Redana, frantic, subconscious running faster than her thoughts, pushes Epistia back, clamps one hand over her mouth. “Wait,” she says. “Not like— if you just yell for her she’ll—“

But it’s too late. She’s made a mistake. She can’t de-escalate now that she’s wrestling with a Ceronian. A thousand generations howl through Epistia’s veins, all daring her to rise to the challenge and end up on top. She grabs for Dany and the two of them stumble into a pillowed alcove and there is a confusion of limbs, growling, and muffled yelps.

But it ends with Dany straddling Epistia, wrists pinned over her head, mouth stuffed and wrapped tightly with regal black and gold, and a shuddery blushy Dany trying to look somewhere that’s not the Ceronian’s pretty gagged face or her heaving chest (damn to the shining waves that Party Top). Every attempt by Epistia to wrench her wrists out of Dany’s hands, every twist of her torso under Dany, every garbled word through the spacer’s cloth, they’re just making the color rise to her cheeks all the faster.

“See,” Dany says, and tightens the grip of her knees. “If you— she— she thinks she’s hiding— and—“ Epistia bucks and makes a glareful noise and Dany nearly combusts. “The Coherent, she, and vines, and…”

[i]And imagine Bella in her place. Straining, bucking, silenced, moaning, free to be touched, batting her yellow-and-red eyes and mumbling an invitation…[/i]

Dany makes the tactical error of letting go of Epistia’s wrists so that she can bury her confused silly head in her hands and make a noise like a tea kettle.