Dashing Devil Omnibus 2: Books 4-6, page 7
“And the wing thrusters will have to pull the screws out when you want to take them off. too… though I suppose we could just wait for your regenerative healing to push it out. Would that hurt?”
“Design it to extract the screws, please. But no,” Boyd assured her, “to answer your question, the whole experience will be a lot less painful for me than you are imagining it—even if I can’t block it out.”
He shrugged. “I don’t enjoy being in pain any more than the next person Tink, but I have been trained to tolerate it. That has a lessening effect all on its own, and then my healing factor will take care of the tissue and nerve damage fairly quickly. If there are a bunch of them, I would expect each screw to be relatively small.”
The bone wasn’t that thick.
“Yeah, they would likely be most accurately measured in millimeters,” Tinker replied.
“Blehh,” Boyd stuck his tongue out and made a face she couldn’t see. “I hated learning conversions.”
He’d done it until he got good at it, but hadn’t enjoyed a moment of it. Boyd was fairly young at the time, which may have played a role in how he felt about conversions. Playing tag with other Powered kids was a lot more fun, not to mention much more intense.
“Heh!” At least this got him a weak laugh. “You know metric is both better and easier for a lot of reasons, right?” she asked.
“The imperial system is superior because of its intricacies,” Boyd sniffed with false imperiousness. That earned him a giggle as he successfully lightened her mood.
“I don’t know where you get your delusions, laser brain,” She quoted the insult sweetly.
Boyd chuckled. “Okay, Leia.”
Tinker leaned back into him more firmly and he felt a surge of surprised pleasure flow down their Bond. She softly murmured, “I can’t believe you caught that.”
“Of course I did.” Boyd nuzzled her head again. At this point, her braid on the right side where he kept bushing against was noticeably more frayed than the other. Oops. She liked it more each time, though, so he had no intention of stopping.
“I know I don’t compare to you with your Power, but I did fairly well in memory and recall testing and we just watched The Empire Strikes Back the other night.”
“Fans just call it Empire,” Tinker told him, craning her head back to look up at him.
She’d pressed her head into his chest and he had to both lean back and look down to meet her big, hazel eyes. Her lips were quirked into a small, pleased smile and her doll-like features and eyes showed the warmth he felt over their Bond. The pose also pushed her generous, for her tiny frame, chest out in front of her. Although Boyd didn’t let that draw his eyes… any more than was appropriate.
“Empire then… because yeah, I’m a fan.” Boyd grinned. “There’s a third recording, right? We’ll have to find some time to watch it. The next few days will be fairly prep and training heavy, but I’ll have a few rest periods programmed in there, too. I’ll put a schedule together soon and maybe we can fit it in.”
“Um…” Tinker’s smile grew, then faded, then grew again as her emotions flip-flopped. “Won’t you want to spend that rest time with Silvie and Raev?”
“There will be more than one period of rest between training and prep.” Boyd shrugged. “I’m sure I will for some of them, but I’ll also be spending a lot of the training time with them. I’ll need my Tinker fix somewhere in there… and what better way to get that than to watch… what’s the third one called?” Boyd pretended to draw a blank, but it had already been added to his to-do list.
“Return of the Jedi.” Tinker’s smile solidified and warmth suffused their Bond. “Surprisingly, that one doesn’t get shortened. Odd… it’s really just Empire, now that I think of it.”
Her eyes shifted around his face for a moment before she agreed with a sigh. “Fine, I’ll make the stupid wing boosters, but I’m adding a numbing agent. I’ll talk to Laura about what will work best.”
“Oh,” Boyd smiled, “yes, please do that. Anything else you can think of to reduce the pain would be great, too. Again, I don’t want this because it will hurt, I just want something that will work.”
“I get it,” Tinker sighed again, “sorry it’s just…”
“I know,” he leaned down to give her a peck on her forehead. “I’m sorry I have to ask you to do this. I know you have issues with stuff like this, and a good reason for them. It is different with me, though.”
“Yeah…” Tinker lowered her head and leaned back into him, nestling in. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it… eventually. Thank you for not making me feel overdramatic, telling me I was overthinking it, or anything like that.”
Boyd nuzzled the side of her head again, and offered, “Hmmm, need me to beat someone up or would you rather talk about it?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, looking back up at him.
“It doesn’t have to be now, but I would like you to tell me about whoever invalidated you like that at some point,” Boyd rumbled.
Tinker smiled again and then reached up to take his cheeks between her small hands. “There’ll be no beating anyone up. Mindy already warned me you would make me talk about it at some point. I’m supposed to tell you, ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ when you did.”
“What do you mean?” Boyd cocked an eyebrow, half expecting Mindy to pop into his head and explain it.
Either she wasn’t paying attention right now, or she thought it would be better for Tinker to explain.
“Mindy said if you wanted me to be comfortable talking about the source of my insecurities, then you should be comfortable talking about the source of your insecurities first.” Tinker traced his cheeks with her fingertips. “Things like why you don’t recognize how attractive you are, or why you feel you aren’t worthy of our love.”
Boyd’s mouth went dry, but he had to admit it was only fair. Mindy had triggered a lot of introspection in him these past few days—enough that he accepted that he did indeed have issues and insecurities. Not quite enough to track them all down to the source, though.
He groaned, but said, “I suppose that’s only fair.”
“I don’t think we need to rush it,” Tinker assured him with a warm smile. “I’m not ready to talk about it yet, either. You’re helping though… a lot.”
She ducked her head, a blush turning even the tips of her ears pink. “I’m not dumb; I see what you are doing…. so thank you.”
Boyd could tell that the emotional outpouring from the normally shy young woman was partially the result of her lack of sleep and partially because he had run her through an emotional wringer.
“I never assumed I was getting anything past you,” Boyd replied honestly. He hadn’t exactly been subtle, jumping at every chance to boost her ego like a personal cheerleader. “It’s time for your nap. Would you prefer the Great Room or your own room?”
“Um, the Great Room… that will feel less like going to bed,” Tinker responded, tracing his jaw again before dropping her hands.
Her eyes remained locked on his lips, so he leaned down to give her a gentle kiss. The angle wasn’t great, but Tinker was more in a brushing of lips stage, at this point, so it worked well enough.
“You’re attractive and worthy of love, too,” he smiled down at her while she beamed back up at him. “Now… off we go.”
He stood, lifting her into a princess’ carry. “Your clothes seem comfortable enough to nap in, but would you like to change them?”
“No, these are PJs,” Tinker replied as a deep blush heated her cheeks and embarrassment filled her.
Boyd chuckled when he realized that she’d forgotten what she was wearing and probably wished she had changed before he’d shown up. “Well, they are very cute, as well as being nice and soft. I like them,” he assured her as he began carrying her off to the Great Room, calling for Mindy in his mind.
That usually got her attention if she wasn’t already paying attention, and he wanted her to come help Tinker get to sleep.
Chapter 7
After leaving Tinker with Mindy on one of the lounges out in the Great Room, Boyd found Raev curled up in the outrageously sized ‘medium’ bed that she, Silvie, and he had taken over as their primary sleep—and other things—space.
The dimly lit natural cave theme of the room had grown on him. Artificial torchlight flickered beneath the surface of the stone to provide a comfortable amount of light. The room was kept a little on the cool side, but both of his lovers were sleep snugglers, so that was by design. The room contained only the single enormous bed, being otherwise devoid of any other furnishings. It was, however, lined with doors.
The doors led mostly to large walk-in closets, most of which currently stood empty. Raev, Silvie, and Boyd each had one, but that left plenty free for others to fill with clothing and personal effects should they decide to. There were also two small but luxurious bathrooms, one of which Boyd had taken to performing his daily ablutions in.
They had a much larger bath as well—as in the size of a small waterpark. It was accessible through a door at the back of this bedroom—after passing through whatever you called the luxury version of a locker room. Finally, there was another door that allowed access to the hall, where all the others’ rooms were on the base’s primary floor.
The massive bath chamber hadn’t seen much use—yet—not having been brought up since the time Silvie had shown it to him. Boyd was operating under the impression that she was waiting for his and Mindy’s relationship to reach a certain point, for some unexplained reason, before she expected the team to use the opulent room.
Raev lay curled up near the edge of the massive bed, obviously having decided that crawling out to the center of the huge mattress was too much work in the semi-bleary state she’d been in when he had sent her back to bed. Instead of using a blanket, she’d pulled her fluffy, white-tipped fox tails over herself. When she’d visited him in the ward, she’d worn an oversized sleepshirt; that sleepshirt lay discarded next to the bed.
Boyd didn’t let the sweet curve of her tight ass clad in a pair of not-very-conservative blank panties distract him for too long as he took a moment to enjoy watching her peaceful sleep. Her tails covered parts of her, but not enough to hide the fact that she was otherwise naked.
After watching her for another moment, Boyd leaned over and nuzzled her neck.
Raev really enjoyed waking up to being kissed on the neck, though he wasn’t one hundred percent certain her hangover would have retreated by now. She must have consumed a fairly large amount of alcohol to overwhelm her minor healing factor, although she had recovered noticeably during the course of the conversation earlier.
His kitsune came awake at Boyd’s second gentle kiss. “Mnhh?” she murmured, questioning the sensation until he kissed her slender neck once more.
“Oh… hey Big Guy. Is it time to get up?” Raev asked with a cute little yawn, her smooth voice still a bit thick with sleep.
“Mhmm,” Boyd rumbled into her neck, which she’d exposed to give him better access.
Boyd kissed along her neck a few more times, ensuring she had a pleasant wake-up, but kept a careful eye on their Bond. He had to be careful with Raev. If he got her worked up now, she would stay worked up until Boyd took care of it.
While he wasn’t opposed to such things, the Last Dragon would continue moving inexorably towards New Eden. He needed to be just as inexorable in preparing to prevent that city’s destruction. Breaks, while important, had to be scheduled.
“Mmmhmm,” Raev purred as her consciousness completed its reboot, this one slowed by his gentle kissing.
Boyd had seen her pop right awake, so he knew that she could do so when necessary. He stood at that point, still leaning over her as she blinked her emerald eyes open.
“Hey… wait,” she pouted. “Come back.”
Raev was an excellent pouter, which Boyd attributed to her big, bright green eyes with their natural thick black liner that always made them pop. Boyd had grown up with Silvie, though, who could teach master classes on the topic if she ever moved into mentorship. Fortunately, he’d learned to defend against such charisma-based attacks at a young age.
Boyd snorted softly to himself—he had ingrained defenses against pouting, but he wasn’t immune. When she put her heart into it, not even he could resist Silvie’s pout. That was to say nothing about Hope’s pout—she didn’t even have a try. A slight downward tick of her lips was enough to tug at heartstrings for miles around.
“I’ll give you lots more later,” Boyd rumbled gently down at her, “after a day’s hard training.”
“Uh-oh,” Raev whined, “I was warned about this.”
“Oh?” Boyd chuckled, before surrendering to the pout and leaning in to nuzzle her neck one more time. “What did Silvie call it in her warning?”
Boyd assumed he knew what she was talking about.
“Training terrorism,” Raev sulked as her arms came up around his neck to pull him deeper into her neck. She succeeded, but only by lifting herself up instead of pulling him down.
He rewarded her effort with another neck kiss. “How is this terrorism?” Boyd asked, his mirth evident in his voice.
“Using your wiles to get me to train is terrorism because I’ll do it for fear of losing out on the offered rewards,” she mumbled.
“Hmm,” Boyd rumbled again, “I think of it differently… I would much rather spend the next hour in this bed with you right now, but if I did then the Last Dragon might eat me, and I wouldn’t be able to spend thousands of hours in it with you later.”
“Thousands, eh?” Raev asked with one of her velvet chuckles.
“If we spend three to four hours a week messing around in bed, we would hit a thousand hours around year five, so yeah… thousands.” Boyd chuckled, kissing her neck one more time before he pulled away.
This conversation had a much larger effect than he’d thought it would on Raev’s libido. He probably should have realized that would be the case. She loved it when he talked about their relationship in the long term. Fortunately, she wasn’t actually intent on fighting him and let herself smoothly drop back to the bed.
Raev grinned up at him with a twinkle in her brilliant green eyes. She wasn’t so turned on that it would interfere with her thinking, and she often spent much of the day in a slightly excited state, but Boyd knew that if he pushed too much further, he would have to delay their training to resolve the issue—and once was rarely enough for Raev.
“However,” Boyd returned her grin, “to do that, we both need to survive a mission against the Last Dragon. Which means we’ll have to forego a few of those happy hours for the next few days to make sure we can make up for them.”
Raev’s smile transitioned back to a pout.
“And, in order to ensure morale remains high, we can reward ourselves for all the training. The harder we train,” his grin turned positively devilish, “the… harder we can reward ourselves.”
That made her pout shift to a languid grin. “See what I mean?” she said. “I know that you’re using your wiles on me, but that is exactly what makes me care.”
Boyd chuckled and shrugged a shoulder. “I feel like the word ‘wiles’ implies more subtlety than I’m using… but hey, as long as it works, you can call it what you want.”
“You’re probably right,” Raev shrugged and smirked up at him, “but I can’t think of any other polite terms for it. Any other terms for it are generally considered naughty. That you’ve weaponized your ‘wiles’… some might even call cheating.” She reached up with one of her long, recently emerald-green painted fingers and bopped him on the nose.
“If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’ hard enough,” Boyd repeated one of his favorite Royce ’isms.
“I like that quip.” Raev smirked mischievously. “What do you think, team motto?”
Boyd chuckled again before shaking his head. “I don’t think it would play well with the citizenry. Well, actually, maybe not the citizens. They get a kick out of mavericks and we could probably lean into that. But it wouldn’t fly with the higher-ups.”
“Unofficial team motto?” Raev asked playfully as she sat up and started to rise.
Boyd helped her rise, pulling her mostly naked, splendid form against him. “I got it from Royce when I was about sixteen and the other kids weren’t letting up. It’s served me well, so I don’t have a problem with it becoming our unofficial motto. And I doubt Royce will mind.”
“We’ll have to run it by the others; they might have even better ones,” Raev said, wrapping her arms around his neck as she rested her head on his bare chest and leaned into him.
She was chilly, which had a pronounced effect on the two hard points pressing into his stomach. Boyd ran warmer than usual, so he sensed through their Bond that she was simply basking in his heat.
“The great part about unofficial mottos is that we can have more than one,” he leaned down to give her a proper kiss good morning.
“That’s true, I suppose,” she purred after the kiss that Boyd had ended before it could get too heated. “So, what’s up first?”
“First, while you get dressed, tell me how Sinoe is doing,” he responded as he, only slightly reluctantly, released her to step back.
“As well as can be expected.” Raev frowned as they walked towards her closet together. “I saw signs of denial, anger, and bargaining last night. I was mostly able to keep her spirits up by telling stories about happy times and so on.”
They entered her closet. Much like his, there was a wall of drawers opposite the entry and a rack for shoes, with hanging rods lining the other walls. Also, much like Boyd’s closet, the racks were mostly empty. This didn’t surprise him, since he knew that her personal effects had finally made it to Glorith City. Everyone, including Boyd, had more clothes back in The Tower that were scheduled to arrive with the next shipment out to their secluded not-so-little base.
