Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 712: Deal Secured

"At the cost of our pride." Trisha’s voice was flat. "And our pride is already in pieces on the floor of that content studio, so I’d say we’re getting it cheap."

Brittany pressed her face into her knees. Her shoulders shook once, then again, and Trisha reached over and put a hand on the back of her neck and held it there.

"I hate this," Brittany whispered.

"I know."

"I hate her."

"I know."

Brittany lifted her head. Her face was swollen and her eyes were raw and she looked at the phone on the floor between them like it was a loaded weapon.

She picked it up and dialed.

...

Nyx’s phone buzzed against her hip. She pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and answered without straightening from the railing.

"We accept," Trisha’s voice said. Tight. Cold. The sound of a woman swallowing glass.

"And Trisha?"

Silence.

"Smart choice. We begin in an hour. You’re to arrive by then. I’ll notify the guild to let you in."

The line went dead. Nyx slipped the phone back into her pocket.

She looked at the stars for another moment, then turned and went inside.

The room was dark and close and smelled like the aftermath of people who’d fought a war and bathed together. Bodies occupied the bed in the sprawling, graceless arrangement of a group that had collapsed into sleep without negotiation.

Luna had migrated to the center at some point, because Luna always migrated to the center, and she was curled against Kaiden’s left side with her face buried in his shoulder and one leg thrown across his hip with territorial precision. Aria had claimed his right arm and was using his bicep as a pillow, her silver hair fanned across him, her breathing slow and even.

Calypso was draped across the foot of the bed like a cat that had grown to human proportions, her tail curled around one of Kaiden’s ankles. Bastet had somehow ended up perpendicular to everyone else, her head on Calypso’s stomach, her ears twitching in her sleep.

Nyx stood in the doorway and surveyed the situation with the calm assessment of a woman who’d done this before.

Then she got to work.

Luna first. Nyx slid both hands under her and lifted with the practiced care of someone relocating a sleeping predator. She growled in her sleep, a low rumble that vibrated through Nyx’s wrists, but she didn’t wake. Nyx deposited her gently beside Bastet, and Luna immediately rolled into the new heat and hooked an arm around the cat girl’s waist.

Aria was harder, clinging to Kaiden’s arm like her life depended on it even in her sleep. She relented eventually, which said a lot about how exhausted she was. ’This chick is a true yandere...’ Nyx giggled as she eased Aria into the pile of softly breathing girls.

Nyx slipped into the bed beside Kaiden, now having him all to herself.

She fit against him the way she always did, pressing into his side, her leg sliding along his, her arm draping across his stomach. He was heated from sleep and from the women who’d been piled on him. The warmth soaked into her cold limbs and she let out a breath she’d been holding since the phone call ended.

Here, in the dark, against him, she could be small.

She lay there for a minute, just breathing, her cheek against his shoulder and her palm resting on the flat plane of his stomach. His heartbeat was slow and steady under her ear. The girls breathed around them in the soft, overlapping rhythms of deep sleep.

The woman who’d just called two A-tier fighters loose women to their faces kissed the underside of Kaiden’s jaw, soft and lingering, and felt the tension in her loosen.

"Kaiden," she whispered against him.

Nothing.

She kissed the corner of his jaw, then the hollow below his ear, her mouth unhurried. Her touch drifted across his stomach, lower with each pass.

"Kaiden." Softer now. She felt guilty about it, which was absurd, because five minutes ago she’d been the cruelest person on this mountain, and now she was feeling bad about disturbing her boyfriend’s well-deserved sleep.

He stirred. A low sound from deep in him, more vibration than voice, and his arm came around her on instinct before his eyes opened.

"Mm."

"Hi," she whispered.

His eyes found her in the dark, half-lidded and soft and still clouded with sleep. His hand tightened on her arm and pulled her closer, and she went willingly, pressing herself into his side until there was no space between them.

"What time is it?" he murmured.

"Late. Or early. Depends on how you look at it."

His thumb brushed the bare curve of her shoulder where the nightgown had slipped. "Why are you awake?"

"I did something."

That woke him up a degree. His eyes cleared and he turned his head to look at her properly. She could see the gears already turning behind the sleepiness, assessing, calculating whether ’something’ meant a crisis or an opportunity.

"The good kind," she added, and kissed his collarbone. "I received some news about Brittany and Trisha."

She told him.

Her voice was low enough that only he could hear it, her mouth close to his ear as she curled against him, nail tracing idle patterns on his torso while she walked him through the contract structure. The mercenary loophole. The allowance system she wanted him to set up, where Brittany and Trisha would receive operational funding from a discretionary account in his name, none of it technically theirs. If Ashbound sued and won, the girls could declare bankruptcy and walk away clean because they’d never owned anything worth seizing.

"Maeve turned her own son into a penniless puppet to weaponize the contract clause," Nyx murmured. "We do the same thing, except ours is a shield instead of a cage."

Kaiden was fully awake now. His hand had moved to her hair, threading through the pink strands while he listened.

"And the criminal exposure?"

"That’s what I’m banking on." Her fingertip drew a circle below his collarbone. "Think about it. Two A-tier women, already known for parting their legs on camera, suddenly in debt for a million Chronos with a seventy-two hour deadline. Someone inside Ashbound leaked the details of that meeting. The amounts, the timeline, all of it. And those two are exactly the kind of exotic delicacy that men like Maximilian salivate over. Young, powerful, desperate, and already used to being looked at."

She let that sit.

"I’d bet everything I have that their phones have been ringing with offers from rich men who heard two pretty A-tiers were available to be purchased. And if even one of those calls crossed a line - and they always cross a line, because men like that can’t help themselves - then Brittany and Trisha are sitting on evidence of criminal solicitation tied directly to information that leaked from inside Ashbound."

Kaiden stopped playing with her hair. His eyes had changed.

"Any court that hears those recordings during discovery is going to care a lot more about who made those calls than whether two women violated a confidentiality clause."

Then Nyx’s voice dropped into that low, velvety register that meant she was enjoying herself. His gorgeous space babe was fully in her element. "And even if the girls leaked it themselves by contacting lawyers in a panic... What’s Maeve gonna do? Sue the lawyers too? When Ashbound is already in deep shit and scrutinized by the whole world? Sue the awakened firms who have dozens of important clients? The few sponsors Ashbound might retain - if any - will leave if they do that."

"Meaning Maeve can’t afford to sue," Kaiden realized.

"Meaning every step she takes toward enforcing the contract drags her closer to a criminal investigation she can’t control or toward bankruptcy. The lawsuit becomes the deterrent. She pulls the trigger and the gun fires both ways. And even if everything goes wrong, she sues, the girls lose and are forced to pay... Well, they can’t. They’re guildless mercs with an ’allowance.’"

His hand stilled in her hair. Then he breathed out, slow and appreciative, and she felt his ribs expand against her chest.

"You made this call tonight," he said. "While everyone was asleep."

"Mhm."

"You saw the opportunity, thought of such an elaborate plan, and moved on it before sunrise."

"Mhm." Her hand drifted lower, tracing the line of muscle below his navel. "You get two A-tier fighters trained for years at another guild’s expense, bound to you by gratitude at a cost that’s basically nothing. Their story becomes your content. Their rescue becomes your brand. And every Chronos they earn as independents is Chronos Ashbound will never see."

Her hand slipped beneath the waistband and wrapped around his shaft, and she felt him respond immediately, thickening against her palm.

"You might just be the most terrifying being in this family," Kaiden chuckled.

"Thank you." She stroked him slowly, her grip loose, her thumb tracing the underside with the same idle patience she used when explaining strategy. "So?"

"So yes. Obviously yes."

Kaiden took her hand off his length, and before she could protest, he rolled her onto her back and pinned both above beside her head. Nyx blinked up at him, and the calm confidence that had survived two A-tier fighters and a midnight negotiation cracked into a breathless laugh.

"Kai, I wasn’t finished talking."

"You are now. Come here, you wonderful woman."

Nyx’s muted yelp and the following, breathless laughter was the last sound before the moonlight swallowed them both.