Chapter 213

“Since you need more Carnal Energy, Natalie,” Ana said, “both for upgrading skills and empowering them, does that mean we should be attending to you more frequently?”

The interjection came out of nowhere. Prior to cutting in, Natalie and the team had simply been discussing which of her abilities should receive the next boost in progression. The obvious candidates were [Carnal Harvest] and [Empower], since it seemed Natalie would be making greater use of the latter, and the former went without saying. But in typical Ana fashion, the stone-faced girl had dropped in that question—which was loaded with all kinds of lewd implications—without an ounce of hesitation.

To Ana’s side, Liz stared at her with widening green eyes. “Attend to her?” she asked, as if the meaning wasn’t clear.

To be fair to her, however suddenly the question had been thrown in, Ana did have a good reason to ask. But Natalie already had strong opinions on the topic. It was something she’d discussed with Jordan.

“It’s fine,” Natalie said. “That’s not necessary. There’s some kind of soft cap, anyway, which I’m reaching most days.”

“There’s diminishing returns, you mean?” Ana asked.

“Basically.” Natalie frowned, hesitating for a second before deciding that she wanted to elaborate. “Even if it didn’t work like that, though,” she said, “I don’t want to treat sex as ... I don’t know. A grind. Something we’re trying to ‘maximize’. It’s weird to me.”

“Does kill the mood, a bit,” Jordan snorted. “Making sex a chore.” She tilted her head. “And the mood literally matters, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. I get more points when, um, you know,” Natalie said.

“When she’s turned on,” Jordan finished for her. “The more excited she is, the better the yield. So that’s a double-no on the whole ‘grinding points’ thing.”

“Besides,” Sofia said. “Surely there’s a limit to how much sex one woman can have in any given day. Even for Natalie.”

Natalie turned an amused look her way. She made a point of raking her eyes up and down Sofia’s body. “If there is, I haven’t reached it. I just meant for ‘efficiency’ purposes, I don’t wanna treat it like a game.” She grinned at Sofia. “I’ve got plenty of space in my schedule, though. Don’t worry about that.”

Sofia flushed. “Pervert,” she muttered.

“I see,” Ana said. “Another question, then. Two, actually.”

“Okay?” Natalie said warily, bracing herself. Because Ana’s questions rarely were of the ‘how is your day going?’ sort.

“Did you work something out with Malice?”

“Oh. Right.” That was more normal than she’d been expecting. Natalie realized she hadn’t caught her team up on the whole Malice situation. “Apparently, she doesn’t care about being released. In fact, she said she’d rather not, unless something interesting is going on.”

“Interesting?”

“Combat,” Natalie said. “Or, you know,” she coughed, “whatever.”

“Whatever,” Sofia repeated dryly, clearly knowing what Natalie meant by that.

“But she said she didn’t want to explore our society,” Natalie said, ignoring Sofia. “And when she’s in the [Capture Core], she’s essentially sleeping, like we guessed. So we don’t have to worry too much about the in-between periods, for now.”

“For now?” Jordan asked.

Natalie chewed her lip. “I still don’t think we should leave her in there all the time. Even if that’s what she says she wants. Ah, I don’t know,” Natalie said, rubbing the back of her head. “It’s her decision to make, not mine. But shouldn’t we introduce her to...?” She searched out for the right way to phrase it.

“Normalcy?” Sofia suggested. “Something other than nonstop killing?”