Day 80 Post-Impact
She came to him at dawn.
Sarnav was reviewing Singapore intelligence reports when his door opened without a knock. Serena stood in the doorway, her short bob slightly disheveled, dark circles under her eyes suggesting she hadn't slept much. But her gaze was clear. Focused. Decided.
"I've run the calculations," she said without preamble.
"And?"
"The probability of this being a mistake is 3.2%." She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. The lock clicked with a sound of finality. "I can live with those odds."
He set down his tablet, giving her his full attention. She was dressed simply, practical clothes, no makeup, but there was something different about her. The professional armor she usually wore was gone. In its place was something raw and honest.
"Serena—"
"Let me finish." She moved closer, stopping an arm's length away. Close enough to touch. Far enough to retreat. "I spent all night running scenarios. Probability matrices. Decision trees. Every analytical framework I know."
"What did you find?"
"That analysis doesn't work on feelings." A breath of laughter, almost frustrated. "I kept trying to quantify why I want you. Strategic value. Network benefits. Alliance strengthening. But none of those are the real reason."
"What's the real reason?"
She met his eyes. "Because when you kissed me last night, I forgot how to calculate. For thirty-seven seconds, my mind went completely blank. Do you know how terrifying that is for someone like me?"
"Terrifying enough to run away?"
"Terrifying enough to run toward." She closed the remaining distance, her hand coming up to rest on his chest. "I've spent my whole life thinking. Planning. Controlling. I'm tired, Sarnav. I want someone to make me stop."
He covered her hand with his. "You're sure?"
"I'm certain." The word carried weight. For someone who dealt in probabilities, certainty was the ultimate commitment. "This is me choosing. Not calculating. Choosing."
He pulled her into him and kissed her.
The kiss started gentle, but Serena wasn't interested in gentle.
She pressed against him with desperate hunger, her fingers fisting in his shirt, her mouth demanding more. She kissed like she was trying to prove something. To him or herself, he wasn't sure which.
He let her lead for a moment. Let her feel in control.
Then he took over.
His hand found the back of her neck, angling her head where he wanted it. She made a small sound of surprise as he deepened the kiss, his tongue claiming her mouth. The shift in power was subtle but unmistakable.
"Oh," she breathed when he finally let her surface for air. "That's..."
"What you wanted?"
"I don't know what I want anymore." But her body knew. She was pressed against him, her hips rocking slightly, her breath coming faster. "I usually have a plan."
"Forget the plan." He kissed along her jaw, down to her neck, and felt her shiver. "Just feel."
His lips found the sensitive spot below her ear, and she melted. Actually melted, her knees going weak, a moan escaping her careful control.
"Wah lau," she gasped. "How did you know..."
"I pay attention." He kissed the spot again, then bit gently, and she whimpered. "Every time we talked, your hand would drift to your neck when you were nervous. You're sensitive here."
"I... that's..." She couldn't form a coherent sentence. Her fingers were digging into his shoulders, her head tilting back to give him better access.
He walked her backward toward his bed, still working her neck with lips and teeth. By the time her knees hit the mattress, she was trembling.
"Clothes off," he murmured against her skin. "Now."
The command cut through whatever remaining control she had. Her hands moved automatically, pulling at fabric, shedding layers with an efficiency that would have made her proud if she could think clearly enough to notice. He helped, stripping away her practical clothes to reveal the woman beneath.
She was beautiful. Slim and toned, her 34D breasts perfect handfuls, her skin smooth and warm. She stood before him in just her underwear, and for a moment, a flash of vulnerability crossed her face.
"You're overdressed," she said, trying to reclaim some control.
"Patience."
"I don't have patience. I have schedules." But her voice was breathy, lacking its usual authority.
He pushed her onto the bed, and she went willingly, spreading out on the sheets like an offering. Her eyes tracked him as he removed his own clothes, and he caught the way her breath hitched when she saw him fully.
"Impressive," she managed. "The statistics suggested..."
"Stop analyzing." He crawled over her, pinning her with his body weight. "That brain of yours doesn't get to participate right now."
"Make me."
Challenge accepted.
He started with her neck, because he knew it would undo her. Long, slow kisses that had her squirming beneath him. Gentle bites that made her gasp. His tongue tracing patterns that she couldn't predict, couldn't anticipate, couldn't calculate.
"Shiok," she breathed, the Singlish slipping out. "That feels... ah..."
[DUAL CULTIVATION - INITIATED]
He moved lower. Her collarbone. The swell of her breasts. He took his time with them, learning what made her moan, what made her arch, what made her forget how to speak English entirely.
"Wah lau..." Her hands were in his hair, pulling him closer. "Your mouth is... I can't..."
"Can't what?"
"Can't think." She sounded almost panicked. "I keep trying to analyze what you're doing and I can't keep up."
"Good." He kissed down her stomach, and she tensed with anticipation. "That's the point."
His mouth found her inner thighs, another sensitive spot he'd catalogued, and she nearly came off the bed. He held her hips down, kissing the soft skin, teasing closer to where she wanted him but never quite arriving.
"Please," she gasped. "Don't tease lah..."
"Ask nicely."
"I'm asking!"
"That wasn't nice. That was demanding." He kissed her thigh again, so close to her center that she whimpered. "Try again."
The power exchange was complete now. She'd come to him wanting to maintain some semblance of control, and he'd systematically dismantled every defense. The brilliant strategist, the probability manipulator, reduced to begging.
"Please," she whispered, and this time it was genuine. Vulnerable. "Please, I need..."
He gave her what she needed.
His mouth found her center, and she cried out in Singlish, a stream of words that the system translated automatically in his mind even as he heard her actual voice. Pleasure. Surprise. Desperate need.
"Shiok... shiok... wah lau, don't stop... right there lah..."
He worked her with tongue and fingers, learning her responses, building her toward a peak she couldn't calculate or control. She tasted sweet, her arousal coating his tongue as he explored her folds. When he found her clit, she nearly screamed.
"There! Ah, right there..."
He focused on that spot, alternating between gentle licks and firm pressure, while his fingers curled inside her to find the rough patch of nerves that made her back arch off the bed.
"I can't... I don't know how to..." She was babbling now, all calculation abandoned. "Wah lau eh, you sibeh good at this..."
Her thighs were trembling around his head. Her hands were fisting in the sheets so hard her knuckles went white. Her voice was getting higher, less coherent, more desperate.
"I'm going to..." She gasped. "I can't hold... I'm..."
"Let go."
She shattered.
The orgasm rolled through her in waves, her whole body shaking, her pussy clenching around his fingers in rhythmic pulses. Her voice broke on sounds that weren't quite words, something between a scream and a moan that echoed off the walls. He worked her through it, gentling his touch as she came down, pressing soft kisses to her trembling thighs until she was lying boneless and dazed.
"That was..." She blinked up at him, looking genuinely stunned. "I lost count. Of everything. I couldn't track the variables. How many times did I...?"
"Three. You came three times in the last two minutes."
"Impossible. That's not..." She stopped, realizing she was trying to analyze again. "Never mind. Just... wah lau."
"We're not done."
"What..."
He positioned himself at her entrance, and her eyes went wide. Still sensitive from her orgasm, still trembling, she looked up at him with something like fear and something like hunger.
"Wait," she said. "I need to..."
"You need to feel." He pushed forward slowly, and she gasped as he entered her. "Stop thinking. Just feel me."
The stretch of him filling her seemed to short-circuit whatever was left of her analytical mind. Her eyes fluttered closed, her lips parted, her whole body arching to take him deeper.
"Oh god," she breathed. "You're so..."
"So what?"
"So much." She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him closer. "I didn't calculate for this."
He began to move.
[DUAL CULTIVATION - IN PROGRESS]
[SYNCHRONIZATION: 87%]
Every thrust drove her further from coherent thought. She'd come to him with plans and propositions and careful analysis, and now she was reduced to sensation. To feeling. To the primal truth of bodies joining.
"Harder," she demanded, then caught herself. "Please. Harder. I want..."
"What do you want?"
"I want you to fuck the strategy out of me." The words came out raw, honest, nothing like her usual careful speech. "I want to stop thinking for once in my life. Make me stupid. Make me forget how to calculate."
He obliged.
The pace became brutal, driving into her with force that made the bed shake. Her breasts bounced with each thrust, her body jolting beneath him as he took her harder than she'd ever been taken. She loved it. Craved it. Every powerful stroke drove the thoughts further from her mind.
"Yes... yes... wah lau... like that... don't stop lah..."
Her Singlish was pouring out now, the accent thickening as control slipped away completely. She was saying things she'd never say with her rational mind engaged, begging, praising, demanding, and he understood every word through the system's translation while hearing the beautiful music of her actual voice.
"So deep," she moaned. "Can feel you in my... ah! You're hitting..."
He adjusted his angle, and she screamed. Actually screamed, her voice cracking, her nails drawing blood down his back. He'd found the spot inside her that turned thought to static.
"There! Don't move! Stay right... oh god oh god..."
He didn't move. He pounded that spot relentlessly, watching her fall apart beneath him. Her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat. Her makeup was ruined with tears of overwhelming pleasure. Her perfectly composed mask was shattered beyond repair.
"You're mine," he growled against her ear, and felt her clench around him. "Say it."
"Yours." No hesitation. No calculation. "I'm yours lor. Can already. I belong to you lah. Just... just don't stop..."
He could feel her building toward another peak, could feel his own release approaching. Through the incomplete bond that had formed during her time at Harmony, he sensed her emotions. Pleasure overwhelming analysis, feeling conquering thought, surrender sweeter than any victory.
"Come with me," he commanded. "Now."
She broke first.
Her orgasm was violent, her whole body seizing, her pussy gripping him like a vice, her voice hitting notes he didn't know she could reach. The sensation of her walls milking him pulled him over the edge, and he buried himself to the hilt as he came, filling her with heat.
And in that moment of perfect connection, of shared pleasure at its peak...
[BOND FORMATION - INITIATING]
The bond snapped into place.
Serena gasped, her eyes flying open, because suddenly she could feel everything. Not just her own pleasure, but his. Not just their connection, but the entire network. Seven women bound to this man, their emotions and sensations a constant presence at the edge of awareness.
She felt Nisha's warm acceptance. Ishani's fierce approval. Jade's possessive satisfaction. Jiyeon's competitive acknowledgment. Minji's playful welcome. Sana's gentle joy. All of them, reaching out through the network to embrace their newest sister.
Welcome, they seemed to say. You're one of us now.
"I can feel them," she whispered, tears forming unexpectedly. "All of them. And you. I can feel everything you feel for me."
[BOND FORMATION - COMPLETE]
[WIFE #8: TAN WEI LING "SERENA" - REGISTERED]
[BOND TYPE: ETERNAL PARTNER]
[NETWORK ACCESS: GRANTED]
[ABILITY INTEGRATION: PROBABILITY MANIPULATION]
[ESSENCE GAINED: +18,500]
Love. That's what she felt pouring through the bond. Not calculation. Not strategy. Not mutual benefit. Just love, pure and overwhelming and impossible to quantify.
"I didn't plan for this," she said, voice breaking. "I didn't calculate... I never thought..."
"That's because some things can't be calculated." He pulled her close, still buried inside her, letting her feel the connection in every possible way. "Some things just have to be felt."
She buried her face in his chest and cried. Not from sadness. From relief. From the overwhelming experience of finally letting go of control and finding something better waiting on the other side.
He held her through it, stroking her hair, letting the bond carry his feelings to her. She felt it all. His love, his pride in her surrender, his commitment to her future. No analysis needed. Just truth.
"I've never cried after sex before," she admitted when the tears finally slowed. "Actually, I've never cried in front of anyone. It's inefficient."
"How does it feel?"
"...Good. Terrifying and good." She wiped her eyes with an embarrassed laugh. "Don't tell anyone, can or not? I have a reputation."
"Your secret's safe with me." He kissed her forehead. "All of them."
Later, tangled together in sweat-soaked sheets, Serena traced patterns on his chest while her mind, finally quiet, processed what had happened.
"The network," she murmured. "It's incredible. I can sense probability fields through the others now. Jade's data streams have statistical patterns I never noticed. Jiyeon's political calculations suddenly make more sense."
"The abilities integrate."
"I didn't know it would be like this." She looked up at him, her sharp eyes soft in a way he'd never seen. "I thought bonding was strategic. Transactional. I didn't know it would feel like... like finding pieces of myself I didn't know were missing."
Through the network, he felt the other wives' response to her words. Understanding. They'd all felt the same thing. Every one of them had come to him with different expectations and found something beyond what they'd imagined.
"You okay?" Nisha's voice came through the door, accompanied by a gentle knock. "Heard the bond form lah. Just checking."
Serena laughed, a genuine, unguarded sound. "Since when do you knock?"
"Since our newest sister might need privacy." The familiar Malaysian lilt in Nisha's voice was warm with affection. "Come find us when you're ready. The family wants to meet you properly."
Family. The word settled over Serena like a blanket.
"I'll be there," she called back. Then, softer, to Sarnav: "Family. I have a family again."
"You always did. You just hadn't bonded with them yet."
She kissed him, soft and sweet, nothing like the desperate hunger from before.
"Thank you," she said. "For making me certain."
[DAY 80]
[WIFE COUNT: 8/32]
[ESSENCE: 777,600 / 1,000,000]
[HP: 12,847]
[SERENA TAN: BONDED, WIFE #8]
[SERENA'S CULTIVATION: C-RANK (32% TO C+)][PROBABILITY MANIPULATION: RANGE +15%][LUCK FIELD: PRECISION +12%]
[NETWORK: EXPANDED]
[HARMONY SAFE ZONE STATUS][POPULATION: 920][WESTERN EXPANSION: 100% COMPLETE][NORTHERN EXPANSION: 15% INITIATED]
[NEXT: MISSION PLANNING]