Steam had colonized the entire chamber.

It rose from the surface of the bath in slow, lazy pillars, curling against the vaulted black stone of the Pleasure Palace’s inner bathing hall—a room that deserved a different word entirely. Not a bathroom.

A ’pool’.

Obsidian tiles ran the full perimeter, wide enough for forty bodies to float without touching. Water channels carved from the walls themselves fed it constantly, salt-warmed, faintly luminescent where the palace’s formation stones bled their residual qi into the current. Lantern clusters hung from the ceiling on chains, their amber light refracted through steam, painting everything in the color of old honey.

It should have been peaceful.

Then Sai breached the surface.

He ’erupted’ from the deep end—full merman, all six feet of scaled tail and bare torso—and launched himself into a horizontal torpedo through the center of the pool with absolutely zero warning and zero apology.

The wave hit like a wall.

Three women on the left bank took it directly to the face. Two more on the stone steps lost their footing entirely and went in sideways. A soap dish went somewhere. An oil lamp wobbled violently on its hook.

"’KIEEHH—!’"

"’COLD—’"

"’WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU—’"

Sai resurfaced in the middle of the pool, shaking water from his black-blue hair with an expression of profound, unbothered satisfaction. His deep-set eyes swept the chaos he’d created with the calm assessment of someone who considered this a successful experiment.

"’Swimming like a jet ski,’" he said, to no one in particular. His voice carried the particular resonance of someone who’d spent their entire life underwater and still wasn’t entirely sure how to pitch sound through air. Flat. Echoless. Entirely sincere. "’Very efficient. Excellent drag reduction.’"

The surviving dry women on the tile rim were staring at him.

Then they were all staring at Kaira’s tribal women. Because twelve of them—bronze-skinned, bodies marked with the angular scars of the Stonefang, absolutely naked from crown to sole—had gone entirely rigid at the wave impact, hands going to weapons that weren’t there, every muscle coiled in threat-response before the water had even finished dripping from their jawlines.

The catkin nobles from the Main Feline Clan—several seated on the far stone shelf with their legs folded—were watching this with the specific expression of women who had expected indignity but not quite ’this particular’ indignity.

One of Kaira’s tribal women wrung water from a long braid. Slowly. With the energy of someone deciding whether to be professionally offended.

Sai observed the room. Did not appear troubled.

Then a voice drifted across the pool—cool, evaluating, carrying the practiced authority of a woman accustomed to being heard even through chaos:

"’Is this really—’" a pause, in which a set of silver blind eyes oriented themselves toward the general direction of the sound—"’—that slave you brought, husband?’"

Kaira. Seated on the wide stone shelf at the pool’s edge closest to the bath’s carved entry pillar, her blind gaze traversing the water’s surface with the uncanny precision of someone who’d learned to read a room in textures and air pressure rather than sight. The gold chain connecting her nipple piercings to her clit ring swayed gently with each breath. The copper of her skin was slicked dark from the water. Her massive breasts sat heavy and full against her chest, the dark nipple hardware catching amber light, her long scarred legs folded beneath her with warrior’s composure.

She wasn’t speaking to Sai.

She was speaking to the bed.

The bathtub’s edge.

’Him.’

Tianlong had claimed the broad stone ledge at the pool’s center-right—the carved-out seat that jutted from the tile about eight inches above the waterline, wide enough to brace both palms flat and lean. He hadn’t moved in several minutes. He didn’t particularly need to.

Yuziyang was doing the moving for him.

She was in his lap. ’On’ his cock, specifically. Her thick thighs were spread on either side of his, feet finding purchase on the submerged tile step below, and she was ’working’—rising and dropping in a rhythm that had been building for the last twenty minutes, her dense, supple body bouncing with every descent, the slap of her hips against his pelvis creating an obscene wet percussion that echoed faintly off the vaulted stone above them.

’PAH—PAH—PAH—’

Her name meant flower in some dead dialect of the fifth circle’s lower tongues. She looked like one—round-faced, bronze-gold skin gone rosy from steam and exertion, her dark hair plastered wet to the sides of her throat, her substantial breasts bouncing in rhythm with her hips, the nipples stiffened to hard points from the cooler air above water. She had the body of a woman built for impact—not delicate, not lean, but ’dense’ in every right location. Wide hips, a soft belly, heavy breasts that swung and jiggled with each downward slam.

She hadn’t stopped moaning since she’d started.

"’Hnn~—! Ah—! Ahnn~!!♡’" A breathless syllable on every upstroke. A broken cry on every crash back down. Her head had dropped back entirely, wet hair dragging across Tianlong’s forearm where he’d braced it on her hip—not steering, just holding. Claiming weight.

His other hand wasn’t on her.

It was in two places simultaneously. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

His left palm—large, warm, completely unhurried—was cupped around Akane’s left breast. She had positioned herself on his right side with the regal casualness of a woman who’d decided this spot was hers an hour ago and saw no reason to vacate it. Her nine tails spread behind her in the water like living crimson ribbons, drifting outward from her spine. She was licking his neck with slow, thorough attention—the flat of her tongue dragging up from the junction of his shoulder, along his pulse point, before her lips pressed a soft, sucking kiss just below his jaw. Her massive breasts pressed against his upper arm, the left one overflowing his palm entirely, the nipple hard between his knuckles as he kneaded.

"’Mm,’" Akane said, against his skin. Not a moan. Just... acknowledgment. The sound of a woman entirely comfortable.

His right hand had found Sylvea’s breast.

She stood on his left side—or rather, stood was generous, she was braced on the pool’s interior ledge, her pale body half-submerged, emerald hair floating on the water’s surface like dispersed silk. She had one hand pressed flat against the stone wall for balance and one arm tucked behind Tianlong’s neck, her forearm across his shoulders, her lips at his ear. She was saying something—not moaning, ’saying’—in a low, even cadence, the way she sometimes did when she thought he wasn’t registering the words. A half-recited old elf verse about water and heat, the kind of thing she called ’companionable sound.’

His right thumb rolled her nipple between it and his forefinger. Hard.

The verse stopped.

"’...Hnn.♡’"

Just that. Just one syllable, pressed very carefully through controlled teeth.

He kept rolling.

’PAH—PAH—PAH—’

One of the Tribal woman—the one whom he decalred as his wife after Chief—above him picked up speed.

Her thighs were slapping water with every bounce now, steam spiraling up from the friction, her heavy breasts swinging forward and back with a jiggle that sent small waves across the pool’s surface each time they settled.

"’HAANNH~!!♡ HUSBAND—’" she gasped, and grabbed his shoulders, fingers digging in—"’—I’M—NGHH—CLOSE—’"