Gia’s mouth found the incomplete sentence and stopped it. She pressed her face into his shoulder the way Celia had pressed hers into his neck — the hiding-not-hiding gesture of a woman managing something she can’t manage with her face visible.

’Don’t say it,’ she told herself.

The throb in her chest said something else.

"Ounghh~!! — I love — ’this’ — I love ’this’ — that’s what I was going to say—"

She’d decided on the substitute word at the last possible moment.

She wasn’t entirely sure it was the substitute.

PAH! PAAAH!

"HIEKK~!! AANGHH~~!!! — I’m ’crying’ too—"

The tears arrived the same way they’d arrived for Celia — no drama, just suddenly present, tracking warm lines from the outer corners of her eyes toward her temples because she was on her back.

"Hnghh~!! — don’t stop — I don’t — the crying doesn’t mean—"

"I know," he said.

He knew.

That was the specific problem.

He knew the difference between the crying that meant ’stop’ and the crying that meant ’this is too much and I need more of it,’ and he had never once confused the two, and that knowledge — his ability to read the exact state of her — was somehow the most destabilizing thing.

More than the mark.

More than the installed rhythm.

The fact of being accurately known.

PAH!

Nara was on her knees before he crossed to her.

She hadn’t made the decision consciously — had been sitting, and was now kneeling, the transition somewhere in the gap between the thought ’I should wait’ and the body’s different filing system.

Her hair was loose on her shoulders.

The afternoon light on her tan skin.

The expression on her face — the Nara-expression, the measuring, nothing-escaping look — was still there, but running on the new frequency, aimed at him with the specific quality of a woman taking inventory on something she intends to acquire more of.

"Nara," he said.

"I know," she said.

Third time.

Different woman, same two words, different precise meaning for each — Celia’s had meant ’I know what this costs and I’m paying it anyway,’ Gia’s had meant ’I know what I am and I’m choosing it,’ and Nara’s meant something that she wasn’t going to say aloud but that the throb in her chest had been spelling out for the last twenty minutes in the patient rhythm of an installed truth.

He pressed her shoulders forward.

She went — face down, cheek to rock, hips up, the same position as the first time but different now because the body receiving the position was different now, had been marked and refrequencied and was running at a temperature it didn’t run at before.

"HNGHH~~!!"

The entry from behind — immediate, the angle finding the precise address it had found before and finding it faster this time, the second visit always faster, the body having filed the route.

PAH! PAH!

"Aanghh~~!! Ounghh~!! — ’deeper’ — yes — there—"

The directness of it.

No filter, no management — the words arriving from the deeper frequency, from the place the mark had installed itself, and they were correct, they were accurate, ’deeper’ and ’there’ were precise coordinates and she was giving them without embarrassment.

’Nara,’ she thought, from very far back. ’You are giving him coordinates.’

’Yes,’ the other frequency replied. ’Because that is what he needs to get this right.’

’And I need him to get this right.’

PAH! PAH! PAAAH!

"AANGHH~~!!! — the mark — both marks — they’re—"

The long deep thrust firing both points simultaneously — the thigh and the chest, two installed pulses running at the same peak frequency, meeting somewhere in the middle of her, the specific interior point where all paths crossed.

"HIEKK~!! HNGHH~~!! — I feel you ’there’ — at the marks — you’re touching both marks from ’inside’—"

Her nails on the rock.

The same scrabble as before, finding no purchase, continuing to try.

’This,’ the deeper voice said, and it sounded like her own voice but operating without the management she’d spent twenty-six years building. ’This is what the marks are for. This is what they pointed at. Not the thigh, not the chest — here, this point, where both paths arrive.’

’Where you can be found.’

’Where he ’has’ found you.’

PAH! PAH!

"Haahh~!! Haahh~!! — I’m ’crying’ — I’m crying and I don’t want you to stop—"

The tears on the warm rock.

The specific, composed, three-weeks-of-curated-reactions Nara, crying onto a sea-wet stone while her hips rose to meet each thrust and her voice made sounds she had professionally not allowed herself to make and the mark in her chest ran at full function.

Celia watched.

Her own tears still drying on her face.

Her own chest still warm.

The three of them — three different cryings, three different ’I-know’s, three different moments of the mark finding its secondary anchor — and he had been unhurried through all of it, the same even timing, the same patient certainty.

’He planned this,’ she thought.

Not resentfully.

With the specific, arriving clarity of a woman who has understood the mechanism after the fact, too late to have made a different decision about it, and is finding — unexpectedly — that the lateness doesn’t produce regret.

PAH! PAAAH!

"AANGHH~~!!! — Raven — ’Raven’—"

Nara said his name.

Not as a sentence. As an anchor.

The thing you say when you need one coordinate to stay attached to while everything else becomes too much to stay attached to — one fixed point, one name, one address for the thing that is doing this to you so that you don’t lose track of what it is.

"HNGHH~~!! OUNGHH~!! — I want — the mark wants — I ’want’—"

The distinction she’d been making dissolved.

She stopped distinguishing between what the mark wanted and what she wanted.

Filed them as the same.

"Say it," he said.

Low. The frequency that went through bone.

Nara’s face, turned sideways on the rock.

Her expression — not composed. Not managed. The raw, arrived, too-honest face of a woman at the end of her own management and choosing not to retrieve it.

"I want more," she said.

Clearly.

No hedge.

"More what."

"’Everything,’" she said. "More everything. More marks. More — ’more.’"

The throb in her chest answered.

’Yes,’ it said, in the patient warmth of something that had been waiting for her to say the correct thing. ’Yes. That’s the right answer.’

’You finally said the right answer.’

PAH! PAH! PAH!

"Aanghh~~!! Hnghh~!! Ounghh~!!"

The pace had changed — steadier now, deeper, the rhythm of something that was no longer building to a point but existing at the point, operating at the peak of the installed frequency because all three marks in all three women were running at full function and the room — the rock, the ocean, the gold afternoon — was saturated with the specific warmth of that.

Gia had her hand on Celia’s wrist.

Celia had her hand over Gia’s.

Neither of them had planned that.

The small, non-verbal, we-are-in-this-together grip of two women who have been marked by the same hand and are now watching the third receive the same full-frequency treatment and recognizing in her face every expression that had been on their own.

"Within three hours, you all three will become loyal to me," he said. To Nara.

"What," she said.

"Yes."

"Um... but aren’t we already—ANGHHH!!," she said.

The single-word answer.

No elaboration.

Nara, who always elaborated, who had calibrated sentences ready for every occasion, who managed meaning with professional precision — saying ’good’ and nothing else and meaning it completely.

PAH! PAAAH!

"HIEKK~!!! AANGHH~~!!! — I’m — the marks are — I’m ’losing’—my pussy—MASTERRR—!?!!"