Emi's Night (IV)

The Master's Suite held its breath, the luxury draped with an afterparty hush. Andy lingered by the window, the taste of cake and laughter still bright on his tongue, Claire’s warmth not yet faded from his sleeve. He’d half expected the night to empty out, to leave him rattling around the glass-and-velvet palace with only his thoughts for company.

Then Emi happened.

She burst through the elevator door with all the subtlety of a preschool stampede, changed out of her princess dress and into a simple pajamas, arms laden with plunder from the buffet and a proud, deranged grin stretched ear to ear. Her six arms (and god, how quickly he’d stopped finding that strange) formed a traffic jam of paper plates, plastic cups, and tupperware hacked from the Dance Hall’s emergency rations. Cradled in her topmost right hand was a slice of cake so mutilated it could only be described as a survivor.

“Ta-da!” Emi sang, pitching her voice high. “Best piece! I fought for it! There was a near-stabbing.”

She barely waited for Andy’s reaction—just beelined for the sunken couch, setting her payload down on the broad coffee table with the reverence of someone unloading a live bomb. She then did a quick, full-body shake, as if clearing invisible crumbs, and flopped onto the cushions so hard the whole structure groaned.

Andy laughed, just a little, watching her sort the spoils with a general’s precision. “You stole half the party,” he said.

“Correction!” Emi’s pointer fingers rose in triplicate. “I liberated the goods. If I didn’t, they’d all go stale, and then Chloe would cry, and then Marissa would get weirdly competitive about who could eat the most in one sitting, and then Riley would… I don’t know, probably weaponize the leftovers somehow?” She beamed. “I’m saving the world, one sandwich at a time.”

He sat down beside her, close but not quite touching. The Suite, for all its curated glamour, always felt too new, too hotel-perfect; Emi’s mess was a tonic. It was childhood, distilled and spilled onto a glass tabletop. She’d brought everything: bowls of fruit, half-broken cookies, meat and cheese roll-ups, a stack of finger sandwiches mashed slightly out of shape by the commute.

“Here,” she said, shoving a plate at him with her lowest arm while two others peeled cellophane from a container of berries. “You didn’t eat enough at the party. I was watching.”

“You have a food radar?” he teased.

She nodded, earnest. “It’s a gift. Also, you looked busy.” Emi gave him a sly look, bottom set of hands hovering near the pile of sandwiches. “You had nine girls draped on you at once. It was kind of inspiring.”

Andy picked up a sandwich. “That’s not how I remember it.”

“Oh, it is,” she said. “You just blacked out from the joy overload.”

Emi’s energy was a forcefield—she was already talking with two hands while another loaded a strawberry onto his plate and yet another (absently) straightened the corner of a pillow near his hip. Her face glowed with accomplishment.

She kept up a running commentary as they ate, the topics skipping around as fast as her hands: how proud she was that nobody had spoiled the party (“Even Norah! I thought for sure she’d crack and email you a calendar invite or something”), the logistics of hiding a roomful of helium balloons from Dawn (“It’s like hiding heroin from a **** dog, I’m serious”), and a blow-by-blow of her six-armed bakeoff against Riley (“She’s a cheater, Andy! She put chili powder in her frosting, who does that?”). She even touched on the corgi, who, by Arabella's fiat, would sleep in the Main Building ("Each of us hopes he'll snuggle with us when our roommate is with you!")

She narrated with the rhythm of a sitcom character on double speed, but Andy heard the undercurrent: pride at pulling off something so elaborate, joy at being in the center of it, the **** hope that nobody would ever see how much she wanted to be needed.

She finished her first round of snacking and settled into the couch, legs tucked up. “We did good, huh?” she said, voice softer. “Best birthday ever, or at least top three?”

“Best,” Andy said, without irony. “I mean, the bar was pretty low for a while, but you shattered it.”

“Nice,” Emi said. “We were aiming for total annihilation. Like, you’d forget every bad birthday before this.”

He shrugged, a little. “Hard to forget. But this helps.”

She reached over, three hands at once, and stacked a row of grapes on his plate. “I was going to make a fruit sculpture, but then I realized I’m better at eating than decorating. Also, I wanted to get here before you passed out from happiness.”

He almost corrected her—he hadn’t slept well in days, and “happiness” wasn’t a thing he trusted, even now—but Emi’s sincerity left no room for deflection.

She stuffed a grape in her mouth, cheeks puffing out, and pointed at him. “You know what my favorite part was?” she said, voice muffled.

He made a guess. “The cake war?”

Emi grinned, spraying a fleck of fruit. “Okay, second favorite. My real favorite was the face you made when everyone started singing. You looked… surprised, but not like you’d lost control. Like you’d finally gotten the joke and it was actually funny.”

Andy paused. “Was it that obvious?”

“It was awesome,” she said. “You used to do that when we were kids, every time Laura gave you a present. Like you couldn’t believe the universe kept letting you have things.”

He stared at the sandwich in his hand, suddenly aware of how closely she’d watched all those years. “Yeah,” he said. “Guess I never got over that.”

Her middle hands toyed with the edge of her skirt, restless. “Nobody does. It’s called having a soul.” The words came out jokey, but something in her face sobered. “I’m glad you still have yours, Andy.”

They fell into companionable grazing, Emi’s movements growing less frantic as she slowed to the pace of someone who might, for once, have enough. She started using her upper arms for emphasis in the story, and the lower set to keep the food moving between them. Every so often, she’d brush his elbow, or nudge his knee, the touches unselfconscious but full of muscle memory.

The Suite’s cold elegance faded under the onslaught of crumbs, laughter, and the delicate chaos of a girl who’d spent her whole life learning how to fill silences. For the first time since arrival, Andy felt the place belong to him.

He looked at Emi—truly looked—and realized she’d somehow become the beating heart of the room. She radiated a warmth that softened every edge, a gravity that made it impossible to drift too far away.

He wanted to tell her this, but she beat him to it.

“Hey,” Emi said, interrupting herself mid-monologue. “You ever think about how crazy it is that we’re here?” She swept all six arms wide, indicating not just the Suite but the whole situation. “Like, if you’d told me when I was twelve that I’d be sitting in a billionaire’s penthouse eating cake with you, I’d have laughed and then drawn it in my sketchbook just to make fun of you.”

He smiled, but a little wistfulness crept in. “You used to draw everything.”

She nodded. “Still do.” Emi popped a berry, then looked him dead in the eye. “You were always my favorite subject.”

Andy’s heart gave a weird little lurch, and he wasn’t sure if it was nostalgia or something else entirely. He wanted to ask which version of him she’d liked best, but that felt greedy. Instead, he settled for, “I’m glad you were brought here, you know. I missed you.”

Emi flushed—actually flushed, all six hands suddenly occupied with some urgent mission to rearrange the table, the pillows, her own hair. “You’re being weird,” she said, but it was gentle, not a brush-off. “But, um, thanks.”

She reached for the cake slice, now listing dangerously to one side, and split it in half with surgical precision. “There,” she said, handing him the messier side. “Best piece. For the best boy.”

He took it, tried to think of something witty, but all that came out was, “Thanks, Emi.”

She licked blue icing off her finger and grinned. “Anytime.”

They ate in silence for a while, the hush not awkward but full. After a few minutes, Emi scooted closer, letting her topmost arm rest across Andy’s shoulders. He didn’t move away. She smelled faintly of jasmine and sugar, the scent so comforting it made him ache a little.

---

Andy dropped back into the couch’s hollow, stretching out with a groan. Emi waited half a second before curling in beside him, knees tucked up, her upper arms looped around her shins and the rest arranged in a tangle that radiated out to fill the space between them.

At first, the conversation kept up its high gear. Emi launched into a monologue about the logistics of cleaning up after a six-armed icing war, her voice ping-ponging between outrage (“Riley used frosting as an adhesive—genius, but evil!”) and pride (“I saved the origami centerpiece, thank you very much, even after Dawn tried to eat it.”). Andy nodded along, the warmth of her pressed to his side, the afterglow of cake and community softening every sharp edge in his memory.

But as the night deepened and the Suite’s lights faded to dim, Emi’s words began to slow, each story blurring into the next until it was mostly background noise, a lullaby of sound and memory. She talked about the first birthday she’d spent with Andy, how she’d been too shy to even say his name at the party, and how Laura had “adopted” her that same day, declaring them all honorary siblings.

“Your mom made this ridiculous cake,” Emi said, her cheek pillowed on her upper right arm. “It was supposed to be a rocket ship, but it looked more like a fossilized foot.”

Andy snorted. “She tried, though. Every year she’d get a little closer to what we asked for, but it never… I don’t think she ever made a cake that wasn’t at least partially collapsed.”

“Still tasted good,” Emi said. “Especially after we buried the candles in it and used the leftovers for breakfast.”

She giggled, then went quiet for a moment, twisting the stem of the orange between two lower fingers. “Those were good birthdays,” she said, her voice thin. “Before you turned twelve. Before everything got… you know. Grown up.”

He hesitated. “Yeah.”

Emi’s eyes traced the ceiling, lost in memory. “You remember how Laura always made you something weird? Like that year she made you the shoebox diorama with the action figures, but she painted all their faces to look like you and her and—”

“—and you,” Andy finished, smiling at the image. “But she drew your eyes way too big, because she said it would make the perspective better.”

“Liessss,” Emi said, but she was smiling too. “She just wanted to make me look cuter.”

“She was right,” Andy said. Then, quietly, “You were always the cute one.”

Emi flushed, the color showing even in the low light. Her six arms froze for a second, then all seemed to relax at once, as if letting the air out of a long-held balloon. She tucked her feet beneath herself and inched a little closer, until her shoulder pressed against his. “I never liked birthdays after that,” she said. “Once I drifted off, I kind of stopped having them. Didn’t seem right, with the team broken up.”

Andy nodded. “I know what you mean.”

They let the silence expand, let it fill the room and drift outward to the wide balcony, where the glass doors were cracked just enough for a wandering salt breeze to perfuse the air. The tick of the kitchen clock, the distant hum of the city’s generator, and above it all the hush of the tide rolling in and back again—these were the suite’s only soundtrack, as if the night itself had paused to listen in.

Emi was the first to speak, almost too soft to be heard over the fan. “You know it’s Laura’s birthday soon, right?” She said it without the brittle armor of banter, just the bare, careful hush of someone who’d rehearsed the question for hours in her own head.

Andy’s chest seized, the old ache suddenly as sharp as the moment he’d first heard Laura’s mom say the words. He had a reflex, even now, to push it away with a joke, to parry with sarcasm or disinterest, but Emi’s gaze was so clear and unguarded he couldn’t do it. He tried instead to let the feeling crest and recede on its own, like the waves in the distance.

“Yeah,” he said. “I knew. I just… I keep thinking maybe if I don’t talk about it, I’ll get through the day and it’ll be less like… like it always is.” He closed his eyes, the hollow in his sternum threatening to spill out through his throat. “Doesn’t work, though. I’m always a wreck.”

Emi didn’t look away, didn’t fidget or fill the space with words. She just let it be. Two of her hands reached for his—one curling over his knuckles, another lacing into the tendons at his wrist. A third reached up and cupped his cheek, the calluses on her palm oddly comforting. “You won’t be alone this time,” she said, her voice almost fierce in its gentleness. “You have us. All of us. Let us help you carry it.”

He nodded, but the tears didn’t come, not quite. The emotion balled under his sternum, a pressure that was neither pain nor comfort, but the halfway state that made it possible to keep talking. Emi just waited, letting the moment ripen.

He managed a breath. “There’s something I never told anyone.” His voice came out raw, a little ragged. “After she died, that first year, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t… I didn’t want to mark the day, but not doing anything felt worse. So I started this thing—maybe it’s stupid, but—every year, on her birthday, I pick a song to learn on guitar. Just for her. I’d spend the week leading up to it learning the chords, the words, everything. Sometimes it would take me all year to pick the song. But I’d play it on her day, like it was a present only for her.” He shrugged, the gesture helpless. “I don’t even have a recording. I just… do it. Every year.”

Emi’s eyes were wet, but she didn’t wipe them. Instead she gripped his hands tighter. “That’s not stupid. That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” She leaned her temple into his, their foreheads nearly touching. “You know she would have loved that, right?”

He tried to smile, but couldn’t quite. “I used to think she’d think it was cheesy. But I don’t know, maybe not. She always wanted people to remember.”

“She’d be so proud of you,” Emi said, all six hands now wrapped around some part of him, as if she could literally keep him from breaking apart. “She was always proud of you.”

He tried to picture Laura as she’d been at twelve, the gap-toothed grin, the wild hair, the way she always made every birthday about everyone else instead of herself. He remembered the last party—the one where she’d given him a paper crown because he “needed to learn how to rule”—and saw, suddenly, that the gesture wasn’t a joke, but a passing of some invisible torch.

He snorted, the sound half-laugh, half-sob. “She always made me wear that stupid crown. Still have it, somewhere.”

“I know you do,” Emi said. “You keep everything that matters.”

He realized, then, that she wasn’t just talking about the crown. She meant the grief, the memory, the impossible ache. He kept it all, because if he let any of it go, it would be like letting Laura drift further away. And for the first time it clicked: maybe you didn’t have to let go to let yourself move forward. Maybe you just carried it differently, with more hands.

He exhaled, the sound shaky but full. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to stop feeling like I should have done something. That there was some way to fix it, or rewind, or—” He stopped, the words falling off. “I know it’s not logical. But it’s still there.”

Emi drew in her own breath, and for once she didn’t try to make it better. She just held him, all the way around, until he was sure he would never fall.

The air in the Suite felt different now, like it had been stripped of all pretense and was just alive with the hum of two people not pretending anymore. The ache in Andy’s chest didn’t vanish, but it changed—became sharper, then lighter, like a wound that had finally bled enough to start mending.

“Can I ask what song you picked for this year?” Emi asked, after a long interval.

He hesitated, then nodded. “I was going to go with something obvious—Beatles or maybe Dylan—but then I heard this cover of ‘How to Save a Life’ by The Fray. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It’s not even a song she liked, but it felt right this time.”

Emi’s expression twisted, a bright, sad smile chasing the tears down her cheeks. “You’re going to play it on the day?”

“Yeah,” he said, voice barely a whisper. “It’s all I can do.”

Emi let the silence fill again, and when she spoke next, her tone was so gentle it nearly undid him. “If you want, I’ll listen with you. Or just sit next to you while you play. I can even pretend not to cry, if that helps.”

He choked on a laugh, the sound caught between gratitude and disbelief. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to,” she said, and it was clear she meant it. “It’s not about helping, Andy. It’s about being there. For both of us.”

He turned to look at her, at the way her hair caught the lamplight, the way her six hands all pressed into him with a steady, anchoring weight. He wanted to say something back, something as true and unguarded as what she’d just given him, but the words didn’t come. Instead, he leaned sideways, letting his head rest on her shoulder.

Emi shifted, arms rearranging themselves so it felt like she was building a fortress around him. She even tucked the blanket tighter, a choreography practiced over years of sleepovers and shared childhoods, the muscle memory of comfort and safety.

For a long time, they just sat there, Emi’s warmth seeping into him, the old wounds stitched with something that wasn’t just memory anymore. And when Andy finally spoke, it wasn’t a confession or an apology, but just a simple, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Emi said. “I mean it.”

He felt her heartbeat through her arm, steady and real. In the glass reflection across the room, he caught a glimpse of himself—hair a mess, eyes rimmed red, but still holding together. It was the first time in years he didn’t flinch from the sight.

The ocean kept rolling against the shore, the ceiling fan kept its steady churn, and in the hush of the Suite, Andy realized he didn’t have to dread the day to come. Maybe he’d still fall apart when it arrived—maybe he’d always feel the loss. But this time, for the first time, he wasn’t alone in it.

He let himself drift in the warmth, the salt air, the faint scent of cake and jasmine and the unreal comfort of someone who knew every broken piece and still chose to stay. The ache in his chest pulsed softer, a throb instead of a wound, something he could carry for another year.

For a while they sat like that, Emi’s arms wrapped around him, anchoring him to the world. The Suite’s hush felt sacred, the old wounds stitched with something warmer than memory.

The air was thick with a tenderness Andy hadn’t known in years—a raw, bittersweet ache that felt less like missing someone and more like holding them through time. He and Emi stayed curled together for a long while, the tangle of limbs and memories its own kind of salve. But the silence between them wasn’t empty; it pressed in with the density of all those birthdays, all the music that had filled the years between, all the words they’d never quite said.

Eventually, Emi spoke, her lips brushing his shoulder. “Will you play for me?” The question was soft but insistent, like something she’d practiced in her head for hours. “I would like to remember her, too.”

Andy’s first instinct was to demur, to say he’d rather just stay here, warm and heavy, but the longing in Emi’s face—wide-eyed, all six hands clinging—drove him off the couch before he could think better of it. Of everyone else on the island, Emi, even more than Riley, had felt the grief of Laura’s ****. Andy remembered seeing her at the funeral, unable to stop crying, and remembered seeing her leaving an origami crane on Laura’s coffin, her last gift to her lost friend. He could see that sorrow in her eyes, those same memories. He padded barefoot to the den, returned with his battered acoustic, and sat cross-legged on the rug.

Emi followed, kneeling so close their knees touched. She had her arms arranged in a two-tiered ring around her legs, like a child trying to hide behind her own body. Her hair was still blue at the tips, from the party, but she wore it unselfconsciously, like she’d always been meant to shimmer in sunlight.

Andy tuned the guitar by ear, stalling, letting the tension settle into his fingers. When he finally started to play, the first notes came out shy, but steady—familiar, lived-in, the kind of song you didn’t have to think about because it was already woven into your bones.

“‘Wish You Were Here,’” he said, giving Emi a sheepish smile. “I picked it up in 2021. Felt right for tonight.”

He played the intro, then sang—not loud, not polished, just the way he would have if he were alone in a stairwell or a dark kitchen after midnight. The words were soft, but the emotion behind them was clean and sharp: the ache of missing, the memories of a life cut too short, the longing for a missing half that was out of reach.

Emi listened with her whole body. She didn’t blink, didn’t fidget, just let the music wash over her. At the chorus, she reached out and laid one hand on his shin, then another on his wrist, grounding him. By the time he reached the last verse, all six hands had found their way to him, thumbprints pressing warmth into his arms, his knee, the back of his neck.

When he finished, he set the guitar down, hands shaking. "Sorry," he said, "I—"

Emi didn't let him finish. She lunged, all six arms at once, and wrapped herself around him so fiercely he nearly toppled backward. Her face was wet, but her mouth found his before either of them could name the emotion. The kiss was urgent, not delicate—a crash of need and old longing, of two people who'd spent years circling the edge and finally let themselves fall in.

Andy was caught off-guard by the ferocity of it. Emi's lips were soft, but her grip was iron; she held him in place with four hands, while the other two mapped his face, his shoulders, the line of his jaw. Her body pressed tight to his, the heat of her bleeding through every point of contact.

They kissed until Andy was dizzy, until all the old fears—of hurting her, of losing her, of not being good enough—burned away in the friction. Emi's hands were everywhere, tugging at his shirt, threading through his hair, skimming the bare skin of his chest and arms and back. He lost track of which hands were where; it was like being devoured and cherished at the same time, a surrender he hadn't known he needed.

She broke the kiss, panting, her face flushed and wild. "Laura would have loved that," she whispered. "She always said you played with your whole heart."

Andy's breath caught. "You think?"

"Remember how she used to sit with her eyes closed when you played?" Emi's fingers traced his collarbone. "That summer you learned 'Blackbird' and played it until your fingers bled? She made us all be quiet so she could hear every note."

Andy smiled, the memory washing over him. "And that time when it rained for three days straight, and we built that blanket fort in the living room—"

"—and she insisted we needed a soundtrack," Emi finished, laughing softly. "So you played your dad's old records and tried to copy them on that terrible toy guitar."

"She would've been moved," Emi continued, her voice gentle. "That you remember her this way. That you still play for her." Two of her hands cupped his face. "She loved you, Andy. We both did."

The words floated there, bare and unblinking: She loved you, Andy. We both did.

Andy had been on the verge of retort—something self-deprecating, something that would dial the temperature down—but there was nowhere to go. Emi was holding him with every arm, every muscle. It was as if she’d gone her whole life not-quite-tethered and now, for the first time, she was refusing to let go.

He saw her in double: the dreamy-eyed girl who once built a fortress of sketchbooks and daydreams, and the woman in front of him, audacious and complicated and—right now—letting everything show.

He didn’t move, didn’t blink, just let her look at him, let the words settle until he felt them in the pit of his stomach. He thought he’d say something, anything, but what came out was a raw, half-strangled: “I don’t know what to do with that.”

Emi pressed their foreheads together, her breath shaky but close enough he could feel the humidity of it. “Do you have to do anything? Can’t you just—let it be true for a minute?”

“I’ve never been good at that,” he said.

“Neither have I,” Emi said, and then she kissed him again.

This time it was less a collision than a test of gravity. Emi’s lips were gentle but insistent, her hands rediscovering him in waves—two framing his face, two bracing his back, and two more fanned out across his ribs and thigh. Her body fit against his with a kind of perfect awkwardness, all angles and softness and the unmistakable thrill of someone who didn’t care if she was supposed to be here.

Andy let her lead, at first. He was still learning the map of her, learning where the scars were, where the edges might be. But Emi didn’t have edges, not really. She met his hesitation with more pressure, more hunger, as if she’d been hoarding this need for years.

He pulled her in, and the kiss deepened. Emi made a little sound—half giggle, half groan—and then all six hands were under his shirt, tugging it up and over his head with alarming efficiency. The sudden burst of cold air made his skin tingle, and the sensation was instantly replaced by the heat of Emi’s touch. She explored him like a puzzle, each set of hands with its own agenda: two slow and exploratory, two almost ticklish, two more intent on pulling him closer than physics should allow.

He wanted to return the favor, wanted to know every inch of her, but every time he reached for her, she beat him to it—undoing buttons, tracing circles on his back, dragging fingernails down his chest until he shivered. For a moment it was overwhelming. Then it was just right.

They tumbled backwards onto the rug, Emi on top, legs astride his hips, her hair loose and wild around her shoulders. The blue in the tips had already begun to fade, but the streaks looked like lightning, like something the sky had loaned her for one night only. She pushed his shoulders down, pinning him, her grip playful but implacable.

“Is this okay?” she asked, suddenly shy. “I don’t want to—I mean—”

“It’s more than okay,” Andy said, meaning it.

Emi’s entire face lit up, the way it did when she got a new set of paints as a kid. She grinned, then yanked off her own shirt with a flourish, not bothering with seduction, just pure velocity. Her bra followed, and suddenly Andy was looking at her bare chest, six arms working together to unclasp and peel the fabric away. She hesitated a half-second, as if the sudden nudity still surprised her, but then Emi shrugged and let it fall, her face bright with excitement and just a sliver of nerves.

He drank her in. She was, objectively, stunning: lean and pale, a sweep of straight black hair across her shoulders, the faintest blush of pink down her neck and upper arms. Her breasts were perfect, and in the weird liminal light of night’s end, they looked like something he should have seen in a painting, not in real life. But it wasn’t just the aesthetics. Emi’s body had changed, was still changing, adapting in ways that made no biological sense but every emotional one. The six arms, for all their impossible angles and junctions, seemed so much a part of her now that he barely registered the oddity. If anything, they made her seem more herself.

Emi was about to say something, maybe a joke, maybe a nervous warning, but Andy caught her in a kiss before she could, crushing their mouths together. For a second they both laughed, the giddiness of the moment spilling over, but then the laughter turned to hunger.

His hands found her waist. She pressed into him, and four of her arms went to work: one cupping the side of his face, two clawing at his back, one worming its way down the band of his jeans.

Andy was on his back before he realized it, Emi straddling him, her hair loose and wild around her face. Her hands—oh god, so many hands—explored him in a way that was at once greedy and reverent. She was everywhere at once: tracing his ribs, massaging his scalp, pinning his wrists above his head while two others unbuttoned his pants with an efficiency that should have been illegal. He tried to keep up, to reciprocate, but for every move he made, Emi was three steps ahead, already there, already driving him half-mad.

He managed to get her pants off. It took some doing—six arms meant every limb was a potential grappling hook—but he prevailed, rolling her onto her back and yanking the waistband down with both hands. Emi giggled, which made the whole process even harder, but he finally succeeded, leaving her in nothing but a tangle of black hair and mismatched socks.

For a moment, Andy just stared. She caught him looking, and instead of hiding, she sat up and let him see her, her six hands splayed behind her like a goddess from some ancient mural. “You’re beautiful,” Andy said, and he meant it in a way that surprised even himself.

Emi went bright red, then all six hands started to flutter—brushing her hair, covering her breasts, fidgeting with the throw blanket until she seemed to realize that was even more embarrassing, and then she just laughed.

“I feel like an alien,” she said, but the words came out soft and happy. “A sexy alien.”

“Best kind,” Andy said, and then he was kissing her again, pushing her back down onto the rug.

She wrapped every limb around him, hands everywhere, legs scissoring his waist. He felt her fingers in his hair, tracing his jaw, stroking his back, gripping his ass, mapping his body with the intensity of someone who never wanted to forget any of it. Her mouth was sweet, a little tang of cake and a lot of want, and when he moved to her neck, Emi arched up and made a sound that sent heat shooting straight through him.

“God, I missed this,” she whispered, voice cracking. “Missed you.”

Andy was half out of his mind, but he managed to focus enough to say, “You could have had me any time. You just had to ask.”

She grinned, then yanked his boxers down in one brutal move. “I’m asking now.”

He laughed, the sound turning to a groan as Emi took him in hand—two hands, actually, wrapping around him with a grip that was both strong and impossibly soft. She stroked him, slow at first, then with growing confidence, her touch alternating between gentle teasing and the kind of rhythm that left him gasping.

He wanted to last, wanted to make this night count, but Emi’s hands were merciless. She seemed to sense his struggle, because she slowed, switching gears from attack to embrace, pulling him down until they were chest to chest, skin to skin, her breath hot in his ear.

She guided him inside her with a precision that bordered on supernatural, and for a second Andy forgot to breathe. She was tight, impossibly tight, and the feeling of her surrounding him—six hands clinging, legs locked—was so overwhelming he had to shut his eyes just to keep from losing it immediately.

“Slow,” Emi whispered, biting his shoulder. “Please.”

He did. He moved inside her, slow and careful, letting her adjust to the rhythm. She met him thrust for thrust, her hips rising to meet his, her nails dragging soft lines down his spine. Every so often she would grab his ass with both hands and pull him in deeper, grinding against him with a hunger that made his knees weak.

It wasn’t just the physicality. With Emi, every movement was charged, every sound she made was a yes, more, don’t stop, I need this. He felt her body respond to him, felt the tension coiling tighter and tighter, and he held out as long as he could, not wanting the moment to end.

He came first, but not by much. Emi held him in place as she shuddered around him, her face buried in his neck, her laughter dissolving into sobs of release. He stayed inside her until the tremors faded, until her breathing slowed and she went limp beneath him, every hand and arm and leg letting go at once.

They lay there, tangled and exhausted, the sweat cooling on their skin. Emi was the first to move, rolling onto her side and curling around him like a human weighted blanket.

“That was,” she said, then lost the words. “Wow.”

Andy was still catching his breath, but he nodded. “Yeah. Wow.”

Emi snuggled in closer, six hands tracing lazy circles on his arms, his chest, his face. She seemed perfectly content to just lie there, basking in the afterglow, but Andy could tell she was thinking.

“What is it?” he asked.

She hesitated, then said, “Do you ever think about—like, if we’d tried this sooner, before the HH, would anything have changed?”

He kissed her, gentle. “We have this time now. That’s all that matters.”

Emi seemed to like that answer. She kissed him back, softer this time, and for a while they just traded slow, tender kisses, the kind that made Andy feel young and raw and brand new.

Eventually, Emi’s hands started to wander again, tracing the lines of his ribs, the angle of his jaw, the swell of his bicep. She explored him like she was making a mental map, and Andy let her, enjoying the sensation of being touched everywhere at once.

It didn’t take long for things to heat up again. This time, Andy took the lead, rolling Emi onto her back and kissing his way down her chest, her stomach, her hips. She giggled, writhing under his touch, and when he reached her center, Emi’s hands gripped his hair, her thighs trembling.

He made her come twice before she begged him to stop, her body shaking with aftershocks. When she finally caught her breath, Emi pulled him up and kissed him hard, her lips bruised and swollen.

“Your turn,” she said, and Andy barely had time to process before she was on him, six hands working together to drive him wild.

They went like that for hours, trading roles, losing themselves in each other, the boundaries between pleasure and pain blurring into something ecstatic. Time lost meaning. The room faded away, the world shrunk to just the two of them, and Andy realized he’d never felt so alive.

At some point, they made it to the bedroom. Andy wasn’t sure how, but the best part was that it didn’t end there.

Somehow, despite the hours they’d spent tangled together (the party had ended after 2am; how many hours could be left before morning?), Emi found new reserves of energy. After a few minutes of post-coital haze, she started laughing—really laughing, the kind that made her body shake and all six hands slap the mattress.

Andy propped himself up on an elbow, grinning. “What’s so funny?”

Emi wiped tears from her eyes, then gestured at the mess of sheets, clothes, and snack wrappers littering the floor. “We look like a disaster zone,” she said. “It’s like the party never ended, just relocated here.” Emi pounced, pinning him to the bed with all her limbs. “Maybe,” she said, kissing his neck, “we could make an even bigger mess.”

They did.

The next round was slower, less frantic but somehow even more intense. Andy took his time, memorizing every inch of Emi’s body, cataloguing the way she reacted to every touch, every kiss. He traced the lines of her scars, the curve of her hips, the softness of her inner thighs. She responded to everything, her body a living instrument, and Andy learned quickly which strings to pluck for the sweetest music.

He lost himself in her, over and over, until neither of them could move without laughing at the absurdity of it all. They collapsed together, Emi sprawled across his chest, both of them sticky with sweat and smeared with streaks of blue icing from the cake.

For a while, they just breathed.

At some point, Emi said, “I don’t want this to end.”

Andy kissed the top of her head. “It doesn’t have to.”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and ****. “Really?”

He nodded. “Really.”

She smiled, then curled up tighter, her six arms locking him in a hug that was equal parts restraint and devotion. They existed in their own little capsule—a capsule where time had already started to flex, stretching out the night for as long as it needed to last.

Emi barely let go of him the entire time. Sometimes she nuzzled his neck, sometimes she just pressed her face into his shoulder, as if hiding from the idea that this, too, would have to end. Andy found himself holding her back, hard, not out of obligation but because the gravity was real—he needed her as much as she needed him, maybe more.

After the urgency died down, a new energy took its place: unhurried, almost greedy. Emi’s hands drifted everywhere, each set with a different agenda. She explored his body like an artist—sometimes soft, sometimes pinching, sometimes just drumming her fingertips against his chest like she was checking the depth of his soul. At times, she’d break away to draw invisible lines on his skin, then laugh quietly as if she’d left a message only he could read.

They lay together for a long time, neither talking much, just breathing and tracing each other’s outlines. It was Emi who finally broke the silence. They drifted for a while, Emi’s hands never still. Sometimes she’d squeeze him so tight it almost hurt, then loosen and stroke his hair as if she had all the time in the world. After a while, the heat between them reignited, and the next round was slower, more deliberate—like they were trying to memorize each other, down to the last scar and dimple.

Andy kissed his way down her torso, taking his time, letting his lips linger on every patch of skin. Emi was sensitive everywhere—her neck, her belly, even the crease at her elbow made her gasp. When he reached her breasts, he circled one nipple with his tongue while cupping the other with a hand, and Emi’s response was immediate: every arm and leg locked around him, holding him in place while she arched into the sensation.

It was almost funny, how much she seemed to want to restrain him and be restrained at the same time. Andy gave in to the paradox, letting Emi take the lead when she wanted, then gently guiding her back when she loosened her grip.

The second time was even better than the first. Emi’s body was electric, every nerve ending live and eager. She pulled him in with all her arms, wrapped her legs around his waist, and kissed him like she was trying to breathe him in. When he entered her, it was slow, inch by inch, and the feeling was so intense he had to stop and catch his breath.

Emi didn’t let him pause for long. “Keep going,” she whispered, her voice raw. “Don’t stop, please.”

He did, and she met him thrust for thrust, her hips moving in perfect sync. The pleasure built in slow, rolling waves, each one cresting higher than the last. When Emi came, she didn’t scream—she just held him tighter, all six hands clamped onto his back and arms, as if she could pin the world in place by **** of will alone.

Andy followed soon after, the release so powerful he thought he might black out. They clung to each other, sweat-slicked and trembling, for what felt like hours.

Time blurred. When Andy glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand, it was barely after three. It should have been dawn, but the sky was still navy, the stars bright and sharp beyond the balcony. It made no sense, but in the warmth of Emi’s arms, he didn’t care.

They dozed, then woke and started again, this time taking their pleasure in little sips, like they had all night to finish a single glass of wine. Emi was gentler now, but no less intense; she kissed him everywhere, sometimes laughing when she found a ticklish spot, sometimes just sighing into his skin. Andy tried to reciprocate, but six arms always won. By the end of round three, he was laughing, too, amazed at the stubborn, silly miracle of it all.

The only time Emi seemed to slow down was when she got hungry. She scavenged the buffet leftovers, feeding Andy bits of cheese or fruit between kisses, then licking the taste off his lips. At one point she sat astride him, naked except for a string of grapes draped over her shoulder, and declared herself “the sexiest snack in the Suite.” Andy agreed.

When they moved to the bed, it was Emi who led the way, hauling him up and pinning him to the mattress with the full weight of her body. She was light, but the sensation of being held by all those limbs at once was overwhelming—in a good way. She didn’t bother with elaborate foreplay; she just lined them up, adjusted his angle with two hands, and lowered herself onto him with a sigh that turned into a long, contented moan.

They moved in tandem, Emi setting the pace, Andy following her lead. Sometimes she’d speed up, sometimes she’d slow to a grind so slow it felt like ****. Every so often she’d lean down and bite his shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark, then soothe it with kisses.

“Can you feel it?” she whispered, her breath hot against his ear. “It’s like we’re the only people in the world.”

He could. It was like the rest of the island had vanished, like the Suite was floating in the middle of the sea and time had given them a reprieve.

They lost track of how many times they came together. At one point, Andy thought he might cry from the sheer absurd beauty of it.

After a while, even Emi grew tired. They collapsed in a heap, arms and legs tangled, sweat cooling on their skin. The clock on the wall read five, but the sun had only just begun to pale the horizon.

“I think we broke something,” Emi mumbled, her cheek pressed to his chest. “Time is definitely not working right.”

“I’m not going to fix it,” Andy said, stroking her hair.

“Good,” Emi whispered. “Let’s stay like this forever.”

He thought about it, and for the first time in years, the idea of forever didn’t scare him.

They must have slept then, because the next thing Andy knew, light was streaming through the windows and Emi was still wrapped around him, all six hands clutching any part of him she could reach. She was drooling on his chest a little, but he didn’t mind.

Spooned the Master! +1 VP