Chapter 66: I like it tight

She stood in the middle of the clearing while Xander, the twins, Tyr, Cyrus, San, and Arden sat on the small stools arranged in front of her.

The heavily armed soldiers obediently opened their mental seas. Bunny divided her white spiritual threads into countless strands and carefully guided them into their consciousness.

The faint, sweet fragrance of gardenia from her Guide pheromones drifted through the air. As the mental barriers gradually took shape, the Sentinels immediately felt the pressure in their minds ease, leaving them relaxed and clear-headed.

Xander, however, wasn’t paying much attention to the training.

His gaze quietly slipped toward Orion’s wrist, where a pink hair tie was looped around it. Then he glanced at the tiny bunny-shaped hair elastic tangled in Tyr’s hair.

Anyone could tell at a glance who those things belonged to.

It was always the seemingly honest ones who turned out to have the least honest intentions.

Xander knew he needed to speed things up.

Just as he was about to look away, his eyes met Cyrus’s. The two scheming old foxes exchanged a single glance, and somehow managed to communicate an entire conversation through it.

Cyrus had expected Xander to lose patience long ago. The fact that he’d managed to hold himself back for this long was genuinely surprising.

As for Cyrus himself, he was simply determined to compete. His spirit beast had practically been throwing a tantrum demanding Bunny, and Cyrus had always been accustomed to being first.

If he was going to become one of Bunny’s men, then he intended to be the first one.

Unfortunately, this was Bunny’s first time constructing mental barriers, and she hadn’t quite mastered controlling their strength.

Suddenly, Illai let out a tiny, muffled whimper. "Bunny, erm... it’s too tight."

It was so constricting that he was uncomfortable. Bunny instinctively loosened the barrier, but Arden immediately protested.

"No. I like it tighter. Keep going, Miss Guide."

Bunny had no choice but to tighten the mental barrier again. San followed almost immediately, releasing a low, breathy sound that sounded far more suggestive than it had any right to.

"That feels so good."

"More..."

Bunny knew perfectly well that they were talking about the pressure of the mental barriers.

But judging from the way they were speaking, she seriously suspected these men were deliberately trying to make things sound indecent.

She withdrew every strand of spiritual energy at once and gave them a cold look.

"Training is over."

That night, aside from the Sentinels assigned to rotating patrol duty, everyone else rested inside the nano field tents, preparing for the assault at dawn.

The wilderness was dangerous, and a Guide needed a Sentinel close by at all times for protection.

As the only Sentinel currently assigned exclusively to Bunny, Liam naturally got the enviable task of sharing her sleeping quarters.

Bunny stared at the narrow military cot. Then she looked at Liam. He was nearly two meters tall, broad-shouldered, heavily muscled, and built like an enormous bear.

She swallowed hard. If he rolled over in his sleep, wouldn’t he crush her flat?

Liam happily finished arranging the blankets and flashed her a bright, toothy smile.

"Bunny, time to sleep."

Bunny hesitated. Between the possibility of being crushed to death by Liam and the possibility of being eaten alive by an alien beast, she reluctantly decided she was more afraid of the latter.

The moment she lay down, Liam swiftly stripped down to his trousers and wriggled beneath the blankets like an oversized eel. Then he wrapped himself tightly around her from behind. His hot, solid chest pressed against her back, while one arm casually settled around her waist.

The rich scent of his Sentinel pheromones, a deep mixture reminiscent of citrus, ink, and moss, immediately filled her senses. The scent carried an unmistakably aggressive quality, perfectly matching his personality.

Bunny turned her head and warned him. "Behave yourself."

Liam looked obedient enough on the surface. But expecting a young man to behave himself when he was sharing a bed with the woman he adored was clearly asking too much.

He gently nudged her hair with the tip of his nose, then lowered his face to breathe in the scent of her neck. He looked completely intoxicated by her fragrance. And once he’d had enough of merely smelling her, he started kissing her.

First, her neck.

Then her earlobe.

Her shoulder.

Meanwhile, the arm around her waist began wandering somewhere it had absolutely no business going. It gently passed her lower belly until his long fingers slipped under the elastic of her underwear.

Bunny felt utterly helpless, like someone who had been stripped of every means of resistance and then thrown into bed with a wildly overexcited male dog.

She finally snapped.

"Liam!"

Liam rested his chin on her shoulder. His hot breath brushed against her cheek while his powerful arms remained locked around her, pinning her down with the weight of a hydraulic press.

"Bunny... I want to..."

He wanted to fool around, but Bunny immediately shut him down.

"In your dreams."

Liam refused to give up. He switched to relentless pleading, shamelessly pushing the limits of persistence.

Bunny had overlooked one very important fact––young men in their late teens and early twenties had seemingly endless energy. Give them enough hormones and enthusiasm, and they could find trouble absolutely anywhere.

And having a woman they were attracted to lying right beside them certainly wasn’t helping.

A scorching presence pressed against her from behind. Bunny nearly screamed.

"Liam! Take that thing away!"

Good grief. What was with that ridiculous size? With her small frame, she was worried she wouldn’t survive the night.

But once a man had worked himself into a state like this, convincing him to back down was easier said than done.

Liam shifted his hips slightly, and Bunny’s face immediately went pale with alarm.

His fingers clenched tightly around the blanket. When he spoke again, his normally bright voice had dropped into a rough, husky murmur.

"Bunny... I’m really suffering here."

Classic male manipulation tactics––she could not fall for it now.

"Help me out," he kept pleading. "Please?"