His answering growl vibrates through my spine. He sinks the rest of the way in and I stop making human sounds for a beat, the fullness a shock and a cure, his cock hitting places that haven’t been named because I didn’t know they existed. “Oh—Rayek?—”
“I know,” he grits, and he does. He braces his weight on one forearm, fingers lacing with mine on the sheets, and starts to move. Slow at first, careful, his hips rolling in a rhythm my body learns in two strokes and starts to crave like air. I lift to meet him, choosing my own angle, and when the head of his cock drags across that spot inside, bright and deep, I make a noise I will never live down.
“There?” he asks, half-broken.
“There,” I gasp. “Do that—yes—do that again.” He does; of course he does; he obeys like a sinner at a revival, and the bed creaks a satisfied little creak, and the ship’s hum seems to thread into the friction where our bodies meet. He leans down and licks into my mouth like he’s thirsty, his tongue hot and sure, and my hands go everywhere—his jaw, the brutal scar under his eye, the thick column of his neck where pulse thunders, the fan of black scales over his shoulders that feels like living armor I’m allowed to touch.
“You’re perfect,” he says into my mouth, and I laugh because I’m sweating and swearing and needy, and still, somehow, pretty for him.
“So are you,” I throw back, grabbing his ass, dragging him deeper. “So huge—Gods, Rayek, you feel?—”
“Say it,” he orders, hips snapping, a little less saint, a little more sinner.
“Good,” I cry, abandoning dignity. “You feel so good in my pussy, like you were made to live there. Like you belong to me.”
His eyes flare molten. “I do,” he says, ragged and devout. “I do.”
He shifts, pulling my thighs higher, opening me wider, and the next stroke knocks a shocked moan out of me. We find a pace that isn’t frantic and isn’t gentle; it’s ours—insistent, hungry, rhythmic, a tide we both push and yield to. Heat builds, bright and golden, coiling low and then everywhere. He presses his forehead to mine, and we look at each other like no one has ever looked at anyone: furious with tenderness, wild with certainty.
“Tell me what it feels like now,” he asks, because he’s a sadist and a scholar.
“Like I’m a cathedral and you’re ringing every bell,” I say, half crying, half laughing, clutching him so I don’t fly apart. “Like I could light the whole sky. Like I’m not afraid of anything if you don’t let go.”
“I won’t,” he promises, and then he proves it. He slides a hand down and circles my clit with that same ruthless patience he used a minute ago, and the world narrows to the point of his cock and the sweet pressure at the front of me and the weight of his body pinning me to a reality that finally, finally loves me back. Pleasure crests, not like a wave smashing a cliff but like a star going nova and deciding to pour itself into every nerve. I break with it, a rush, a flood, my pussy clenching around him, milking him, pulling him deeper, a cry ripped out of me that sounds like it belonged to somebody braver and I just borrowed it.
“Yes,” he snarls, losing the last of his control, thrusts turning ragged, beautiful. “Yes, Star—gods—look at me.” I do, and that does it; he curses again, a gutted sound, and comes with hisface open and holy, buried deep, shuddering against me like the universe finally let him arrive. I hold him through it, nails in his shoulders, legs locked around his hips, body still taking, taking, taking.
After, we breathe. The cabin breathes. The ship hums, friendly and oblivious. He doesn’t collapse on me; he lowers himself, careful, an enormous, panting blanket, and I wrap my arms around his neck, stroking the ridge of delicate scales there until his breathing evens. He stays inside me while he softens, possessive without being greedy, and the contentment that washes me feels like sunlight after a life lived in shade.
“I didn’t know it could feel like that,” I whisper into his ear, tasting salt, tasting us. “I knew want. I didn’t know home.”
He lifts his head, gold eyes soft and feral, and kisses me slow, like punctuation. “You’re shaking,” he says, thumb finding the pulse at my throat.
“I’m alive,” I answer, grinning up at him, shameless and wrecked and perfect. “Don’t you dare make me calm down.”
He laughs, low and stunned. “Never.” He rolls, bringing me with him so I end up sprawled on his chest, our bodies still joined, lazy and smug. I draw patterns over the brutal scar that mars his eye, then over the silver striations that mark him like shooting stars caught in midnight. He looks less like a weapon and more like a planet I could live on.
“Again,” I murmur, because greed is a virtue now.
His hand cups my ass, squeezing, promise in the pressure. “Always.”
We move again, slower, sweeter, a long hush full of small sounds, and learn that there are a dozen ways to sayminewithout ever using the word. When we finally go still, the galaxy outside is quiet, and the only war left is the one we wage against the idea that we were ever less than this. I fall asleep with his heartbeat under my ear, his arm a band around my waist, myring pressed warm to his chest like it knows exactly where it belongs.
I lie sprawled half across his chest and listen to the engine sing through him, low and steady, a lullaby I didn’t know my bones had been waiting for. His hand covers the back of my head, fingers tangled in my hair like he’s afraid I’ll evaporate if he doesn’t anchor me. My heartbeat takes his rhythm, then decides to be lazy.
“Tell me a thing,” I whisper into the place where his jaw meets his throat, the place that was made for secrets. “Tell me something I can keep.”
He thinks for a beat, thumb tracing lazy circles at my shoulder. “When I was young,” he says, “they taught us how to sleep in noise. Artillery, engines, men. The trick was to find the constant under the chaos and make your breathing match. I haven’t had a constant in a long time.”
“What am I,” I ask, drowsy and foolish and full of light.
“You are the constant,” he says, like he just solved an equation that used to laugh at him. “You are the sound I match.”
My throat tightens again, but this time the tears come quiet and easy and mean nothing but relief. “Good,” I murmur. “Because I’m keeping you. That’s not a request; it’s a theft.”
“Then we are thieves,” he says, and kisses my hairline, and I swear I feel him smile against my skin.
I mean to say more. I mean to make a joke about how CynJyn is going to demand we name our inevitable crimes after her. I mean to plan a hundred impossible things, to rebuild the world and move all the furniture around in my head until it fits us better. But the bed is warm, and his chest is solid, and the ship purrs, and we have burned through every last scrap of adrenaline. My eyes slip closed, not from exhaustion, but from permission.
