He grunts my name with each deep penetration, voice cracked and unrecognizable. His thrusts lose rhythm, turning frantic. The coiled tension inside me snaps. My second climax explodes, arching my back off the floor, my pussy clenching rhythmically around his relentless cock. My cry is smothered against his shoulder.
He stiffens above me. Buries himself so deep I feel him pulsing hot and thick inside me. A long, low groan escapes him, part alarm, part abject surrender, as heat floods my core with throbbing jets.
He collapses over me, crushing me into the rug, his weight a possessive anchor. His face is buried in the hollow of my neck, damp hair plastered to my skin. His breath rasps against my collarbone, ragged and harsh as the surf after a storm.
His hands frame my head, fingers clenching then slowly relaxing. The tremors that run through him now are exhaustion, not restraint. A heavy, profound stillness settles over him – not sleep, but the quiet aftermath of a battle where only one victor remained: us.
The fire crackles, painting shifting gold patterns across the sweat-slick skin of Cassian’s back where he lies heavy and spent against me. He’s a collapsed mountain, his massive frame pinning me deliciously to the hearth rug, the rough wool scratchy against my spine.
His breath steams warm and steady against my throat now, no longer that frantic rasp of battle and desire. Deep, even. Asleep. The crushing weight should feel like entrapment; instead, it feels like the strongest shield imaginable.
I wiggle carefully, trying to ease a tingling arm out from under him. A low, rumbling sigh vibrates through his chest into mine, but his eyes stay closed. Slack jaw, long lashes brushingthe high plane of his cheek. In sleep, the harsh lines etched by guilt and penance finally smooth out.
He looks… younger. Less burdened by the specter haunting him. One of his hands, calloused and scarred, rests possessively on my bare hip, fingers loose now, not gripping.
Shadows flicker in the hollows beneath his cheekbones, the scar cutting through his eyebrow. I trace it lightly, carefully, with my gaze, not daring to touch and wake him. The bear might be quiet, but the man underneath… the fierce, grieving, ferociously protective soul he tries so hard to bury… that’s what burned brightest in our joining. That’s what surrendered last.
That’s what I crave whenever I lift my camera lens, searching for truth in a frozen wasteland. It’s not the myth of the beast. It’s this impossible, stoic tenderness barely surviving in the harshest environment. Him.
His chest rises and falls, a deep, anchoring rhythm against my own. The crackle of the fire is the only other sound. I lean my head back against the rug, feeling the steady thud of his heartbeat beneath my palm.
My lips brush the rough crown of his head, the scent of pine and snow somehow still clinging to his hair. The words form in the quiet, soft but deliberate, meant for the sleeping man and the watchful dark, leaving no room for doubt where the bear ends and he begins.
"I see you, Cassian." A whisper, almost lost in the crackling fire. "Just you. Not the monster."
13
CASSIAN
The air’s too still again. That kind of quiet that presses in behind your ears like pressure before a storm, where everything in the world waits for something to break. I’m outside splitting firewood, same as every morning since we came deeper into the range, where the ice climbs like jagged teeth and the sky opens wide enough to swallow a man whole.
She’s inside, probably still asleep, curled up under that threadbare quilt with her curls fanned across the pillow, lips parted just enough to breathe soft and steady. I shouldn’t be thinking about her like that. Not after everything we... not when things are still this raw.
I raise the axe and bring it down clean, the log cracking sharp against the frozen ground. My body works on rhythm, muscle and memory, no thought to it. That’s how I like it. The noise gives me something to do. Something to drown out the sound of my own thoughts.
But then I hear it.
The tone from her radio. That synthetic chirp she forgot to mute again. It’s faint through the walls of the cabin, but I know the sound too well by now. It means a message just camethrough. It means someone on the other end of this frozen world still thinks she might answer.
I don’t go in right away. I tell myself it’s not my business. That she’s earned a little space. But then I hear her voice. Strained. Like someone trying real hard to keep something inside.
I drop the axe.
When I open the door, she’s standing by the small desk we dragged in from the back room. The radio’s on, screen still lit, and she’s got both hands braced against the table like she’s using it to hold herself up. Her back’s to me.
She doesn’t turn when I step inside.
“I wasn’t going to tell you,” she says, voice low, breath uneven. “Because it’s nothing. It’s not real. And I said no. I swear I said no.”
I say nothing. Not yet.
She turns slowly, eyes wide and full of something that looks too much like guilt.
“I think he knew I’d check the radio this morning,” she says, voice quickening now. “Gordon. He must’ve had it queued. It was waiting. Like he knew I’d hear it.”
I step closer. My boots grind ice into the floor. She doesn’t flinch, but she starts talking faster.
“He offered me money,” she says. “A lot. More than I’ve ever made. More than I’d make in a decade of documentaries. He said if I brought you in—alive, unhurt—he could guarantee my career. Called it the story of the century. Proof of myth. Tangible, sellable, packaged truth.”
