I cross the distance like a man who forgot how to walk until someone put his name back in his mouth. When I reach her, her fingers slide into the ribbon at my wrist and tug. The smallest command, the oldest consent.
“Say it,” she murmurs.
“Mine,” I breathe, and the word doesn’t cage—itcrowns.
She steps into me and I feel our bond catch, then pull—violet-gold threading through bone, breath syncing, pulse doubling until it’s one drum. My crescent heats under her palm; hers warms through the linen when I press my mouth just above it. She gasps, hand fisting in my shirt.
“Careful,” I say into her skin, because her wound taught me reverence.
“I like you careful,” she whispers, fingers slipping to my jaw. “I like you reckless too.”
“Then let me be both.”
We move toward the bed in stuttering, hungry inches—kiss, touch, breathe, repeat—our marks brightening with every unbuttoned breath. When I sit, she climbs onto my lap like a queen claiming a throne that was made for her hands. Her legs bracket my hips; her forehead rests against mine.
“Taeyang,” she whispers, and the way she says my name empties me of every lie I ever learned about needing.
“Yuna,” I answer, because I want her to hear who she is inside me.
Her fingers trace the line of my throat, pause at the ink over my heart.
“Does it hurt?” she asks.
“Only when you’re too far,” I tell her, and guide her hand flat to my chest. “Feel it.”
The bond hums there—steady, heady—then surges when her palm meets my skin. Heat spills between us; a ribbon of power slips from her mark to mine and back again, lazy and sure, like tide over ankle bones.
She inhales, eyes gone wide.
“I can feel you,” she says, wonder making her voice young and wild. “Not just you. The shape of your wanting.”
“You can have all of it,” I promise, and kiss her slow enough that the room has to lean in to hear.
She tastes like night after rain. When her mouth opens, I take my time—tongue teasing, teeth barely there, the kind of kiss that makes patience into a vice and a virtue both. Her nails skim my shoulders; the little sound she makes lodges in my ribs and refuses to leave. I flip us gently, careful of bandage and scar, pinning her wrists above her head against the pillow with one hand.
“Word?” I ask—quiet, because promises stay true when you check them.
“Green,” she breathes, pupils blown. “Don’t stop.”
I don’t. I worship.
Mouth at her throat, along the angle of her jaw, down the delicate notch at the base of her neck—kisses like a litany, devotion in every press. When I reach the edge of her bandage I slow, letting heat and breath do what teeth would rush. The half-moon under linen flares against my lips.
“Good girl,” slips out before I can catch it, rough with awe.
Her answering shiver almost undoes me.
“Again.”
“Good girl,” I say into her pulse, and feel our marks answer with a bright, sweet ache that has nothing to do with pain and everything to do withhome.
My free hand draws pathways down her sides—mapping, relearning, memorizing with a reverence I didn’t think I had in me. Her hips rise to meet my palm; her breath hitches; the bond tightens and suddenly her pleasure is in my mouth, my hands, my chest, reflected back at her until we’re both gasping at the same thing.
“Taeyang,” she says, wrecked. “Please.”
“Tell me how.”
“Just—don’t be kind,” she says, eyes shining. “Beyours.”
