Halo approached with the towel still slung low on his hips, steam clinging to his skin like a second atmosphere. Underneath his eyes, shadows pooled. He looked like a man dragging months of stress in his bones.
“What’s wrong?” His eyes found mine, and they looked like they’d been through war. His voice was soft but not gentle, just calculating and even.
“Just worried about you.”
He sat down next to me and tilted his head, studying my own face. I knew I had seen better days too: the bruises were healing in bursts of color.
“I’m fine. Thanks to you.”
“You’re not. You’re pretending. Are you done?” I asked, voice faint. “Can you be done?”
His face went blank, and I knew he’d put up those walls again to keep me out. I watched the way he disappeared into himself as the fortress was rebuilt, brick by brick.
“Halo, I—”
He kissed me before I could find words, like kissing me was easier than hearing the truth in my voice. It was slow, deep, hesitant. A question and an apology wrapped into one motion.
I melted against him, threading my fingers into his dark hair. He pulled away from me, and at first I was afraid he would retreat, but instead he pulled me closer. I kissed the wound on his shoulder, soft and cautious, like maybe tenderness could be medicinal.
“When?” I whispered into his shoulder as he pulled me against him.
“Soon,” he responded, “I have to find them before they find us.”
“You aren’t ready.”
“Life rarely waits until we are. You’re going to be fine, Eden.”
“But what about you?”
He pulled away far enough to look me in the eyes, and I thought I saw an edge of regret and longing in them. Like I was already gone. It felt like a goodbye, but the kind you read in a letter left behind.
“One more time. Onelasttime,” he whispered. His voice was so quiet and held such sadness that I wanted to cry. I nodded at him, and without breaking eye contact, I reached down to tug the towel around his waist free.
He undressed me in silence. No rush, no frantic edge, just unwrapping, undoing armor. His skin was warm against mine, and when he laid me back, it wasn’t with dominance or aggressive frenzy; it was with reverence. He settled between my legs, forehead against mine. The head of his cock rested at my entrance, pressing so close that the ache I felt was unbearable. I wrapped my arms around him and gave him another tender kiss. His hips rocked slowly, just once, a test. Then he pressed in deeper, filling me in aching, perfect increments. I inhaled deeply, legs shaking. If he didn’t give me everything, it was going to kill me. He acted like he hadn’t fucked me from behind just days ago. This was… different.
“Eden,” he whispered my name, and when he looked at me, he looked scared. Terrified.
I didn’t answer with words. I answered with my body: hands on his hips, drawing him deeper. He groaned low when every inch of him was inside me, a curse barely audible as his hand fisted into the sheets beside my head. The other trembled at myhip, uncertain. Every thrust was slow, deliberate. Like he was trying to memorize something he thought he’d never get again.
He wasn’t fucking me. This wasn’t just sex. It was total surrender. He wasrememberingme. Committing the shape of me to muscle memory. He moved with aching precision, like he was mapping my body through every movement. My fingers curled behind his neck; my heels dug into the bed. Every part of me was open to him: mind, body, history.
“I’ve killed for less,” he whispered against my mouth. I didn’t know if it was a confession or a threat to the universe. It was almost as though he had said it to himself more than he had said it to me.
“Then live for this.”
And this time, he didn’t look away. He kissed me like he was scared it would be the last time and took his hand from my hip to raise one of my legs to access an even deeper part of me. I moaned his name and he put his mouth onto my neck, planting firm kisses that morphed into small nips and sucks.
“You feel… right. God, you feel soright.” He spoke the words into my flesh, thrusting into me harder now.
“Just like that. Please,” I begged, clenching around him as he drove into me. Sweat was beading on his brow, and I felt the warm drip of blood on my chest as the wound on his shoulder opened again. I reached up to touch the blood on my chest, smearing it across my flesh as I tried unsuccessfully to wipe it away. My own hand left goosebumps along my flesh, and I moved my fingers down to one of my own nipples. I teased it until it peaked, and Halo watched with heated intensity.
“Touch yourself,” he demanded.
I obeyed, reaching down to circle my swollen clit. A surge of white-hot pleasure flooded my core, and I arched off of the bed as he wrapped his mouth around my blood-spattered breast. His teeth grazed me gently, and then firmer. I cried out.
My hand moved faster between my legs, circling tight and desperate as the pressure built inside me like a scream. I was so close, right on the edge, and he knew it: his rhythm shifting just enough, not harder, not faster, justdeeper.Every thrust unspooled me a little more. I wanted this to last forever. My fingers slipped and stuttered over my clit as I came with a cry, the sound torn from somewhere guttural and hidden. My body clenched around him in sharp, fluttering pulses.He groaned like he’d just tasted heaven with his bloody mouth, moaning into my skin, guttural and broken, like my climax was the answer to a prayer.
He cursed under his breath, surging deeper once, twice more, then came with a strangled sound that cracked at the edges. His body shuddered above mine, hot and heavy, pouring himself into me like he didn’t know how to stop giving himself to me. I wanted every drop of him. I grabbed his waist, pulling him against me as tight as I could as my entire body shook with weakness.
