"Fuck." The word tore out raw. "Fuck him. Fuck his games and his poetry and his perfect fucking manipulation." I pulled back, water streaming between us. "I need you to fuck me until I can't hear their voices anymore."
His expression shifted, concern mixing with something darker. "Bunny—"
"Please." I kissed him, desperate, tasting water and need. "Make it stop. Make me stop thinking."
He caught my wrists when I reached for his belt. "No."
"Nathan, please—"
"Look at me." His grip was firm but not painful. "Really look at me."
I forced my eyes to his, hating the tears I saw reflected there.
"Tell me exactly what you want. Not what you think will make the pain stop, not what you're running from. What do you actually want?"
The question undid me. Want had been trained out of me, replaced with need, with survival, with performing desires I thought would keep me safe. But here, shower-soaked and falling apart, want felt possible.
"I want to feel something that's mine," I whispered. "Not his conditioning, not trauma response, not coping mechanism. Something I choose because I choose it."
"And what do you choose?"
"You." The word came out sure despite everything. "I choose you. I choose this. I choose to feel something real even if it doesn't fix anything."
He studied me for a long moment, then released my wrists. "Okay."
He turned off the shower, led me out dripping. No towels, no pause to dry off. The kitchen counter was cold against my back when he lifted me onto it, but his mouth was hot on mine,consuming. This wasn't gentle. Wasn't careful. When I bit his lip, he growled, hands tightening on my hips.
"Tell me if—"
"Don't stop." I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him closer. "I'll tell you if I need to stop. But don't hold back. Not tonight."
Something shifted in him then, control cracking to reveal the darkness underneath. He'd been so careful with me, so conscious of my trauma. But trauma had taught me to recognize need, and his was a living thing between us.
When he entered me, it was with a force that drove thought from my mind. Yes. This. Something raw and real and uncomplicated by memory. I scratched at his back, felt skin part under my nails, and he bit where my neck met shoulder in response.
"Harder," I gasped, and he complied, driving into me like he could fuck the ghosts out of both of us.
The counter edge dug into my spine. My legs shook with the effort of holding on. Everything narrowed to sensation—stretch and burn and the sweet edge of too much. This wasn't about pleasure. This was about presence, about being so absolutely in my body that no other voices could intrude.
When he reached between us, thumb finding my clit, I nearly screamed. Too much sensation after emotional numbness. But I craved the overload, the white-out of pure physical response.
"Look at me," he demanded, and I did, finding his eyes wild and dark. "Stay with me."
I nodded, beyond words, and let him watch me shatter. The orgasm hit like a demolition, everything flying apart and reforming. He followed, pulling out at the last second to spill across my stomach, marking me in the most primal way possible.
We stayed frozen for a moment, breathing hard, water drying on our skin. Then he stepped back, and I saw what I'd done to his back. Blood welled from parallel scratches, evidence of a desperate claiming.
"Shit. I'm sorry—"
"Don't." He kissed me, gentle now. "Don't apologize for being present. For choosing this."
He cleaned us both with careful hands, tended the wounds we'd made on each other. But when he tried to talk, to process what had just happened, I couldn't. Words felt too heavy, too real. I pressed my fingers to his lips, shook my head, and he understood.
We moved to the couch in silence. He pulled a blanket over us, let me curl into him without demanding conversation. The apartment filled with the quiet sounds of two people learning to exist in the aftermath—his breathing, my occasional shudder, the distant hum of city life beyond the windows.
Hours passed. The light changed, afternoon becoming evening becoming night. Still, I didn't speak. Couldn't find words for the grief of discovering I'd been just another experiment, another test case in a madman's research. Gabriel had made me feel singular, chosen, special in my suffering. Learning I was one of many, hearing their stories,—one of the few who'd survived his refinements—hollowed out something I hadn't known was load-bearing.
Nathan didn't push. He held me through the silence, occasionally pressing water to my lips or adjusting the blanket. He understood this wasn't trauma response or manipulation. This was mourning. I was grieving the narrative I'd built to survive, the fiction that my pain had been unique, purposeful, meaningful in its specificity.
