"Tell me," I breathed, rolling my hips in a way that made his eyes nearly roll back. "Tell me you need me."
"I need you." His hips snapped up to meet mine, harder now, deeper, and I gasped at the intensity of it. "I need you more than you will ever know."
He thrust again, and the sound that escaped me was shameless. A moan that echoed off the walls and made his eyes blaze with dark satisfaction. One of his hands slid between us, his thumb finding the bundle of nerves at my center, pressing and circling in time with our rhythm. My vision went white around the edges.
"Again," he demanded, his voice like gravel and velvet. "Let me hear you again. I want the whole ship to know you're mine."
I couldn't have stopped myself if I'd tried. The sounds he pulled from me were obscene, desperate, echoing through the room. And he drank in every one like they were the sweetest music he'd ever heard.
The pressure built like a storm gathering on the horizon; slower this time, but inevitable. No urgency. No desperation. Just the steady, relentless climb toward something that would shatter me completely. His hands never stopped moving, never stopped discovering new ways to make me tremble. His mouth found my breast, his tongue swirling, his teeth grazing, and I cried out, fingers digging into his shoulders.
"Let go," he murmured against my skin, his thumb pressing harder, his hips driving up to meet mine. "I want to feel you come apart. I want to watch you break for me."
When I finally shattered, it was with his name torn from my throat and all four of his arms wrapped around me. The pleasure crashed through me in waves, endless and overwhelming, and I felt myself clenching around him, pulling him deeper. He held me through all of it, whispering my name like it was sacred, watching my face like he wanted to memorize every moment of my unraveling.
He followed moments later. I felt him swell inside me, felt the tension in his body snap like a wire pulled too tight. His face buried in my neck, his whole body shaking with release and relief, my name spilling from his lips over and over like he'd forgotten every other word in the universe.
After, we lay tangled together in the narrow recovery bed.
Kaedren had rearranged us, so I was tucked against his uninjured side, my head on his shoulder, one of his lower arms draped across my waist. The monitors beeped softly in the corner, his heart rate elevated but steady. Lyrin would probably have opinions about this particular form of physical therapy, but neither of us cared.
I smiled against Kaedren's chest.
"I was afraid you’d never want me again." His voice rumbled beneath my ear. "After. I thought... the guilt, maybe. Or that seeing me like this, broken, less than what I was…I was afraid it would change things."
I lifted my head to look at him. "You're not less than anything."
"I couldn't protect myself." The admission came out softly, like it had been sitting in his chest for weeks, waiting to be spoken into existence. "I've always been the protector. The one takes the hit so others don't have to. And when the moment came, I did it without thinking. But now—" He gestured at the regeneration patches, the medical equipment, the evidence of his vulnerability. "Now I'm the one who needs protecting. And I don't know how to handle that."
I propped myself up on my elbow and traced the edge of his jaw with my fingertips. "Do you remember what you told me once? About the Tether?"
He shook his head slightly.
"You said it wasn't about one person carrying the weight. It was about distributing it. Making sure no one bears too much alone." I leaned down and kissed him softly. "You protected us. Now let us protect you. That's not weakness. That's how this works."
His hand cupped the back of my head, holding me close. "I'm trying."
"I know." I settled back against him, listening to the steady beat of his heart. "I'm trying too. I almost didn't come here tonight. I almost convinced myself that staying away was the right thing to do."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I realized something." I traced idle patterns on his chest, careful to avoid the healing patches. "Leadership doesn't protect me from loving you. Neither does distance, or professionalism, or pretending I'm not terrified every time one of you walks into danger. I can't separate the leader from the woman who loves you. And I'm done trying."
Kaedren was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion.
"I love you too." Simple. Direct. Kaedren in four words.
I smiled and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. "I know."
We lay there in the soft amber light, the ship humming around us. Tomorrow, there would be more moments where the cost of what we were building would demand payment. Voss was still out there. The corporations were still hunting us. The war we'd been pulled into wasn't going to stop just because we needed it to.
But right now, in this moment, we were alive. We were together. We could breathe.
And that, I was learning, was what love looked like in the middle of a war.
Not the absence of fear. Not the promise of safety. Just the willingness to stay.
Staying didn't mean pretending the cost didn't happen.
