"James." I reached for his belt. "I need—"
"What do you need?"
"You. Inside me. Now."
He stripped us both with an efficiency born of desperation. His clothes hit the floor, then mine, and then he was settling between my thighs, the thick head of him nudging my entrance.
"Look at me," he said.
I did.
"You're not a variable." He pushed inside, one slow inch at a time. "You're not data." Another inch. I felt myself stretching around him, accommodating his size. "You're mine."
He bottomed out.
I cried out. Full. So impossibly full.
"Say it," he demanded, holding perfectly still even though I could feel him shaking with the effort. "Tell me what you are."
"Yours." The word came out broken. "I'm yours."
"Good."
He started to move.
Long, deep strokes that hit something primal inside me. He hooked my leg over his hip, changing the angle, and I felt him even deeper. Felt him everywhere.
"This is what's real," he panted. "You and me. This. Not charts. Not data. This."
His hips snapped harder. Faster. The bed creaked beneath us, the headboard hitting the wall in a rhythm that matched his thrusts.
I held on.
Let him drive out every doubt, every fear, every moment of feeling like something less than human. There was nothing clinical about this. Nothing measured or observed. Just two bodies moving together, chasing pleasure, drowning in each other.
"Close," I gasped. "I'm so close—"
"Then come." He ground against my clit. "Come on my cock, Lumi. Let me feel it."
I shattered.
The orgasm ripped through me, more intense than before. I screamed—actually screamed—as my walls clamped down on him. Through the bond, I felt his pleasure spike with mine.
He followed a moment later. Buried himself to the hilt and roared my name as he spilled inside me. I felt every pulse, every throb, every wave of release that shook through his body.
We collapsed together.
Sweaty. Breathless. Tangled in sheets that would definitely need washing.
"I love you," he murmured against my hair.
"I love you too."
We lay there until our heartbeats slowed. Until the sweat cooled on our skin. Until the outside world started to creep back in.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
"Much."
