“Then show me.”
I kiss the inside of her thigh first, slow and unhurried. Her skin is warm and smooth under my mouth, and she shivers when my tongue traces higher, teasing but not yet touching where she needs me most.
“You don’t get to be the only one who decides how this goes,” she murmurs.
I smile against her skin. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
When I finally press my mouth to her, she gasps sharply, hips jerking. I hold her steady, hands firm on her thighs as my tongue moves with patience and precision, learning her again now that the restraint is gone.
She tastes like heat and salt and something that makes my chest ache with it.
“Gods,” she breathes, fingers digging into my shoulders. “Don’t stop.”
I don’t.
I take my time, building her slowly, deliberately, until her thighs tremble and her voice goes ragged. When she comes,it’s not frantic—it’s deep and consuming, her body bowing over mine as the bond pulses warm and bright between us.
I rise and lift her onto the console. This time, when I press into her, there’s no hesitation left in me. No fear of taking too much.
But I still move slow.
Not because I’m holding back.
Because I want her to feel every inch.
She wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me closer, and when I thrust fully inside her, the bond locks into place with a quiet, resonant certainty that steals my breath.
There’s no spike.
No chaos.
Just alignment.
She meets me thrust for thrust, equal and fierce, her nails dragging down my back as she laughs breathlessly against my mouth.
“I love you,” she whispers between kisses.
“I love you, too,” I answer.
CHAPTER 34
ROXY
Syfer’s sky always looks like it’s on the verge of a riot.
Red-orange clouds churn over the city’s upper decks, shot through with purples too electric to be natural. There’s a tremor in the ground when we disembark—just the usual hum of infrastructure, but after Kaerva, my nerves register it as warning.
Vrok keeps a hand close to his belt, not on a weapon, but near enough to remind anyone watching that he could clear ten feet in two strides and leave nothing but teeth behind. He doesn’t say anything as we descend the shuttle ramp. He doesn’t need to. The bond between us pulses warm and low—not insistent, just present. Calibrated. It’s still new, still adjusting, but no longer volatile. It doesn’t surge when I glance his way. It steadies.
I breathe deeper than I have in days.
Don Gnotz is already waiting by the edge of the hangar, flanked by two of his skinnier cousins, each of them dressed like a bad debt in human form. Gnotz himself looks worse than usual—eyes bloodshot, throat ringed with a fresh layer of gold, mouth pursed like he's chewing sour rot. He nods once and gestures us forward like this is a family dinner and not a tactical briefing laced with power moves.
Vrok steps slightly behind me when we walk up.
Subtle.
Intentional.
