"I know. I know. You're doing so well." His lips drag along my neck. His voice drops to something barely audible—raw, trembling, stripped of every guard. "You're perfect. Do you hear me? You're perfect. And I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
Another pulse. The knot swells to its full size and locks—a hot, impossibly tight seal that presses against something deep inside me and holds.
Then Bane strokes my cock.
The orgasm doesn't build. It detonates.
I come with a broken cry, spilling over his hand, my whole body clenching around his knot in waves that I can't control—rhythmic, pulling, dragging him with me. I feel him follow—feel the exact moment his control shatters, his hips slamming forward one final time, burying himself impossibly deep as he comes inside me with a sound that isn't a word. Just my name.
Fractured. Wrecked. Poured against my skin like a confession.
We come together. His release hot and pulsing inside me, mine slicking his hand, our bodies locked and shaking, heartbeats slamming against each other through the thin wall of skin between his chest and my back. The knot holds us together—fused, inseparable—and the orgasm rolls through us both in overlapping waves that crest and crest and won't stop cresting.
"I've got you," he's saying. Over and over. Into my neck, into my hair, into the space between my shoulder blades. "I've got you. I've got you. I've got you."
I can't speak. Can't think. Can feel nothing but him—inside me, around me, his arms crushing me against his chest, his pulse inside me syncing with mine until I can't tell where I end and he begins.
The knot holds. Twenty minutes. Maybe more.
His mouth is still on my neck. Right on the spot. The junction. The bonding gland. Where his teeth could sink in and make this permanent. I can feel the tension in his jaw—the effort of not.
"I didn't bite," he says. Into my skin. Against my pulse.
"I know."
"I wanted to." Honest. Raw. "More than I've ever wanted anything. Fuck, Max. My whole body was—" He stops. Swallows. "But not here. Not drugged. Not in a cage. If I ever—if that everhappens—I want you to choose it. With a clear head. In a bed that belongs to us. Not them."
My hand finds his where it rests against my chest. Laces our fingers together over my heartbeat.
"Thank you."
"For not biting you?"
"For giving me the choice."
The knot holds. We breathe together. His heartbeat against my back—slowing, steadying, syncing with mine until I can't tell which pulse is whose.
When the knot finally releases—a slow, slick easing that makes us both gasp—I roll over to face him. Clear-eyed. Present. The heat is a low simmer now, sated for the moment, and what's left in its wake is not shame.
For the first time, what's left is not shame.
"What does this mean?" I ask. My voice is quiet. Hoarse. "For us. For... all of us."
Bane is quiet for a long time. His thumb traces slow circles on the back of my hand where our fingers are still laced together.
"I don't know," he says. And the honesty of it—the absence of performance, the refusal to pretend he has answers he doesn't—is the most comforting thing anyone's said to me.
"Your brothers—"
"I don't know, Max." Softer now. His forehead tips forward until it rests against mine. "I don't know what this looks like when we get out of here. I don't know how Atlas handles it. I don't know what Zero does. I don't know if this works or if it blows up in our faces or if—" He stops. Breathes. "I just know that I'm here. And I'm not pretending anymore. Whatever comes next, I'm not pretending."
I close the space between us. Kiss him. Not the desperate, heat-drunk kiss from earlier. Something slower. Deeper. Thekind of kiss that isn't asking for anything—just sayingI'm here too.
He cradles the back of my head. He kisses me back like he's memorizing the shape of my mouth. Like he wants to take this with him when the door opens and the world rushes back in.
We hold each other. Foreheads touching. Breathing the same air. The fluorescent tube hums above us and Wren's lullaby drifts faint through the wall and somewhere beyond these concrete walls, two brothers are doing what they can to bring us home.
But right now, in this bed, in this room, there is only this.
