He starts to move. Slow at first, letting me adjust, but I don't want slow.
"Harder," I demand. "Fuck me like you’re the only thing tethering me to Earth."
He gives me harder. His hips slam against my ass, over and over. His hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise, fingers digging into the muscle, leaving marks that I'll feel for days. His breath comes in harsh grunts against my ear, animal and desperate.
The cot creaks beneath us, threatening to collapse. The metal frame scrapes against the floor with every thrust. Neither of us slows down.
"More," I gasp. "Give me more."
He pulls out, flips me onto my back, shoves my legs up over his shoulders and drives back in. The angle is deeper, more intense, hitting the spot inside me that makes my vision white out, makes my cock throb against my stomach.
"Look at me." His voice is raw. "Jinx, look at me."
I open my eyes. His face is above mine, flushed and sweating, his eyes dark with want but also with something else. Concern. Love. The desperate need to make this good for me, to give me what I need.
"I've got you, sweet pea" he says. "I'm right here. I’ll take the pain away, baby, let me carry it."
He starts moving again, and this time there's rhythm to it. Deep, steady strokes that build the pressure in my balls, that coil tighter and tighter until I'm shaking with the need to come.
"Asher." His name is a plea. "Please. I'm close."
He wraps his hand around my cock, strokes me in time with his thrusts. The dual sensation is almost too much, pleasure crashing over me in waves, drowning out everything else.
"Come, keep your eyes on me, let me watch your soul come back.”
I come. Hard. My vision whites out, my back arches off the cot, my cock pulses in his hand, spilling across my stomach and chest. The orgasm tears through me, shatters me, leaves me gasping and trembling in its wake.
He follows seconds later. Buries himself deep and comes, his cock pulsing inside me, flooding me with heat. His body shudders, his face contorting with pleasure, and then he collapses onto me, heavy and warm and real.
We lie there. Panting. Sweating. Still connected. His heart pounds against my chest, gradually slowing, matching its rhythm to mine.
Then the tears come.
I don't expect them. Don't want them. But they come anyway, spilling down my cheeks, soaking into the thin pillow beneath my head. A sob tears out of my throat, ugly and broken, and suddenly I'm crying in earnest. Thirty years of grief and rage and terror, all of it pouring out at once, all the things I've never let myself feel because feeling was weakness and weakness was death.
"Hey." Asher pulls out, gently, and gathers me into his arms. "Hey, it's okay. It’s okay, you’re safe."
"I'm sorry." The words come out broken, barely recognizable. "I don't know why—I can't—"
"You don't have to apologize. You don't have to explain." He pulls me against his chest, strokes my hair, holds me while I fall apart. "You just killed the woman who destroyed your childhood. That's not nothing. It's okay to feel it. It's okay to grieve."
"Grieve?" I choke out a laugh that's half sob. "I hated her. I wanted her dead."
"And you can still grieve what she took from you. The childhood you should have had. The person you might have been if she'd never touched you." His arms tighten around me. "Those things matter. That loss matters. You're allowed to mourn it."
"I thought I'd feel free." I'm ugly crying now, snot and tears mixing on my face. "I thought killing her would fix something. Would make me whole. But I still feel broken. I still feel like I'm what she made me."
"You're not." His voice is fierce and he forces me to look at him, his eyes filled with certainty and rage and love and everything I don’t deserve. "You're what you chose to be. Every day, every decision, every moment you chose kindness over cruelty, love over fear—that's you. Not her. You."
"Then why do I still feel like this?"
"Because healing takes longer than killing." He presses his lips to my forehead, holds them there, breathing me in. "But you're not alone. You don't have to carry this by yourself anymore. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. Not ever."
I cling to him like he's the only solid thing in a world that's crumbling around me. The tears don't stop, but they change. Less desperate. Less raw. More like release. More like letting go.
She's dead. The children are safe. And I have someone who loves me despite everything I am. Everything I've done.
Maybe that's not enough to fix me. Maybe nothing ever will be. Maybe I'll carry the scars of the Foundry for the rest of my life, invisible wounds that never fully heal.
