14. Malrec #2
I should refuse. Should maintain the boundaries I put in place specifically to prevent moments like this. Should protect us both from whatever instability is building every time we're in proximity.
Instead, I key the containment barrier open wider, though she can still enter if she wants. "Go ahead."
She moves into Azhrael's enclosure with the same careful confidence I've watched her display dozens of times before, but tonight it feels different.
Tonight I'm not trying to catalog her behavior for analysis or identify potential risks.
Tonight I'm just watching her, acknowledging the way her presence immediately settles something in both the beast and myself.
Azhrael lowers his massive head as she approaches, allowing contact with a gentleness I've never seen him show anyone else.
Lenna's hand presses against the armored ridge of his jaw, and I watch the tension drain from her shoulders as though touching him physically grounds her in ways nothing else can.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, too quiet for anyone who wasn't paying absolute attention to hear. "I didn't want to leave."
Azhrael rumbles in response, a sound somewhere between reassurance and acknowledgment. Lenna smiles—actually smiles, warm and genuine—and the expression transforms her entire face into something that makes my breath catch.
She collects the bridle with practiced efficiency, moving through the process with the same natural understanding she's always demonstrated. Within moments, Azhrael is secured and ready for transport, calm in ways he hasn't been all week.
"The feeding pasture?" Lenna asks, glancing at me for the first time since entering the enclosure.
I nod, not trusting my voice.
We walk through the stable corridors in silence, Azhrael moving between us with uncharacteristic docility. The ascent toward ground level feels longer than usual, each step carrying us further from the controlled environment of the stables and closer to the open volcanic terrain outside.
The night air hits us first—cooler than the stable heat but still carrying traces of sulfur and ash. The feeding pasture spreads before us, a contained space of volcanic rock and carefully maintained vegetation that provides enrichment for beasts too dangerous to release into true wilderness.
Lenna leads Azhrael through the entry wards without hesitation, her body language suggesting complete comfort in a situation that would terrify most humans. I follow, watching the way moonlight catches in her hair and casts shadows across her profile.
She's beautiful.
The thought arrives with uncomfortable clarity. Not in the polished, curated way of demon nobility, but in the way living things are beautiful—present, real, imperfect. The way something essential is beautiful because it exists.
I've been trying not to notice for weeks. Trying to categorize her appearance as merely human, merely functional, merely one more laborer among hundreds. But standing here in the moonlight while she tends to Azhrael with gentle competence, I can't pretend anymore.
I want her.
The admission feels dangerous, like acknowledging something that will change everything the moment I stop denying it. But it's there, undeniable and growing stronger every moment I spend watching her.
Lenna releases Azhrael's bridle, allowing him to move freely through the pasture space.
The beast settles near the far boundary, finally relaxing in ways he hasn't all week.
She turns back toward me, and in the moonlight I can see her expression more clearly—the exhaustion around her eyes, the tension in her jaw, the careful control she's maintaining over her own emotional state.
"Thank you," I say, because I need to break the silence before it becomes something heavier. "For helping."
"I didn't do it for you." The words should sting, but they don't. They're just honest, like everything else about her. "I did it for him."
"I know."
She studies my face, searching for something I'm not sure I'm capable of showing.
The distance between us feels simultaneously too large and not large enough.
I'm aware of every breath she takes, every slight shift in her posture, every micro-expression that crosses her features before she can suppress it.
"Why did you reassign me?" The question comes quietly, without accusation. Just genuine confusion. "After everything—after the binding ritual, after the auction, after—" She stops herself, but we both know what she was about to say.
After I kissed you.
"I thought it would be easier." The admission costs me, but I force it out anyway. "For both of us."
"Easier?" Something flashes across her expression—hurt, maybe, or recognition. "You thought pushing me away would make whatever this is just disappear?"
"You were avoiding me." The words come out more defensive than intended. "I thought you wanted distance."
"I did." She takes a step closer, and my entire body responds to the decreased proximity. "I do. But that doesn't mean—" She stops again, frustration evident in the set of her shoulders. "I don't understand what's happening. Between us. None of this makes sense, Malrec."
Hearing her say my name in that tone—soft, confused, almost pleading—breaks something in my carefully maintained control. I close the distance between us without deciding to move, pulled by forces I don't understand and can't resist.
"Maybe not, but I'm tired of thinking." The confession feels dangerous, like exposing a vulnerability that could destroy me. "Of acting like I don't feel this pull to you."
Lenna stares up at me, her warm brown eyes wide and searching. My hand rises without permission, fingers brushing the side of her face with a gentleness that feels like muscle memory.
She's looking at me with longing. Raw, undeniable longing that mirrors exactly what I'm feeling. Like she's been missing me despite having every reason not to. Like proximity to me is both relief and torture in equal measure.
"Malrec—" My name comes out breathless, uncertain.
I can't help myself anymore. Can't maintain the distance or the control or the careful boundaries I've been trying to enforce.
I kiss her the way I've been wanting to since that night in the garden, since the auction when she looked at me with confused recognition, since every dream that's left me aching when I wake alone.
She makes a sound against my mouth—surprise or surrender, I can't tell which—before her hands come up to grip my shoulders. The kiss is different from the garden. Less tentative, more certain, like we're both done pretending this isn't inevitable.
Her body curves into mine with familiarity that shouldn't exist, fitting against me like we've done this a thousand times before. My hands slide to her waist, pulling her closer, and the sensation is overwhelming—right in ways that transcend explanation or logic.
She tastes like longing and confusion and something underneath that feels like coming home.
I don't want her to run again. Can't let her pull away like she did in the garden, leaving me alone with confusion and unfulfilled need burning through my veins.
So I lift her. My hands slide beneath her thighs and I pick her up, pulling her body against mine as her legs automatically wrap around my waist. The surprised gasp she makes against my mouth sends heat straight through me, and then she's clinging to me, her fingers fisting in my tunic with desperate urgency.
"Don't run," I murmur against her lips, the words coming out rougher than intended. "Please don't run."
"I won't." Her voice breaks on the promise, breathless and wanting. "I can't."
The admission undoes something in me. I kiss her harder, deeper, walking us back toward the stone outcropping at the pasture's edge where the volcanic rock creates natural shelter from the wind.
Her fingers tug at my tunic, pulling the fabric with increasing frustration until I have to break the kiss long enough to help her.
The tunic comes off in a graceless motion, tossed somewhere I don't track because Lenna's hands are on my bare chest and the sensation steals every rational thought from my mind.
Her touch feels like recognition, like her hands know the shape of me even though this is the first time she's touching my skin.
"You feel—" She stops, her fingers tracing the lines of old scars and the harder muscle beneath. "I know you. My body knows you."
"I know." The confession comes out strained, barely controlled. "I feel it too."
I set her down only long enough to reach for the simple buttons of her kitchen uniform, my hands shaking with need I can't contain. She helps me, her fingers working alongside mine in frantic coordination until the fabric falls away and I can see her in the moonlight.
She's perfect. Soft skin marked by the evidence of her labor—faint burns, old scars, the physical history of survival written across her body in ways that make my chest ache. Real and present and here, looking up at me with desire that mirrors my own.
My hands slide down her sides, feeling the curve of her waist, the dip of her hips, memorizing textures and responses that feel simultaneously new and familiar.
She shivers under my touch, her breath coming faster as I trace patterns across her skin that my fingers seem to know without being taught.
"Malrec." My name on her lips undoes me completely.
I kiss her again, deeper now, tasting the longing and confusion and raw need that matches exactly what's burning through me.
Her hands work at the fastenings of my pants with increasingly desperate motions, and I help her because I need this as much as she does—need to be closer, need to stop thinking, need to understand why every touch feels like remembering.