Anhara #2
“Patience is overrated.”
“Torek would disagree.”
That made him laugh. A real laugh, soft and surprised, and the sound of it made something loosen in my chest. I wanted to make him laugh again. I wanted to learn all the sounds he could make.
I kept going. Down his stomach, along the V of his hips. He was hard already, straining, and when I wrapped my hand around him, I felt those flanges flex against my palm. He made a sound that went straight through me.
I stroked once, twice, learning the feel of him. The flanges rippled under my touch, soft and responsive. Then I shifted, moving to straddle him.
And froze.
The position. The weight of a body beneath me. For just a moment, I wasn’t here. I was somewhere else, somewhere dark, with hands that weren’t asking permission.
“Anhara.” His voice. Soft. Careful. “Look at me.”
I looked.
His hands were flat on the bed, not touching me. His eyes were steady, patient, waiting.
“We can stop,” he said.
“I don’t want to stop.”
“Then tell me what you need.”
What I needed. Such a simple question. Such a hard answer.
“I need you to keep talking,” I said. “I need to hear your voice. So I know it’s you.”
“It’s me.” His hand came up slowly, giving me time to track the movement, and touched my face. “It’s me, Anhara. I’m here. We’re here. And nothing happens that you don’t want.”
I breathed. Once. Twice. The past retreated, sliding back into its locked room.
“I want this,” I said. “I want you.”
“Then take what you want.”
I sank down onto him.
The stretch was slow, intense, and those flanges did exactly what they were designed to do.
Every ridge caught against my inner walls, stroking places I didn’t know could feel this good.
He kept talking. Small words, meaningless words, just his voice in my ear, anchoring me to the present.
By the time he was fully inside me, I was shaking, but not from fear.
“Okay?” he asked.
“More than okay.”
I started to move.
The rhythm built slowly. I set the pace, and he let me lead. Every stroke, those flanges rippled inside me. His hands roamed my body, learning me, and when he kissed my throat, I felt that euphoria spread through me again, making everything sharper and softer at once.
“I can feel you,” he said. “Every time you tighten around me. Every sound you make.”
“What am I feeling?”
“Heat. Want.” His breathing roughened as I rolled my hips. “And something else. Something I don’t have a word for.”
“Good something or bad something?”
“Good.” His hands gripped my hips, steadying but not controlling. “Very good.”
The pleasure built. Layered. Deepened. It was different than anything I’d felt before, the flanges stroking me from inside, his saliva’s euphoria spreading through me, his heat surrounding me.
“Kallum.” His name on my lips. Half warning, half plea.
“I know.” His hand slid between us, finding the spot where we joined, and the pressure he added was exactly right. “I’ve got you. Let go.”
I let go.
The orgasm rolled through me, wave after wave, and I felt him shudder beneath me. He followed a moment later, his back arching off the bed, his hands gripping my hips, and the sound he made was raw and broken and real.
After, we lay tangled together in the narrow bed. His arm around me, my head on his shoulder, careful to avoid the bandages. The sweat cooled on my skin, but his warmth lingered, steady and comforting against my side.
“That was,” he started.
“Yeah.”
Silence. But comfortable now. Easy.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “When you froze earlier. I wasn’t sure if I should have stopped.”
“You asked. That was the right thing.” I traced patterns on his chest, following the black lines. “It happens sometimes. The past intruding on the present. It’s less frequent now than it used to be.”
“Does it help to talk about it?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it just helps to be reminded where I am.” I laid my hand over his heart, feeling it beat. “Who I’m with.”
He covered my hand with his. “I’ll always remind you. As many times as you need.”
The promise settled into my bones. Simple. Certain. Real.
“The claiming,” I said eventually. “What happens after? You said your sigils would mark my skin.”
“They would. A permanent mark, matching mine.” He traced patterns on my shoulder, absent and gentle. “And we’d be bonded. Not full telepathy, but I’d feel what you feel. You’d feel what I feel. Constant. Both directions.”
“That doesn’t scare you? Someone else in your head?”
He was quiet for a moment. I could feel him thinking, the rise and fall of his chest slow and steady beneath my cheek.
“I’ve spent my whole life alone in my head,” he said finally.
“Even with my brothers. Even when we’re working together, fighting together, there’s a separation.
A distance I can’t close.” His hand stilled on my shoulder.
“The idea of someone else there, someone I chose, someone who chose me back... it sounds like relief.”
“Like not being alone anymore.”
“Yes.”
I lifted my head. Found his eyes in the darkness.
“I see you,” I said. “The assassin and the orphan. The ghost who doesn’t know how to stop haunting his own life. I see all of it.”
“And?”
“And I’m still here.”
He pulled me closer. Pressed his lips to my forehead. When he spoke, his voice was rough.
“I see you too,” he said. “The survivor who learned how to grow things. The woman who stabbed her way to freedom and then built something worth defending. The person who let me in when she had every reason not to.” He paused. “I see you, Anhara. And I’m not going anywhere.”
“Even if we don’t survive tomorrow?”
“Especially then.” His hand found my face, tilting it up so I could see his eyes. “Whatever happens on that ridge, whatever comes through those trees, I’ll find my way back to you. That’s not a hope. It’s a fact.”
I kissed him. Softer than before. A seal on the promise.
The stars were coming out through the window. The moon was rising, marking the hours until midnight. Until the sequence began.
We had four hours until we had to separate, until we had to become operators instead of lovers, until the weight of the world came crashing back down.
“Again?” I asked.
He pulled me closer.
“Again.”
I woke first.
The outside world was dark. An hour before we’d need to move. The house was quiet in that way it only got in the middle of the night, when life came to a halt.
Kallum was on his side, facing me. One arm across my waist, heavy and warm.
Asleep, he looked different. The watchfulness was gone.
The constant calculation behind his eyes, the way he tracked every movement in a room, the ghost always ready to disappear.
None of that. Just a face. Gray skin and sharp features and the black sigils tracing his jaw, his throat, vanishing under the sheet.
Younger. He looked younger.
I touched one of the lines on his shoulder. Traced it down his arm, feeling the raised edge of it under my fingertip. He shifted toward me in his sleep, and his arm tightened around my waist. Instinct, not conscious thought. Like his body knew where I was even when his mind didn’t.
My chest did something complicated.
We’d talked about the claiming. The permanence of it. The bond that couldn’t be undone. He’d been careful to tell me I didn’t have to decide now, that there was no pressure. That wanting him didn’t mean wanting forever.
I’d listened. I hadn’t told him that I’d already decided.
His eyes opened. Red, unfocused for half a second. Then they found me, and something in his body unclenched. Not startled. Not reaching for a weapon. Just... settling. Like waking up next to someone was a language he was learning in real time.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” His voice was rough with sleep. His thumb moved against my hip, slow and absent. “How long have you been watching me?”
“Long enough to know you don’t snore.”
“I don’t do anything that makes noise. Professional hazard.”
I laughed. He almost smiled. That mouth-twitch I was starting to collect, each one proof that the ghost was real underneath all that training.
“We should get up,” I said.
“I know.”
Neither of us moved.
“Kallum.”
“I know.” He pulled me closer, pressed his mouth to my hair. Held me for three more breaths. Then he let go.
We dressed in silence. Not awkward silence. The kind where everything important had already been said and what was left was just the doing of it. Boots. Belts. Equipment checks. His hands moving over his gear with the same focus they’d moved over me hours ago.
He caught me watching. I didn’t look away.
“Be careful tonight,” I said. Not because he needed the reminder. Because I needed to say it.
“You, too.”
We walked out into the darkness. Separate directions. Separate stations.
The mission was waiting.