EPILOGUE （NAKED EDITION）
ELLIE
Sometimes, rules are worth breaking.
I love him.
I love him so fucking much.
The last six months were just proof. Every day I thought about him, and not once did my affection for him wane.
I would cook dinner and imagine him making a mess in the kitchen with me and smile.
I moved into this place a few weeks ago and thought about how we would shop for decorations together. I told my mom about him.
I love him.
And it’s quite possible I’ve never been so horny in my entire life.
Historically, I haven’t thought much about sex when I wasn’t physically around the partner I was sleeping with.
But the last six months have been a test of willpower devised to torture me.
Masturbation alone wasn’t enough. I ended up on a sex toy website that Jo sent me to find anything that would remind me of Zarek.
I’m pretty sure I’ve gone round the bend with sexual need.
And now he’s here, and he’s kissing me, and…
“I love you, too,” he says, laughing with the force of his joy. “Of course I do, we are corasala.”
I want to ask him what that means—it’s on my list of things for Zarek to explain when he gets back that I’ve been writing in the back of my field notes binder.
But right now I actually couldn’t give a shit less what the word means, only that he’s looking at me like that, and touching my face like that, and kissing me like that.
Like he needs me just as badly as I need him.
He’s smiling against my lips when I kiss him again, his hands immediately going to my hips and lifting me in the air. Fuck, I’m so happy.
Zarek’s hands and my dissertation going well and Zarek’s body heat and a new adventure for both of us and Zarek’s lips and teeth on my neck and this cute little house in the woods and Zarek, Zarek, Zarek.
I grind my body down against him, needing the friction to relieve some of the pent-up pressure building in my body. I’ve been thinking about this very moment for months, and even spending the evening chit chatting with my best friend could not fully distract me.
“Ellie,” he groans into my mouth, and I chase his kiss, all tongue and teeth and heavy breaths as we pull each other back in. He has my back pressed completely against the wall, held up by the sheer pressure of his body against mine.
“We have a bed,” I pant as his lips traverse my collarbones. He keeps pulling at my shirt like it offends him.
“Unsure if we will make it that far,” he replies into my skin, palming at my thighs like he’s re-memorizing my body.
“You can’t fuck me like this,” I laugh, threading my hand through his hair as he kisses the tops of my breasts. Pretty sure this shirt is going to be destroyed. Absolutely certain I don’t care.
“Is that a challenge?” he asks, pulling back to rake his eyes down my body. I know I must look a mess, all needy and panting, hair probably wild from his touch, but he’s looking at me like I’m the moon and the stars and everything in between.
I almost laugh him off, wiggle out of his grip and drag him to our sparsely-appointed bedroom.
But I’ve got that buzzing under my skin that I had the whole time we were in France together.
That urge to do something fun, to try something new, to leap and know that Zarek will catch me, or at least fall by my side.
“If you’re up for it,” I reply, my cheeks heating with the way the stars in his eyes start to sparkle brighter. He says something under his breath in Terilian, and I would bet money it’s a curse.
“Fuck, I love you,” he says, diving back in to capture my lips again.
He presses me back into the wall again, his thigh wedged underneath me to support some of my weight as his hands roam my stomach.
They crawl up my ribs while he kisses me frantically, barely able to force himself to pull away as he drags my shirt over my head.
“So beautiful, my corasala,” he whispers, his thumbs dragging over my nipples through the thin fabric of my bra, forcing my back to arch into his touch.
My mind is an endless loop of need need need, please please please, Zarek Zarek Zarek, but I can’t get the words out.
Mostly because Zarek’s tongue is back inside my mouth in a heartbeat.
I was a fucking genius to wear loose-fitting jeans, because he’s easily able to slide them and my underwear down my hips.
It’s a bit less graceful getting them down my legs and onto the floor, but we’re laughing and kissing and touching the whole time, so we don’t find it awkward. Nothing is uncomfortable with Zarek.
My fingernails score down his arms, tracing and dipping into the rivers of lighter blue that I’ve been re-mapping in my mind for the last six months.
I want to see all of him, figure out if I remembered the map of his skin correctly after all this time.
But Zarek’s too distracted to get himself properly undressed.
I can’t complain too much though, especially when I feel how hard he is as I grind my barely-covered pussy down on his hardening length.
“Fuck, need your cock,” I moan, feeling myself get slick so fast it’s dizzying.
“Anything you want, Ellie,” he promises, undoing his fly with one hand as the other bands around my waist, holding me close to him. Feeling his cock drag against my core has me throwing my head back against the wall, exposing my throat to him.
“Thought about this every day,” he murmurs against the hollow, teeth nipping as he adjusts us so he can line himself up with my entrance. I nearly fucking cry at the first press of him. Fuck, he’s so much bigger than the blue toy I bought. I should have known better.
“Me too,” I say, nodding as my shoulders dig into the drywall behind me. It feels so incredibly good, the way he’s leveraging our bodies to take me like this. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better homecoming. “Every day.”
My name is the only word out of his mouth as he pulls me down onto his cock, slowly and carefully, like he knows I’m going to need a moment to adjust. And even if I had found a toy that could prepare me for the size of him again, the angle is different and new, stretching me to the edge of pain that makes the pleasure that much better.
“You feel so perfect, my perfect Ellie, my star,” he pants, holding me still with the arm around my waist as he pulls back and thrusts back in. And fuck, it feels so goddamn good.
“I’m yours,” I agree mindlessly, my heartbeat pounding in every cell. “And you’re mine.”
Zarek’s free hand finds its way into my hair again, and he pulls my head back to meet my gaze. He looks hungry and desperate and so in love.
“Yes, I am yours,” he says on another slow thrust, dragging out my pleasure with every ridge of his cock. “I am your corasala.”
I’m one second from breaking and asking him what that means, but Zarek loses the careful control he had over his movements and starts thrusting into me fervently. We’re barely kissing, our mouths and tongues clashing and separating as he fucks me into this wall like he can’t stop.
Neither can I. The heat crawling through my veins is starting to feel explosive, an electrical hum zapping my skin everywhere we’re connected. I can feel my orgasm building as Zarek’s cock drags against every pleasure zone inside me with his movements.
“I need to feel you,” he says, voice thin and thready, like he’s holding back his own pleasure. “Please, my love.”
Like I was waiting for permission, or maybe waiting to see that he was as far gone as I am, I fucking detonate at his words.
My fingernails bite into the skin of his shoulders as the waves of my orgasm rip through me, drowning me in pleasure. It lasts forever, with Zarek keeping up his brutal pace as I convulse around him, crying out against his skin as I bury my face into the crook of his shoulder.
“Ellie,” he groans as the last wave recedes, and he finally spills into me.
We’re both sweating and panting, our hearts beating against each other in tandem as the world grows less staticky around us. I blink back the haze at the edge of my vision, leaning back against the wall and locking my legs around Zarek’s hips so I don’t fall.
But he’s got me. Even though he looks just as exhausted as I am, I know he’ll hold me for hours if I asked.
“We are very good at that,” he says, and I can’t help the laugh that spills out of me. It’s so Zarek, so sweet and matter of fact and genuine. I kiss his nose, because I feel like it. Because he makes me feel like it.
“We really are,” I reply, tapping his shoulders. He very carefully withdraws from me, setting me down on the floor and keeping his arm around my waist when I wobble a bit, unsteady after such a mind-blowing orgasm.
“We should clean up,” I say, feeling the evidence of both our releases start to slip down my thighs. Zarek just pulls me closer, hugging me to his body.
“Whatever you need, my corasala,” he murmurs into my hair. Finally, finally, I have the wherewithal to pull back and ask him what I should have asked the first time he said it on that spaceship six months ago.
“What does that mean?”
He pulls his lips from my hair and tilts down to stare into my eyes. He has that look, like he did the last time I saw him on the Terilian spaceship. Like he can see the whole universe laid out in front of him.
He takes my hand in his and lays it against his chest—right in the center, over what would be the sternum in my body, just beneath his pecs.
“There is not a good human translation for it in any language,” he says, interlacing his fingers with mine. “But the closest I can get in English is heartsync. According to an old prophecy from our planet origin—Sapphiron—when two beings were destined to be together, their heartbeats aligned.”
I feel Zarek’s heart thud in his chest, listen for the sound of it in the silence. And after a moment, I startle, trying to pull my hand away. But Zarek has it trapped there, holding me to him.
“I can maybe feel it easier than you can,” he explains, dragging his thumb down the back of my hand in comforting circles. My heartbeat stutters a bit, picking up pace in reaction to his touch.
Zarek’s mimics it.
“Holy shit,” I whisper, staring at the place where our hands are interlocked.
“You are my heartsync,” he says, placing another kiss on top of my head, like he can’t help but return there.
I am a scientist, down to my bones. I don’t believe in soul mates or fate or anything so unprovable.
But maybe there’s something to be said about two people who are so in tune, so meant for each other, that even their cardiovascular systems sense it.
“And you’re mine,” I say.
When I find Zarek’s eyes, they’re lined with tears. Which is okay, because I’m crying, too.
“Until the last star dies.”