Chapter 28
TUR
The city still smolders, bleeding red and orange into the sky like it’s been gut-shot and left to die. But in the safehouse—bare bones, bare walls, barely habitable—it’s quiet.
The kind of quiet you don't trust. The kind that presses against your ribs like it’s waiting to be broken.
Kim lays next to me on the pallet. The makeshift mattress creaks under every shift of her weight.
My fingers trace slow lines down her spine, memorizing the places where soot hasn’t touched her.
She’s warm, sweat-slicked, alive—and for reasons that defy biology, physics, and every rule the Alliance ever tried to beat into me, she’s mine.
Not because of the bond.
Because she chose to stay.
“You keep lookin’ at me like you lost a bet,” she murmurs, voice low and scratchy from smoke and sleep.
“I keep thinking I’ll blink and you’ll vanish.”
“I don’t do vanishing acts,” she says. “Stage fright.”
I huff out a breath that’s almost a laugh. Her hair tickles my chest. It smells like industrial soap and burned cumin and her. Just her.
Her palm flattens over my ribs. Skin to skin. Her thumb brushes the edge of a scar I don’t remember earning. I remember too many. That one’s a mystery.
“You good?” she asks, without ceremony.
“I don’t know what good feels like,” I say.
Kim hums. Doesn’t argue. Doesn’t flinch. Just drapes her leg over my hip and shifts closer. I feel her breasts press to my side, the steady heat of her breath on my throat, and it’s like being measured by something holy.
She moves again, slowly, sliding a thigh over me, and suddenly she’s straddling my lap. The air between us charges. Not sudden. Not electric. Slow-burn. Molten. I can feel the heat of her—bare and ready—and I haven’t done a damn thing to earn it.
I want to pray. I want to run. I want to anchor myself in her mouth and drown in the way she’s looking at me.
No fear. No command. Just want.
“Don’t run on me now,” she says, voice gone thick.
“I’m not running.”
“Then touch me like you mean it.”
Her fingers find mine and guide them to her waist. I grip her hips like a man afraid he’s dreaming.
She rolls against me—deliberate, devastating—and I bite back a sound that would echo off concrete. My cock’s hard and aching, pressed between us, and she’s not rushing. She’s learning. Mapping me. Every shift of her hips writes a new gospel on my nerves.
“You always this quiet?” she asks, grinding just enough to make my breath stutter.
“I wasn’t designed for this.”
She leans down, mouth a breath from mine. “Good. Let’s ruin the blueprint.”
She kisses me—slow, deep, consuming. Her tongue teases mine, licking fire into places I didn’t know could burn. When she pulls back, she’s breathing like we just sprinted a mile. Her eyes are blown wide and dark.
“I want you inside me, Tur.”
I blink.
Once.
Twice.
Her fingers wrap around me—firm, knowing—and she strokes once, twice, then lines me up with a precision that shreds my restraint.
“Wait—” I start, but she lowers herself slowly onto me, inch by inch, and my brain dissolves.
She’s wet and tight and fuck, the heat of her wraps around me like silk spun over fire.
My hands grip her hips. My claws retract instinctively—because hurting her is unthinkable—and I hold still while she takes me all the way.
“Okay?” she whispers, forehead pressed to mine.
“I might never be okay again,” I choke.
She smiles, slow and filthy and so goddamn beautiful it hurts. Then she begins to move.
There’s no rhythm at first. Just exploration. Rocking. Grinding. Testing how deep I go. I feel every ridge of her, every clench, every gasp she breathes against my mouth.
She’s not trying to make me lose control.
She’s trying to show me what it feels like to give it away willingly.
I bite her shoulder—not enough to bruise, just enough to mark this moment—and she moans like she’s been waiting her whole life to be bitten.
Her hands frame my face.
“Look at me,” she says.
I do.
Her eyes burn. Not with lust. With knowing.
“This ain’t desperation,” she says. “Ain’t the end of the world. We’re not fucking for survival. We’re doing this because I want you. All of you. The man and the weapon.”
I kiss her before she can finish, because anything I say would come out as worship.
She rocks harder, taking me deeper. Her breath shatters. Mine follows.
Her nails bite into my shoulders.
“You’re so deep,” she pants. “God—Tur—I can feel you everywhere.”
I slide my hands to her ass, guiding her pace, and lift into her on every stroke. Each time she sinks back down, the friction drives pleasure through me like a blade.
“I’m not gonna last,” I warn.
“Don’t hold back,” she whispers. “I want all of it.”
And gods help me—I give it.
I thrust into her with everything I’ve got. The pallet creaks. Our bodies slap. Sweat slicks our skin. She breaks apart in my arms, trembling, cursing, gasping my name like a spell.
Her pussy clamps down and that’s it.
I come with a guttural sound, burying myself deep as I spill inside her, her name burned into every corner of my mind.
We collapse together, breathless.
Kim drapes herself over my chest, kisses my jaw, my throat, the scar over my left shoulder.
“Still breathing?” she teases.
“Barely.”
“Good. Would’ve been awkward explaining a death by orgasm.”
I chuckle. She laughs with me. The war’s not over. The city’s still bleeding.
But for one night, I’m whole.
Not a weapon.
Not a warning.
Just hers.