19. Kalev
KALEV
She tastes like salt and sleep and something only mine.
Leah lies beneath me, bare skin flushed with heat, pupils blown wide and fixed on my face like I’m the only thing keeping her anchored.
My hands map the curve of her hip, the swell of her thigh, the way her breath catches when I bite the edge of her jaw—not hard, just enough to remind her I’m here. Still here.
The hum of the surveillance array buzzes faint through the concrete above us, but it might as well be stars away. In this moment, it’s just her and me and the way our bodies speak a language I’ve never been fluent in—want threaded with reverence, heat shot through with restraint.
“Say it,” I murmur against her ear, voice low and rasped. “What you want.”
“You,” she breathes, no hesitation. “All of you.”
The words detonate in my chest.
I grip her thighs, spread her open like a prayer, and settle between them.
She gasps as my mouth finds her, and I don’t stop, not even when her fingers knot in my hair and she curses in three languages. I want every sound, every quake in her thighs, every staggered breath.
Her pleasure’s a storm, and I ride the center of it, grounded only by the way she moans my name like a vow.
When she comes apart, she arches—spine a bow, mouth parted in silent ache. I don’t stop until she trembles beneath me, wrecked and shining.
“Fuck,” she exhales, dazed.
I crawl up her body, kiss her deep, and taste her on her tongue.
We move together then—urgent, rough, almost desperate. She claws at my back, bites my shoulder, wraps her legs around my hips and takes me like she was born for it. And I give. Every thrust says I’m yours. Every groan says I need you. Every look says I’m coming undone and I don’t even care anymore.
We finish messy, breathless, tangled in limbs and sweat and disbelief that this—this—can exist in a world like ours.
Afterward, I hold her like she’ll vanish if I let go. Her heartbeat flutters against my chest, fast then slowing. I bury my face in her hair, breathe her in. Skin, heat, and something sharp underneath it. Not just lust. Not just need.
Something more dangerous.
“You okay?” she murmurs, voice wrecked.
I nod, but she knows better.
“You’re thinking too loud.”
“I’m always thinking.”
“Talk to me.”
I hesitate.
Then I say it, voice raw. “What if I become something I can't come back from?”
Leah pulls back just enough to look at me. “You’re afraid you’re already that thing.”
I don’t answer.
She brushes hair from my forehead, thumb grazing a scar I don’t even remember getting.
“Monsters don’t worry about being monsters, Kalev.”
I close my eyes.
“I’ve killed people. Not just combatants. Civilians. Collateral.”
“I know.”
“They were in the way.”
“And you still remember them. That’s the point.”
I turn my face toward hers. “You make me want to stop running from what I’ve done.”
“You make me want to stop hiding from who I am.”
We lie there in the quiet, not touching now, but not apart.
I feel it—unspoken but loud as war drums. The bond. Not just bodies. Not just timing. This thing between us has teeth.
I reach for her hand.
She laces her fingers with mine.
We don’t say love.
But it’s in the silence.
In the way I memorize the line of her throat, the rise of her ribs, the soft curl of her lips when she finally falls asleep.
I watch her for a long time.
Then I whisper a promise to the dark.
“I’ll protect you.”
Even if I have to protect her from me.