Chapter 13 #2
"Don't stop." His voice was low, rough, strained in a way that had nothing to do with pain. "It doesn't hurt. It's just—" He exhaled slowly, his grip tightening on my hips hard enough to bruise. "Sensitive. Everything is sensitive right now."
Good, I thought. I want you to feel everything.
I let my fingers continue their exploration, more carefully now, mapping the terrain of his healing.
Here, the smooth expanse of undamaged skin that rippled under my touch.
There, the slightly raised edge of a scar that hadn't entirely faded.
And everywhere, the heat of him, the steady pulse of his blood beneath my hands, the way his muscles clenched and released as I discovered what made him react.
"Off," I murmured against his lips, tugging at his tunic. "I need to see you."
He complied, his four arms moving in coordination as he pulled the garment over his head. The sight of him, bare-chested, still marked with the evidence of what he'd survived, all that strength barely contained, made something fierce and possessive curl in my stomach.
Mine, I thought. He's still here. He's still mine.
I leaned down and pressed my lips to the largest regeneration patch, a pale, shimmering square over his left ribs where the worst of the shrapnel had torn through. He shuddered beneath me, a low, broken sound escaping his throat. His hands fisted in the sheets.
"Kira." My name was a warning, a plea, and a prayer.
"I've got you." I kissed my way across his chest, my tongue tracing the lines of muscle, pausing at each mark, each scar, each piece of evidence that he'd chosen to stay. I scraped my teeth lightly over his collarbone, and his whole body arched off the bed. "I've got you."
His hands found the buttons of my shirt, and I sat back to let him work them open. His fingers trembled want so intense I could feel it radiating off him like heat. When the fabric finally fell away, sliding down my shoulders to pool at my elbows, his breath caught audibly.
"You're beautiful." The words were reverent, almost pained.
His upper hands cupped my breasts, palms warm and slightly rough, thumbs brushing across the peaks until I whimpered and arched into his touch.
His lower arms pulled me flush against him, bare chest to bare chest, and the sensation of skin against skin made us both shudder.
"I thought about this. In the dark, when I couldn't sleep.
I thought about touching you again. Tasting you.
Being inside you. I wasn't sure you'd still want me to. "
"I want you." I rolled my hips against him, slow and deliberate, grinding down against the hard length of him through the thin fabric still separating us. His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping in his cheek, his eyes going dark and heavy-lidded. "I will always want you. Now stop wasting time."
The rest of our clothes disappeared in a tangle of urgent hands and impatient movements. When his skin finally pressed against mine with nothing between us, nothing but heat and want and need, I sighed into his mouth. Relief and desire and homecoming all wrapped into one breathless sound.
We moved together slowly at first. Every touch deliberate.
Every kiss lingering. His mouth found my throat, teeth grazing my pulse point before his tongue soothed the sting.
His hands explored like he was relearning me, rediscovering every curve and hollow, every place that made me gasp.
When his fingers finally slipped between my thighs, testing, stroking, I cried out against his shoulder.
"So ready for me," he breathed, something raw and reverent in his voice. "You're so—" He broke off, groaning, as I wrapped my hand around him and stroked.
When I finally positioned myself above him and sank down slowly, taking him in inch by inch, we both went still. The stretch of him, the fullness, the overwhelming intimacy of being joined. It stole the breath from my lungs. Our foreheads pressed together, breathing hard, neither of us moving.
"Okay?" I whispered.
"Yes." His voice was wrecked, barely more than a rasp. "More than okay. Don't move yet. Just, stay. Let me feel you."
I stayed. I let him feel me. And I felt him. The tension in his muscles, the hammering of his heart against my chest, the way his hands gripped my hips like I was the only thing anchoring him to the world.
When I finally began to move, we both moaned.
We found a rhythm that worked, careful of his injuries but not defined by them. Slow, deep movements that made my toes curl, and my breath come in gasps. I rose and fell above him, and his hips lifted to meet each movement, driving deeper, making me see stars.
His four hands were everywhere: gripping my hips to guide me, sliding up my sides to cup my breasts, palming my back to pull me down for hungry kisses, threading through my hair to tilt my head back so his mouth could find my throat.
Like he couldn't decide what to hold onto, so he held onto everything.
Like four hands still weren't enough to touch me the way he wanted.
I braced myself against his shoulders and rode him, watching his face, reading every flicker of pleasure.
The way his eyes darkened when I clenched around him.
The way his lips parted on a ragged groan when I changed the angle.
The way his hands flexed against my skin like he was fighting a losing battle for control.
"Tell me," I breathed, rolling my hips in a way that made his eyes nearly roll back. "Tell me you need me."
"I need you." His hips snapped up to meet mine, harder now, deeper, and I gasped at the intensity of it. "I need you more than you will ever know."
He thrust again, and the sound that escaped me was shameless.
A moan that echoed off the walls and made his eyes blaze with dark satisfaction.
One of his hands slid between us, his thumb finding the bundle of nerves at my center, pressing and circling in time with our rhythm. My vision went white around the edges.
"Again," he demanded, his voice like gravel and velvet. "Let me hear you again. I want the whole ship to know you're mine."
I couldn't have stopped myself if I'd tried. The sounds he pulled from me were obscene, desperate, echoing through the room. And he drank in every one like they were the sweetest music he'd ever heard.
The pressure built like a storm gathering on the horizon; slower this time, but inevitable.
No urgency. No desperation. Just the steady, relentless climb toward something that would shatter me completely.
His hands never stopped moving, never stopped discovering new ways to make me tremble.
His mouth found my breast, his tongue swirling, his teeth grazing, and I cried out, fingers digging into his shoulders.
"Let go," he murmured against my skin, his thumb pressing harder, his hips driving up to meet mine. "I want to feel you come apart. I want to watch you break for me."
When I finally shattered, it was with his name torn from my throat and all four of his arms wrapped around me.
The pleasure crashed through me in waves, endless and overwhelming, and I felt myself clenching around him, pulling him deeper.
He held me through all of it, whispering my name like it was sacred, watching my face like he wanted to memorize every moment of my unraveling.
He followed moments later. I felt him swell inside me, felt the tension in his body snap like a wire pulled too tight. His face buried in my neck, his whole body shaking with release and relief, my name spilling from his lips over and over like he'd forgotten every other word in the universe.
After, we lay tangled together in the narrow recovery bed.
Kaedren had rearranged us, so I was tucked against his uninjured side, my head on his shoulder, one of his lower arms draped across my waist. The monitors beeped softly in the corner, his heart rate elevated but steady.
Lyrin would probably have opinions about this particular form of physical therapy, but neither of us cared.
I smiled against Kaedren's chest.
"I was afraid you’d never want me again." His voice rumbled beneath my ear. "After. I thought... the guilt, maybe. Or that seeing me like this, broken, less than what I was…I was afraid it would change things."
I lifted my head to look at him. "You're not less than anything."
"I couldn't protect myself." The admission came out softly, like it had been sitting in his chest for weeks, waiting to be spoken into existence.
"I've always been the protector. The one takes the hit so others don't have to.
And when the moment came, I did it without thinking.
But now—" He gestured at the regeneration patches, the medical equipment, the evidence of his vulnerability.
"Now I'm the one who needs protecting. And I don't know how to handle that. "
I propped myself up on my elbow and traced the edge of his jaw with my fingertips. "Do you remember what you told me once? About the Tether?"
He shook his head slightly.
"You said it wasn't about one person carrying the weight. It was about distributing it. Making sure no one bears too much alone." I leaned down and kissed him softly. "You protected us. Now let us protect you. That's not weakness. That's how this works."
His hand cupped the back of my head, holding me close. "I'm trying."
"I know." I settled back against him, listening to the steady beat of his heart. "I'm trying too. I almost didn't come here tonight. I almost convinced myself that staying away was the right thing to do."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I realized something." I traced idle patterns on his chest, careful to avoid the healing patches.
"Leadership doesn't protect me from loving you.
Neither does distance, or professionalism, or pretending I'm not terrified every time one of you walks into danger.
I can't separate the leader from the woman who loves you. And I'm done trying."
Kaedren was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion.
"I love you too." Simple. Direct. Kaedren in four words.
I smiled and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. "I know."
We lay there in the soft amber light, the ship humming around us.
Tomorrow, there would be more moments where the cost of what we were building would demand payment.
Voss was still out there. The corporations were still hunting us.
The war we'd been pulled into wasn't going to stop just because we needed it to.
But right now, in this moment, we were alive. We were together. We could breathe.
And that, I was learning, was what love looked like in the middle of a war.
Not the absence of fear. Not the promise of safety. Just the willingness to stay.
Staying didn't mean pretending the cost didn't happen.
It meant choosing love anyway.