41. Chapter 41

Dinner goes better than she anticipated. The conversation is somewhat stilted, but no one shouts and no one bleeds, so Rey counts that as a success.  She finishes her meal first and rests her chin in her hands, watches Kylo poke at his food, laughs when Finn’s slurping splashes sauce onto Poe’s shirt.  Once Poe and Finn are done eating, they stand and make some excuse about wanting to get to bed early, clearing their places before disappearing down the hall.

She turns to Kylo, still chasing a bit of purple vegetable around his plate with his fork. Master Skywalker keeps lecturing the importance of eschewing personal attachments, and his voice in her head warns that she is turning down a path she cannot retread, but she ignores it and reaches for his hand. He drops his fork and turns his palm up, catching her fingers in his. The contact makes her light-headed, her heart fluttering against her ribs. He’s as close to freedom as he’s been in decades, even if that freedom comes with stipulations and restrictions. Excitement and uncertainty swirl through his head.

She smiles at him and his pulse spikes. “I have a surprise for you.”

“I’ve had a few surprises already today. A new job, a new room, roommates.” He makes a face and she laughs, too giddy to play along with his half-feigned exasperation.  “I’m not sure I can handle any more.”

“You’ll like it.” Rey squeezes his hand, sending some of her elation at his freedom, at being together, down their connection. She feels it glow inside him and he smiles back at her, eyebrow quirking. “Let’s go.”

A few mechanics make their way in for an after-shift snack as they speak. The mechanics shoot Kylo and Rey wary glances, but make no move to approach.  They clear their plates and Kylo rests his hand against her lower back as they exit. The light pressure sparks something low in her stomach and she takes deep breaths to keep from trembling.

Where are we going? He rumbles across her mind when they turn away from the barracks.  He pauses at the fork in the hallway, turns to her.

Rey doesn’t respond, just tugs him forward to the base’s front doors.

“Wait,” he says, pulling back. His stomach flips and he looks between her and the door twice before pushing his hair off his forehead, a nervous gesture.  “Outside?”

“Outside,” Rey nods, palming the mechanism that opens the doors and stepping into the cool night. His eyes widen, sweeping from the dark sky slashed by D’Qar’s bright asteroid ring down to the swathes of grass as a fresh breeze caresses his skin.  The hair on his neck stands up, and it prickles. When was the last time you went out without that mask?

A long time ago. He breathes in deep lungfuls of sweet air, and then steps forward onto the gravel path.  

She leads him across the lawn, back to the tree where she’d sat with Finn and Poe and sent him tastes of fruit and friendship. Her shoulder brushes his arm as they face away from the base, looking out across the terraces and up into the sky. I thought you might like to see some real stars, feel the wind, smell the grass for yourself.

He tilts his head back to the unfamiliar constellations, thoughts perfect in their stillness, mirroring the sky. He doesn’t try to put the feeling into words, trusting their connection to speak for him. They stand together, marveling at the stars until he looks down at her, his eyes dark and wide.  

Something like dread trickles down her spine, a whispered caution. She’s not supposed to be doing this. Rey she shoves that away and reaches out for him. He slides his hand down to rest at the small of her back again, lifts the other to the back of her head.  

The brush of their lips makes their connection thrum like a plucked string.  Rey takes her time for once, explores his mouth, his jaw, his neck at her leisure. There’s no impending doom hanging over them tonight, no desperate battle to wage, no one to break them apart, no blood or pain. She takes full advantage of that while it lasts, peppering kisses along his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids when he tilts his head down for her attentions. The Force burns strong inside him, feeds off the touch of skin on skin. She pushes into their bond as she presses into his mouth, feels the thump of his heart, tastes herself on his tongue, hears her sigh through his ears.  Her pulse quickens and the warmth of his hand on her back flares.

She pulls him down so her heels rest on the soft ground again. He smooths under her shirt and across to her hip, floods her veins with molten gold and she wants more, closer, now .  He groans, other hand tangling in her hair as she sucks on his lower lip before kissing, licking, biting, teasing down to the divot of his clavicle. He swallows under her tongue, his throat moving against her lips as he pants. Grinning against him, she nips the fragile skin and sends him a thought wrapped in red-hot desire. He gasps and presses his hips into her, needy, insistent. He’s hard, hot through the layers of cloth, and her smile turns wicked as she leans back.  

Rey doesn’t need to ask and he doesn’t need to answer. The stars spin above her, in her head, and her skin crackles with electricity where he touches her. She catches her swollen lip between her teeth, looks up at him through her lashes. He takes her proffered hand, smiles, and they turn back to the base.

He slows as they approach the doors, adjusting his pants to hide his arousal.  Rey snorts as he shoots her a sharp look. Your hair is no better . There’s no venom behind the look;  it’s taking all his control not to burst out laughing and pull her back in his arms. Rey removes the ties, shakes her head like a Wookiee drying itself, finger-combing her hair as they enter the base. The tips of their fingers just touch as they make their way to her room on the second floor of the barracks.  

Kylo stops her in the stairwell, grabs her hips as she climbs the stairs in front of him, spins her around so they stand face to face, almost the same height. Reaching up, he kisses her hard and hungry. She gathers a fistful of his shirt and leads him by the collar until her back thuds into the wall by the stairwell door. He catches both of her wrists in one large hand, pins them to the wall above her head. Maybe she should feel vulnerable here, crowded against a wall and restrained, but she doesn’t. She just wants more . Pulling their bodies together, her hardening nipples brush against his chest through their clothes, and she frees a hand from his loose grip and curls her fingers around his jaw. Holding him in place, Rey chases his tongue with hers and savors the filthy groans she finds in his mouth. Desperate for more as her back scrapes against the wall and his mouth works along her neck, she pants, hot and ragged, grateful it’s late. No quick words could talk a passerby out of filing an indecency complaint.

It’s torture to disentangle themselves, but they’re almost to her quarters and they race down the hallway. She rubs her thumb across his knuckles as she opens her door with its code and they trip over each other in their haste to get inside and shut the door behind them.

Flicking on the small lamp by the desk, for a moment Rey thinks she should have cleaned.  She turns to say something, but he’s not paying attention to the clothes strewn over the bed frame, the neat stack of field rations under the desk, the stolen cafeteria cups full of soil and seedlings by the window. His eyes blaze, heedless of anything but her. He slams the door shut and steps forward, catches her face in his hands, and surges into her mouth. No questions, no doubts, no hesitations.

A heel hooked behind his knee pulls him down to the haphazard pile of mattresses and blankets she arranged on the floor her first night here. Kylo grunts, surprised, as they land but he doesn’t break the kiss. He settles over her, a leg between her thighs, kissing her into the softness of her nest. She toes off her boots and socks and presses into him, scrapes her nails over his scalp.  She wants him, has wanted him for so long, and he’s here. He’s hers . He growls at the thought, kisses her harder. The bond is on fire and so is she, burning bright, ecstatic, fierce.  

He strokes up under her shirt again and she releases him so he can whip it over her head, catching the band underneath with nimble fingers. Her breasts bounce once as they’re freed and she feels his brain stutter. He tosses the shirt aside and swoops down to catch a nipple in his mouth. She keens as he rolls it over his tongue and arches up into him as electricity spears from his mouth to her core. Gliding her hands over the hard lines of his shoulders, down the slope of his strong back, she uses her nails to drag him from her chest to her mouth. As he moves up, she dips under the waist of his pants, skims her fingers along the band of his underwear. He drops his head to her shoulder, gasps her name, the syllable echoing inside her head, and grinds his hips into her.

Kylo kisses her, rough and possessive, their bond rippling with how much he wants her, needs her, as he wriggles to kick off his boots and socks. They clatter against the wall and something falls to the floor, but neither of them care. His desire shoots a coil of heat to her cunt and she clenches, empty and wanting. She pushes him upright, following close behind, catching his lips with her own for another searing kiss before seizing the hem of his shirt.  

Rey ducks her head down, kissing and licking up his torso as he tears the shirt over his head. “ Pants,” she breathes, hears it echo in his head. Foreheads pressed together, they stand struggling with belts and laces in their haste to disrobe. She pushes his underwear down his thighs, flicks them to the floor, fingers fumbling when his cock springs free, hard and proud. She takes him in both of her hands and the bond resounds with the sudden friction.

Kylo chokes, hisses, stutters unintelligible sounds as she strokes down the length of him, and he grabs her wrist after a strangled expletive. “ Too much, too soon ,” he says in her head and into her hair, leaning on her and panting between the words. He kicks off the cloth pooled around his ankles and drops to his knees before her. His lips skim up and across her thighs to suck a bruise at her hip as he hooks his fingers into the band of her underwear and pull it down. She shivers when the cool air hits her. She’s wet, so wet , and his enthralled wonder at her obvious arousal narrows the whirlwind of of his lust into focus.  She digs into his hair and he shudders, showing her through the connection what he wants. She moans,  sighs as she nods, eager and aflame.

He kisses her, hot and wet and perfect , nose pressing into the hair between her thighs, sweeping his tongue over her folds. She can taste herself through his senses, obscene and ambrosial and mine. The Force around them expands and contracts, hot then cold, overwhelming through the bond they share. Stars pop behind her eyelids and she isn’t sure if it’s the space they share or how he’s moving his mouth. She cries out as he flicks over her clit and her knees shake. He tugs her down by her hips, wraps an arm around her waist and twists so she’s on top, straddling him as he reclines.  

Rey runs her palm up his right bicep as she grinds down, gasping at the friction, slick and sliding over his leaking cock. He recognizes the gesture and, groaning through gritted teeth, mirrors the movement, eyes glittering and erection pulsing torturously against her.  She feels for the contraceptive and immuno-implant and finds it, a tiny ridge under the skin of his arm.  She hadn’t thought to check before, back in his room on Moraband.  Now, though, with the thought of death pushed far away, when they are both whole and healthy and half-gone from rutting through their clothes, the practicalities must be considered.  It’s a common check between couples throughout the galaxy, and it feels strange, a normal moment in their abnormal  relationship.

With his hands on her hips, Kylo hikes her an inch higher so she hovers over him, the head of his cock brushing against her clit and she moves against it, shuddering.  Rey repeats the move and his eyes flutter shut. The link scorches white as she drinks in his rapturous expression. Kylo’s shoulders tremble under her hands as she balances, tilting her hips with another perfect, dizzying drag He is slick with her arousal and his mind is ablaze with her scent, her touch, her taste still on his lips. Rey pauses above him, drinking in the flush across his nose, the heaving chest, and then she slips down, freezing midway as her cunt clenches and stretches around him.  

The connection ignites in a new curtain of flame that overtakes them, envelopes them, melts their selves together. For a moment, there is no separation between their bodies, their minds, their souls. Then they slide apart, back into their own selves, connected and whole.

Kylo groans a wrenching oh! that wells up from the bottom of his soul, and loosens something tight in her belly. She sinks lower with small rolls of her hips, breathing his name as she bottoms out against him. Bracing her hands on his chest as she adjusts to his girth, shifting her weight in tiny controlled undulations. Kylo’s fingers tighten around her thighs and he looks up at her as if she were divine.

There’s no separating words, thoughts, emotions. They merge into eternity under her skin. She shivers, memorizing this moment: his solidity under her, inside her, the complete entwining of their minds, the rumbling vibrations along the bond, the way his mouth works, wordless, as she moves.

Rey rolls her hips back, sliding up, and Kylo gasps, rakes her back with his nails, digs trails of fire into her skin. She can feel, as though it were a memory, the sensations he experiences as she moves, and it’s almost too much to bear. She finds a pace that works , rolling against Kylo as he snaps his hips up to meet hers, steady thrusts quickening as he blazes under her. He growls as she slows the pace, too soon, need more , and she laces her fingers through his, pulls his hand up the curve of her stomach, drags it over her breast and up her neck. She drops hot kisses into his palm, sucks the tips of his fingers into her mouth.

The hand gripping her thigh slips over her pubic bone so his thumb can brush her clit as Kylo slips his fingers from her mouth. He pulls her forward and her hands sink into the softness behind him as he kisses her, hot and wet and tasting of sex as he circles her clit and fucks up into her from a new angle. The taste of herself in his mouth is overwhelming and he pours that sensation into her mind, incinerating him from the inside out as she kisses back. Licking into his mouth as she grinds her hips back to meet his, Rey is unable to keep her eyes open as he drowns her in their shared ecstasy. This pressure, this tension, has been building for months, since he first entered her mind, and the sudden immediacy of it is all-encompassing. His cock bumps something deep in her and the fire spreads up her chest and down her legs, and she’s so close so close so close if he’ll just keep going.

He does, driving up over and over as she comes apart above him. The fuse they lit burns down and she explodes, is remade, and explodes again as her orgasm rips through her. She convulses, cries his name as her skin flushes and smoulders. His control starts to slip as the aftershocks quiver through her thighs and Rey opens her eyes, stares into his exaltation as she shakes. Rey says his name, a plea and a command, and he comes, head tipping back, muscles under her straining all at once, body arching, his mouth rounding in rapture as his hips slam into hers hard enough to hurt.  Kylo’s climax is a tidal wave of euphoric, riotous pleasure that bowls her over and sweeps her away with him. He empties into her as she flutters and pulses around him, gasping, and then the tension drains away to be replaced by a deep, warm, profound satisfaction.

Once Rey gathers her wits, she raises her hips and eases his softening cock out of her. He sprawls, boneless beneath her and she lowers herself on shaking arms, lying flush against him. They lay together, fingers knitting over his chest, taking long meditative breaths as the connection stabilizes, dims from incandescent desperation to a soft glow. The fingers of his other hand card, slow and soft, through her hair where it sticks to the back of her sweat-soaked neck. She angles her face up to his, tugs herself higher to press a lazy kiss onto his mouth. This is new, this quiet comfortable meeting of lips.  There’s still so much to explore, to find, but this is a pleasure all it’s own.

Kylo’s chest rises and falls as he chuckles. She’s never heard him laugh like that before, and it makes her heart leap. He twists and they twine their legs together as she rests her head against his chest, runs a hand along his arm.

He gives her room a drowsy glance as she nestles closer, curling around him as she tugs a blanket up her shoulder.  “This place really is a mess.”

“I like it.  It’s my mess.  My space, my things, my mess.”  She kisses the muscle beneath her cheek. He draws circles and spirals over her back with light touches. After a few moments of silence, Rey huffs a resigned sigh.  “You’ll have to go back to your room soon.  I’m surprised Poe hasn’t already burst in here looking for you.”

Kylo snorts at that, rolls over to face her so that she rests on his arm before he pulls her in for another languorous, kiss.  He’s tender now, the happiest she’s seen him, warm and fucked out. She adores this Kylo, with his swollen lips and mussed hair, the way his fingertips trail over her breasts, her side, her ass. “Can’t I stay here?” he murmurs against her cheek, holding her to him and burrowing his face into her hair.

She smiles into his neck, kisses his pulse. Not tonight. What happened to being good?

He moves to look at her, face full of feigned offense. “Are you saying that wasn’t good? I’m hurt, Rey.” She chuckles again and his pleasure at the that hums through her as he sits, pulling her up into another flurry of kisses.

They squeeze into the ‘fresher together and Kylo spends each second under the water cataloguing the things he wants to do to her the next time they’re in a shower together. She’s more than agreeable, eager to spend more time alone with him, delighted at the ideas he shows her. She scrubs his back, his chest, and then smacks his hands away when he tries to spend three minutes soaping only her breasts.  When they’re rinsed and clean, she grabs her one towel and dries herself with quick efficiency.

She moves to sit on the edge of her desk once she’s dressed and fiddles with his shirt as he dries himself with the damp towel. Watching him lean over to dry his hair is entertainment fit for gods. His muscles work as he scrubs and ruffles, shifting beneath the skin of his back, his arms. When he’s satisfied, he flips his head back so his hair frames his face like a mane. She makes sure he notes her appreciation, sending her gratitude for the show through their connection as she bites her lip.  He glances over to her, smiles, and winks . She throws the shirt at him and it hits his smug face.

He dresses after he’s dry and she stands from her perch, walks into his open arms. I wish you could stay.

He kisses the top of her ear and her heart flips. I know.

She toys with his damp hair, runs her fingers up and down the ridge of his skull. Master Skywalker must be mistaken. How could anything this good be bad? Kylo holds her, one hand at the flat of her back as  the other tilts her chin up. Rey opens beneath him and his adoration, his devotion, his desire, cascades through the kiss. There is power in this, different from the Light or the Dark, and it feels right.

They fall back into their connection and the stars ignite overhead, singing and blazing bright. She holds his heart in her hands, broken and bleeding and far too small but pumping hard, beating for her. He’s not good, will never be good, but he’ll try for her , and she’ll keep him safe, protect him. She’s not alone.  He’s not afraid.  It’s enough.  It’s everything.

When she opens her eyes, he’s looking down at her with a tenderness that she doesn’t recognize. He looks younger, softer. She doesn’t know what to say, so she stays quiet, kisses him again, quick and closed lipped, and moves to open the door.

They walk back to in silence, fingertips just brushing again. When they reach the door to his room, she glances up and down the hall before bouncing up on the balls of her feet to kiss him one last time. He runs his thumb across her jaw, along the line of her lower lip, and sighs.

“I’ll see you in a few hours for breakfast.  Be nice to Poe and Finn, please.”

“I’ll try.”

He slips through the door, quick and quiet, trying not to rouse his new roommates. He fails. Rey can hear Poe’s voice rise in inquiry, but can’t make out Kylo’s grumbled response.  She smiles and heads back to her quarters.