“And us?”
She shifts. Moves so she’s looking down at me, her body stretched alongside mine in the grass. This close, I can see the tracks her tears left through the ash on her face. Can see the exhaustion she’s been hiding, the fear she’s been controlling, the relief that hasn’t quite finished settling in.
“Us.” She tests the word like it’s something fragile. Something that might break if handled wrong. “I meant what I said. Partnership. Hunt down everyone responsible. Make sure this never happens again.”
“Sounds like a lot of killing.”
“Is that a problem?”
I should give her a serious answer. Should discuss logistics, strategy, the thousand practical considerations that will determine whether our mission succeeds or fails.
Instead, I reach up. Thread my fingers through her hair. Pull her down until her lips are close enough to feel my breath.
“Not for me.”
She kisses me.
Not gentle. Not questioning. Fierce—desperate—alive in a way that makes my recently-stopped heart hammer against my ribs. Her mouth claims mine with hunger that the Bloom amplifies into something consuming, and I respond in kind.
This isn’t the storage chamber. That was careful. Exploratory. Two survivors learning to trust each other with their bodies.
This is something else entirely.
This is survivors celebrating survival. Damaged people affirming that damage doesn’t mean destroyed. Two humanswho nearly lost each other deciding that nearness isn’t enough—that they need to be closer, need to feel more, need to confirm with touch what words can’t adequately express.
She takes what she wants.
Her hands find the gaps in my ruined armor, strip away the leather that’s hanging in scraps. Her mouth traces paths down my throat, across my chest, over wounds that should hurt but don’t because the Bloom is still magnifying every sensation into something beyond pain or pleasure.
I let her take. Let her have whatever she needs. My body is hers—has been hers since the moment she looked at me like I was worth saving. If she wants to use it to convince herself I’m still alive, I’ll give her that.
But I’m not passive.
My hands find her waist. Pull her onto me, so she’s straddling my hips, so her body presses against mine in ways that make thinking difficult. She gasps—a small sound, surprised—and I use the moment to flip our positions.
Now I’m above her. Looking down at the woman who pulled me back from death. The woman who cried over my still body. The woman who I love with an intensity that the Bloom didn’t create, only revealed.
“My turn.” The words scrape past gritted teeth. Hungry.
She smiles. “Then take it.”
FIFTY-SIX
ZRYNOK
Itake.
Her clothes come off in pieces—torn fabric that neither of us cares about, barriers removed with the same efficiency I’d apply to an enemy. Her skin beneath is pale, scarred, beautiful in the firelight. I trace every mark with my fingers, my lips, my tongue—learning her body the way I learned combat, with thorough dedication to mastery.
She arches beneath me. Makes sounds that the Bloom amplifies until they’re almost overwhelming. Her hands grip my shoulders—my wounded shoulders, but the pain is distant, irrelevant—and her nails leave marks that will scar.
I want them to scar. Want to carry evidence of this moment on my body for the rest of my life.
When I finally join with her, it’s like the last piece of something clicking into place. Not completion—neither of us is complete, and we never will be. But rightness. The sense that this is where I’m supposed to be. Where I’ve been trying to get for a lifetime of violence and isolation.
She moves beneath me, with me, her rhythm matching mine with instinctive precision. The Bloom magnifies every sensation—her heat, her tightness, the small sounds she makes when I hitthe right angle—but we don’t let it control us. We ride the waves of want and choose where they crash.
This is what desire feels like when it’s freely given. When both people want the same thing. When surrender isn’t surrender at all, but choice.
