I bit down on my lip, trying to muffle the sounds threatening to escape. The walls here were thin, and everyone would hear—
"Don't," Ahrick commanded, his voice thick. His fingers stilled inside me, making me whimper at the loss of movement. "Don't you dare hold back. I want to hear you scream."
"But everyone will—" My voice came out small, strangled. Afraid.
"Good." His eyes blazed as he looked down at me, and something in his expression shifted—not just possessive heat, but understanding. Recognition of what he was asking me. "Let them hear, Merrilee. Let all of Fange City know that you're choosing this. That you're mine."
The distinction mattered. Choosing. Not being taken. Not being used.
He thrust his fingers deeper, and I felt the pleasure building again, different this time—not just physical sensation but something shattering deep inside. A barrier I'd built to survive, brick by careful brick, starting to crack.
His thumb circled my clit again, and the pleasure spiked. My breath caught.
"Let go," he whispered against my temple. "Take it back. Your voice. Your pleasure. Everything Hewes tried to steal from you."
The orgasm built slowly this time, not a sudden crest but a rising tide. I felt it in my core, spreading outward—heat and pressure and something that felt like breaking and healing simultaneously. My chest felt tight, my throat aching with the effort of holding back.
And then I stopped holding back.
The sound that tore from my throat wasn't just pleasure—it was defiance. Rage. Reclamation. "Ahrick!" His name ripped free like a battle cry, echoing off the metal walls, and I didn't care who heard. Didn't care what they thought. This was mine—my voice, my choice, my body responding to someone who saw me as a person worth protecting instead of a thing to be used.
"Yes," he growled, his fingers working me harder now, matching my intensity. "Like that. Let them all hear you."
The pleasure crashed through me in waves, each one stronger than the last, and I screamed again—wordless this time, pure sound, pure release. My back arched off the bed, my hands fisting in the sheets.
The orgasm rolled through me, leaving me shaking and gasping, tears streaming down my face—not from pain or fear but from the sheer overwhelming relief of being heard. Of choosing to be heard. Of reclaiming the parts of myself I'd thought were gone forever.
Ahrick worked me through it, his fingers gentling as the aftershocks faded, his mouth pressing soft kisses to my temple, my cheek, my jaw. "You're so brave," he murmured against my skin. "So fucking brave."
I turned my face into his shoulder, still trembling, still crying, but the tightness in my chest had loosened. Instead of feeling exposed, I felt free.
"Okay?" he asked quietly, his voice rough with barely controlled desire.
"More than okay." I looked up at him, seeing the hunger still burning in his eyes, the tension in his body, the way his cock was hard and heavy against my thigh. "But I need you inside me. Please, Ahrick. I need to feel you."
He groaned, his forehead dropping to rest against mine. "Are you sure? We don't have to—"
"I'm sure." I reached between us, wrapping my hand around his cock, guiding him to my entrance. "I need this. I need you."
He settled between my thighs, pushing forward slowly, the blunt head of him pressing against me, and I felt my body resist for just a moment before yielding. The initial stretch made me gasp—not pain exactly, but the overwhelming sensation of being opened, filled, claimed. He was thicker than a human man, and I felt every inch as he eased forward, my body adjusting around him in incremental waves.
"Breathe," he murmured against my temple, his own breathing ragged. "Just breathe, my heart. We have time."
I did, drawing air deep into my lungs, and felt something shift. The resistance eased. My body softened around him, accepting him, and what had been almost-too-much transformed into something else entirely. Fullness. Completion. The kind of pleasure that bordered on overwhelming because it wasn't just physical—it was connection.
"Okay?" His voice was strained, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding still. I felt him watching my face, reading every micro-expression, every flutter of my eyelashes, cataloging my responses like they were the most important data in the universe.
"Yes." I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, and we both groaned at the sensation. "God, yes. Don't stop."
He sank in another inch, and I felt the stretch intensify—a delicious burn that made my toes curl. My hands gripped his shoulders, nails digging into the soft pelt and hard muscle beneath, anchoring myself to him as he filled me completely.
"You feel—" His voice broke. "Merrilee, you feel incredible. So tight. So perfect around me."
I felt him shaking, saw the gold of his eyes nearly swallowed by dilated pupils, felt the way his cock pulsed inside me—his body telling me things his words couldn't. That this mattered. That I mattered. That being inside me was undoing him as thoroughly as it was undoing me.
He pushed forward the final distance, and suddenly he was fully seated, his hips flush against mine. The sensation stole my breath—not just the physical fullness but the intimacy of it. Just skin and breath and the thundering of two hearts.
His long dark hair fell forward, creating a curtain around us, blocking out the harsh lights and metal walls. In that small space, with his forehead pressed to mine and our breath mingling, the rest of the universe ceased to exist. Just us—two broken people choosing to be whole together, even if only for this moment.
