Page 110 of Pocket Wife

“Yes.” The word comes raw and immediate. “Yes.”

She pulls me onto the cot, her body warm and welcoming beneath mine. I position myself between her thighs, and she spreads for me, her legs falling open in invitation. I can see the wetness between her legs, the evidence of her wanting, and the sight of it nearly undoes me.

“Look at me,” she says.

I do.

“You belong to yourself,” she says. “But if you choose me, choose me fully. Not the Authority. Not fear. Me.”

“I choose you,” I say. “Fully. Only you.”

She pulls me closer, arching her hips, her slick heat pressing against the tip of my length. I push inside her slowly, feeling her body welcome me, the tight, wet heat of her gripping me as I sink deeper. She gasps, her nails scoring my shoulders.

“Don’t stop,” she says. “Rethan, don’t stop.”

I move, and the rhythm is urgent but not careless. I watch her face, learning the flicker of pleasure and the small sounds she makes. The bond echoes every sensation back to me, doubling the heat until I can barely think. Her tightness surrounds me, squeezing with each thrust, and I feel her clit brush against my skin as I move.

“Harder,” she says against my mouth. “Rethan, harder.”

I give her what she asks for, my control slipping, the careful restraint of two centuries unraveling in the heat of her. The cot creaks beneath us. The chalk wall of names is somewhere beyond this room. The hearing waits. The cylinder waits. But here, there is only Lucy.

She kisses me, and I move deeper, and the bond blazes between us. Her pleasure becomes mine. My need becomes hers. I can feel her building, feel the tension coiling in her body, feel her inner walls beginning to flutter around my cock.

“Now,” she gasps. “Rethan, now⁠—”

She shatters beneath me, her body clenching around my length, milking me as waves of pleasure tear through her. Her release pulls me with her, my own climax breaking like a wave against stone. I spill inside her, my seed flooding her heat as I groan against her throat, the bond blazing so bright that I can see it through my closed eyelids.

For a long moment, neither of us moves.

The storage room holds us in fragile quiet. Water drips somewhere. The soft gray of night presses against the small window. Lucy’s breathing is ragged against my chest, her body still trembling with aftershocks.

Lucy drops her head against my chest and begins to laugh.

It is not a happy laugh. It is the sound of a person worn down by too much weight, finally setting it aside.

“Rethan.”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to open that cylinder.”

“Yes.”

“And then we make Helix answer for every lie.”

I kiss her forehead. “Yes.”

She lifts her face. The fear is still there. So is the exhaustion. But something in her has steadied.

“If we win,” she says, “come home with me after.”

Home.

The word enters me deeper than the bond.

“And if we lose?” I ask.

“Come anyway.”