His fingers were still inside me, and the world hadn't stopped spinning.
I was gasping, trembling, every nerve ending screaming with aftershocks that wouldn't cease.
My back was still arched off the mat, my legs still locked around his waist, and Malik was watching me with an expression so raw, so completely unguarded, that it made my chest ache.
"God, you're perfect," he murmured against my ear, and I felt him harden again against my stomach—
You drive me crazy, Kira. Do you know that?” He continued—the impossible evidence of his wanting, his need, the desperation he'd kept locked down for so long finally breaking free.
I wrapped my fingers around him, and the sound he made—guttural, wrecked, his hips jerking into my grip—was the most powerful thing I'd ever heard.
“Show me,” I whimpered as I gazed into his eyes. “Show me how much I drive you crazy.”
And he did.
He pulsed and throbbed against my palm, the dampness at his tip telling me he was as desperate as I was, and when I guided him to my entrance and rolled my hips upward, the first brush of him against my slick folds made us both curse.
"We should stop," he breathed, his voice destroyed beyond any composure he'd ever worn. “Someone could see us. It wouldn’t be better for any of us.”
"Let them see. I don’t care. So shouldn’t you," I whispered, and locked my legs around his waist.
He sank into me in one long, devastating stroke. I cried out—couldn't help it, didn't try—because the stretch of him filling me completely, the impossible fullness.
“Ah—Malik!” I moaned, harder than I intended.
The way my body opened and clenched and molded around him like we'd been designed to fit together sent pleasure crashing through me in waves that stole thought and breath and everything that wasn't him inside me.
His jaw locked, tendons standing out in his neck, a sound tearing from his throat that was half groan and half my name.
His fingers dug into my hip hard enough to bruise as he fought for control he was already losing.
He moved, and the world ceased to exist beyond the place where our bodies joined.
Deep, rolling thrusts that hit something devastating inside me with every stroke, building a rhythm my body answered like an instinct written into my blood.
I rose to meet him, hips matching his pace, and the slick sounds of our bodies coming together filled the training hall alongside our ragged breathing and the broken sounds neither of us could contain.
“Let me show you then. Let me show you exactly what you want to see. What you want to feel.” He says.
His mouth found mine—not kissing, just breathing the same air, foreheads pressed together, eyes locked in a connection more intimate than anything our bodies were doing.
I raked my nails down his back, hard enough to draw blood, and he snarled against my lips and drove into me harder.
His hand hooked under my knee, pushing my thigh higher, changing the angle so he could thrust deeper, and the new position hit a spot inside me that made stars explode behind my eyes.
I keened—a high, desperate sound that didn't sound like me at all—and his pace turned punishing, relentless, his hips snapping against mine with a force that drove me across the mat.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice wrecked and dark and dripping with authority that had nothing to do with rank, and my eyes flew open to find his—black with desire, burning with something savage and tender at once. "I want to see you when you fall apart."
I shattered.
The orgasm ripped through me like lightning—white-hot, blinding, every muscle in my body clenching around him so violently that he choked on my name.
“Malik—“ I screamed, I think. I couldn't hear anything over the roaring in my blood and the violent pulsing of pleasure that tore through my core in wave after merciless wave.
He followed me over the edge with a roar that shook his chest, burying himself impossibly deep as his release flooded into me, his body shuddering, my name breaking apart in his mouth like something holy.
We collapsed together. Breathing wrecked. Bodies trembling. Sweat-slicked skin cooling in the torch-lit air while the aftershocks pulsed between us like a shared heartbeat.
I traced the scars on his chest while he stroked my hair with fingers that trembled. The lattice of silver lines caught the low light, and I pressed my lips to the one below his collarbone—earned during the blood trials, protecting me—and felt his arm tighten around me like letting go would kill him.
"I love you," I said, simple and true and wholly inadequate for the enormity of what I felt—but it was all I had. The most powerful weapon I owned against a world that wanted him taken from me.
His hand stilled in my hair. Then resumed, gentle as a whisper. "I love you, Kira. And I choose you—whatever happens, whatever the court demands, whatever impossible choices they force on us. I choose you. Every single time."
I pressed closer, his heartbeat steady beneath my cheek, and held those words like armor.
We would need them. The storm was gathering beyond these walls—a kingdom that wouldn't bend, a reckoning coming for everything we'd built in secret.
But not tonight. Tonight we were just two people who'd found each other against every odd, and that was enough.
It had to be.