He curls his fingers inside her again, finds that rough spot, and her whole body jerks. "Jareth—" His name tears out of her, raw and broken, and she's never sounded like that, not once, not in any of her careful games.
Her hips grind against his palm, chasing the pressure, chasing the edge, and he feels her start to flutter around his fingers, that first tremor that means she's close. He pulls back just enough to keep her on the lip of it, not letting her fall, and her nails dig into his back hard enough to leave marks.
"Look at me," he says.
She does. Her mismatched eyes are wild and wet, the blue and green both drowning, and he holds her gaze while his fingers stay still inside her, not moving, not giving her anything.
"You don't get to come until I say."
A sound catches in her throat—half sob, half whimper—but she doesn't look away. He presses his palm against her clit, just pressure, no movement, and watches her jaw go tight.
"Why did you want me?" he asks.
Her lips part. Nothing comes out.
He curls his fingers again, slow, deliberate, finding that rough spot inside her and pressing until her breath stutters. Her head falls back, dark hair brushing the bar's sticky wood, and he watches the column of her throat work as she swallows.
"Answer me," he says, his thumb finding her clit and circling once, light, teasing. Her hips jerk, chasing the pressure, and he pulls back just enough to keep her hovering. "Why me? There are a thousand Jedi in the galaxy. You could have picked any of them."
Her laugh comes out broken, half a sob. "You think I didn't try?" Her voice scrapes raw. "Three years. Three years of hunting, of finding the ones who might—who had the darkness in them, the hunger. And every single one turned me away. Cited the Code. Called me a temptation they wouldn't touch."
He stills his hand. The absence of motion is worse than withdrawal. She whimpers, a sound she'd kill him for hearing if she had any pride left.
"But you," she breathes, her mismatched eyes finding his in the dim light, one blue, one green, both desperate. "You hunted me for five days. You didn't report me. You didn't call for backup. You followed me from system to system, and every time you got close, you pulled back. Like you were savoring it."
He presses into her again, three fingers, and her back arches off the bar. "Keep going."
"You wanted me," she gasps. "I felt it. In every dream I planted, every thought I seeded—you didn't fight them. You let them grow. You wanted to fall."
His jaw tightens. She's not wrong, and they both know it.
"Where are you from?" he asks, pulling his fingers almost all the way out, just the tips inside her, barely there. She bucks against him, trying to take them deeper, and he holds position, unmoving. "Answer."
"Zardossa Stix," she says, the name falling from her lips like a curse. "The moon. The pleasure markets."
His eyes narrow. He knows the name. Everyone knows the name. A place where flesh is currency and will is a commodity.
"I was born there," she continues, her voice flattening, the velvet stripped away to something hollow. "Raised in a training house for courtesans. They break you early. Teach you that your body is a tool and your mind is a weapon and the only way out is to make someone want you enough to take you with them."
He pushes deeper, finds that rough spot again, and her words dissolve into a moan. "And did someone take you?"
"No." The word is sharp, bitter. "I escaped. Killed my handler. Stole a ship. Spent four years running before I figured out I couldn't outrun the market. They have bounty hunters. They have trackers. The only way to stay free was to find someone powerful enough to protect me."
Her hips grind against his palm, desperate, and he lets her chase the friction for a moment before pulling back again. She cries out, frustration and need tangling in the sound.
"What's your ultimate goal?" he asks, his thumb pressing her clit in slow, maddening circles. "And think carefully before you answer. Because if you lie, I'll know."
Her chest heaves. Sweat glistens on her throat, on the pale skin above her robes. "Freedom," she whispers. "I want to be free. Not hiding. Not running. Not owned by anyone."
"Then why sex?" He curls his fingers, and her breath catches. "Why not ask me for protection outright? Why the chase, the dreams, the cantina?"
She meets his eyes, and for a moment the desperation clears, replaced by something sharper. "Because Jedi don't grant protection to strangers. They take on causes. They rescue damsels. But they don't keep them." A pause. "They keep what they want."
His hand stills again. The air between them goes cold.
"You wanted me to want you," he says slowly. "So I'd keep you."
"Yes."
The word hangs between them, naked and raw. He looks at her—bent over the bar, robes pushed up, wet and open and trembling on the edge of release—and sees the calculation beneath the desperation. The strategy beneath the surrender.
She's still playing him.
And he's still letting her.
He straightens, his fingers still buried inside her, and lets the silence stretch. The cantina noise washes around them—a glass shattering somewhere, a burst of laughter, the whine of a bad speaker—but here at the bar, the only sound is her breathing.
"What happens to you," he says, his voice low and even, "if I refuse to keep you?"
Her mismatched eyes flicker. For a heartbeat, the calculation is gone—replaced by something raw and unguarded that he almost doesn't recognize. Then it vanishes, locked down behind the velvet, and she's the woman who hunted him for five days again.
But he saw it.
"You know the answer," she says.
"I want you to say it." He doesn't move his hand. The stillness is deliberate, a weight she can't escape. "Out loud. Every detail."
Her jaw tightens. The muscle at the corner of her mouth jumps, and for a moment he thinks she won't answer—that the pride she's clinging to will win over the need clawing through her body. Then she exhales, a shuddering breath that fogs the bar's dark wood.
"They'll take me back." Her voice is flat now, stripped to the bone. "My former master—the one I killed my handler to escape—he'll reclaim ownership. The market remembers its merchandise." She swallows. "There's a brand. Not on my skin—they're too clever for something so obvious. It's in the registry. Genetic. Transmissible. Every bounty hunter in the Outer Rim has access to it."
He curls his fingers. Slow. Watching her face. Her lips part and her eyes lose focus for a second, and he feels the flutter around his knuckles before he stills again.
"And then?"
"Then I go to the harem." The word comes out like glass. "Not as a courtesan. Not as the trained asset I was supposed to be. As an example. They'll make me available to anyone—any species, any number, any act—and they'll make sure everyone knows what happens to girls who run." Her chest rises and falls in quick, shallow jerks. "The harem isn't a brothel. It's a spectacle. They sell tickets."
His thumb finds her clit—not circling, not pressing, just resting there, a promise he's not sure he'll keep. She makes a sound that's halfway to a curse.
"How long would you last?"
"Months." She meets his eyes. The blue and green are burning. "They're professionals. They know how to keep a body alive through things that should kill it. That's the point. I'd wish for death long before they let me have it."
He withdraws his fingers. Not fast—slow enough that she feels every inch, every knuckle, the obscene wet sound of his hand leaving her. She slumps against the bar, her forehead pressed to the sticky wood, and he hears the sob she's been swallowing for the past ten minutes finally crack loose.
He looks at his hand. Wet to the wrist. Her slick catching the cantina's dim light. He should wipe it on his robes. He doesn't.
"Look at me."
She lifts her head. Her face is a wreck—tears cutting tracks through the sweat, her mismatched eyes red-rimmed and wild—and somehow she's still the most dangerous thing he's ever seen.
"You're still playing me," he says.
"I'm always playing you." Her voice breaks on the last word. "That doesn't mean I'm lying."
He knows. That's the worst part. He can feel the truth pressing against his mind, her shields down far enough for him to taste the terror beneath the strategy. She's been running for four years. She's killed for her freedom. She's spread her legs and opened her thoughts and let him finger her in a public cantina, all because she calculated that his desire was the only thing standing between her and a fate that would make death look like mercy.
And what does that say about him? That he's still hard. That her calculation arouses him more than her desperation. That the thought of her belonging to anyone else—of some faceless buyer putting his hands on her—makes something dark and possessive uncoil in his chest.
"You want me to keep you," he says. Not a question.
"Yes."
"Then beg."
Her expression shifts. The predator surfaces through the tears, recognizing a demand that's also a test. She pushes herself upright, her robes still rucked around her hips, her bare thighs slick where she's been dripping on herself, and she doesn't bother to cover up.
"Please," she says. Soft. Deliberate. Every syllable a weapon. "Keep me. Protect me. I'll give you anything—my body, my mind, my obedience. I'll warm your bed and fight your enemies and never ask for anything you don't want to give. Just don't send me back." Her voice drops to a whisper. "Please, Master Kael. Don't let them chain me again."