Leo woke to grey light through the curtain and the weight of her beside him. Still naked. Still unconscious. The sheet had twisted around her hip during the night, leaving the rest of her exposed to the cool morning air—goosebumps along her ribs, her lips slightly parted, her breathing slow and deep.
He didn't move. Didn't want to. The silence in his head was still perfect, still empty, still hers.
The memory of last night sat clean in his chest. Jessica returned to her truck. Anya on the bed. The rhythm of her body as she came back to consciousness under him, the way she'd looked at him in that raw moment before she asked him to take it all away again. To make her forget. To make her nothing.
She'd meant it.
He watched her chest rise. Fall. The steady pulse in her throat. He could already feel his hunger stirring again, a low hum at the base of his skull, but he held it back. Let her wake first. Let her choose.
Her eyelids fluttered.
He waited.
She blinked, slow and drugged, her gaze finding the ceiling before it found him. Recognition surfaced. Then something softer. Relief.
"I'm still naked," she said. Her voice was rough with sleep.
"Yes."
"You didn't dress me."
"You asked me not to."
A pause. She processed that, her tongue wetting her lips. Then she smiled—a small, private thing that made his chest tighten.
"Good," she said. She stretched, her spine arching against the sheets, her breasts lifting, and she didn't cover herself. Didn't reach for a blanket. Her body was an offering, laid out for him to see.
The hum in his skull sharpened.
"Anya."
"I know." She turned her head to look at him. "I can feel you thinking about it. The hunger. The static."
"You can feel it?"
"I've been studying you for weeks, Leo. I know what that look means." She reached out, her fingers finding his chest, tracing a slow line down his sternum. "You want to take me again. While I'm awake. While I'm watching you decide."
"Yes."
"Then do it."
He caught her wrist. Not hard. Just enough to stop her hand. "You need to understand something."
"What?"
"This isn't a game. This isn't an experiment. If you stay here, if you stay naked, if you keep asking me to take you—" He stopped. Let the silence finish the sentence.
She didn't pull her wrist back. She held his gaze. "I'm not playing, Leo. I'm not investigating. I'm not collecting data." Her voice dropped. "I'm staying. Naked. Like this. Forever if you let me."
"Forever."
"I mean it." She shifted onto her side, facing him fully, the sheet falling away. Her hand found his jaw, her thumb tracing his cheekbone. "I've spent my whole life in my head. Analyzing. Calculating. Always one step removed from everyone else. And then you showed me what it feels like to be quiet. To be empty. To be nothing but a body being used." She swallowed. "I don't want to go back."
The hum in his skull was a roar now. But he didn't move. He let her speak.
"Take me," she said. "Right now. Use me. Make me limp and stupid and empty. I don't want to think. I don't want to choose. I just want to be yours."
He stared at her. The woman who'd walked into his apartment with a file folder and a theory. The woman who'd demanded
proof, who'd watched him take Isabella, who'd touched herself at his command. The woman who'd asked him to knock her unconscious and fuck her limp body.
She was still that woman. But she was also something else now. Something softer. Something that had stopped fighting.
He released her wrist. Slid his hand up her arm. Her shoulder. The curve of her neck. She shivered under his touch, her eyes going half-lidded.
"You're sure."
"Yes."
"No false memories. No sleep. You stay awake and you remember everything."
"Yes."
"And when it's over, you stay naked. You stay here. You don't put your clothes back on."
The smile that spread across her face was slow. Triumphant. "I wasn't planning to."
He kissed her then. Not the careful, measured kiss of their first meeting. Something harder. Something that tasted like hunger finally given permission. Her mouth opened under his, her hands fisting in his hair, and she moaned into his throat like she'd been starving for this.
He rolled her onto her back, his body covering hers, his weight pressing her into the mattress. She gasped at the contact—his chest against her breasts, his thigh between her legs, the thick heat of his cock already hard against her hip.
"Look at me," he said.
She did. Her eyes were dark, dilated, wrecked.
"You're mine."
"Yes."
"Say it."
"I'm yours." Her voice broke on the last word. "I've been yours since the night I walked into your apartment. I just didn't know it yet."
He kissed her again, slower this time, his tongue sliding against hers, and she softened under him like honey in heat. Her legs parted, her hips tilting up, and he felt her wetness against his thigh—slick and hot and ready.
"You're already wet."
"I've been wet since I woke up and saw you watching me."
He reached down, his fingers finding her cunt, sliding through the slick heat of her. She gasped, her back arching, her nails digging into his shoulders.
"Leo."
"What?"
"Don't be gentle."
He wasn't.
He pushed two fingers into her, hard and sudden, and she cried out, her head thrown back, her throat exposed. He watched her face as he fucked her with his fingers, the way her mouth fell open, the way her eyes lost focus, the way her hips started moving against his hand like she couldn't help herself.
"That's it," he said. "Let go. Don't think. Just feel."
She was close already. He could feel it in the way her cunt clenched around his fingers, in the desperate little sounds she was making, in the way her body was trembling under his.
He pulled his fingers out.
She whimpered.
"Not yet." He positioned himself at her entrance, the head of his cock pressing against her, not pushing in. Just resting there. Letting her feel the weight of what was about to happen.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were wet. "Please."
"Please what?"
"Please fuck me. Please fill me. Please—" She broke off, a sob catching in her throat. "Please make me feel something other than my own head."
He pushed in.
Slow. One inch. Two. Her body opened for him, slick and tight and perfect, and the sound she made—a low, broken moan—went straight through him. He kept pushing, sinking deeper, until he was buried inside her to the hilt.
She was panting. Her hands were fisted in the sheets. Her eyes were closed.
"Look at me."
She opened her eyes.
He started moving. Long, slow strokes that pulled almost all the way out before sliding back in. Her breath caught on every thrust. Her pupils were blown, her lips parted, and she was crying—silent tears sliding down her temples into her hair.
"You're beautiful like this," he said. "Broken open. Letting me in."
"Don't stop."
He didn't.
He fucked her slow and deep, his hips rolling against hers, his skin slapping against her thighs. She matched his rhythm, her legs wrapped around his waist, her heels digging into his lower back. She was saying something—a string of broken words, half-words, sounds that barely made sense. Please. Yes. More. Don't stop. Don't ever stop.
He reached between them, his thumb finding her clit, and she screamed.
Not a moan. A scream. Her body convulsed under him, her cunt clenching around his cock, and he watched her come undone—her eyes rolling back, her back arching, her mouth open in a silent cry.
He kept moving through it. Kept fucking her as she shuddered and shook and gasped for air.
"Leo—I can't—"
"You can. One more."
"I can't—"
He pressed harder on her clit, changed the angle of his thrusts, and she shattered again, a second orgasm tearing through her before the first had finished. Her whole body went rigid, then limp, then rigid again.
He followed her over. His hips stuttered, his cock pulsing deep inside her, and he came with a groan that was almost a growl, his forehead pressed to hers, his breath hot on her lips.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then she laughed. A soft, breathless sound. "I think you broke me."
"Good."
She laughed again, and he felt it in her chest, in the way her ribs moved against his. Her arms came up around his neck, holding him close, and she pressed her lips to his shoulder.
"I meant what I said," she murmured against his skin. "I'm not leaving. I'm not putting clothes on. I'm staying right here, naked and used, for as long as you'll have me."
He pulled back to look at her. Her face was flushed, her hair a mess, her eyes still wet. She looked wrecked. She looked happy.
"You're serious."
"I've never been more serious about anything in my life." She reached up, touched his face. "I don't want to be a person anymore, Leo. I want to be your thing. Your body. The one you carry to bed and fuck and leave limp in the sheets. I want to be the silence in your head."
Something cracked open in his chest. Something he'd been holding closed for years.
"Anya."
"Yes."
"I don't know how to have this. I've never—I've always been alone in this. The taking. The hunger. I've never had someone who wanted to stay."
"I'm staying." She pulled his head down, kissed him softly. "I'm not going anywhere."
He held her for a long time. His face buried in her hair. Her heartbeat slowing against his chest. The silence in his head was no longer empty—it was full of her.
When he finally moved, it was to slide out of her, to settle beside her, to pull the sheet over them both. She curled into him, her head on his chest, her hand splayed over his heart.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"Now we rest." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "And then I take you again."
She smiled against his skin. "Good."
The quiet settled around them like a held breath. Grey light through the curtain. The distant sound of birds. The rhythm of her breathing slowing into sleep.
Leo stared at the ceiling, one hand in her hair, and felt the hunger stir again. Patient. Waiting. Hungry for her.
She was still naked.
She was still his.