Lena wakes in the dark, disoriented. The bunk is empty beside her, but the air is thick with his presence—sweat, steel, and the faint ozone of his skin. She turns her head on the pillow and finds him exactly where he was, leaning against the far wall. His eyes are open, fixed on her in the gloom.
The distance between them is a live wire. It hums with the memory of his teeth in her shoulder, the raw slide of him inside her, the way her legs locked around his waist. She stares back. He hasn’t slept. He hasn’t moved. The black uniform jacket is gone, his white undershirt a stark slash in the shadows.
Her body is a map of soreness. A deep ache between her thighs. The bite on her shoulder pulses with a low, persistent heat. She shifts under the thin blanket, and the fabric rasps against her bare skin. She’s still naked.
“You’re awake.” His voice is a gravel scrape in the quiet. Not a question.
She doesn’t answer. Her throat is dry. She watches the steady rise and fall of his chest, the way his arms stay crossed, muscles defined even in repose. His vigil is a claim. More intimate than the mark. More absolute than any lock on a door.
“How long?” Her own voice is sleep-rough, unfamiliar.
“Long enough.”
He pushes off the wall. Two strides bring him to the foot of the bunk. He doesn’t touch her. He just looks. His ice-blue eyes travel from her tangled dark hair, over the blanket draped across her hips, to the bare curve of her shoulder where his teeth broke the skin. The scar above his eyebrow is a pale seam in the low light.
Lena doesn’t pull the blanket higher. She lets him look. A flush spreads up her chest, warm and involuntary. Her nipples tighten under his gaze. She feels the dampness between her legs again, a fresh slickness that has nothing to do with the past and everything to do with this silent, watchful now.
His jaw clenches. A faint tick in the muscle. He sees it. He always sees it.
“Your readings have stabilized.” He says it like a report. Like it costs him something. “The bond is holding.”
She breathes in. The air is saturated with him. With them. “Is that why you’re standing there?”
“No.”
He reaches out then. Not for her. His hand closes around the footboard of the bunk, his knuckles white. He leans forward, bridging the space without crossing it. The heat of him radiates across her shins. “I’m standing here because if I get in that bunk, I won’t let you sleep. And you need to sleep.”
The confession lands between them, stark and simple. Her breath catches. Not in her throat—her whole chest tightens. The ache deepens, a hollow pull low in her belly.
Lena reaches out. Her hand crosses the space between them, fingers brushing the white cotton stretched taut over his forearm. The muscle beneath jumps. His knuckles go whiter on the footboard.
She doesn’t pull. She just rests her palm there, her skin pale against his olive tone, her touch a question. The heat of him sears her. Her own pulse hammers in her wrist.
Riven’s ice-blue eyes drop to her hand. He doesn’t move. The silence stretches, thick with the scent of her arousal and his restraint. The low light catches the scar above his eyebrow, a stark line of past violence.
“You said you wouldn’t let me sleep.” Her voice is quiet, stripped of defiance. It’s just truth now.
“I won’t.”
“I don’t care.”
His control fractures. It’s not a shatter—it’s a deliberate, silent release. He lets go of the footboard. His other hand comes up, covers hers where it rests on his arm. His fingers are rough, callused. They close over hers, not to remove her, but to hold her there.
He moves then. Not around the bunk, but over it. One knee sinks into the mattress beside her hip, his weight dipping the frame. The other follows. He’s above her, blocking the low light, his shadow swallowing her whole. The blanket is trapped between them. He doesn’t remove it. He braces himself on his forearms, caging her in, his face inches from hers.
His breath is warm. It smells of coffee and something darker, purely him. She can feel the hard line of his erection through his trousers, pressing against her thigh. A fresh wave of slick heat answers it, soaking the sheet beneath her.
“Tell me you’re sure.” The command is a rasp, stripped of its usual authority. It’s just need.
She lifts her chin. The bite on her shoulder throbs in time with her heartbeat. “I’m sure.”
He kisses her. It’s not like before—not claiming, not punishing. It’s slow. Devastating. His mouth opens over hers, and she tastes him, deep and familiar now. Her hands come up, tangling in the short, coarse hair at the nape of his neck. He groans into her mouth, the sound vibrating through her teeth.
He breaks the kiss to trail his lips down her throat, over the mark he left there. His tongue traces the raised edges of the bite. She arches off the mattress, a gasp tearing from her. His hand slides under the blanket, finding the damp heat between her legs. He doesn’t push inside. He presses the heel of his palm against her, a firm, steady pressure that makes her hips jerk.
“Riven.”
“I know.” He says it against her skin. His fingers slide through her slickness, circling, learning the shape of her need all over again. “I feel it.”
He pushes two fingers inside her.
The stretch is immediate, a blunt, perfect fullness that makes her back arch off the mattress. A choked sound escapes her—not a word, just air and need. Her inner muscles clench around him, slick and hot, pulling him deeper.
Riven’s breath hitches against her throat. His fingers curl, finding a rhythm that’s slow, deliberate, devastating. Each stroke drags against that sensitive, swollen place inside her. Her hips rise to meet him, a helpless, seeking motion. The blanket is a maddening barrier, trapping the heat, the scent of her arousal soaking into the fabric between them.
“Look at me.” His command is rough, frayed at the edges.
Her storm-grey eyes, glazed with pleasure, find his ice-blue ones. He’s watching her face, studying every flinch, every gasp. His own features are stark with concentration, the scar above his eyebrow a pale line in the dim light. The hard ridge of his erection presses insistently against her thigh through his trousers.
He adds a third finger.
Lena cries out, her nails digging into the bunched muscle of his shoulders. The stretch borders on pain, then melts into a deeper, aching pleasure. He works her open, his thumb finding her clit again, circling in time with the deep, measured thrust of his fingers. The dual sensation unravels her. Pleasure coils tight and low in her belly, a spring wound past bearing.
“You take it so well,” he murmurs, his lips against the shell of her ear. His voice is pure gravel. “Your body knows what it needs. Knows who it belongs to.”
She can’t answer. Her world has narrowed to the push and pull inside her, to the callused pad of his thumb, to the heat of his body caging hers. The bite on her shoulder throbs in time with her racing heart, a primal echo of the claim he’s reinforcing with every stroke.
He shifts his weight, his free hand coming up to frame her face. His thumb brushes her lower lip, and she turns her head, catching it between her teeth. Not hard. A promise. His eyes darken.
The rhythm of his fingers changes, becomes deeper, more focused. He’s searching for something, and when he finds it, her entire body seizes. A sharp, bright shock of pleasure arcs through her, stealing her breath. She sees stars behind her eyelids.
“There,” he breathes, a note of savage satisfaction in his voice. He presses relentlessly against that spot, his thumb a steady, maddening circle. “Come for me, Lena. Let me feel it.”
The command is the final thread snapping. The coil in her belly releases in a rushing, tidal wave. Her orgasm crashes over her, silent at first—a breathtaking suspension—then a broken sob tears from her throat as she shakes apart beneath him. Her inner muscles flutter and grip his fingers, milking them through the pulses of raw sensation.
He doesn’t stop. He gentles the motion but doesn’t withdraw, letting her ride the aftershocks until she’s boneless and gasping, sensitive to the point of overspill. Only then does he slowly slide his fingers free.
He brings his wet fingers to his mouth, his ice-blue eyes holding hers. He licks them clean, his tongue sweeping over his knuckles. The act is obscene. Primal. A claiming as potent as the bite. A fresh, dizzying rush of heat floods her spent body.