His hands find the fastenings of her uniform jacket. They don’t tear. They hesitate, his knuckles brushing the flat plane of her stomach through the fabric—a question.
Elara watches his face. The lamplight cuts the hard angle of his jaw, shadows the scar through his eyebrow. His ice-blue eyes are fixed on his own trembling fingers.
She covers his hands with hers. Guides his thumb to the first clasp. The metal gives with a soft click.
A sound escapes him. Low. Broken. Like a fortress gate swinging open on rusted hinges.
She works the next clasp with him, then the next, her movements deliberate where his fumble. The heavy fabric parts, revealing the thin gray undershirt beneath, the rapid rise and fall of her ribs. Cool air touches her skin, raising goosebumps. His breath hitches.
“Elara.”
It’s not her rank. It’s a confession.
He pushes the jacket from her shoulders. It falls to the floor with a weighty thud. His palms come to rest on her waist, over the undershirt. He just holds her there, his forehead dipping until it presses against hers. His eyes are closed. His breathing is ragged, unregulated—a system failure.
She sees it then. The hunger in him isn’t just for her body. It’s for the permission to be undone. To let someone else hold the pieces.
Her own hands come up, fingers sliding into the close-cropped black hair at the nape of his neck. She doesn’t pull. She anchors.
“Cassian.”
His name, in her low voice, is the final release. A shudder runs through him, a full-body tremor he doesn’t try to hide. His arms wrap around her, crushing her against the broad wall of his chest. He buries his face in the junction of her neck and shoulder, his lips moving against her skin, not kissing, not speaking—just breathing her in.
He is holding on like a man drowning. And she is the only solid thing in the room.
Elara turns her head, just enough. Her lips find the skin beneath his—the taut cord of his neck, the frantic pulse hammering there. She doesn't kiss. She presses. A slow, deliberate pressure against the proof of his unraveling.
His arms tighten, a reflexive clench that steals her breath. A ragged groan vibrates against her mouth, swallowed by her own skin.
“Don’t stop,” he rasps, the words muffled in the hollow of her shoulder. His voice is stripped, raw. A plea, not an order.
She does it again. Her mouth opens slightly. The taste of him floods her senses—salt, cedar, the sharp tang of desperate control finally shed. Her tongue traces the path of his artery.
Cassian’s knees buckle. Not a collapse, but a shuddering descent. He sinks, his grip sliding from around her ribs to her hips, holding on as he goes down until he’s kneeling on the cool floor. His forehead presses against her stomach, over the thin gray fabric of her undershirt. His shoulders heave.
Elara looks down. Her hands cradle his head, fingers threaded through the coarse black hair. The lamplight catches the pale scar through his eyebrow, the hard line of his jaw gone slack. The most feared alpha in the sector is on his knees, broken open at her feet.
His hands slide up her back, under the hem of her shirt. His palms are scorching against her skin. They splay across her spine, pulling her closer, as if he could fuse them together.
“I have nothing left,” he whispers into her stomach. The confession is so quiet she feels it more than hears it. “No protocol. No command. Just this.”
She bends. Her lips find his temple. “Just this is enough.”
He tilts his head back, his ice-blue eyes searching her face. The hunger is still there, but it’s quiet now. Acknowledged. His hands slide around to her front, fingers hooking into the waistband of her trousers. He doesn’t push. He waits, his gaze holding hers, asking a second, more terrifying permission.
Elara nods.
The fastenings give way under his steady hands. The fabric pools at her ankles. The cool air touches her thighs, her stomach, and she stands before him in nothing but her undershirt. His breath hitches. He doesn’t look away. He looks, and in his looking, she is not assessed. She is witnessed.