Chapter 602: Every Part Counts
Chapter 602: Every Part Counts
She sank down onto me.
Slow. So slow it felt like time itself had been told to sit in the corner and wait its turn.
Her mouth fell open. No sound came out. Just that silent gasp that happens when the body experiences something so overwhelming that the brain forgets how vocal cords work. Her fingers splayed across my chest, nails digging half-moons into muscle as gravity did the work her trembling thighs refused to rush.
Inch by inch. The heat of her swallowed me whole.
"Oh," she finally managed. Her voice cracked on that single syllable. "Oh, that’s... that’s a lot."
"Breathe."
"I am breathing."
"You’re really not."
She exhaled hard through her nose. A shaky, stuttering thing that made her stomach muscles quiver. Her crimson hair hung around her face like a curtain, the ends brushing my collarbone as she adjusted her hips and took more of me. Her inner walls clenched and relaxed in waves, her body learning the shape of mine in real time.
The Nectar hummed between us where our skin touched. Not the aggressive chemical flood I’d used on others in those early, manipulative days. The Devotion variant did something different. Something honest. It took whatever already lived inside her chest and turned the volume up until she couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there.
Reyna Cabana, the Crimson Comet, La Sirena, the girl who had never been on a date before last week, bottomed out and sat completely still.
Her thighs pressed against my hips. Her weight settled fully onto me. She bit her lower lip hard enough that the skin went white, and her emerald eyes found mine through the curtain of red hair with an expression I’d never seen on her face before.
Not the cocky arena grin. Not the La Sirena smolder she served to cameras. Not even the genuine, reckless smile from the rooftop garden.
This was vulnerability. The naked, unarmored version of a girl who’d spent her entire life being forged into a weapon and had never once been touched like she mattered beyond her Aspect ranking.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Shut up." Her voice wobbled. "Just... give me a second."
I gave her the second. Placed my hands on her hips. Not guiding, not controlling. Just resting there. Thumbs tracing slow circles against the skin below her navel where her muscles jumped at the contact.
Her whole body shivered.
Not from the Nectar. Not from any supernatural enhancement. Just from being touched with patience by someone who wasn’t in a hurry to get to the finish line.
"Nobody’s ever..." She stopped. Swallowed. "Nobody’s ever just touched me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I’m not going to break. Like I’m not a sparring dummy or a marketing asset." She rolled her hips once, experimentally, and the movement drew a groan from somewhere deep in my chest. "Like I’m just a girl."
The words landed harder than anything she’d thrown at me in the Crucible.
I sat up. The change in angle made her gasp again, and her hands shot to my shoulders for balance. My face was level with hers now. Close enough to count every faint freckle across the bridge of her nose that her professional makeup usually concealed.
I kissed her forehead.
Her eyes went wide.
"What was that?"
"A kiss."
"On my forehead."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I wanted to."
She stared at me like I’d pulled a live rabbit out of my combat suit. Like affection without an ulterior motive was a foreign language she’d heard about but never studied. Her grip on my shoulders softened from combat hold to something gentler, and the corners of her mouth twitched upward in a way she clearly couldn’t control.
I kissed her right eyelid. Then her left. The tip of her nose. The spot where her jaw met her ear, where I could feel her pulse hammering against my lips.
"What are you doing?" she whispered.
"Kissing you."
"You’re kissing me everywhere except where it counts."
"Every part of you counts."
The sound she made was small and wounded and beautiful. A noise that had probably been locked inside her ribcage since she was fifteen years old and Veronica first told her to smile for the cameras.
I kissed her collarbone. Traced my mouth along the ridge of it from shoulder to throat while my hands mapped the geography of her back. The dip of her spine. The twin dimples above her ass that I’d noticed when she walked to the center of the room but hadn’t acknowledged because I was trying to be a gentleman.
Trying being the operative word.
Reyna’s hips moved again. A small, helpless circle that ground her down against me and sent a jolt of white heat up my spine. She buried her face in my neck and made a sound that was half moan and half laugh.
"This is unfair," she mumbled against my skin. "You’re supposed to be an asshole."
"I am an asshole."
"Assholes don’t kiss foreheads."
"I contain multitudes."
She lifted her head and kissed me on the mouth. Soft. Searching. The kind of kiss that asks a question rather than makes a demand. Her hips found a rhythm that was agonizingly slow, a rolling wave that took me to the hilt and pulled back just enough to make every nerve ending scream for more.
I let my hands wander lower. Cupped the heavy swell of her ass. Squeezed, not hard, just enough to feel the muscle beneath the softness. She was an athlete in every sense of the word, her body a weapon honed through years of professional training, but right now she moved against me with the lazy grace of someone who’d decided that speed was beside the point.
"You’re gorgeous," I said.
She faltered. Actually stopped moving for a full second. "Don’t."
"Don’t what?"
"Don’t say things like that while you’re inside me. I’ll believe you."
"Good. You should." I pressed my forehead against hers. "You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some spectacular women recently."
"How romantic. Comparing me to your harem."
"You beat all of them in sheer athletic aesthetics."
"That is the worst compliment anyone has ever given me." She was smiling though. Full and real and without a single camera to perform for. "More."
"More compliments?"
"More everything."
I pulled her closer and kissed her throat. Dragged my tongue along the tendon that stood out when she tilted her head back. She tasted like salt and expensive perfume and something electric that crackled at the edge of sensation, some residual echo of her Aspect that saturated her skin even when she wasn’t actively generating lightning.
Her rhythm picked up. Not fast. Just deeper. Each downstroke a complete commitment that seated me to the root and made her breath catch in a staccato pattern I was already memorizing. My hands traveled from her ass up the curve of her waist, mapping the transition from soft to toned where her obliques created visible lines beneath caramel skin.
"Here." She took my right hand and placed it on her breast. "Touch me here."