Chapter Text
Kylo did indeed improve upon all right.
It helped that his body was no longer a stranger to her. If she had been right off of Jakku, his attentions, far more focused and intense than the first, might have overstimulated her touch-starved skin. But after their months of close training and even closer sleeping arrangement, Rey knew him in a way that she hadn't on their first night together. He wasn't so much an invasion as a visitor. And she found her own body much more accommodating.
Of course it helped that he wasn't intent on getting a task done. He took his time with her, and, she imagined, worked from stored away knowledge of her, too. His scrutinising attention on her in the irontree wood must have brought him a better understanding of the working of a woman's body. He was much more deft at piloting her hips, and though his hands were large, almost to the point of caricature, his nails were short and his fingertips warm and tapered. He ran the backs of his fingers along her and felt for the answering reaction on her skin.
She didn't have to use many words. Either Kylo was adept at measuring her nonverbal cues, or he peeked into her mind while it was otherwise distracted, because he caught on to what worked and what didn't and soon had her vocalising his success.
It was too much. If it hadn't already been darker than pitch, Rey would have wanted to crawl into the nearest hole to hide. If he said something now, if he made one wrong choice of words or indicated his derision for her, she would never let him touch her again.
But he didn't laugh at her. He stroked her flank, with that muted pride she was accustomed to from him when she could recite back a lesson, asked something insightful, or out-manoeuvred him in their sparring.
And sex at its essence was a kind of spar. It had an underlying aggression, of two opposite but complementary forms colliding. She felt a confused and confusing mix of resentment and satisfaction: of being subdued somehow but of not altogether disliking it. It didn't help that he was averse to her touching him with the same freedom that he did her. The many silvered scars she saw on him when he went bare in the woods were available now for close, sensory examination. But Kylo kept taking her hands away from him and planting them on the bed along her sides.
Balance was soon restored, however. This time, when Kylo breached her, she reached for him, let the tendrils of her awareness tangle in his own, the way her fingers combed hesitantly into the softness of his hair. He was too far gone to shoo her away; open, more open than he had ever been to her, and she wondered, half excitement and half fear, if he'd been able to read her as easily. At his moment of brutal vulnerability, exposed and trembling, she saw things -- or rather, knew them. Images intangible and yet real: a woman with braids and a broad smile; dappled sunlight on the treetops as the shadow of a ship flashed beneath; the click of two golden dice and the smooth-and-weighted feel of them rolling between the fingers. And a word. No, a name. Airy but clear. Ben.
His mouth found its way to hers and kissed her, ragged and sloppy, even as he held back the sounds of his submission. They shook through her body, and she knew, no matter what came to pass, she would remember them all her life.
And she didn't even bite him.
***
Kylo shouldn't indulge his base desires. He shouldn't allow himself to become yet more vulnerable and attached. He shouldn't care, with a spreading warmth blanketing his thighs, that she wanted him back. Well, perhaps not him, but something he could give her. He shouldn't want to give her that. But he did. He did want.
He remembered watching her fly from his knights. He remembered the mixture of fear and determination that wafted off of her, strapped to the interrogation table with no possible way of escape, headier than drink. He'd wanted her then, too. Perhaps even this way. Something in him recognised her. Even before he realised she'd been with him in the Force all along, quiet but essential in the background of its architecture.
She wanted to be wanted. He could taste it over the Force, a faint bitter flavor that characterised everything she did, everything she thought, everything she was. And why shouldn't she be wanted? It wasn't just that she was magnificent and powerful and completely new. Those things were incidental. They couldn't have been without the lowest common denominator, the foundation of her, unburnished and unyielding. Indestructible but so precious, so worthy of protecting.
Rey was pliable and cooperative and curious. When she tried to touch him back, it was too much. He needed to grasp the last shreds of his control. But even though he took her hands away from him, they drifted back, like butterflies drawn to flowers.
And in the end, the only thing left … was her. She could have done anything to him in that moment, could have plunged a lightsaber through him and he would have submitted himself to her execution. She was good, good, so good. His good, brave, strong, soft scavenger. His own wife. His.
Please don't destroy me.
At last, he covered her mouth with his and waited for thought and reason to return.
***
He clung to her in his sleep, his limbs folded around her as though he were a child and she were his stuffed toy, a sentinel of fancy guarding from nightmares. Rey remembered how she'd pawed her own ragged doll, pieced together from bits of fabric and thread, and couldn't resent him. Though she kicked the covers well off because he made her hot enough.
She dozed but woke to his pants of distress, the miasma of his nightmare spooling in the base of her neck. She rotated toward him in his arms and put her hand out to his cheek. Now that she faced him, his closeness was unavoidable, and she shivered. She could almost picture the map of his face as she felt it, stroking and coaxing the distress from his clenched jaw.
The nightmare dissipated beneath her studied touch, and she felt, with alternate senses, the way he gradually left sleep and rose to the surface of consciousness. His voice, syncopated and unpolished, was near enough to raise the tiny hairs where his breath traced her cheek.
"What are you doing?"
It was not an accusation. It sounded plaintive and confused, and Rey drew her hand away slowly.
"Who is that man?" She hadn't known it was what would come out before she said it. "Who stands over you in the dark, with the lightsaber and the wild eyes?"
Kylo was silent for a long time, while Rey hung in the balance, fearful of where her direct and prying question might push him.
Relief spread in her like the warming sun when he said, "My uncle. He tried to kill me. In my sleep."
Her relief shattered. "Y-your uncle? Why would he--?"
"He looked into my mind and was afraid of what he found there." Kylo's voice, usually steady, sounded brittle. "But, it wasn't just that one moment. It was a buildup, over time, of his doubts and fears for me. Looking into mind, submerged into the darkness there -- it was only the final step of a long and inevitable road for us."
This was not -- no, this was not the Kylo Ren who commanded with confidence and authority, who took her sass and served it back to her with a large portion of I-told-you-so. Not the one who'd drawn pleasure out of her like a charmer draws a coiled snake. This was the defeated man she'd glimpsed before, in brief flashes -- such as when he spoke of Snoke's occupation of his mind as a conqueror.
His arm rested loosely on her hip, and the other curled beneath her, cradling. Why, in all the millions of planets and crowding stars, had all the galaxy conspired to trample this one man? It was no wonder he wore a mask. Who could blame him for hiding?
Rey fingered the smooth band around her neck. She made her voice steady, pronounced every word with the finality of a closing door, when she said, "He should not have done that to you."
The answering dissonance of emotions from him worried her. But his rising storm sank, as quickly as it had risen, and he answered quietly, with a note of wonder, both alien and inviting: "Thank you."
Then Kylo fell on her, mouth crashing against mouth, and devoured her.