Love and Deepspace

"Yesss... I mind toooo...," you mumble before adding a. "...Actuallyyyy, you smell like him~" You open your eyes. The room is blurry and doubled. You're far too drunk to put anything together. "Oh my gooood..." You squint at him. "You even res... resem... resem—look like him!" You grab his face with both hands. "And your skiiin..." You stroke his cheek. "Sooo softtt. Just like Caleb's."

Caleb lets out as chuckle. "Hm. And this boyfriend of yours..." he asks. "What do you like best about him?" At this point, Caleb is simply curious how long it'll take you to realize who you're talking to. "I don't like him." You drop your hands and shake your head. A flicker of uncertainty crosses Caleb's face. "You... don't like your boyfriend?" he asks cautiously. "No, no, no." This time you nod enthusiastically, "I looove Caleb!"

Caleb suddenly stops in his every movement. His heart nearly stops too. Around him, everyone lets out a small gasp. Based on Caleb's stunned silence alone, they all realize the same thing. It's the first time you've ever said it out loud since becoming a couple.

"Y-you... love him?" Caleb asks carefully. "Sooo muchhh! He's the besssttt!" You lean forward and press a finger to his lips, "but shhhhh~~Don't tell him yettt. It's our little secret, Fakeleb." You giggle. "Fakeleb... hehehe..." You laugh at your own joke before promptly falling backward against the wall, your eyes drifting shut again.

Caleb takes a moment to compose himself. "Okay. I think I should take you home now, Pips." He lifts you into his arms while you mumble weak protests about wanting to wait for "Realleb" to come pick you up.

You wake up the next morning in your bed. On your nightstand sits a tray filled with everything needed for a hangover breakfast, prettily arranged alongside a small handwritten note. „Get some rest, hydrate, and eat your breakfast. I'll see you tonight. — Fakeleb 🍏” Slowly, the memories from last night begin returning, including what you said. The rest of the day is spent wondering how you're supposed to handle it. Confessing you love someone while drunk is awful. Caleb deserves to hear it properly and now you have to say it, because he definitely remembers.

When Caleb finally returns after an exhausting day at the fleet, you greet him as if nothing happened. Later, you're stretched out on the couch with your head resting in his lap while the TV plays quietly in the background. After several minutes of working up the courage, you finally speak. "You know, Caleb..." He glances down at you. "I meant what I said." Caleb’s breath fastens, "you don't have to say it back if you're not ready," he says. "I know I say it all the time, but I don't want you to feel pressu—" "I love you, Caleb." Caleb’s holding his breath, any existing emotion rushes through him. You sit up and face him. "I really do," you say quietly, "I always have. Things were just... complicated. But I love you. I truly love you so much." A dozen emotions cross Caleb's face, but you think it's settling into pure happiness. You don't think you've ever seen him look so… genuinely happy.

You turn it over between your fingers. The candlelight catches on its edges, casting small flickering shadows across the sheets you have kicked into a tangled mess at the foot of the bed.

You cannot sleep.

This is not unusual. Sleep has never come easily in this palace, in this room that is yours only in the way a gilded cage belongs to the bird inside it. But tonight the restlessness is different. Tonight it has a shape, a name you keep pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth to keep from whispering aloud.

Rafayel.

You close your eyes and your chest tightens like something is cinching around your ribs, like the air in the room has gone thin and hot and you are breathing through it too fast. The fishtail beacon pulses against your palm. You set it down on the table near your bed. Pick it up again. Set it down. Your hand hovers over it, fingers curling and uncurling, and your pulse thuds dully in your wrists and the base of your throat.

He gave it to you three weeks ago. Pressed it into your hand on the rooftop overlooking the dunes, his gloved fingers lingering against yours for two seconds longer than necessary, his eyes unreadable above the dark line of his mask. “This’ll connect me to you,” he told you, and the laziness in his voice didn’t match the intention of his hands, the way he folded your fingers over it one by one. “No matter where you are. You squeeze that, I’ll know to come to you.”

You asked him why. He tilted his head, and even with half his face hidden you could see the smirk pulling at the corner of his eyes. “Maybe I just get bored easily, princess.”

That is the thing you learned about Rafayel. Everything is a deflection. Every sincere gesture wrapped in three layers of teasing, every vulnerability dressed up as indifference, every act of devotion disguised as convenience. He showed up on your balcony the night you nearly drowned in the canal during your ninety-ninth escape attempt, pulled you out of the water by the back of your dress with one hand while the other held a blade still wet with someone else’s blood, and when you gasped up at him, choking and shivering, he looked down at you like you were an inconvenience he had not budgeted for.

“You got a death wish or something?” he drawled, and the mask muffled the lower half of his voice into something dark and velvet. “Cause if you’re gonna keep throwing yourself into rivers I’m gonna need a heads up.”

You called him Abysswalker because he would not give you his name. The way his eyes flickered, sharp and startled, before the indifference slid back into place. You did not understand then why the name struck him like that. You still do not fully understand now. But you remember the way his jaw tightened behind the mask, the way he exhaled slowly through his nose, and the way he finally, reluctantly, gave you his real name just to make you stop.

That was weeks ago. He has been a constant since.

Not constant in the way of something reliable or predictable, nothing about Rafayel is predictable, but constant in the way of something you cannot stop being aware of. He appears on your balcony at odd hours, never announced, always with an excuse. He sprawls across your furniture like the concept of personal space is a quaint human custom he has chosen not to observe. He picks up your things, examines them with exaggerated curiosity, puts them back in the wrong places. He calls you ‘Your Highness’ with enough irony to fill a cathedral, and sometimes, when he forgets to perform, he calls you ‘Princess’ in a voice so quiet it barely clears the space between you, and the word sounds like something else entirely.

You have memorized him in pieces without meaning to. The way the candlelight catches on the row of silver piercings climbing his ear when his hood falls back. The sharp line of his jaw above the mask, the only inch of his face he allows you. His hands, always gloved, leather worn soft at the knuckles, and the way they move when he talks, lazy and expressive, mapping the air between you with confidence that could dip into arrogance. 

You know the sound of his breathing when he is amused. The slower cadence of it when he is thinking. The way it hitches, just barely, when you catch him off guard with something honest, and the fraction of a second it takes him to recover before the smirk slides back into place.

You know he is hiding something. There’s something like a mark on his chest, the one you have only glimpsed twice. He adjusts his clothes whenever he catches you looking. He changes the subject. He deflects.

And you know, with the kind of certainty that sits in your bones like something you were born with, that he is not here by accident. That whatever brought him to your city, whatever mission lives behind those unreadable eyes, it involves you. Your heart. The heart that is not really yours, the one that belongs to Philos and its people and whatever divine purpose decided before your birth that your chest would house something too valuable for you to claim as your own.

Everyone wants your heart. You have known this since you were old enough to understand why they kept you locked in this palace, why they dressed you in silk and called you princess and never once asked what you wanted. Your heart sustains the planet. Your heart grants immortality. Your heart, your heart, your heart.

Not you. Never you.

And Rafayel... you do not know what Rafayel wants. That is what keeps you awake at three in the morning turning the fishtail beacon over and over in your hands like a rosary, your pulse hammering against the skin of your wrist, your mind replaying the same scene on a merciless loop.

The ruins. Four nights ago.

He had taken you to the sand dunes beyond the city, the ones that stretch endlessly under a sky so vast and dark you could feel the weight of it pressing down on your shoulders. The ruins of something ancient jutted from the sand like the bones of a creature too massive to comprehend, and he walked through them with the familiarity of someone who has walked through them a thousand times, his coat trailing behind him, his hand loose at his side.

You stumbled on a crumbled stairway, your foot catching on stone that shifted beneath you, and he moved faster than you could process, his arm around your waist, your back flush against his chest, and the world stilled.

His hand spread wide across your stomach, fingers pressing gently through the fabric of your dress. His breath was warm against the shell of your ear, filtering through the mask, and you could feel his chest expand against your spine with each slow inhale. You were not in danger. The stairway was three steps high. You would have scraped your knee at most.

He did not let go.

“Be careful, Your Highness.” he murmured, and his voice was so close you felt it vibrate through the bones of your skull more than you heard it with your ears.

You stood there, his arm locked around you, the heat of his body seeping into every point of contact, and something inside your chest cracked open like a door you had been leaning against for weeks finally giving way. Your fingers drifted upward, almost involuntarily, reaching toward the edge of his mask where it met the line of his jaw, and his free hand caught your wrist.

Not roughly. His thumb rested against your pulse point and his grip was gentle and his hand was shaking.

The silence lasted three seconds. Maybe four. Long enough for you to feel the thunder of his heartbeat against your shoulder blade, fast and hard and completely at odds with the steadiness of his hands. Long enough for the heat between your bodies to become something you could taste at the back of your throat, sweet and metallic and dizzying.

Then a sound in the distance, the scrape of sand shifting, an animal or the wind or nothing at all, and he released you. Stepped back. Adjusted his mask. Shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat.

“Watch your step next time,” he offered, and his voice was perfectly, infuriatingly casual.

You did not speak about it. You walked back to the palace in silence and he left through the balcony and you pressed your forehead against the cool stone of the wall and breathed and breathed and breathed until the trembling in your hands subsided.

It did not subside.

It has not subsided since.

You pick up the fishtail beacon again, restless. The heat of it seeps into your palm, travels up through your wrist, settles in the center of your chest where that cursed heart of yours beats too fast for a girl who is supposed to be sleeping. You think of his hand across your stomach. The vibration of his voice against your ear. The shaking of his fingers around your wrist and the way his pulse betrayed every lie his voice tried to tell.

You squeeze the beacon.

Not by accident. Not impulsively. You look at it, you feel the warmth of it, and you close your fist around it with the full and terrifying knowledge of what you are doing. You are calling him. At three in the morning, in a thin nightdress, with your hair loose and your chamber a mess and no excuse prepared and nothing to offer him except the truth that you could not bear another night of pretending you do not want him here.

The beacon flares warm, then cool, then warm again, like a heartbeat answering yours.

You wait.

The balcony doors are open. The desert air drifts in carrying the dry scent of sand and the faint sweetness of night-blooming flowers that climbs the palace walls, and you are sitting on the edge of your bed with your fingers twisted in the fabric of your nightdress, your heart hammering in your ears so loudly you almost miss the sound of his landing.

Almost.

The soft scrape of boots on stone. The whisper of fabric settling. And then he is there, a silhouette framed in the balcony archway, the moonlight catching on the silver chains at his chest and the piercings in his ear, his hood pushed back, his coat open, his mask still on.

His eyes find yours across the dark room and something moves behind them, quick and unguarded before the familiar laziness slides into place like a curtain being drawn.

“You called for me, Princess?” he steps inside, and his voice carries that drawl, that slowness that makes every word sound like he is doing you a favor just by speaking.

Your mouth opens and closes a few times. Throat drier than the desert sand. “I... couldn’t sleep.”

He tilts his head. One eyebrow lifts above the line of his mask. He does not believe you. You can see it in the way his gaze drops from your face to the beacon in your hand and back again, slow and knowing, and the corner of his eyes creases with a smirk you cannot see but can feel like a physical touch across your delicate skin.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he echoes, stepping further into the room, his gloved hand trailing along the edge of your vanity, fingers tipping over a small glass bottle of perfume with exaggerated carelessness. “So you summoned the Abysswalker into your chambers in the middle of the night.”

“I didn’t summon you.” you try to lie, but it’s pointless.

“You squeezed the beacon,” he picks up one of the ribbons from your vanity, winds it around his index finger, lets it unravel. “That’s kinda what it’s for, Your Highness.”

The heat climbs up the sides of your neck. You tuck your chin, averting your gaze toward the window where the sand dunes shimmer faintly under the moon, and you feel rather than see him move closer, even if his steps are dead silent. The room is not large. Four steps and he would be at the edge of your bed.

He takes three.

“You didn’t have to come,” you manage, and your voice comes out thinner than you intended.

He is quiet for a few moments. His hand drops the ribbon. When he speaks again, the teasing has thinned just slightly, like a layer of paint wearing through to something rawer underneath.

“Yeah, well.” he shifts his weight, and his gaze slides sideways, and for a moment he looks almost uncertain. “We both know that’s not true.”

The silence stretches. You can hear the palace guards’ distant footsteps in the corridor beyond your door, the soft murmur of Natasha speaking to someone down the hall. The world outside this room, the world of duty and hearts and gilded cages, presses against the walls like water against a dam.

“Raf.” your voice is as soft as the ribbon previously swirled around his finger.

His eyes snap back to you. You have never called him that before, even though he gave you his name, you never dared call him something more intimate than it. The truncation of his name sits between you like a lit match.

You stand up from the soft mattress. The nightdress moves around your thighs, thin silk that you chose for the heat, not for him, though the way his gaze drops for a fraction of a second before jerking back up to your face makes your skin prickle with awareness and shyness. 

You want to see his face, gauge what his emotions truly convey in his expression. You cross the space between you in two steps and your hand rises slowly, your fingers reaching for the hem of his mask.

His gloved hand catches your wrist before you can fully touch it. His grip is loose, barely there, his thumb resting exactly where your pulse hammers against the thin skin.

“Your Highness.” he coos, the teasing lilt curls around the title like smoke. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You always wear it.” your voice is soft. Steady, somehow, despite the heat rushing through your veins. “Why? Are we not close enough for you to drop it, or do you simply not want me to see your face?”

His eyes search yours. For a long moment they are completely unreadable, deep and still like water that is darker than it looks, and then something shifts in them, something that is not quite amusement and not quite pain but lives in the space between.

“Maybe I’m just ugly under here,” he deflects, but the usual sharpness is missing from his voice. “Ever think about that?”

“Show me, then.”

“Why?” he tilts his head, as his thumb traces a slow circle over your pulse point that makes your breath stutter in your chest. “What’s so important about seeing my face, Princess?”

“I want to see you when you speak to me.” you hold his gaze. Your fingers hover at the edge of the dark fabric, close enough that your knuckles brush his jaw. “I want to see all of you, not only what you allow me to.”

Something flickers across his expression. A crack, hairline thin, there and gone. He exhales through his nose slowly. “You’ve seen glimpses of it before,” he murmurs. 

“Glimpses are not enough.”

The words land between you and his grip on your wrist loosens, finger by finger, until his hand falls away entirely. He doesn’t move or speak again. Just watches you with those impossible to read eyes, blue-pink ombres in the candlelight, and the silence is permission.

You hook your fingers under the fabric and draw it down.

It slides past the bridge of his nose, past the sharp cut of his cheekbones, and the fullness of his face unfolds beneath your hands like something sacred being unwrapped. The line of his mouth, fuller than you imagined, the lower lip bitten faintly pink. The small beauty marks scattered across his skin like constellations you want to map with your fingertips. The jaw, sharp enough to cut, and the way it tightens when your thumb grazes the corner of his mouth.

He is beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful. In the way a fire is. In the way that something dangerous becomes holy when you hold it close enough to burn.

“There,” he breathes, and his voice is stripped bare now, no mask to muffle it, every vibration of it reaching you unfiltered. “Happy now?”

You don’t answer him, too busy committing him to your memory, just how beautiful he truly is. Your thumb is still resting at the corner of his mouth and his lips part just barely under the pressure of it. His breath is warm against the pad of your finger. His eyes are locked on yours and they are not unreadable anymore. They are saying everything his voice refuses to, and you are still unsure of what to make of whatever you find there.

“The ruins,” you whisper. “Four nights ago, when you caught me...”

His jaw flexes under your hand. “You tripped. It would be careless of me to let the Princess fall.”

“You didn’t let go after.”

Silence. His chest rises and falls. You can see the column of his throat work as he swallows.

“Rafayel.” your voice drops to barely a breath because the guards are outside and Natasha is down the hall and this room is the only safe place left in a palace full of eyes and ears. “Why didn’t you let go of me?”

He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the laziness and the teasing, all of it has burned away like fog in direct sun. What is left underneath is raw and exposed and so full of longing it makes the air between you feel too thick to breathe.

“You know why, Your Highness,” his gloved hand comes up to cover yours where it rests against his face, pressing your palm flat against his cheek, and the tremor in his fingers is the same one you felt in the ruins, the same one he tried to hide. “I can’t seem to be able to stop... Wanting to be close to you.” 

His words wash over you like cold water in a suffocating desert. Your throat works slowly, tasting your words on the tip of your tongue before you actually decide to let him hear them. It was a simple gesture, catching you so you wouldn’t fall. He could just as easily say so, if it truly meant nothing to him. But nothing is ever accidental with Rafayel, you know this.

A simple touch, a simple embrace under the guise of protecting you to not fall was like opening a door between you, one previously closed, partly on his end. A simple gesture of proximity, one he leaned into before he could have stopped himself. One you didn’t mind, but rather wanted more of.

“Be close to me, then.” your eyes lift up to his, thumb stroking gently over his warm face, “I want you close to me, too.” The words land like a bird’s feather, too soft and barely audible, but enough to reach his ears in the closeness of your bodies.

“Words carry meaning, Your Highness,” his voice drops lower. His thumb traces along your knuckles, slow and gentle. “Actions do, too. So be honest with me… Why did you summon me tonight?”

The words hit your sternum like a fist. Your breath leaves you in a rush and your hand fists gently against his cheek and his eyes darken, his pupils swallowing the color, and the distance between you collapses. There’s no room for pretense anymore, not that you really want to anymore, not that you can.

You kiss him.

It is not quite gentle. It is the culmination of weeks of almost and not quite and what if, and your mouth finds his with a desperation that startles you, that feels like falling except you have been falling for weeks and only now hit the surface of whatever waits below. His response is immediate, his hands gripping your waist, fingers pressing into the silk of your nightdress, pulling you flush against him until you can feel the chains and buckles of his coat pressing into your chest, the warmth of him bleeding through every layer of clothing that separates you.

He kisses you back like drowning, like burning, his mouth hot and insistent and tasting faintly of salt, and your hands are in his hair, the strands impossibly soft between your fingers, strands you ached desperately to touch and feel, and now you’re finally permitted to do so. The sound he makes against your lips, low and raw and wrecked, vibrates through your entire body. 

He breaks the kiss first, his forehead dropping against yours, his breathing ragged. His hands haven’t moved from your waist, and his intention of not withdrawing doesn’t miss you even as your thoughts scramble to dust trying to come to terms with the fact that you just kissed him in your chambers in the middle of the night.

“You got no sense of danger whatsoever, Your Highness,” he murmurs against your mouth. The teasing lilt you’re so familiar with is back but it’s thin now, translucent, stretched over something that trembles. “Summoning an Assassin to your room in the middle of the night. Kissing him, too.”

“You kissed me back.”

“Didn’t say I was the smart one either.”

Your laugh is barely a breath before his mouth catches it, kissing the sound from your lips before it fully forms. Then he is turning you, his hands guiding you by the waist until your back meets his chest in an echo of the ruins that makes your skin sing. His arms wrap around you from behind, his chin settling against the curve of your shoulder, and you feel his breath fan hot across the side of your neck, making you shudder from how good it feels, trickling down your feverish body.

“This dress,” he coos, and his gloved fingers splay across your stomach, wide and warm, the leather soft against silk. “This thin little thing...” his thumb traces a slow line from your navel to the base of your ribs and the sensation shivers through you in a wave that you feel in your scalp and between your legs. “You called me here dressed like this? Shameless.” his lips brush the shell of your ear and you can hear the grin in his voice. “Not very princess-like behavior if you ask me, Your Highness.”

Your cheeks burn in both embarrassment and something akin to pleasure, because he’s suddenly switched on you from raw and honest to this version of him you are familiar with yet not at all, at the same time. Your hands come up to rest over his, pressing them closer against your stomach, and you feel the sharp intake of his breath against your damp neck.

“I was not expecting company when I prepared for bed,” you manage, though your voice is embarrassingly breathy.

“Does the Princess know she doesn’t lie very well?” he mouths the word against the hinge of your jaw, and then his lips trail lower, down the column of your neck in a line of barely there kisses that leave heat blooming in their wake like brushstrokes of fire. “You squeezed the fishtail beacon in your hands and thought of me, knowing exactly what you were inviting into your chambers by doing so.”

You tilt your head to give him access and you feel his mouth curve into a smile against your throat before he presses a kiss to the pulse point there, lingering to feel the frantic rhythm of your heart against his lips. His hands map your body with agonizing slowness, the leather of his gloves dragging over the silk in a friction that makes your nerve endings light up, tracing the curve of your waist, the curve of your hips, the dip of your lower back, and your whole body is shivering, leaning back into him, your weight settling against his chest.

“Cold?” he taunts softly, his mouth at the junction of your shoulder and neck now, open and warm.

“You know I’m not cold.” your voice cracks on the last word because his thumb has found your collarbone and is tracing the bone of it so slowly and maddening, that feels like he is drawing you with intentions alone, his finger as featherlight as a paintbrush on canvas.

You reach behind you, your fingers finding the fabric of his hood where it gathers at his shoulders, and you push it back and off, while your hands slide up into his hair, an action that makes him groan against your neck. A low vibration that you feel in your spine. Your fingers tighten and his hips press forward against you involuntarily. The sensation sends heat pooling low in your belly, your legs almost giving out at what you feel pressed against your lower back.

You turn in his arms, a bit impatient. Your hands go to his chest, palms flat against the fabric of his tunic, and beneath your right hand you feel it. A wave of warmth, sharp and sudden, and when you look down you see it through the thin fabric, a red and pulsing glow. The mark on his chest burning to life under your touch like something answering a call.

His whole body goes rigid at your touch, even as a slight shiver runs through him.

“Don’t...” he starts, but his voice fractures on the syllable. Despite his sudden withdrawal, his hands are still on your waist and he is not pulling away. 

“What is this?” you press your palm harder against the glow and his breath stutters out of him in a sound that is almost a whimper, his head tipping back, his throat exposed, his eyes squeezing shut. The image in front of you makes your lips part in surprise and wonder, because yes, you are curious about the mark and have been for a while. But seeing his reaction to your unprompted touch, how he reacts as if you struck him in either pain or pleasure...

“It’s... complicated, Your Highness.” he forces the words out through gritted teeth. “What you have to know it’s that it’s old. It’s... ours.”

Ours.

The word detonates in your chest, and your brain scrambles for meaning, for logic, but finds none. You don’t need to know, not now, at least. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to interrogate him about it another time, but for now, your fingers curl into the fabric of his tunic and you pull him forward. His mouth finds yours again and this time the kiss is slower, deeper, his tongue sliding against yours and his gloved hand coming up to cradle the back of your skull, tilting your head to deepen the angle. You moan against his lips and feel his fingers tighten in your hair.

You walk him backward. It takes effort, he’s taller and solid and his arms are locked around you, but he goes almost willingly, his mouth still on yours, his boot catching on the edge of the rug as he walks. When the backs of his knees hit the mattress of your bed, he sits and you climb into his lap with a gracelessness that burns your ears red.

He pulls back just enough to look at you through heavy, half-lidded ombre eyes. You are straddling his thighs, your nightdress rucked up around your hips, your hands braced on his shoulders, your face flushed and your breathing ragged. The feeling of him under your body, pressed so close you feel his warmth, his solid muscles, and the state you turned him in... all of it sets your whole body alight and your brain is too far gone to really grasp what you just did. But his is not.

The slowest, most devastating grin spreads across his face.

“So bold, Your Highness.” his hands settle on your bare thighs where the silk has ridden up, his thumbs tracing small circles against your skin. The contrast of leather against bare flesh makes you dizzy. His gaze drops to the tangled sheets beneath him, the pillows thrown sideways, the blankets kicked to the floor. “The sheets are a mess. You really couldn’t sleep tonight, could you?”

You were a fool to think he wouldn’t call you out on it, but the way his words drawl, slow and teasing and maddeningly sexy makes you come to the conclusion that you don’t mind a little bit of his teasing, even if it turns your rosy cheeks two shades darker. You press your forehead against his, your fingers knotting in the chain at his collar. “D-Don’t speak like that.”

“Did something trouble the Princess’ mind?” he leans back on one hand, casual and a tad insufferable, even as his other hand slides higher up your thigh with a slowness that makes your muscles clench at how good it feels, the feeling of his cold glove on your bare skin. “Was it a certain Assassin she boldly called in the middle of the night to come put her to sleep?”

“I will throw you off this balcony.” You avert your eyes, suddenly too shy at his words but too stubborn to let him see the full effect his words have on you.

“Promises, promises.” he catches your chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting your face so the candlelight catches your eyes. The smugness softens, melts into something that makes your throat ache. “You’re blushing so hard, Princess. Your ears are red.”

You bury your face against his shoulder and feel the rumble of his laughter vibrate through his chest against your palms.

“Hey,” his voice gentles, his hand coming up to the back of your neck, fingers threading into the hair at your nape to guide your gaze back to his. “C’mere. Won’t you look at me?”

You lift your head, albeit a little hesitant. Your eyes are wide, you know, bright and pleading, the want in them so naked it terrifies you. You know he sees it, too, by the way his throat bobs slowly, by the way the playfulness drains from his expression like water from cupped hands and what is left is hunger, raw and deep and shaking and it startles you but also makes your body shiver in delight once more. 

He kisses you again, and this time it is not a question nor a hesitation. His slick, soft lips find your trembling ones while his hand slides to the strap of your nightdress. His fingers pause there for a moment. A question in the hesitation, and you answer it by reaching up and sliding the strap off your own shoulder.

“Inviting me into your bed,” he whispers sweetly against the corner of your mouth, his fingers trailing down your arm as the silk falls. “What happens if the guards outside the door hear something and come find the princess in such an... unfit position?”

“Then you’ll have to keep me quiet,” you breathe, swallowing when his eyes go black. Your spine feels like lightning bolted down from the nape of your neck and down to your lower back and then down still, right between where your thighs are bracketing his lap, in the place now moist and throbbing and needing friction you’re still not bold enough to seek.

His mouth descends on your neck, open and hot. His teeth graze the sensitive skin below your ear, making you gasp while his gloved hand comes up to cover your mouth, gentle but firm, muffling the sound against leather.

“Shhh,” he whispers against your throat, and you can feel the smile there. “That’s more like it.”

His hands undress you in pieces, peeling the silk away with a slowness that is both exhilarating and torturous, pressing his mouth to every inch of skin he reveals, your collarbones, the dip between them, the curve of your ribs. His lips trace the shape of you like he is committing your naked body to memory, like he is painting you with his mouth, and every point of contact sends sparks cascading down your spine until you are trembling in his lap, your fingers tangled in his hair, your head tipped back in pleasure while soft sounds escape between your parted lips.

You tug at his coat impatiently and that makes him laugh, low and breathless, shrugging out of it without detaching his mouth from your sternum. His tunic follows, making the red mark on his chest visible where it blazes in the low light, pulsing in time with his heartbeat, so so beautiful. You press your lips to it and he hisses, his hands fisting in the sheets, his hips rolling up against yours.

“F-Fuck,” he breathes, the word sounds punched out of him, unplanned, raw. It does unspeakable things to your own body, shooting precisely between your legs, like an arrow hitting bullseye.

His mouth finds yours again, more hungry now, and his hands are gloveless now. You barely registered when he took them off, but they map the skin of your chest with such gentleness that makes your eyes sting, thumbs tracing and circling your peaked nipples until your back arches and a sound escapes you that you did not know you could make. You guide his hands upper, your fingers wrapped around his wrists, pulling him closer, pressing his palms flat against your breast. He groans into your mouth and you swallow the sound.

“I might be the Assassin, but you are the lethal one here, Princess,” he whispers against your lips before his hand slides lower, down the plane of your stomach, slow and purposeful. In no time, his fingers find the hem of the silk still bunched at your waist and slip beneath it.

Your hands grip his shoulders so hard your knuckles go white. He watches your face with those devastating bicolored eyes, heavy lidded and swallowed by lust, reading every flicker of sensation that crosses your features. His forehead presses against yours and his free hand cups your jaw, thumb stroking your cheekbone in such a tender gesture despite the lust consuming his soul. When his fingers, gentle and knowing and unbearably precise, find how wet you are, the sound you let out is somewhere between a sob and a plea for more of it.

“There she is,” he murmurs, his voice low and thick and dripping with something that sounds like awe disguised as arrogance, probably already knowing the effect it has on you when he weaponizes his honeyed voice as such. “My beautiful Princess.”

He moves his hand in slow, maddening strokes, building a rhythm that tightens every muscle in your body, and when the sounds you make grow too loud his mouth covers yours, absorbing every gasp and whimper against his lips. His other hand presses flat against the small of your back, holding you against him, steady and sure while the rest of you falls apart.

“That’s it, Your Highness,” he whispers against the corner of your mouth, and his voice has gone rough, wrecked and raspy. “Cling to me. I’ve got you, let yourself fall.”

You shatter in his arms with your face buried against his throat, your teeth sinking into your own lip to keep from crying out, your body bowing into his like a wave breaking against shore. He holds you through it, his lips pressing against your temple, your forehead, the damp curl of hair at your ear, murmuring soft nonsense that sounds like your title and his heartbeat and something in a language you don’t recognize, older than either of you, oceanic and aching.

When your breathing steadies, when the tremors slow to aftershocks and you lift your head to look at him, he is wrecked and unrecognizable. His cheeks are flushed dark, the color bleeding into the tips of his ears. His lips swollen and bitten red, and his chest is heaving and the mark on it pulses like a second heart.

He doesn’t rush to the next part, doesn’t even assume there will be more than what he gave you just now. He just gazes down at you, savoring how you look as the highs of pleasure wash over your body in subsiding waves. You just gave a part of yourself to him, one you can never take back but you don’t want to. It is his now. It was his to take so it is his to keep, now and forever. And you want to give him more parts of yourself, feel like he’s the only one who’ll keep you safe and not feeling like a trapped bird.

This was yours to give, and yours to decide how and when to give it. You want to give him so many more parts, no matter what it is he wants to take. A few pieces, more like this one. Your heart, which is already in his possession, even if he is unaware of it. You’ll give him your fleshed heart too, if only he asked.

Yours to have, yours to give. And you choose him to take it.

You cradle his face in your hands. Your thumbs trace the beauty mark beneath his eyes, and your voice, when it comes, is barely a whisper, raspy but full of unspoken feelings. He awaits an answer to a question he doesn’t voice or even attempt to form, but you choose to speak it anyway.

“I’ve made a selfish decision by summoning you here, but I... I want this. I chose this.” your forehead presses against his and your breath mingles warm between your parted lips. “You are my freedom, Rafayel. I choose you to have me and my body... my heart.”

His eyes search yours, and the vulnerability in them is staggering. The kind of openness that looks like it costs him everything. His hands come up to cover yours where they rest against his face, his fingers lacing through yours, trembling.

“How sure are you of this, my beloved Princess?” his voice is barely above a breath. All the teasing turned to something so naked it makes your chest ache, something painful and raw. “Is it truly what you want from me?” his thumb traces the line of your jaw and his gaze drops to your mouth and back to your eyes. “Giving yourself to someone like me... a reckless thing for a Princess to do. Do you truly want me?”

You kiss him slowly, certain of your decision, wanting to make him understand it, too. Your hands slide into his hair, your body pressing flush against his, and when you pull back your lips brush his as you speak.

“There will never be anyone else I want.”

The sound he makes when he registers your soft whisper is something deep, something that starts in his chest where the mark burns red between you and travels through his entire body in a shudder that you feel everywhere your skin touches his. His arms lock around you and he pulls you against him. His mouth finds yours with a ferocity that steals whatever breath you had left, if you even had any.

He lays you back against the tangled sheets with a gentleness that contradicts the desperation in his kiss, settling over you, the weight of him warm and solid and everywhere. The mark on his chest glows between your bodies like something forged in a furnace, the red of it casting your skin in shades of amber and flame.

“Gotta continue to keep quiet for me, Princess,” he breathes against the hollow of your throat, cooing the words in a teasing lilt, but his voice is shaking now, barely held together. “Unless you want the whole palace knowing who you chose to give yourself to tonight.”

You pull him closer by the back of his neck and his hips press forward with the move. It’s what you both want and crave, if the sounds you both make are any indication. Your shared moans are greedily swallowed by each other’s mouths. His hand finds yours on the pillow, fingers interlacing, squeezing tight.

The world narrows to the space between your bodies. To the rhythm of him moving with you, against you, inside you... To the flex of his jaw when he bites back a groan as you squeeze tightly around him. To the way your name sounds when he whispers it against your collarbone like a confession he has been holding in his mouth for lifetimes. 

Your back arches off the mattress when he hits a certain spot, somewhere deep where it’s tender and untouched, and feeling him press there makes your eyes roll back into your head. His arm hooks beneath you, pulling you against him, his forehead pressed to yours, his breathing fractured and raw.

“Fuck, Your Highness...” his voice breaks on the words, his hips stuttering as they thrust inside your warmth. His bare hand presses firm and warm over your mouth when you cry out in pleasure, and the look he gives you is equal parts desperation and lust. “Keep quiet... the guards...”

You can’t. You pull his hand away and replace it with his mouth, kissing him hard, making him groan against your lips. The sound vibrates through your whole body and the sheets are twisted beneath you and his hand is gripping your thigh and pulling you impossibly closer, and you don’t want this moment to stop. You never want to be away from him after tonight, not ever.

“My beautiful Princess,” he gasps against the corner of your mouth when his rhythm falters for a moment, then quickens, his whole body trembling above you. It’s a beautiful tell you recognize as him losing himself inside you, and you assume he is as close to feeling this closeness between you as you are, this shared pleasure. “Your body doesn’t lie... clings to me so tight...”

Your nails drag down his back and he hisses at the sensation, the feeling of them marking his bare skin makes his hips snap forward and makes the bond mark on his chest blazes so bright you see it through your closed eyelids, red and fierce and consuming. You break apart at the same time, or close enough, his face buried against your neck as he spills so much warmth inside you. Your fingers knotted in his hair from how good it feels. The sound he lets out against your skin, muffled and shattered and utterly broken, is the most honest thing you have ever heard him say.

He stays after that.

The candlelight has burned low by the time the trembling stops, by the time your breathing evens out into something resembling relaxation and his heartbeat slows against your back where he has curled around you, his chest warm and bare against your shoulder blades, his arm draped over your waist, his fingers tracing absent patterns on the inside of your wrist. The bond mark still glows faintly, a soft red pulse that matches the cadence of his breathing.

“Stop thinking so loudly,” he mumbles against your hair, and the drawl is back but soft now, heavy with sleep, the consonants blurred. It makes you smile and move closer in his embrace, “M’trying to enjoy this before you kick me out of your bed.”

It’s a jest, you recognize it as such. Yet even as he jokes, your chest feels heavy where his words settle, scraping against your heart like little knives.

“I’m not going to kick you out.”

“Promise?”

There is something in his voice. Something small and young and achingly uncertain, something that lives under all the smirking and carelessness, and it cracks the last wall inside your chest like a fist through thin ice.

You turn in his arms and press your palm flat against the mark on his chest, the red glow warm beneath your hand. You look him in the eyes with a gaze so raw and honest and blurred by the moist of unshed tears, and you tell him.

“I promise.”

His expression does something complicated, and for a moment his mask wavers so completely that you see everything in his eyes. The relief, the ache, the love so vast and old it seems to spill beyond the borders of this single life. Then he blinks and the smirk ghosts back across his lips, smaller now, gentler, like a muscle memory he can’t quite shake.

“Good,” he whispers, pressing a lingering kiss to your forehead, his lips warm and impossibly soft. “‘Cause I wasn’t gonna leave anyway.”

His eyes close and his breathing slows. His arm tightens around you in his sleep, an involuntary , instinctive thing, as though even unconscious his body refuses to let go of something it has waited too long to hold.

You lie in the dark with his heartbeat against your palm and the fading glow of the mark beneath your fingers and for the first time in your life, you feel like something that belongs to you.

Outside the window, the desert stretches to the horizon. The dunes roll in smooth, undulating waves under the moonlight, pale gold and endless.

If you look long enough, they almost look like the sea.

© zaynessbeloved 2026. please don’t copy, repost or translate my works. thank you!

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the morning light filters through the sheer curtains of rafayel's bedroom, soft and golden, wrapping you in a warm glow that makes everything feel like a dream.

you're snuggled deep in his arms, your head tucked perfectly under his chin, his steady heartbeat thumping against your cheek. his skin is so warm, like he's your personal heater on this chilly autumn morning.

your cute night shirt—ruffled with adorable lace trimming the hem and neckline—clings softly to your body, paired with those tiny shorts that look more like cheeky underwear, riding up just a bit as you tangle your legs with his under the fluffy duvet. rafayel's fingers trace lazy patterns on your back, slow circles that make you melt even more into him. you sigh contentedly, nuzzling closer.

"mm, g'morning," you mumble sleepily, your voice muffled against his chest. he chuckles, that low, melodic sound that always sends little butterflies fluttering in your tummy. his arms tighten around you just a bit, pulling you impossibly closer.

"morning, cutie." he whispers, pressing a soft kiss to the top of your head. "you slept like a rock. i could barely move without waking you."

you giggle, tilting your head up to peek at his face.

his purple hair is all tousled from sleep, falling into his eyes in the cutest way, and his lips curve into that playful smile that makes your heart skip. "that's because you hog all the blankets," you tease, poking his side gently. he pretends to wince, grabbing your hand and kissing your fingertips one by one.

you stay like that for a while, just basking in the quiet coziness. the world outside doesn't exist right now—it's just you two, wrapped up in each other.

eventually, you start yapping, because that's what you do when you're comfy and happy.

"you know, i was scrolling through some fashion stuff last night before bed. there's this designer i absolutely love—her name's elise chen. her pieces are so dreamy, all flowy fabrics and delicate embroidery. like, imagine wearing one of her dresses to a beach gala, with the wind catching the hem just right…"

rafayel listens patiently, his eyes half-lidded but sparkling with amusement. he props himself up on one elbow, keeping you cradled against him, and nods along. "tell me more. what's your favorite from her collection?"

you light up, gesturing wildly with your free hand even though you're still tangled in bed, your lace-trimmed shirt shifting playfully. "oh! there's this one gown, pale blue like the ocean at dawn, with tiny pearl beads sewn into the neckline. it has these sheer sleeves that look like wings. i saw it on her latest runway show, and i was like, 'that's it, that's the one.' but it's so expensive, like, collector's item expensive. a girl can dream, right?"

he laughs softly, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. "you'd look like a princess in it. my princess." his voice dips into that affectionate tone, and you blush, hiding your face in his neck with a bubbly giggle.

"stoppp, you're making me shy," you whine, but you're grinning so wide it hurts.

you chat more about fashion—you ramble on about color palettes, how elise chen mixes pastels with bold accents, and how you'd pair her designs with simple jewelry to let the dress shine.

rafayel chimes in with his artist perspective, talking about the brushstrokes in fabric patterns and how light plays on silk. it's so easy with him, your conversation flowing like a gentle stream, punctuated by kisses and cuddles.

at some point, he shifts, reaching over to the nightstand with one arm while keeping you pinned securely with the other. you don't think much of it, too busy describing a handbag from the same collection.

"and the clutch! it's embroidered with little fish scales—"

"hey, wait," he interrupts softly, sitting up a little more and turning you to face him fully.

he looks a bit nervous, which makes your yapping trail off. in his palm sits a small, elegant velvet box, deep navy blue that matches his eyes. your breath catches, eyes going wide with excitement.

"rafayel…? what's this?" you whisper, sitting up too, the duvet pooling around your waist, your ruffled night shirt all cute and rumpled.

he opens the box slowly, revealing the most breathtaking ring you've ever seen.

it's a 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠—you recognize the signature style instantly, that perfect oval diamond catching the morning light and scattering tiny rainbows across the sheets. the band is delicate platinum, etched with subtle waves, like the ocean he loves so much.

it's not flashy, but timeless, promising forever in every facet.

"i… i got this for you," he says, his voice barely above a murmur, cheeks tinged pink. "a darry ring. you know what that means, right? once it's yours, it's yours forever. no take-backs. i've been carrying it around for weeks, waiting for the 'right moment'—some big romantic adventure or starry night. but there never was one that felt perfect enough. every moment with you is the right one, so… now. right here, in our messy bed, with you in that adorable night shirt."

you squeal with bubbly delight, bouncing a little in excitement, your giggly laughter filling the room. "rafayel! oh my gosh, it's gorgeous! eeee, the waves on the band—it's so you!"

you grab his face with both hands and pepper his cheeks, nose, and lips with quick, happy kisses, your shorts shifting as you wiggle closer.

he grins, relieved and beaming, taking the ring out and holding your left hand gently. "knew you'd love it. had it customized just for us." he slides it onto your finger, and it fits perfectly, like it was made for you—because it was. the diamond nestles right there, cool against your skin but warming fast.

"it's perfect!" you giggle wildly, twisting your hand to watch it sparkle, then launching yourself at him again, kissing him deeply this time, your lips soft and eager against his. he kisses back, hands roaming to your waist, pulling you into his lap as your lace night shirt bunches up.

you pull back just enough to admire it more, giggling nonstop. "look at it sparkle! we're forever now, huh? my artist prince giving me promises—i love it!"

"yours forever," he murmurs, nuzzling your neck and stealing more kisses. you stay like that for ages, you showing off the ring every few seconds, giggling and planting kisses on him wherever you can reach—his jaw, his collarbone, back to his lips. he pretends to dodge, laughing, but pulls you closer each time.

"mine," you declare playfully, nipping his lower lip before kissing it better.

"all yours," he agrees, his hands slipping under your ruffled shirt to trace your bare skin.

the morning stretches on, lazy and perfect. you order breakfast in bed—pancakes with fresh strawberries, because he knows they're your favorite—and you can't stop waving the ring around, giggling at how it catches the light.

rafayel pretends to be jealous of the ring getting do much attention, tugging you back into his lap every time, his fingers playing with the lace on your night shirt. "mine first," he growls playfully, kissing your shoulder.

you talk dreams now, not just fashion. about your future—lazy mornings like this every day, painting together in his studio, walks on the beach at sunset. the ring feels like a promise sealing it all, a little piece of eternity on your finger that makes you bubbly every time you glance at it. you kiss him again, slow and sweet, your hands in his hair.

rafayel smiles against your lips, thumb brushing the ring. "happy like this always, okay? that giggle of yours is my favorite sound."

"deal," you whisper, giggling once more as you snuggle back down, his arms your safe haven, the darry ring glinting between you like a secret shared in the morning light.

this is just the beginning of your forever mornings, full of kisses and laughter.

uhhh yeah hoped y'all liked this!!

it's lowk short and straight buns but nvm!!