#amut

For a man like Edward Nigma, hell wasn’t fire or torment or bloodshed. 

Hell was routine.

Hell was the slow starvation of genius beneath the sterile hum of fluorescent lights—the erosion of a mind built for conquest, wasted on bureaucracy. This was not a prison of bars or chains, but of routine, submission masquerading as structure, a cage lined with copy paper and policy briefings. Here, the world’s most dangerous strategist was reduced to a line item on Amanda Waller’s quarterly report, his brilliance domesticated under the illusion of reformation and freedom.

They gave him a salary (six figures), a 401k, insurance (health and dental), a badge to swipe, a desk to sit at, and an apartment not far from the base—close enough that the leash didn’t need to be visible to exist.

Working for Amanda goddamn Waller.

The strategic director of ARGUS Special Projects, Villain Division. The man who once held Gotham in his palm now passed data along to higher clearances and acted as a living algorithm for the U.S. government’s black budget. 

He despised being on someone else’s time, hated answering to calls marked “urgent” from analysts who couldn’t decrypt a Caesar cipher without a YouTube tutorial, detested being summoned at all hours by panicked voices from the floor above—government suits who treated his mind like a fire extinguisher behind glass: Break in case of crisis.

He loathed walking past Richard’s cubicle every morning.

“Hey, Eddie, workin’ hard or hardly workin’?”

Every time. Without fail.

And the interns, christ, we always underfoot, elbowing past each other to keep up with his stride, breathing too loud beside his ear, scribbling notes as if proximity to brilliance might rub off on them. One had spilled their “triple shot espresso cold brew with oat milk" near his workstation last week. 

He nearly walked into traffic that day.

Dragging a hand down his face, Edward knocked his glasses loose, adjusted them with a sigh, and kept walking.

At least it was over for now. He had never imagined he’d become the kind of man who thought, Thank god it’s Friday.

But here he was.

The air was cool in the walk from his car to the apartment complex. The weather in DC was nice. It was loud in the city, not as cocophanous as Gotham, but it was a little more quiet and revered in Dupont Circle. There was a cleanliness in the air, a feel of arrogant contenment in the neighborhood. Peace. Affluence. Something he had never really be apart of. But this was the government, and the government had money…

The building where he stayed was high-end. Polished. Sterile. Gray stone and black brick in a tight horseshoe, hemmed in by iron gates and bristling surveillance. A single blinking camera tracked every vehicle as it turned in off the main road. The kind of place that whispered you can relax here—but screamed you’re being watched.

The walk from the garage to the front door was uneventful, save for the lone security guard nodding from behind the marble-topped desk.

“Evening, Mr. Nigma.”

“Howard,” Edward muttered without looking up.

His shoes echoed too sharply on the floor.

He hated that.

The ride up to the ninth floor was quiet, always was. Too many high-ranking names lived in this building to risk neighbors overhearing anything that might crack the veneer of control.

He did like that.

And yet, he hated it, too.

This was… a good life—relatively speaking. The kind of life people like him didn’t get. A gorgeous corner unit overlooking the park. Two bedrooms. Exposed brick accent walls. Inset lighting. Stainless steel appliances. A memory foam mattress. Excellent water pressure. His name on the electric bill. His fingerprints in the elevator scanner.

It was all very neat. Very normal.

It made his skin vibrate.

His mind was starving.

The itch had started three weeks ago, maybe four. Somewhere between reviewing a foreign infiltration case and debugging a surveillance satellite schematic.

It crept in during the long, dull hours of meetings. The silences between keystrokes. The forced smiles at federal agents who thought encryption was a brand of deodorant.

The Riddler in his head began to murmur again. Soft at first. Curious.

“Remember how good it felt, Edward? When you knew more than everyone else? When you were God in a tie?”

 Then louder.

“You know what would be brilliant?”

Now he was shouting.

“Just blow it up. Blow the whole thing to hell. You know how. You could do it before the elevator hits the top floor.”

By the time the ninth-floor doors opened with a ding, Edward’s eye twitched. His briefcase felt too heavy. His brain, too light. He needed something. Anything.

He swiped his keycard, and unlocked the apartment door. Just as he stepped inside—

The itch vanished.

The ambient smells hit him first—cotton, linen, citrus. Then something different, something herbacious and fresh—parsley, maybe cilantro, freshly torn. It clung to the air in soft layers, like steam curling in from another room, wrapping around his senses before he even shut the door. It smelled like life. Lived-in. Gentle. A home.

Edward sighed, long and low. His nostrils drank it in.

Brow now relaxed, he tossed his badge and keys onto the black walnut table by the door with a practiced flick of his wrist, the metal clatter saying “Welcome home.” His briefcase followed, dropped with less care, and then his jacket—black, tailored, discreet—was shrugged off and draped over the bench at the entrance, like it might contaminate the rest of the apartment if it touched anything too soft.

Because you were here. And softness was sacred.

The music playing was faint, a playlist you'd made, no doubt, something soft and womanly. The kind of music that smelled of candles and overripe fruit and reminded him of thighs pressed together under summer skirts. He couldn’t place the artist, but her voice curled lazily in the air like cigarette smoke in a jazz club. He followed it.

When he reached the archway into the kitchen, he stopped.

His body stopped. His breath. His heart. His mind.

And all he saw—

Was you.

Bathed in the low golden spill of the kitchen lights, barefoot on the tiles, you moved slowly between the fridge and the countertop. A bowl of greens sat waiting beside you, half-filled, while a mixing spoon clinked gently in a ceramic dish of tahini dressing. There were cotton shorts clinging to your hips, rolled beneath the swell of your belly, a loose kimono cover up flowing in your wake, and a thin tank top that looked painted on—clinging, stretched, barely containing the life you were both holding between you.

A smirk tugged at his mouth—slow, crooked, reluctant. It had to climb through exhaustion to reach him, but it made it. That smile—private, quiet, born of awe—was for you alone.

He reached up and pulled at the knot of his tie, letting it hang loose against his shirt. The collar opened next, fingers slipping beneath the starched edge to give his neck some relief, and then, methodically, he rolled his sleeves up to the elbows. One turn. Two. Precise. Practiced.

He stayed in the doorway, didn’t dare move, didn’t want to disturb the stillness of the scene before him.

There was something magnetic about the way you moved—slow, yes, and slightly off balance from the extra weight you carried, but still elegant in your own, stubborn way. You moved slowly, not because you were tired—though you likely were—but because everything you did now had gravity. Everything was deliberate. In your wake, the apartment transformed into something holy.

He could see the curve of your thigh when you turned, the shadow of your areolas through the fabric, the press of your belly against the counter as you reached for something in the cabinet. Your hair was long, healthy, heavy with shine. The rubor of your cheeks and nose was delicate, enminating below the surface. You weren’t glowing, no. You were radiating. 

You were beautiful. 

You were the answer to every question he hadn’t realized he was asking. You were why he endured Waller’s voice. Why he swallowed his ego. Why he hadn’t burned this city to the ground just to feel something. You were his reward. His ransom. His rope back to the surface.

You were his. 

“I should’ve known,” he drawled at last, voice low and worn thin from the day, “you’d look better in my kitchen than I ever have.”

You didn’t startle, you never did; just a glance over your shoulder, gaze warm with quiet mischief, amusement ghosting over your features before it settled into a smile—wide, dimpled, nose crinkling the way it always did when he earned it.

Edward tilted his head, arms folding loosely over his chest as he leaned into the doorway, eyes dragging over you with the kind of reverence most men reserved for stolen artwork or unearthed scripture. “Wasn’t aware we were throwing a dinner party,” he said, nodding toward the set table off to the side—two places, a bottle of whiskey beside a single, waiting rocks glass. “Or is this just for me?”

You gave a little shrug, sauntering over to fetch the bottle and glass, the sway of your hips unhurried. “Someone’s gotta make sure we eat something green before this baby comes out craving salt and blood.”

He snorted. God, he loved your mouth. “What a shame,” he muttered, watching as you poured him two fingers of amber, enjoying the soft clink of glass on glass and the way the bottle caught the kitchen light. “I had a plan involving Mediterranean takeout and two pints of gelato that could’ve put you in a food coma.”

“That sounds like a threat,” you teased, handing him the neat drink.

Edward’s fingers curled around the glass, knuckles pressing into the cut crystal as he watched the gleam of your engagement ring catch the light. That solitaire, simple, elegant, unmissable, flashed against the amber liquor like it had been made to be seen in moments like this. He didn’t answer your tease aloud. He didn’t need to. Instead, he brought the glass to his lips and drank slowly, eyes never leaving yours. He just watched you, let himself breathe you in.

The way your eyes caught the light reminded him of precious stones, the kind he used to steal in another life, holding them up between fingers and flame just to see them refract. There’d been a time when that glint had meant survival. He’d grown up with nothing—cans of soup for dinner if he was lucky, hunger as a constant hum in the walls. He never craved wealth for its own sake. But beauty? Comfort? Permanence? He could admit now how deeply he valued the finer things.

You were one of them. Maybe the finest.

You leaned up on your toes, closing the short distance between you until he could smell the cocoa butter you slathered on religiously—the warm, soft scent that now lived in the sheets, in his skin, in the quiet of every room you touched. When your lips, pillowy and warm, pressed against the edge of his cheekbone, just beneath the faint rasp of his stubble, his eyes fell shut like they’d been waiting for that touch all day.

“Mmm.”

“Welcome home, Mr. Nigma,” you murmured, still brushing the scratch of his jaw.

And then you—radiant and real—glided away, drifting back toward the counter with a grace that was more instinct than effort. The fabric of your kimono swayed gently behind you as you returned to the half-prepped mixing bowl, fingers reaching for the bundle of herbs you’d chopped earlier. You plucked a pinch between your fingers and let it rain down into the creamy dressing.

Edward lingered, the glass cool in his hand, his eyes warmer than the whiskey as they followed your every move.

“I smell parsley,” he said at last, voice soft. “Or is that cilantro? Hard to tell. My senses are still recovering.”

You hummed faintly. “Cilantro. Parsley’s for cowards.”

He smirked into his glass, taking another sip. “Such a savage.”

“I try.”

Another handful of greens joined the bowl. You stirred absently, back still to him, clearly aware he was watching you but unbothered by it—used to it, maybe even performing for him in small, habitual ways. Your hips swayed slightly as you moved from counter to stove, checking the pot and giving it a slow stir with the ease of someone who could do this with her eyes closed.

“How was work?” you asked, glancing over your shoulder just long enough to catch his eye, then returning to your task. “Save the world again?”

He scoffed softly. “No. Just rewrote a system that five government engineers botched.”

You arched a brow without looking back. “And?”

“I fixed it before lunch. They’ll probably slap a new acronym on it and call it a breakthrough.”

“Mm. What would you name it?”

“Project Morons.”

You snorted. “Catchy.”

“It’ll never get approved. Too honest.”

“Any catastrophes?” You stirred your salad again, reaching for a lemon to slice.

“Other than having to walk past Richard’s cubicle twice?” He took a slow sip. “Not unless you count being assigned to ‘mentor’ an intern who graduated from Harvard and couldn’t tell me the difference between a buffer overflow and a stack pointer.”

You paused, knife hovering mid-air. “Should I be horrified, or...?”

His eyes cut toward you over the rim of his glass. “Imagine someone in med school not knowing what the heart is.”

“Okay, wow.”

“Exactly.”

You resumed slicing. “Still not sure what either of those things are, but I respect the outrage.”

Edward chuckled, watching the subtle lift and roll of your shoulders as you resumed slicing, your posture all soft curves and quiet confidence. There was something mesmerizing in the way you moved—precise but unhurried, like the kitchen bowed to your rhythm.

Since Waller had loosened her grip—since the leash had lengthened and the surveillance waned, since Edward had been reassigned away from Task Force X and you’d moved in with him—something in you had begun to bloom. With space came curiosity. With freedom came appetite.

You had taken to cooking, obsessively, tenderly, like it was a language you’d never been allowed to speak until now. You read everything, studied, experimented, especially with the things you could still eat in your condition—carefully adapting recipes, scrawling notes in the margins of dog-eared cookbooks, determined to learn through trial and taste.

Edward didn’t mind being your taste tester. In fact, he was proud of it. He could still remember the first time you tried falafel—the way your eyes fluttered closed, the soft hum that left your throat. You’d moaned, eyes rolling, and looked at him like you’d just bitten into heaven. That was the moment, he realized, when something cracked open in you. The joy of it. The novelty. The life.

You were good at it, too—life— naturally intuitive, and he couldn’t wait to see what else you’d make of this fragile, hard-won freedom.

In those early weeks, when you’d first begun spending more time together, more time outside the glass box Waller had kept you in, he hadn’t understood how sequestered you’d truly been, not until he saw you begin to live.

It was the little things. The way you blinked at real Mediterranean food like it was an alien delicacy. The thrill in your laugh when he taught you to drive, gripping the wheel like it might run from you. The tentative excitement in your voice when he took you shopping for the first time and you got to choose your own clothes. The awe in your eyes the first time you sat in a movie theater—not because the film was good (it wasn’t), but because you’d never been. He hated the movies. But he’d go again, just to watch you lean into him with wide eyes and butter on your fingers from the popcorn. He remembered your face during Chicago, your sheer delight at the razzle-dazzle of it, how you wouldn’t stop humming All That Jazz for a week. He remembered your first attempt at dancing in the living room afterward, barefoot and laughing, stepping on his toes more than once but never once apologizing.

It had stunned him how much you’d missed, how much had been stolen.

It made watching you now feel like witnessing a second childhood, or perhaps a first one finally earned. Everything was new. Everything was sacred. You moved through the world with that quiet wonder of someone touching it for the first time. 

Edward, for all his cynicism, all his bitterness, all his brilliance—had never seen anything more beautiful.

You had once been a ghost in your own life. Now, you were incandescent.

And he wanted to be there for every second of it.

Not just because he loved you—though he did, in ways that left him undone—but because you reminded him what it meant to be alive. You, with your wonder and your second chances, your sudden hunger for experience and stubborn joy in the smallest things. You made the ordinary feel sacred again.

He wanted to know everything.

Every errand you ran, every page you read, every craving you indulged or denied. Even when he wasn’t there to see it, he wanted the story, the texture, the tone of your voice when you recounted it. He wanted to live inside the details of your day like they were coordinates to a better version of himself.

“How was your day?” he asked, voice low, the edge of a smile still ghosting through it.

“Quiet,” you replied, shrugging. “Folded laundry. Took a nap. Scheduled my next OB appointment. Read a few chapters of that new book you bought me. Started this salad. Looked up whether pregnant women can eat raw eggs.” You glanced back at him, lips puckered into a faint pout. “Apparently, not unless you trust the pasteurization.” You turned back to the counter with a sigh. “So no Caesar salads for me.”

“How tragic.”

“Tell me about it,” you muttered. “I’d sell a kidney for a proper dressing.”

Edward exhaled through a smile, warm and faintly breathless. You reached for the oil and vinegar next, pouring with a practiced tilt of the wrist as the scent lifted into the air—herbs, citrus, warmth. The steam from the stove curled. You moved through it like a prayer in motion, barefoot and flushed, unaware—or entirely aware—of how hypnotic you were.

He leaned more fully against the doorframe, shoulder pressing into the wood, his glass loose in his hand.

“Sometimes I think I could watch you do this forever,” he murmured, more to himself than to you.

You didn’t turn, but the corner of your mouth curved. “What, cook?”

“Move. Breathe. Exist.”

You turned your head just slightly, smiling like you’d heard a secret in his voice. “You’re getting soft, Mr. Nigma.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He tasted his whiskey once more—cask strength Aberlour A’Bundh—delectable.

“Not bad,” you mused, tossing another pinch of herbs into the bowl. “Just different.”

But then you stopped, just for a moment. Your shoulders rounded forward slightly as your arm came up, fingers pressing into the side of your neck. You rolled it slowly, lips parting around a quiet, unconscious exhale as you worked at the sore spot. A small frown tugged at the corner of your mouth, more frustration than pain, but it was enough to pull his focus.

Edward’s eyes dropped to your hand. He watched as your thumb pressed into the side of your neck, tracing slow, practiced circles along the muscle. The motion was clinical—habitual, even. Not the gesture of someone indulging in comfort, but someone trying to stay functional. He noted the tension in your posture, the way your shoulder rose slightly as you worked at the ache. His gaze fell lower, to the thin gold band on your finger.

The light caught it—just briefly—and the diamond flashed once, sharp and clean. No ornamentation. No frills. Just one stone, perfectly set. A reflection of you, in its own way. Quiet. Exacting. Certain.

You were his. And you were hurting.

The corner of his mouth twitched, then flattened. The smirk dissolved without a sound. He pushed off the doorframe. There was no need to announce himself. You didn’t turn. You didn’t ask. He moved anyway, crossing the kitchen with practiced quiet, the sound of the floorboard under his heel registering. His glass made a soft clink as he set it beside your cutting board. 

Then he reached for you. His hand brushed your hair gently to the side, fingers sliding through the strands with care, and let his palms settle on your shoulders. The contact was familiar, but never casual. His thumbs pressed into the curve of your traps, fingers spreading with purpose across the muscles lining your shoulders. Your skin was warm beneath his touch—soft in some places, tense in others. He adjusted instinctively, reading you like a pattern he already knew by heart. Pressure shifted, movement slowed. This, at least, he could fix.

Edward stepped in closer, aligning his body to yours. His chest rested against your back, the contact seamless. The heat between you deepened. He exhaled near your ear, quietly, rhythmically, grounding himself in the act of touching you without taking, not yet.

But God—how he wanted to.

The curve of your body in front of him was breathtaking, almost criminal in its softness. He could see the faint sheen of sweat at the nape of your neck, the way your spine arched as you shifted your weight, how the muscle along your shoulders tightened and rolled beneath his hands. The sight of your body carrying his child—fleshed out, heavy with purpose, glowing without even meaning to—hit him low and hard.

You looked like abundance. Like divinity. You were creation itself. Alive, full, powerful. 

His eyes dragged over you with slow precision, cataloguing everything. The flushed skin beneath the kitchen light. The slope of your neck. The outline of your nipples, faint but visible through the thin cotton. The scent of cocoa butter and heat rising from your skin. The rhythm of your breath as it began to slow beneath his palms. He wanted to press his mouth to every inch of you, not out of lust alone—though the ache was there, thrumming—but because your body demanded reverence. 

And when you exhaled again, slower now, deeper, he felt it pass into him like a gift.

Edward’s voice, when it finally came, was a rasp against your ear—low, raw, and thick with a heat he didn’t bother hiding.

“You shouldn’t look like this…” 

You didn’t answer. You didn’t have to. Instead, you leaned subtly into his touch, and he felt it—the tension buried deep beneath your skin, the coiled ache in your trapezius, the exhaustion etched into the quiet effort of standing. He read it like pressure points on a map, each knot a signal, each shift in your body a confession.

Working in silence, his hands moving with slow, coaxing precision. thumbs dragging in steady, rhythmic circles, palms sweeping broad, calculated arcs across your shoulders. You were so soft beneath his hands, but worn, overused, holding too much. He didn’t want to fix it—he wanted to take it from you entirely.

With a slow pull, he drew the kimono from your shoulders, letting it slip down your arms until it bunched at your elbows. The fabric fluttered faintly before settling, leaving your skin bare beneath his hands.

And then his mouth found your neck. 

Edward began just beneath your ear—one kiss, feather-light, barely pressure at all. Then another, lower, where the skin pulsed with life. He lingered there, lips pressed to the heat of your throat.

“You’re running me,” he whispered, and the words landed somewhere between devotion and curse.

You made a soft sound, half sigh, half protest, but it was already dissolving.

“Edward, dinner—”

“Dinner can wait,” he murmured, and this time, his voice dropped, lower, rougher, colored with something darker. Beneath it, a growl flickered to life—the private one, the one that only surfaced when you were this close, when his hands were on you and you hadn’t yet told him to stop.

One hand slid up, threading into your hair with slow, deliberate care. The other reached to the side without looking, fingers finding the dial on the stove. He flicked it off in a smooth motion—reflexive, silent, already knowing where this was going—and returned to the warmth of your scalp, both hands now buried in you.

You began to object again, another quiet protest born of instinct more than intention, but the moment his thumbs found the base of your skull and pressed, slow and steady, you exhaled a soft gasp, lilting and honest. He felt it bloom against his cheek and he took it, gently, greedily.

His lips dragged along the line of your jaw, slow and reverent, tasting the shape of your surrender.

“I’ll order from that place you like,” he whispered. “The falafel bowls. Extra feta. Extra tzatziki.”

You let out a breath and he felt the tension begin to melt beneath his hands once more.

“But,” he added, voice now a velvet rasp against your ear, “if I’m being honest…”

Edward kissed the corner of your lips, lingering just long enough to feel the way you leaned into it.

“I’d rather have you for dinner.”

A groan escaped you, long, low, theatrical. Your shoulders dropped under his palms as if held up by nothing but protest, and then, slowly, you turned in his arms. The motion was sluggish, not from reluctance, but from weariness, the dramatic kind, the kind you performed just to make a point, like gravity had become a personal insult. Your hands found his chest, fingers curled loosely in the front of his shirt. You looked up at him, eyes warm, amused, and utterly exasperated.

“Edward,” you sighed, exasperated, “my ankles are swollen. I have stretch marks in places I don’t even wanna look. My stomach’s huge. I can’t see my feet. I can’t reach my legs. I haven’t shaved in weeks… I’m a cow.”

He blinked, just once behind his glasses.

Then, with the certainty of a man who had never once questioned his desire, he scoffed under his breath, a quiet, disbelieving sound, almost amused by the absurdity of your claim. Without a word, he reached forward, nudged the cutting board aside with a firm push, and stepped in closer. One arm slid behind your back. The other hooked beneath your thigh.

You didn’t even have time to protest.

Effortless, fluid, he lifted you with ease, like your weight meant nothing to him, like you were made to be carried. Edward’s hands found purchase beneath your thighs, guiding you higher onto the counter, and he set you down with the same care he might give to something priceless. His grip didn’t falter. His touch never wavered. He placed you as if he were positioning something he’d stolen from the Louvre—delicate, irreplaceable, wholly his.

You gave him a look for it, half-glare, half-blush, and he only smiled, that slow, wicked thing that lived behind his teeth when he wanted you to feel it.

“Careful now,” he murmured, stepping between your knees. “You’ll hurt my feelings talking about my favorite girl like that.”

Despite the weak protest, your arms looped around his neck and shoulders, and when he leaned in, he bent at the waist and braced his palms on the counter beside your hips, caging you in without pressure. His forehead met yours with a gentle brush, and for a moment, he just hovered there, breathing you in, letting your scent, cocoa butter, clean skin, cilantro, and something sweeter, something innately you, flood his lungs until he was drunk on it.

You tilted your head, just barely.

It was all the permission he needed.

The first kiss came slow, measured, reverent, a question asked with lips instead of words. He brushed your mouth once, tender and searching. Slower this time, his lips parted and pulled back only to find you again, savoring the plush give of you against him. It wasn’t a claim, but an exploration, a rediscovery. He shifted, tilted his head the other way, and kissed you deeper.

This time, your mouths aligned with aching symmetry—his bottom lip catching on your top, then sealing, slow and deliberate, only to part again. He kissed you like a man working out a rhythm, like he was memorizing the tempo of your mouth in long, coaxing passes, lips locking, unlocking, breath shared, heat drawn in and exhaled. Again. Again. A soft suck at your bottom lip. 

A hush settled over the kitchen as he leaned into you with the sensual confidence of a man who knew he didn’t have to rush. He knew you were already his, that he was already yours, and that the world—dinner, the stove, the outside noise—would wait for the two of you to remember how to breathe.

The manicured cut of your nails curled into his shirt and you sighed, something soft and lilting, something near relieved. The sound sparked like kindling in his chest. Whatever restraint he’d carried in with him, whatever stiff-collared professionalism still clung to his skin from the office, crumbled the instant your fingers threaded into his hair. He groaned into your mouth, a low and unguarded sound, hips nudging forward as if your breath had dragged it from him.

His arm curled around your lower back, hand sliding up beneath the loose drape of your kimono, fingers splaying wide across your spine. He pressed closer, close enough to feel the round swell of your belly settle into the ridge of his abdomen. The sensation grounded him, real, warm, heavy with the weight of what you'd created together. The other hand stayed low, fingers flexing against your hip, kneading softly, pulling you closer even though there was nowhere left to go. Your thighs framed his hips. Your breath came faster now. 

The kiss turned molten.

Edward licked into you with purpose, with need, tongue gliding over yours in a slick, coaxing stroke that made your breath catch. His hands flexed into your skin. You parted for him, sighing into his mouth, and he took it, stole it, drank you in like he needed it to live. Your tongues met in slow, sinuous rhythm, rolling and retreating, teasing and tasting. You were so soft, and he knew that softness now, knew how to coax it open with a well-timed drag of his teeth along your lower lip, a subtle press, a little pull. The way you gasped when he did it—the sound wrecked him.

When your nose bumped his, his glasses knocked loose, crooked, but he didn’t stop, didn’t care, not when your fingers curled deeper into his hair and pulled, sharp, decisive, right at the back of his skull. God, he loved when you did that. He groaned into your mouth, the noise ripped from his chest, unfiltered. Your thighs tightened around his hips, heels hooked at the backs of his legs. He pressed forward instinctively, letting the swell of your belly cradle against him as he rocked closer, mouth still working yours open. The kiss was clumsy in places, teeth grazing yours, breath ragged—but it didn’t matter. It was the eagerness, the recklessness that made it so fucking perfect.

When your tongue dragged slow and deliberate along the roof of his mouth, Edward shuddered. Still he chased more, lips slick and parted, breath coming harder now, little pants shared between each meeting of your mouths. Your hands slipped down the back of his neck, nails grazing lightly along his nape. It made his skin pebble.

He kissed you like a teenager, like a man starved, like someone who knew what he had in his arms, on his counter, in his life—and was terrified to lose it.

God help him, he wanted more.

Edward broke away just long enough to breathe against your lips, voice hoarse and uneven, still tasting you:

“Still think you’re a cow?”

Your exhale was light, disbelieving. “I’d say you’ve made a considerable argument against the claim.”

That earned the ghost of a smile. But he didn’t laugh. He stepped back instead, breath shallow, eyes glazed with a hunger that hadn't yet found its edge. He took you in fully—sitting there with your knees parted, flushed and tousled, skin glowing under the kitchen light, that ring catching every glint—and his expression softened.

Then, without a word, he dropped to his knees. Reverent, his palms came to your calves first, warm and steady, sliding down the back of each leg in slow, adoring strokes. He traced every inch. He leaned in and kissed the front of your shin, slow, deliberate, and lower. Next, your ankle. The side of your heel. The arch of your foot. He kissed with purpose, not hesitation, pressing his mouth to the places that had carried the weight of both your lives these past months. Swollen or not, sore or not, he kissed them with honor, hands supporting and cradling as he moved.

No hesitation, no glance for permission, he continued his quiet worship—steady, focused, sure.

Upward his hands traveled, gliding over the shape of your knees, and higher, slowing as they reached your thighs. There, where stretch marks curved across your skin in pale, tender arcs, he didn’t falter. He didn’t look away. Instead, he followed the traces with his mouth, one kiss, then another, breath feathering against the heat of your skin in soft, reverent murmurs.

Nestled against the cradle of your thigh, he paused to breathe you in, nose brushing the edge of your hip, like grounding himself in your scent was a necessary act. The kind that brought him back to earth when the rest of the world went hazy.

“Ha ha—Eddie, that tickles,” you laughed, high and breathy, twitching and squirming.

Edward huffed out a crooked laugh against your skin, something quiet, almost boyish, but didn’t stop, didn’t even slow. “Good,” he murmured, voice thick. “Maybe you’ll laugh again while I’m ruining you.”

Your snort dissolved into a hum as his mouth returned to work, hands rising to the hem of your shorts. He toyed with the waistband, tugging gently, his eyes flicking up in a silent, almost amused question.

You rolled your eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

He arched a brow, unbothered. “Lift your hips.”

Biting your lip, you did as ordered, and he peeled the fabric down, inch by inch, savoring the reveal. His gaze didn’t waver, didn’t skip. It traveled the path his hands took, drinking in the length of your thighs, the swell of your belly, the fullness of you—his, all of it, carved into memory and made holy by the weight of your shared life.

Shorts tossed aside, he bent again, brushing a kiss to each of your knees. Then, hands steady, he lifted your legs and settled them over his shoulders. The movement was unhurried, possessive. 

Only then did he lift his gaze—slow, deliberate.

When your eyes met his, he smirked, though not with arrogance. No, it was something far deeper. It was heat, the kind of hunger that simmered low and thick beneath the skin. Hunger that had nothing to do with the dinner cooling beside him on the stove and everything to do with the way you looked right now—flushed, bared, waiting for him.

Still, he didn’t rush. Hands firm at your thighs, he let his thumbs stroke lazy circles into the softest parts of you, grounding both of you in the slow rhythm of touch, anchoring, calibrating. The pads of his fingers sank just slightly, kneading as he dipped in, brushing his mouth to the inside of your knee.

Then higher. Another kiss. And higher again. His lips dragged upward in a slow, deliberate path, warm and parted along your inner thigh. The scrape of his breath against sensitive skin sent a shiver through you body and made you hiss. When his tongue flicked out to taste you, brief and sinfully precise, you flinched instinctively.

Edward chuckled under his breath, delighted, addicted.

Closer now, he pushed your thighs open with the reverent surety of a man who knew he was welcome, who knew this was his place—had always been his. He nestled in, nuzzling, breathing slow. And without another word, he pressed forward and buried his face between your legs.

The groan he gave, low and raw, melted into you, muffled by the soft give of your flesh. It vibrated against your skin, deeper than breath, heavier than air. He didn’t just want this—he needed it, needed you, needed the taste of you on his tongue.

With one slow breath through his nose, he buried himself deeper, shoulders pushing firm beneath your thighs. His hands didn’t wander—they held. One cupped the curve of your ass with quiet possession, the other splayed flat across your stomach, palm spreading just below the swell of your bump.

Then came the first Leisure lick. Too slow. Too soft. A teasing pass, exploratory and maddening. His tongue pressed flat and warm, a broad stroke from your entrance to your clit, dragging upward with decadent control.

You yelped, loud and helpless..

“Edward—” you breathed, laughing through it. “You’re gonna make me fall off the counter.”

“Then hold on,” he murmured against your folds, lips brushing your skin. “I’m just getting started.”

Another lick, this one firmer, intentional. He flicked his tongue once, then again, directly over your clit. Your hips twitched.

“Shit—” you whimpered, a hand bracing hard against the countertop edge. “Okay. Okay. Don’t stop—”

He didn’t.

Giving a low hum of approval, he sealed his mouth around your clit and sucked gently, then rolled his tongue in slow, rhythmic circles, patient and practiced. The noise that broke from you was ragged, halfway between a sob and a moan. He shifted closer, adjusting your legs, and kissed lower again, wet, open-mouthed kisses over your entrance.

“You’re unreal,” you gasped. “You’re—fuck—how do you know exactly what to do?”

He groaned again, lower this time, as if the praise alone could make him harder.

The vibration made your hips jolt. He responded with a firm grip to your thighs, keeping you still, and then sank deeper, mouth sealing around you with practiced, greedy devotion. He licked, sucked, kissed you like a man obsessed, like this was a delicacy he’d been denied too long and now planned to savor until his jaw ached. He tilted his head slightly, shifting angles, tongue dipping, teasing your entrance with slow flicks.

When you groaned, low, desperate, raw, your hand snapped into his hair, fingers threaded into the thick, chaotic mess he never managed to tame after hours, and then you tugged. Sharp. Unapologetic.

Edward moaned. The sound escaped him before he could think, unfiltered and aching. Christ, he loved that. The feel of your grip, the gasp it pulled from your lungs, the proof that he was getting it right. That he could still undo you, despite the months, despite the changes, despite the new weight of your body and the child inside it.

He pressed in deeper, mouth moving faster now, more insistent. His tongue curled into deliberate, rhythmic strokes, every movement calibrated to the way your muscles twitched, the cadence of your breath, the tremble that began to rise in your legs. 

God, you tasted like home.

Gentle as ever, he shifted his grip, hands sliding beneath your thighs, fingers digging into the soft give of your skin. He pulled you wider, closer, anchoring you open as if he needed to stake a claim. You weren’t going anywhere, not while he had you like this, not while your legs trembled against his shoulders and your breath hitched every time his tongue made another slow, punishing circle.

You were gorgeous like this.

Transcendent. 

“Christ, you taste—fuck.” The words rasped out against your cunt, low and guttural, barely intelligible between licks.

A shaky laugh bubbled from the back of your mouth. “So dramatic.”

Edward hummed in agreement, mouth too full of you to answer properly, and he swore he could feel the sound echo inside your body when his lips closed around your clit again, tight and focused. It was a careful seal of tongue and suction, a perfect pressure that made your hips jerk against him.

The moan that followed—Goddamn, that sound—filthy, unrestrained, fucking honest.

Again, your fingers clenched in his hair, tugging, sharp enough to draw a grunt from deep in his chest. His cock jumped in his slacks, thick and achingly hard now, straining behind his zipper. The sharp sting of your grip only fed the fire in his veins, only made him press closer, deeper, his hands flexing to hold you there. He slurped at your clit, loud, intentional, just to feel the vibration ripple through your thighs and hear you hiss through gritted teeth. 

Above him, you bucked. You squirmed. You slapped the side of the fridge with a blind, desperate hand, palm smacking metal, fingers scrambling for purchase like you were holding on for dear life. Your breath stuttered, hitched, raced. He could hear you panting, high and erratic, the sound of it nearly breaking him.

Then—fuck—your ankles locked behind his neck, dragging him in, trapping him there. A lesser man would have lost it. He almost did.

The pressure of your legs around him, the heat of your cunt against his mouth, the way you kept him there, not that he was going anywhere, sent a bolt of electricity down his spine. It rooted deep in his cock, now leaking in his boxers, twitching with every pulse of your hips.

“You have no idea,” he growled, voice dark and slurred as he pressed his mouth back to you, “how much I think about this.”

Tongue slick and deliberate, he dragged it from your clit to your entance in a long, slow sweep, savoring the taste of you. Salty, sweet, utterly you—soaked his chin, slick on his lips, clinging to the roof of his mouth. The tip of his tongue traced every swell, every dip, curling into you with obscene precision. His fingers slid beneath your ass, steadying you as you trembled, and his mouth opened wide to kiss you again—deep, indulgent, slow. The kind of kiss that belonged somewhere sacred. 

Mine, he thought, burying himself deeper. Fuck, you're mine.

“Oh my god, Eddie—”

That. That right there. The way your voice broke around his name, high, breathless, caught halfway between a moan and a plea, ignited something deep in his core. He’d never heard you like this before. Not so undone. So raw.

You were always so sharp, all bite and brilliance. Even beneath him, you didn’t give without a fight, sarcasm on your tongue, challenge in your eyes. But now? Now you were soft, needy. That ferocity he knew so well was gone, stripped bare, and the wreckage left behind was the most beautiful thing he’d ever witnessed. 

Edward could feel it, your body teetering on the edge, every breath shallower than the last. You were so sensitive now, everything swollen, stretched, your body doing the impossible day by day, and still—still—you gave this to him. Let him have you like this. Let him taste the parts of you no one else would ever know.

Your fingers raked through his hair, slower now, trembling. “You’re so good at this—fuck, right there—don’t stop…”

His cock throbbed. God, he needed you to cum, needed to push you over that edge with nothing but his mouth.

Smiling into you, he adjusted his grip on your thighs—fingers curling tighter, thumbs stroking in tandem as he buried his face deeper. The flat of his tongue dragged firm and slow up your slit, then circled your clit in a tight, deliberate loop. He tasted every slick pulse of you, lips parting as he sealed them around your clit and sucked, harder now, the pressure rhythmic, merciless, tongue flicking, rolling, coaxing.

You whimpered—high and shaken—and he nearly groaned in response, his hips rocking forward helplessly into the empty air.

“Yes,” you gasped. “You’re gonna make me cum, E-Eddie, please—”

If he could bottle that sound, he’d keep it in his pocket, let it echo in his ears every time the world tried to demand his attention elsewhere.

Tongue steady, unrelenting, mouth locked tight against you, he doubled down. Suck. Lick. Flick. Suck. The rhythm was practiced now, perfected, learned over countless nights of tasting your need, your ache. His nose brushed your pubic bone with every motion. Your thighs shook against his cheeks. Your ankles crossed tighter behind his shoulders.

Fuck—he could feel it coming. Not just in the way your breath caught or your muscles tensed, but in the way the world felt about to tip. You were right there. And he was going to take you over.

Because he could.

Because you let him.

But then—

Your fingers threaded through his hair again. They drifted lower, trailing across his temple with a featherlight touch. Skin to skin, your pulse thudding through your fingers—and something beneath that, a thrum, a flicker.

Lilac light bloomed softly where your touch met his skin, barely visible at first, just a shimmer at the corner of his eyes, just the whisper of something more.

Edward froze.

And then it hit.

The pleasure you were feeling was his now too, not imagined, not observed, lived.

It slammed into him with no warning, a white-hot burst searing through the base of his skull like a celestial bolt, a spike of raw sensation so intense it nearly sent him sprawling. His breath left him in a sharp gasp. Eyes flew wide, pupils dilating instantly, and for a split second, his mind reeled, lost in the impossible, overwhelming reality of you.

Because it wasn’t his pleasure flooding his senses. It was yours. And it was blinding.

He loved when you did this, loved when you touched his mind. What once felt like a breach had become something sacred. That first time, when your palm met chest and you saw everything—his lies, his truth, the emotions he thought he’s burned and buried deep—you'd slipped past his defenses. He’d hated it. Hated how easily you’d seen him. And later that same day, when he’d finally taken you to bed, you’d done it again—reached for him not just with your body but with your power, twining your desire into his until he couldn’t tell where you ended and he began.

Now, every time it happened, he opened to it, no resistance, no fear, just the raw flood of you surging through him—your nerves sparking against his, your pleasure becoming his own. It was unbearable, exquisite. It was communion. It was the one place he didn’t have to think. Didn’t have to solve. He only had to feel.

And he’d never stop craving it.

That impossible power of you curled into him, and he felt it all—every hypersensitive inch of your arousal. The heat swelling low in your belly, the tension in your thighs, the pulse between your legs that matched the rhythm of his mouth. The wetness, the ache, the pressure mounting like a coil winding tight inside you. Every flick of his tongue ricocheted back into him tenfold, amplified and relentless, as if the very nerves in your body had linked to his own.

You were flushed and open, trembling and desperate—and now he knew exactly how much. He felt the craving in your gut, the flutter of your heartbeat skipping with every lick, every kiss. Even the cold edge of the countertop beneath your thighs was eclipsed by the molten pleasure surging through your core, and he could feel it echoing through his spine as though he were the one on the verge of breaking.

A groan tore from his throat, guttural and involuntary. His spine nearly gave. He braced one hand against your thigh, the other clenching at your ass—not for dominance, but for balance. 

“Holy fuck,” he gasped against your cunt. His voice was hoarse, guttural. “Do it again.”

You didn’t answer aloud, just huffed a breathless laugh, and let the power surge deeper.

The next time his tongue stroked you, the pleasure loop hit him. His own mind lit up with the response—your body’s reaction. Your toes curling. Your belly tightening. The ache in your clit begging for more. It was all fed back into him with unnatural clarity, tinged with lavender light, like the sensation had a flavor.

“Feels so fucking good, sweetheart… You don’t even know…” He moaned into you—desperate, worshipful.

“You make me feel like this,” you whispered, breath catching as your fingers flexed against his temple, threaded deeper into his hair once more.

He shuddered.

Above, your voice throbbed through him, pleasure so close to his own now that he couldn’t tell whose pulse was climbing faster. His tongue worked you with slow, intentional fervor—flattening, circling, flicking—while his lips sealed around your clit again, suckling harder now, deeper, hungrier.

Then came the gasp. That sound—it snapped through his spine like a jolt, wrecking what was left of his composure. He moaned into you, hips grinding involuntarily in the air as he reached up, hand dragging along the soft underside of your thigh.

With exquisite precision, his fingers slid between your folds, slick and hot, and dipped inside—two at once, deep, curling. You clenched down with such heat and urgency that he choked on a groan, the vibration rolling into your cunt as his knuckles flexed. He fucked you with his hand as his mouth never left you, the rhythm devastatingly in sync—tongue at your clit, fingers driving up to press and drag and work the swollen ache inside you.

“Right there—God, Eddie, yes, right there, baby!”

The lilac glow flared again, brilliant against the shadows now pooling around the kitchen. The energy between you surged in a tide, crashing into his mind in waves—wet, swollen, unbearably sensitive.

“I’m so close—fuck, don’t stop—”

And he didn’t. He couldn’t. He was right there with you, drowning in your mind, in your heat, in the devastating way your walls spasmed around his fingers.

One more flick. One more pull of his lips. One final curl of his fingers against that sacred, pulsing spot inside you.

Your touch sparked at his scalp again, blooming light under your fingertips—

And then:

Fuck.

The feedback slammed into him like voltage straight to the base of his spine.

Your orgasm struck first like heat lightning, all flash and breathless rupture. But then—then—it surged.

It wasn’t just a contraction of muscle. It was a collapse. A supernova ripping through your core and detonating in his. Through the bond, it howled through him. The rhythm of your cunt locking around his fingers, the wet pulse of you fluttering, clenching, unraveling—it didn’t just register in his mind. It reverberated in his body, burned through his nerves, sent a violent tremor from crown to toes

Edward gasped, mouth still locked around you, tongue rolling through the flood as if he could drink it down and keep drinking until he drowned.

Then came the second wave.

A violet flare, bright as phosphorus behind his eyes, burst from the skin beneath your fingers like a shockwave. It hit harder than the first. Much harder.

Your scream split the room.

The utensils clattered off the counter beside him in a clanging chorus. The magnets on the fridge rattled, shivering down the metal. Mail fluttered from the island in a sudden, wild gust. The lights above flickered—then pulsed. 

“Holy shit… holy fuck… oh my god—” You writhed beneath the hold of his mouth, hips jerking, spine bowing, thighs trembling where they pressed against his shoulders.

Even as you shattered, even as the storm rippled through your body and his, he didn’t stop, he kept his lips on you—kissing through the quake, tongue softer now, gentler. Drawing the last threads of it out like silk from a spool, coaxing every twitch, every breath, every stuttering pulse.

You were undone. And so was he.

Soaked through and pulsing with the ache of his own release, he barely noticed the wet cling of slacks around his thighs. His cock throbbed with the fading burn of it. Spent, yet untouched, he didn’t care. Not when you were still trembling above him, not when your taste was smeared warm and sweet across his tongue, not when your power still sizzled behind his eyes like static under skin.

Edward’s fingers remained buried inside you, moving slow, deliberate, coaxing every last aftershock from your body. The tight flutter of your walls still rippled against him, fluttering in staggered waves. He felt your breath catch, slow, then still. A whisper of a hitch, a soft whimper, the barest shudder—all signs of you beginning the slow return to yourself.

At last, he lifted his mouth from you, reverent and unhurried. His lips glistened. His chin was damp. A drop clung to the edge of his lips. His tongue flicke to the side, gathering the fluid. Behind fogged glasses, Edward’s vision was glassy, half-lost in awe, still dazed with power and hunger and the ghost of your voice moaning his name in orison.

Finally, he looked at you, gaze flicking up, panting, licking his lips once. 

You were luminous in the low light, flushed from throat to hairline with sweat beading along your temples. Strands of hair clung to your skin, curling damp before your ears. Your nipples strained against the thin fabric of your tank top—tight, peaked, visible beneath the cotton—while your kimono hung twisted and wrinkled at your elbows, bunched from where he'd stripped it partway down your arms. The breath in your chest rose and fell in uneven pulls, just beginning to steady, lips parted in a dazed, ruined haze.

Your eyes met his—slow, heavy-lidded beneath your lashes, glassy with the afterglow—and he felt something in him clench hard and low. Something possessive. Something tender. Something that whispered you’d never looked more divine.

God help him.

Grinning with what little breath remained in his lungs, Edward murmured, voice wrecked and thick with pride, “You’re welcome.”

The look you gave him made something low in his belly seize. Your lips were parted, breath escaping in short, shallow bursts. And your eyes—God, your eyes—were blown wide, barely a ring of gemstone left around the darkness. For a split second, he thought you might faint. But then your hand snapped forward, trembling but sharp, and grabbed his tie with a suddenness that made his breath catch.

Edward barely had time to blink.

One harsh tug—no warning—and he stumbled forward, knees bumping the cabinets, pulled up between your thighs. His palms shot to the counter beside you to catch himself, bracing either side of your hips. Though you were already there, already meeting him halfway, already fisting the silk around his neck as you surged into him.

The kiss hit hard.

Mouths crushed together in a collision of teeth and heat, lips sliding, dragging, desperate. Your tongue curled into his with no patience, no pause—just molten want. You devoured him. Took him into your mouth and kissed like you needed to breathe through him, like it wasn’t enough to feel his hands on you or his mouth between your legs. You needed this.

Edward groaned—sharp and involuntary—into your mouth. His glasses slipped on the bridge of his nose. He didn’t fix them, didn’t even try, not when your tongue was rolling hot against his, not when your hands fisted in his shirt and dragged him closer until his abdomen crushed to your rounded one.

You tasted like sweat and salt and the last of your scream.

He kissed you back like it was the only thing tethering him to reality, like he could crawl inside this moment and live there—your breath in his lungs, your need on his tongue, your mouth claiming him in a way no one else ever had.

This wasn’t a thank-you. It was a promise. A declaration. A goddamn reckoning.

When you finally pulled back, both of you were breathing hard.

Softly, catching his breath, tasting you, he cleared his throat. But his voice still cracked, “Wow.”

A smirk curled at the side of your lips. “Feel like I should be saying that.”

Once, slow, Edward blinked. His pupils still hadn’t recovered. He was hard again already, he realized distantly, still pulsing against the seam of his ruined slacks. Every nerve in his body hummed, as if the center of gravity had shifted without his permission. His mouth parted like he might speak, but the words short-circuited somewhere between his tongue and lungs. Instead, he just looked at you. At your flushed face, at the sheen of sweat across your collarbone.

Your smirk deepened, that same wicked glint in your eyes you always wore when you had him exactly where you wanted him.

“You okay, Mr. Nigma?” you teased, fingers toying lazily with the end of his loosened tie. “Need me to get you a glass of water?”

“No,” he said, too quickly, too honestly. “Yes—I’m fine. I just…” He swallowed, and his eyes dropped to your lips again. “I wasn’t ready.”

“For what?” Your brow arched. 

“For that.” His thumbs circled into your skin like he still wasn’t sure you were real. “For you to kiss me like you wanted to crawl inside me.”

“Hmmm, I’ve already been inside you.”

Edward couldn’t help the laugh that burst out, full, with his head tilted back. “As enticing as that sounds—” he leaned forward, narrowing his eyes— “I’d much rather be inside you right now.”

“Haven’t you had enough of me?”

His hands drifted to your hips, smoothing up and over your belly before anchoring at your lower back. “Mmmm, never.” 

Then, he leaned in close, not kissing you yet, just letting his breath mix with yours, forehead brushing yours in a quiet kind of intimacy that made the kitchen feel sacred.

“You are,” he murmured, “utterly fucking magnificent… Let me have you.”

The words bled out of him in a plea, forehead pressed to yours. His hands—still slick from pleasuring you—rested on your back, thumbs tracing slow, grounding circles into your skin. You were still trembling, still flushed and sensitive, breath coming in little stutters beneath his.

“I want to be inside you,” he murmured, as if the admission cost him. “I want to feel you. I want to make love to you. Please. It’s been months, I—”

“Edward… I don’t—I don’t feel like myself. I’d feel so gross.”

He froze.

Not from hurt. Not from rejection. But from something worse. That you didn’t see what he saw.

That you couldn’t feel what he felt when he looked at you like this.

“Hey.” His voice was gentler than silk. A hand rose to cup your face, thumb brushing the corner of your lips. “Don’t say that.”

You looked away.

“Look at me,” he said, soft, but firmer now, urging your gaze back toward his with a gentle press of his fingers. “You’re carrying my child. Your body is… fuck, it’s miraculous. You’re divine. You’ve never looked more beautiful to me than you do right now.”

One of his hands drifted back between your thighs. He touched you again—gently, reverently—fingers gliding through your slick folds, memorizing you all over again. Your breath hitched and your eyes fluttered

“Edward…”

“I need you,” he whispered, kissing your jaw, your cheekbone, your temple. “Need to feel you wrapped around me. Need to be inside you again. Let me love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

You whimpered.

He smiled, just barely, against the side of your head, the heat of your skin mingling with the warmth of his breath. “Let me fuck you so sweet you forget you ever felt anything but perfect.”

Two fingers slipped just barely into you again, and your hips rocked toward him instinctively.

“Please,” he said—no longer teasing, no longer coaxing, just asking, voice stripped bare with need. “Let me make you mine again.”

The words felt dangerous in his mouth. Not because they were manipulative—he knew how to wield those. This wasn’t that. This was something else, something truer. His hand was still moving, slow and reverent between your thighs, coaxing heat from skin still trembling from the last time he touched you like this. He could feel it—the way your body betrayed any lingering hesitation, the way it leaned into his touch like it had never known another anchor.

Pressure bloomed behind his sternum as your fingers curled into his shirt. Atiny, almost imperceptible nod—the first crack in the dam—hit harder than any cry or moan could have. He would’ve waited longer, if he had to. He would’ve waited forever. But you said yes. 

“Yeah?” he asked softly, searching your face for any trace of uncertainty, smile widening as he pulled back a little.

“Yeah.” You nodded again, more sure this time, but your voice was still soft.

Edward’s breath left him in a short laugh—quiet and cracked. Then, unable to help himself, he pressed a kiss to your temple, sweat and softness clinging to your skin. “Okay,” he murmured, as if the word could hold the weight of everything he meant: I missed you. I need you. I’ll be gentle. I’ll be here.

In one fluid motion, he wrapped his arms around you, gathering you up like you were something sacred—because to him, you were. One arm beneath your thighs, the other braced behind your back, he lifted.

The sound you made was half-gasp, half-laugh, sharp with alarm. Your limbs snapped tight around his shoulders, instinctive, unpracticed in trust.

“Eddie—what are you—!”

“Shh,” he hushed against your cheek, adjusting your weight easily, anchoring you to him with effortless control. “I've got you.”

The round of your belly pressed into his abdomen. Your legs fluttered, trying to find their place around his waist, and he shifted his stance to steady you, not with strain but with certainty.

He didn’t mind the way your voice pitched higher in protest. He liked it, if he were honest. That thread of disbelief that still lingered whenever he showed you just how strong he really was. Just how easily he could carry you.

“You’ll drop me—”

The look he gave you was molten. 

“Never,” he said, voice was low enough to scrape. “Not in a million fucking years.”

And he meant it.

The moment your weight settled into his arms, something in him locked into place; not just desire, possession. He moved through the apartment with quiet, purposeful fury, jaw clenched, arms tightening around you like someone might try to steal you before he made it to the bed. As if God himself would have to fight him for you—and lose.

Light from the kitchen cut a soft trail behind them, warm and gold, throwing shadows that clung to the walls in smudged silhouettes. It made the two of you look mythic, something ancient and rare, carved out of motion and hunger. He didn’t look back.

At the bedroom door, he didn’t pause, just lifted one foot and kicked it open without ceremony, the wood swinging wide under his heel, no hesitation, no flair, just forward.

The air inside was warm, familiar. It smelled faintly of clean cotton and lavender wax, something you must’ve lit that afternoon while folding laundry. The rumpled bed waited, half-unmade, the imprint of your nap still dented into the sheets. Beyond the glass, the city lights cast dim ribbons of silver and violet across the duvet, as if even D.C. had the sense to go quiet for what was about to happen.

At the edge of the mattress, he slowed. Every movement now was deliberate, intentional. He bent—carefully, reverently—and lowered you into the bed like you were made of glass and starlight. His palms lingered as your weight met the mattress, adjusting your legs, easing your spine against the pillows. One final stroke of his fingers along your cheek, like he didn’t want to let go, like placing you down meant waking up from something.

But it didn’t.

This was real.

Then Edward stepped back, and he started to undress, not in haste, but in stages.

First, the tie—his fingers found the knot and loosened it with deliberate grace, drawing the silk from his collar in a single, silent pull. It hit the floor with a muted sigh. Then came the shirt, button by button, each one slipped through its slot. The shirt slipped from his shoulders, following the journey of his tie. 

From the bed, you watched. Your body had already begun to settle, the effort of movement replaced by stillness and breath. One hand rested over your belly, the other drifting to the edge of the sheets. The kimono still clung to the crook of your elbows, bunched and forgotten. You shifted gently, untangling yourself from the fabric, letting it slide off and disappear into the floor. Without a word, you slid beneath the covers, onto your side, facing him—watching.

Your gaze didn’t waver. “You’re taking your time. 

“I’m making a memory,” he answered, voice gravel-soft. “I want you to remember every second of this.”

Edward peeled the cotton undershirt over his head in a single, unhurried motion. The fabric caught briefly at the crown before sliding free. He let it fall without looking, without care. What mattered was in front of him.

Cool air met warm skin. He didn’t flinch. Instead, he reached downOne shoe came off. Then the other. Each movement was exact. Socks next, peeled down and tossed aside. Then the belt—undone with a clean flick, the buckle catching against itself once before it slid loose. He threaded it through the loops with practiced rhythm, hearing the faint whip of leather before it too fell to the floor in a pointed clatter. 

You giggled softly, head tilted on the pillow, arm curled underneath. “Okay, now you’re just putting on a show.”

Edward didn’t look away. “So what if I am?” The grin he gave you was small, crooked, genuine. His fingers moved to his waistband, precise and steady, the soft click of the button and hiss of the zipper breaking the hush between you. “Afraid you might like it?”

Your smile deepened. “More afraid I might like it too much.”

“I’ll remember that when it’s your birthday.” He pushed his slacks down, stepping out of them in a single motion. 

The roll of your eyes made him feel absurdly human, grounded, still, even then, your gaze stayed fixed on him—warm, bright, unblinking. You weren’t just watching. You were bearing witness.

So he gave you the rest of him.

His fingers found his glasses with the ease of ritual—brushing the frames where they rested on the bridge of his nose, then sliding them off. He folded them slowly. One click. Then the other. Nothing dramatic. Just quiet, practiced finality.

After that, he moved, crossed to his side of the bed, footsteps muffled against the rug. One hand turned down the covers. The other reached for the nightstand, setting his glasses in their proper place. .

Edward gaze flicked down your spine.

You were already curled on your side, half-buried beneath the sheets, hair mussed, skin flushed from the heat of your earlier release. Your hand rested over your belly. Your eyes hadn’t left him. Not even now. You turned your head slightly, craning back to keep him in sight.

That did something to him.

For a long, weightless second, he simply stood there—completely bare, utterly seen. He didn’t have words for it—not even in the private architecture of his mind, where everything usually had a name.

You looked like home.

He exhaled slowly, the breath pushing low into his abdomen, steadying him. Then, at last, he reached for the waistband of his boxers. Paused for one breath. Then eased them down and let them fall to the floor.

When he finally slipped into bed behind you, it was with the same care he gave everything that mattered. His body curved to yours instinctively—thighs folding behind yours, knees aligning, chest meeting the soft line of your spine still covered by that thin tank top. His cock pressed gently against the swell of your ass, but he made no move, no grind or thrust.

Edward’s arm slid under you, it snaked  around your waist, hand splayed wide and settling where it always did now: across the gentle round of your belly. The other slid to your hip, smoothing down and in, anchoring you to him. He nosed gently into the space behind your ear. Inhaled.

And just like that—he was home.

“Still sure about this?” he whispered into your hair, voice nearly swallowed by the space between your bodies.

The nod you gave him was small but certain. “I’ve never been more sure of anything… I’ve missed this.”

He closed his eyes, chest tightening. A kiss landed on your shoulder. Then another. Each one soft, deliberate, an anchor.

“You’re perfect,” he said quietly.

You snorted. “Tell that to my swollen ankles.”

“I would,” Edward murmured, lips dragging behind your ear. His hand slid up your thigh, warm and reverent, then along your arm until it found your bicep. He gripped gently, thumb tracing idle arcs into your skin. “I will. I’ll kiss every inch of you until you believe it.”

“You’re a sap.”

When he spoke, his mouth never left your skin.“I’m in love.”

With that, his hand drifted lower again, slow and searching, fingers skimming the shape of your arm and the curve of your waist before settling at your hip. You shivered beneath the contact, just slightly. He felt it, every twitch, every breath.

Edward shifted. The head of his cock brushed your backside—hot, firm, unhurried. He didn’t press, just let you feel it, let the anticipation build in the quiet space between now and yes.

“Are you comfortable?” 

“Yes, Edward,” you said, almost amused. “More than comfortable.”

Sighing through his nose, he kissed your shoulder again. Once more. Finally—he moved.

The head of his cock pressed against your soaked entrance from behind, and he groaned low in his throat the moment he breached you. One slow thrust, guided by nothing but instinct and restraint. The heat of you—soft and wet and so fucking tight—nearly made him stop right there, forehead falling to your shoulder, eyes squeezing shut.

He pressed into you like it was the first time, like the space inside you was meant for him and he’d spent his entire life learning the way back in. The glide was slow, careful. He filled you gradually, hips rocking forward in small increments, letting you take him inch by aching inch.

There was no sound but your breath catching. His low exhale. The faint rustle of sheets shifting beneath your bodies. No rush.

Edward wanted you to feel all of it.

And God, he did too.

You whimpered beside him, body stretching to accommodate and hips twitching back as he pressed deeper. One arm was still cradling your belly, the other hand caressing and smoothing down your thigh. 

“You okay?” he whispered, lips brushing your ear. “Sweetheart, talk to me—”

Your fingers found his, laced with them against your thigh, squeezed.

“I’m okay,” you assured. “I’m okay. Keep going.”

At that, he kissed your cheek. Your jaw. The corner of your mouth.

The next roll of his hips came deep—unhurried, intentional—like he wanted to feel you take him, memorize the way your body clung to every inch. The glide in was maddening, velvet over steel, tight and wet and still swollen from the orgasm he’d already given you. He moved with reverence, each thrust a stroke of worship.

A sound crawled out of his throat—low, cracked, a groan that dragged itself into a whimper as he rocked forward again, deeper this time. He didn’t have language for this, didn’t need it, just the brutal truth of friction and breath, the unbearable way you fluttered around him like your body was begging to be filled and held there.

You were warm. You were tight. You were trembling.

Edward felt everything.

The quiver of your thighs against his. The pulse of your cunt as it gripped him with each slow stroke. Every part of you yielded to him now, open and honest in a way you rarely allowed yourself to be. And it broke him.

“I could stay here forever,” he whispered, lips brushing the damp shell of your ear, voice hoarse from restraint.

The noise you made in response—it wasn’t a word, not really. Just a breath. A moan. Soft and shattered. It knocked the wind out of him. He rocked in again, a little slower, hips flush to your ass, cock dragging through your heat in an unbroken stroke that felt like absolution. Each time he bottomed out, he had to fight to breathe. Your body gripped him like it knew how much he needed this. How badly he wanted to deserve it.

His hand stayed where it had been the whole time—spread wide across your belly, thumb tracing gentle, reverent circles over the skin stretched tight with the weight of what you carried. He wasn’t fucking around it. He was fucking with it. With you. With this. With everything you'd built together.

This wasn’t indulgent. This wasn’t routine. It was sacrament.

“Jesus Christ,” he rasped against your neck, breath hitching. “You’re taking me so well.”

“Y-you feel so good, Eddie…”

Another thrust followed, then another—slow, dragging, designed to wring pleasure out of the space between pain and praise. His forehead dropped to the curve of your shoulder, lips brushing sweat-slick skin. You reached for him, and he felt your hand slip over the forearm that anchored you. Your nails bit into his skin just enough to make him hiss.

He didn’t care.

He wanted it to hurt.

He wanted to feel you mark him.

Your body rocked with him now, hips meeting his in a rhythm too ancient for thought. The sounds you made—ragged breaths, soft whimpers, that sharp inhale when he hit that deep, aching place inside you—he catalogued every one. Each sound etched into him like a carving.

Edward couldn't stop kissing you. Your shoulder. Your neck. The place behind your ear that always made you shiver. His lips brushed wherever he could reach, as if anchoring himself with affection, as if his mouth alone could make you feel adored enough to believe the things he still couldn’t say out loud. 

Palm wide, fingers spread, he caressed your belly, rubbing gently. You weren’t just warm and soft and wrapped around him. You were carrying his future. His child.

At that moment, omething shifted beneath his palm.

It was the faintest motion—barely there—but it stopped him cold. A soft, rolling press beneath your skin, no stronger than the flick of a pulse.

“I can feel them…” he breathed, voice catching, thick and fragile in the quiet. “They’re moving.”

Emotion coiled tight in his throat—hot, impossible, too big for language. His heart stumbled over itself.

With him enchanted, your hand reached up and found the back of his neck. Your fingers curled into his hair, gentle but grounding, and pulled him close. Your voice, when it came, was hushed and wrecked with love.

“They always do when you’re near,” you murmured. “It’s like they know it’s you.”

Edward’s eyes fluttered shut.

Something inside him folded.

Still sheathed deep within you, his hips resumed their rhythm—not urgent, not seeking—just slow, reverent movement. He rocked into you with the kind of care that felt generational. His mouth found your temple, warm and unrelenting, and he kissed you like it meant something. Because it did.

“They’re going to be brilliant,” he whispered against your skin, a soft confession exhaled between thrusts. “Unnervingly smart. Probably a little dangerous. Definitely unhinged.”

Your breath hitched on a laugh that melted into a moan. “Wonder where they’ll get that from…”

Edward bit your earlobe in response—soft, possessive. “You, obviously. I’m just here to make money and eat pussy.”

You snorted—then gasped, your hand tightening in his hair like you didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“And knock me up?” 

“That too,” he murmured, hips grinding forward in a deep, reverent arc. “God… look at you.” His eyes dragged over the curve of your body, dazed and hungry and full of awe. “You’re perfect like this. Full of me. Full of us.”

He said it like a prayer.

Still cradling your belly, his thumb swept slow arcs across your skin as if memorizing the shape of his future. The life moving beneath his palm made his chest ache in ways he didn’t know how to survive.

With every breath, he was falling further.

Edward’s hand drifted lower like a vow being spoken through skin. His touch skimmed the curve of your thigh with a reverence that bordered on religious, every inch of his palm dragging heat into the space between you. He moved slowly—intentionally—as if speeding would desecrate something sacred. Downward he traced, along the inner seam, until his fingers reached that soft, tender hollow just where your thigh met the slick heat of your core.

There, he stilled. Not from doubt, but awe.

The skin beneath his fingertips was fever-warm and trembling, and the space itself—hidden, wet, pulsing with life—felt like hallowed ground. He inhaled once through his nose, sharp and quiet, grounding himself before continuing. This was ritual. Worship. And he treated it as such.

When he touched you again, it was with the careful precision of a man re-learning scripture. His fingertips pressed delicately into the crease, gliding forward through the heat and mess, until he found what he was looking for: his cock, thick and hard, buried to the hilt inside your cunt. The sensation of it—slick and pulsing, dragging in and out with slow, punishing rhythm—stole the breath from his lungs. Edward could feel the obscene squelch of it, the stretch of you around him, the velvet glide of your walls as they gripped and released, gripped and released, milking him with every roll of his hips.

It was goddamn perfect.

The wetness that coated both of you was decadent, shameless—his spend and your arousal mixing in a heat-slick mess that clung to his fingers and made him ache harder. He felt everything: the way your cunt opened for him, sucked him in, held him like you never wanted to let go. Every twitch. Every flutter. Every needy pulse that told him you were close again.

Slipping back up, his fingers reached the swollen knot of your clit, but he didn’t rush, didn’t press. He circled it once—barely a graze.

You gasped, body jolting in his arms, thighs twitching, hips jerking helplessly against him like your nerves had been struck by lightning. The sound you made—high, broken, too raw to be purposeful—hit him straight in the gut. His cock throbbed inside you.

“Easy,” he breathed, mouth brushing your cheek as his fingers drew another slow circle. “You’re so sensitive, sweetheart. I know. I’ve got you.”

“Eddie, fuck, that—” you choked, head cranig back and body arching. 

“I know,” he whispered again, circling your clit in lazy, aching spirals. “I know, baby. I can feel it too. You’re squeezing me so tight…”

The pressure was maddening. Rhythmic. You were wrapped around him like you were made for it, like your body had memorized the shape of him and didn’t want to give it back. Every breath you took pushed against the hand on your abdomen. Every shudder of pleasure, every helpless exhale, he felt through that point of contact. He needed it. Needed to feel you unravel.

Edward kissed your shoulder. Your neck. The curve of your jaw. Open-mouthed, wet, loving kisses. His mouth worked in rhythm with his hips and fingers, tongue dragging along your carotid, teeth grazing when he couldn’t help it.

“You’re perfect like this,” he murmured into your throat, words sticky with heat and praise. “So fucking perfect.”

The both of you were close again, could feel it in the way his body tightened, in the way your cunt clamped down with each circle of his fingers, in the rising whimpers leaking from your mouth like truth you couldn’t hold back anymore. You were shaking in his arms. You were ready. You whined—soft, high, broken—and he smiled against your pulse.

“Think you can give me one more?” he murmured against your skin, voice low and coaxing, as if the request itself was a secret shared between breaths. “Just one more, sweetheart. Let me feel you come apart for me.”

Edward’s mouth ghosted over the nape of your neck as he moved deeper—steadier now, more purposeful. The pressure was exact, the angle carved into muscle memory, but it was the way you responded—how your body trembled, clutched, opened—that undid him. His fingers circled your clit with obscene precision, slow and devastating. He knew you too well. Knew the perfect rhythm, the pressure, the shape of your unraveling. Your body jolted at the touch, hips twitching, cunt fluttering around his cock in involuntary pulses that made his jaw lock with restraint.

“God,” he whispered, voice wrecked and reverent, lips brushing your shoulder in a kiss that barely had the strength to land. “You feel like divinity… like you were made to be worshipped.”

His hips rolled into you again—slow, deep, exact—and the sound you made in response carved itself into his spine. A moan turned helpless by overstimulation. A sound that let him feel you teetering on that impossible edge again.

Your hand trembled in his hair, gripping like you needed an anchor—but it was your other hand that undid him.

Without a word, you reached down, fingers twitching, and found the hand splayed protectively across your belly. He felt your fingertips brush over his knuckles, soft and shaking, before you threaded them through his own. You held him, palm atop his hand, fingers laced together. A perfect fit, practiced and familiar. 

The connection hit him like a surge—low and quiet, then rising, rising, blooming. Not a jolt. Not an intrusion. Something more like a tide: warm, steady, inevitable.

The glow began again, soft at first, no brighter than a dream, a gentle pulse of lilac light blooming and painting the air. He could feel it in his spine, fingertips, the marrow of him. Not a loop this time—a convergence. Something new. Something symbiotic. His pleasure and yours were no longer echoing. They were overlapping, layering, synchronizing.

Edward’s hips never stopped moving. His fingers never lost rhythm. But everything inside him changed. The world shrank to this—your breath, your body, your pulse inside his hands. The lilac light shimmered at the edges of his vision, dancing with every roll of his hips, with every circle of his fingers against your swollen clit. He could feel your orgasm before it came, not as anticipation, but as a presence, a rising wave already cresting in your belly—now in his.

When you gasped again, high and broken, trembling in his arms, he whispered like a man watching the stars fall:

“That’s it, baby… That’s it. Give it to me. I’m right here.”

You shattered.

Tight and wet, your cunt clamped down, milking him with unbearable precision. Your cry cracked the silence, raw and wordless, and Edward felt it in his ribs. Your orgasm detonated through you in a cascade of light and sound and sensation, every muscle locking in a perfect, helpless rhythm. Your body convulsed around him, fluttering in pulses that didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop.

It was too much. He gasped—choked—and thrust once more, deep and final and fatal.

Edward followed you. His body locked behind you, arms crushing you to him, mouth open in a . His cock throbbed inside you, ppanting, groan against your shoulder, pulsing in hard, staggering bursts as his orgasm tore through him. He emptied himself into you with reverent violence, every spasm of pleasure laced with awe and fear and love so sharp it almost hurt.

It kept coming. He came harder than he ever had. His balls tightened. His breath fled. His vision blurred at the edges with lilac light and the stutter of your name somewhere in his throat. You wrapped him in absolution. 

As if the world were breaking open, he held you, cradles you close as possible, hands still yet firm. As if he could keep you together by sheer will. His fingers stayed locked with yours over your belly, still threaded tight. Your bodies glowed—soft and fading now—an afterimage of something unrepeatable, a violet shimmer slowly dimming as the storm passed. And still he stayed inside you, forehead pressed to your skin, breath shaking through every exhale.

Neither of you spoke; couldn’t.

You didn’t need to either.

Your breathing slowed first.

Then his.

Bodies still tangled, limbs draped together, his sweat-slick skin beginning to cool beneath the hush of moonlight bleeding in through the curtains. The bed was soft beneath him, rumpled sheets twisted at his hips.

Edward didn’t move, didn’t pull out, didn’t want to. Instead, he curled tighter around you, chest pressed to your back, breath slowing against the nape of your neck. His thumb stroked lazy, reverent circles over the skin of your abdomen, as if calming the child growing inside… or reminding himself this was real.

After a moment, maybe minutes of laying like that, you sighed. Your fingers drifted through his hair, slow and languid, scratching at his scalp in soft, mindless motions. He melted into it, like a cat curling against its favorite hand, lashes fluttering against your shoulder as his body relaxed completely.

For the first time in what felt like years—though it had only been months, weeks maybe—the world no longer existed beyond the borders of your bodies. There was no Amanda Waller, no surveillance rigged into the halls of his apartment complex, no pressure of D.C.’s polished concrete streets or dead-eyed security details. No clock ticking in the background. No invisible leash. It was just silence, warmth, the shared breath between two people folded into the hush of after. And in that silence, something ancient stirred. 

It was the first time he’d felt alone with you in the way that mattered. Your skin was still glowing faintly, pulse slow and steady beneath his palm where it lay over your belly. That rhythmic rise and fall—paired with the aftershocks still echoing in your limbs—lulled him into a kind of stillness he didn’t know how to label. His fingertips traced gentle arcs across your skin, mapping the curve of your side, the delicate line beneath your breast, the soft weight of what you both had made.

As he held you, the thought came.

The child inside you was not yours. Not legally. Not in the way that meant anything to a woman like Waller. It was a commodity, a line item on her ledger, a biological footnote tied to an experiment he’d never been allowed to understand. For months, he’d treated that knowledge clinically, logically, like he always had. It wasn’t your baby. Not really.

But now? After this? After you—soft and open and radiant beneath him, your voice breaking around his name, your fingers clutching his, your breath shared in a secret? Now, the thought of that child belonging to anyone else made something lodge in his throat, a dry, tight, globus ache—like grief before it had a name. The idea of watching that life torn from you, parceled off to a woman who didn’t know the scent of your skin or the sound of your laugh, made his stomach knot.

Over the months, he’d watched your body stretch to make room for wonder, watched your mind learn softness, watched you choose joy, even in captivity. He'd traced stretch marks like scripture. Held your hair back when morning sickness knocked you sideways. Listened to your heartbeat as if it held the answer to every riddle he'd ever written. And all of that—every moment, every inch—had changed something in him. Not all at once. Not loudly. But something had changed…

Fully present, the hand on your hip trailed up to delicately brush your hair from your cheek, combing it back and continuing to pet the damp strands. 

Edward wasn’t a man who did well with feelings. That was the one blind spot even his ego couldn’t deny. He knew shame. He knew vengeance. He knew obsession like a second language. But love? Hope? The slow, disorienting ache of wanting something good and being terrified to want it—that was new. That was you. Since you, he had tried, tried naming things, tried defining what this was, tried speaking these strange new truths into existence before they withered on the vine.

So, to stay true to himself—to who he was now, to the version of him that you had helped coax out of the dark—he opened his mouth to say it.

But before the words could find air, you beat him to it.

“I want to keep the baby.”

Your voice came soft, uncertain, like a secret accidentally spoken aloud before it had finished forming. Your fingers were still threaded in his hair—slow, absent, affectionate. 

He stilled entirely.

His breath froze. 

His mouth snapped shut.

His eyes widened behind you. 

Every motion in him stilled. The hand on your belly paused mid-stroke. The fingers curled in your hair went soft, limp, like his whole body had forgotten how to move. For a moment, he didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

Because he’d heard your voice say so many things before—snide, clever, reckless, even vulnerable. But not like this, not so quietly sure, not so open. But what devastated him wasn’t just the words. It was what came after.

“I’ve never wanted that before. Never had the privilege to,” you added, softer still. “Until you.”

That cracked him.

It cracked him open.

Because he knew you—knew the armor you wore, the sharp edges you kept honed for survival before all of this, the way you used sarcasm like a blade and power like perfume. You didn’t say things like that, not unless you meant them.

Not unless they were already carving a place in your heart.

Edward swallowed hard, burying his face in your neck.

When he finally found his voice, it sounded nothing like the man who wrote algorithms for the U.S. government or the criminal who once held Gotham hostage with riddles.

It was just Edward. Raw. Stripped down. And scared.

“I don’t know if I know how to be a father,” he croaked. “But if you want this—really want this—I’ll stay. I’ll fight. I’ll give you everything. Even if I don’t deserve it.”

A breath, shaky.

“I’ll learn for you. For them. I swear it.”

That hand of his tightened over your belly, hoping it might keep the future from slipping through his fingers. You shifted slightly in his arms, pressing back into his chest, drawing his touch closer, your fingers tracing aimless lines over the back of his hand.

Neither of you had to say it—but you did anyway. Because naming the weight made it easier to bear.

“We’ll have to keep working for her,” you sighed. “Stay here. At least for now.”

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t argue. Just nodded against your shoulder, the tension in his jaw a mute acknowledgment. I know.

Edward knew what staying meant. It meant surveillance. It meant compliance dressed up as stability. It meant Waller’s grip tightening every time he exhaled too deeply. He had once been a god in Gotham’s underworld, feared and untouchable. Now he was a file on a desk. A number in her ledger. A tool.

And yet—

As you curled into him, as his hand remained firm over the life you carried, he exhaled.

Not in surrender. In promise.

“I’ll find another way,” he whispered, and it wasn’t just words—it was a blueprint already forming in the dark. “We won’t belong to her forever. I swear it.”

He felt your breath catch against him—but you didn’t question it.

Because if anyone could break the system from the inside—could disassemble Amanda Waller’s web of secrets with surgical precision and stitch a new future out of its ruins—it was him. No bombastic threats. No false bravado. Just quiet, methodical resolve. The kind that built empires. The kind that brought them down.

Edward pressed a kiss to your shoulder, slow and grounding. His nose nudged along your skin like he could inhale the last of the moment before sleep pulled it away.

Then, without thinking, his hand tightened—just slightly—over your belly. He could feel the faint warmth there still. The presence. The potential. The promise.

“Our kid’s gonna be terrifying,” he muttered, half-smiling against your neck.

Your laugh was wrecked and soft, pulled from the depths of exhaustion. “Only if they take after you.”

This time, he smiled for real, the kind that made his eyes close, the kind that reached all the way down. Held in the hush of a room no longer haunted by wires or walls—Edward finally understood what it meant to feel free.

With his body still wrapped around yours, your hand laced tight with his, and that soft psychic pulse thrumming low between your skin and his—

The world slipped out of focus.

And everything else faded.

Soft.

Violet.

Whole.

Did you like this? Check out the rest of the PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE RIDDLER series!

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