I woke with my cheek pressed to the hard plane of Akira's chest, his heartbeat a slow, steady drum beneath my ear. The scent of him—gun oil, blood, and something darker—filled my lungs. For one disoriented second I thought I was still in the first-aid room, curled on that unforgiving chair while I watched over him. Then memory slammed into me: exhaustion had dragged me under sometime before dawn.
Heat flooded my face. I tried to bolt upright, but his arm locked around my waist like iron, dragging me back down against him.
"Going somewhere, little nurse?" His voice was gravel and smoke, rumbling through his ribs into my body.
"How—" My throat was dry. "How am I in your bed?"
A low laugh vibrated under my palms. His fingers came up, slow and deliberate, tracing the burning line of my cheek. "I woke three hours ago. You were asleep on that chair, neck bent like a broken bird. I carried you here. My room. My bed. My rules."
Last night crashed over me again—gunfire, his blood soaking my hands, the way I'd stepped between him and death without thinking. My fingers flew to the bandages across his ribs. "Your wounds—"
"Are nothing." He caught my wrists, pinned them above my head with one hand, and used the other to rip his shirt open. Buttons scattered like gunshot. Fresh scars and old ones crisscrossed his torso, but the new gashes were already knitting beneath my clumsy stitches. "See? Still breathing. Still dangerous."
Before I could speak he flipped me onto my back, the mattress swallowing my gasp. He loomed above me, all shadow and muscle and predatory calm.
"Why do you keep pretending to be sweet, Amane?" His mouth brushed my ear, teeth scraping the lobe. "Last night you stood in front of a loaded gun for me. Fearless. Stupid. Mine." The last word was a growl that sank straight between my legs.
My breath hitched. "I told you," I whispered, "you already own me. Punish me however you want."
His eyes flashed—something feral and reverent at once. Then his mouth crashed against my throat, no gentleness, just raw claim. Teeth scored my pulse; his tongue followed, hot and wet, dragging fire across my skin. I arched without meaning to, a helpless sound escaping me.
He dragged that wicked tongue up the column of my neck, over my jaw, and forced my lips apart. The kiss wasn't a kiss—it was invasion. He took my mouth like he'd taken the battlefield: no mercy, no retreat. His tongue stroked mine, demanding surrender, tasting every corner until my head spun and my thighs clenched.
He pulled back just enough to let me drag in one ragged breath—then his palm cracked across my cheek. Not hard enough to bruise, just enough sting to make my eyes water and my core flood with wet heat.
"Look at you," he rasped, gripping my jaw, forcing my gaze to his. "Flushed. Trembling. Mine."
My cheek burned; my lips throbbed. I couldn't speak—only panted, drowning in him.
His forehead pressed to mine, voice cracking for the first time. "Since the day I saw you in that house, collared like an animal, something in me broke. I bought you because I couldn't leave you there. Every minute near you I want more—your breath, your blood, your screams. But I'm a soldier, Amane. Tomorrow isn't promised. Today might be my last. How can I let you love a ghost?"
The confession tore out of him like shrapnel. My heart cracked open and bled.
I surged up, wrapping my arms around his neck, dragging him down until our mouths almost touched. "If you die," I breathed against his lips, "I die with you. I don't care about tomorrow. I only care about right now—about you inside me, owning me, ruining me."
A shudder ripped through him. "Then you're mine," he snarled. "Completely."
His hands shoved under my shirt, rough palms scraping over my ribs until he closed one brutal hand around my breast. My nipple peaked instantly against his calluses; he pinched hard enough to make me cry out, then soothed the sting with his mouth, sucking through the fabric until it was soaked and clinging.
Lower. Always lower.
He ripped the shirt up and off me, baring me to the cold air and his hotter gaze. His mouth traced a molten path down my sternum, tongue swirling into my navel until my hips jerked off the bed. Then lower still.
He shoved my thighs apart with no pretense of gentleness. The first swipe of his tongue between my legs tore a raw moan from my throat. He didn't tease—he devoured. Lips sealed over my clit, sucking hard, relentless, while two thick fingers thrust inside me without warning. My back bowed; the pleasure was violent, almost painful.
I came with a broken scream, thighs clamping around his head, inner walls pulsing greedily around his fingers. He kept licking, drawing it out until I was sobbing, oversensitive and begging—though I didn't know if I was begging him to stop or never stop.
Only when I was limp and shaking did he rise up over me again. His mouth glistened with me; the sight sent another helpless clench through my ruined body. He kissed me—fierce, filthy, letting me taste my own desperation on his tongue.
This time I kissed him back like I was starving. My legs wrapped around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, urging him closer. I felt the thick, bare length of him—hot, rigid, already leaking—nudging against my soaked entrance.
He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes. In them I saw war and worship and a lifetime of lonely nights collapsing into this single moment.
"Last chance, Amane," he said, voice ragged. "Tell me to stop and I'll walk away. But if I take you now, I take everything. Your body. Your future. Your last breath if it comes to that."
I dragged his mouth back to mine and whispered against his lips the only truth left in me.
"Take me, Akira. Break me. I was never whole until you."
With a guttural sound—half curse, half prayer—he drove into me in one brutal thrust.
There was no slow surrender after that.
Only the wet slap of skin on skin, the creak of the bedframe, my nails raking down his scarred back as he fucked me like the world was ending at dawn. Every stroke branded me deeper—his. His teeth sank into my shoulder hard enough to mark; I screamed his name and clenched around him, milking him, begging without words for everything he'd promised.
When he came it was with my name torn from his throat, hips snapping deep, flooding me with heat that felt like both salvation and damnation. I followed him over a second later, shattering around him, vision whiting out as pleasure ripped me apart and stitched me back together wrong—perfectly wrong.
He collapsed over me, sweat-slick and trembling, face buried in my neck. I held him like I could keep death itself from ever finding the door.
Outside, somewhere far away, the war still waited.
In here there was only the ragged sound of our breathing and the knowledge that whatever tomorrow took, it would have to pry me from his cold, dead hands first.
I was his.
And he was mine.
Until the last bullet found us.