Chapter 3: Midnight Claim
The black car didn’t return. For three days, the only vehicles that pulled into Maz’s garage were beat-up sedans and delivery trucks, their drivers oblivious to the tension that hung in the oil-scented air. Rey threw herself into work, the grind of metal and the roar of engines a welcome distraction from the static hum under her skin. She changed her blocker patch with a grim, ritualistic precision, pressing it hard against the gland on her neck as if she could seal it shut.
“You’re working too hard, kid,” Maz said, watching Rey attack a corroded exhaust manifold with a blowtorch. Sparks flew in a bright, angry cascade.
“Rent’s due,” Rey grunted, not looking up. The lie was easier than the truth: that if she stopped moving, she would start thinking. And thinking led to remembering the weight of a specific gaze, the timbre of a voice that had seeped into her dreams.
“Rent’s paid. You pre-paid for the month. Try again.”
Rey switched off the torch. The sudden silence was heavy. “I just need to keep busy.”
Maz gave a slow, understanding nod. “He’ll come when he comes. Burning out your spark plugs won’t change that.”
So Rey worked late. After Maz left, locking the front office with a cheerful “Don’t stay all night!”, the garage became a cavernous expanse of concrete and shadows. The only light came from a single, flickering fluorescent bulb above her workbench, its erratic buzz the only company. The air was thick and still, saturated with the ghosts of the day’s labor—oil, gasoline, hot metal. The hum of distant traffic was a faraway lullaby.
She was elbow-deep in the X-wing’s engine block, her world narrowed to the alignment of gears and the feel of a wrench in her hand, when the quality of the silence changed.
It wasn’t a sound. It was a pressure shift, a vacuum forming in the space behind her. The fine hairs on her arms stood up. Her breath hitched in her throat, her body recognizing the threat before her mind could catch up.
Slowly, she turned.
He stood just beyond the pool of jittering light, a part of the shadows he’d stepped from. No long coat, no entourage. Just black trousers and a dark shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders. He had moved without a sound, a predator navigating its own territory.
Kylo Ren.
His eyes, dark and impossibly focused, were already on her. He didn’t smile. He didn’t speak. He simply stepped forward into the light, his movements fluid and unnervingly quiet.
Rey’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. She tightened her grip on the wrench, her knuckles bleaching white. “Get out.” The words came out a strained whisper, lacking any of the force she intended.
He ignored her. He stopped an arm’s length away, close enough for her to feel the heat radiating from his body, to catch the full, undilited force of his scent. It wasn’t just coffee and cedar now. It was raw power, dominance, a dark and compelling promise that made her head spin. Her own scent, a nervous, sweet counterpoint of jasmine, betrayed her instantly.
His gaze dropped to the wrench in her hand, then back to her face. A flicker of something—amusement?—crossed his features. It was gone in an instant.
Then he did something she didn’t expect. He raised his left hand. He was wearing a single, black leather glove. With a deliberate slowness that felt like a ritual, he pressed the bare index finger of his other hand to the scent gland at the base of his own throat.
Rey froze, mesmerized and horrified.
He held her gaze, his dark eyes pinning her in place as he dragged that finger, now coated with the pure, concentrated essence of himself, slowly down the column of her throat.
The touch was a brand. A bolt of white-hot lightning. It seared through her skin, through muscle and bone, straight to her core. Her body went rigid, then liquid. A wave of dizzying heat washed over her, followed by a shocking, deep-seated tremor of recognition. Her knees buckled. She barely caught herself on the edge of the workbench, the wrench clattering to the concrete floor. The sound was deafening in the silence.
He leaned in, his mouth close to her ear. His voice was a low, visceral rumble that she felt in her teeth.
“Mine.”
The word was not a question. It was a fact, etched into her very cells with his scent. He straightened up, his eyes sweeping over her once more, taking in her disheveled hair, her rapid breaths, the utter defeat of her posture.
Then he turned and walked back into the shadows, disappearing as silently as he had arrived.
Rey slid down the side of the workbench until she was sitting on the cold, dirty floor. She brought a trembling hand to her throat. The skin there was hypersensitive, buzzing. She could smell him all over her—a dark, possessive shroud that had sunk into her pores, overwhelming the clinical scent of her blocker. It was everywhere. In the air she breathed. On her skin. Inside her.
She drew her knees to her chest, buried her face in her arms, and waited for the shaking to stop. It didn’t.