Chapter 4: Heat Dreams
The scent wouldn’t wash off. Rey scrubbed her skin raw in the shower until it stung, but the phantom imprint of him remained—a dark, possessive stain woven into her very cells. It was a perfume of power and cedar, a constant, maddening reminder of his claim. For two days, it was a low hum under her skin. On the third, it ignited.
A fever bloomed in her gut, a slow, insidious heat that radiated outward until her entire body felt flushed and oversensitive. The coarse fabric of her coveralls was sandpaper. The distant rumble of a truck engine vibrated through the soles of her boots and straight to her core. She fumbled a socket wrench, her hands trembling.
Maz took one look at her glazed eyes and the fine sheen of sweat on her forehead and pointed to the door. “Go home, Rey. Now. Before it gets worse.”
Rey didn’t argue. The walk to her apartment was a blur of overwhelming sensation—every stray scent from a food cart, every passing glance, felt like an assault. She locked the door behind her, leaning against it with a gasp. Her cozy sanctuary, with its mismatched furniture and posters of starships, felt like a cage. The scent of the coffee she’d brewed that morning, usually a comfort, was now cloying and sickly sweet.
She collapsed onto her bed, the sheets tangling around her legs. Sleep was a fractured, feverish thing.
In the dream, he was already there. Not emerging from shadows, but a solid, breathing weight on top of her, pinning her to the mattress. The dream was not soft. It was brutal and explicit. His naked body was a landscape of hard muscle and pale skin, corded with strength. He didn’t speak. He just looked down at her, his dark eyes burning with a possessive fire, and entered her in one vicious, tearing thrust.
Rey arched off the bed, a silent scream caught in her throat. He was huge, stretching her open with a pain so sharp it bordered on pleasure. He set a punishing rhythm, each drive of his hips slamming into her cervix, the sound of their bodies connecting wet and obscene in the quiet room.
“This cunt was made for me,” his voice growled in her ear, a raw, filthy whisper that was part dream, part memory. “You can fight it all you want, but you’ll always be mine. You’ll always take my knot. You’ll scream for it.”
He fucked her like he was trying to break her apart and remake her in his image. And her body, traitorous and eager, clenched around him, welcoming the violation, the heat inside her coiling into a tight, desperate knot of need.
She woke with a gasp, her body convulsing. The dream-phantom of him vanished, but the ache remained, a deep, throbbing emptiness between her legs. Her sheets were soaked with sweat, clinging to her skin. The scent of her own arousal, thick and sweet as honey, filled the room, mingling with the lingering trace of him.
A low, desperate whine escaped her lips. She was on fire. Her hand slid down her stomach, under the waistband of her panties, of its own volition. Her fingers met slick, heated flesh. She was drenched, her folds swollen and sensitive. She didn’t tease. She drove two fingers inside herself, a ragged cry tearing from her throat at the contact. It wasn’t enough. It was like trying to put out a forest fire with a cup of water.
She fucked herself with her own hand, picturing the dream—his brutal pace, the feel of his cock stretching her, the filthy words in her ear. Her hips bucked off the mattress, matching the rhythm of her fingers. She was close, so close, the pressure building in her core.
A floorboard creaked.
Her eyes flew open. Her hand stilled, buried inside her.
He stood in the doorway of her bedroom, a silhouette darker than the shadows of her apartment. He must have picked the lock. He wore only black trousers, his chest bare, a testament to the same fever that gripped her. His scent, now unleashed and fully dominant, crashed over her like a wave, drowning out everything else.
Rey yanked her hand free, scrambling back against the headboard. “Get out.” The words were a breathless, weak protest.
Kylo didn’t even acknowledge them. His eyes were locked on the glistening wetness on her fingers. He crossed the room in three long strides, the air crackling with the intensity between them. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t speak. He grabbed her hips and flipped her onto her stomach with effortless strength, yanking her to the edge of the bed.
“No—” she choked out, but it was a useless reflex.
He ripped her panties down her thighs. The cool air hit her wet skin, and she shuddered. One of his large, warm hands pressed between her shoulder blades, holding her down. The other hand guided the thick, blunt head of his cock to her entrance. He was slick with pre-cum, or maybe it was her own arousal. It didn’t matter.
He pushed inside.
Rey cried out, her fingers clawing at the sheets. He was bigger than her fingers, bigger than her dream, a solid, burning intrusion that filled her completely. He didn’t wait for her to adjust. He withdrew and slammed back in, setting a ruthless, animalistic pace from the first thrust.
“Fuck,” he grunted, his voice thick with lust. “So fucking tight. Dripping for me.”
He leaned over her, his chest pressing against her back, his mouth near her ear. His breath was hot. “This is what you needed, isn’t it? Couldn’t even wait. Had your fingers in your cunt, thinking of me.”
She wanted to deny it, to scream at him, but all that came out was a broken moan as he hit a spot deep inside her that made her vision whiten. Her body was betraying her utterly, clenching around him, milking his cock with each brutal stroke.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his hand moving from her back to wrap in her hair, tugging her head back. “Tell me whose cunt this is.”
She shook her head, tears of frustration and overwhelming pleasure leaking from her eyes.
He drove into her harder, his rhythm becoming erratic, frantic. “Say it.”
“Yours,” she sobbed, the word ripped from her. “It’s yours.”
A low, guttural sound of satisfaction rumbled in his chest. His thrusts became shorter, harder, deeper. She could feel him swelling at the base, the beginning of his knot. The pressure was immense, stretching her even further, a blinding, perfect fullness. He shoved his knot inside her with a final, searing thrust, locking them together.
His release was a hot flood inside her, pulse after pulse, and it triggered her own. Her orgasm crashed over her, a violent, shattering wave that left her trembling and boneless, pinned beneath him. He collapsed over her, his weight a solid, anchoring presence, his breath harsh in her ear.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the feeling of him locked deep inside her. The heat, for the moment, was sated. The frantic edge was gone, replaced by a heavy, languid exhaustion.
Slowly, he shifted them, turning onto their sides without breaking the join, his arms wrapping around her waist, holding her close against his chest. His nose nuzzled the mating gland on her neck, his scent enveloping her completely.
Rey lay there, trapped in the aftermath. The fight was gone, drained out of her along with the fever. But as her mind began to clear, a cold, sharp sliver of dread pierced the haze. This wasn’t over. It had only just begun. And the most terrifying part was the small, secret part of her that never wanted him to let go.
His weight was a furnace against her back, his breathing a steady rhythm in her ear. The ache between her legs was a deep, thorough reminder of what they’d just done, a soreness that felt disturbingly like possession. She tried to shift, to put an inch of space between them, but the movement only made her more aware of the damp patch on the sheets and the way his arm tightened around her waist.
“Stop squirming,” his voice was a low, sleep-thickened rumble against her neck.
“You’re crushing me,” she muttered, the words lacking any real force. Her body felt heavy, liquefied by the receding tide of her heat and the brutal efficiency of his claiming.
He didn’t loosen his hold. Instead, he nuzzled deeper into the junction of her shoulder, his lips brushing over the scent gland he had marked in the garage. A fresh, subtle wave of his cedar-and-darkness scent washed over her, a deliberate reinforcement. It should have felt like a violation. It mostly felt like a sedative.
“Go to sleep, Rey.”
Her name in his mouth was a new kind of intimacy, one she wasn’t prepared for. She stared at the faint light from the streetlamp filtering through her window, painting stripes across her poster of the Millennium Falcon. This was her space, her sanctuary, and he had invaded it completely. Now he was telling her to sleep as if he belonged here.
Her mind raced, a frantic hamster on a wheel. What happened when his knot went down? What would Maz say? What did this make her? The questions were a sharp, panicked chorus.
His breathing evened out behind her, the deep, slow cadence of someone slipping into unconsciousness. The hand splayed on her stomach relaxed, his fingers going slack. The utter normality of it was the most disorienting part. The most powerful Alpha she’d ever encountered was falling asleep in her bed like a spent lover.
She could try to shove him off. She could scream. But her limbs were leaden, and a profound, cellular exhaustion was pulling her under. The frantic need that had clawed at her for days was quiet, replaced by a hollow, satisfied ache. Her eyelids grew heavy, the stripes of light on the wall blurring into a soft glow.
The last thing she felt was the faint, possessive pressure of his hand on her skin. Then the darkness took her.