Chapter 9: Morning Domination
The smell of coffee and frying bacon wrapped around Matthias, a familiar, comforting blanket. Morning light, sharp and clean, sliced through the panoramic windows, painting the hardwood floor in long, brilliant rectangles. He stood at the kitchen counter in his boxers and a thin, worn t-shirt, humming something tuneless as he nudged the sizzling strips with a fork. The world outside was a silent, blue-white sculpture. Inside, it was warm, and he was at peace.
He didn’t hear her approach. One moment he was alone with the pop and sputter of fat; the next, he was aware of a presence filling the doorway behind him. A change in the air pressure. A scent of clean skin and something faintly metallic, like a storm on stone.
He turned, a casual smile ready on his lips.
Tektah stood there, silhouetted by the hallway’s gloom. She’d pulled on one of his flannel shirts but hadn’t buttoned it. It hung open, framing the smooth, sun-tanned planes of her torso, the lean muscle of her stomach. Her eyes, a luminous green in the morning light, weren’t looking at his face. They were fixed on him with an intensity that stripped the warmth from the room and replaced it with a different, more primal heat.
Her gaze traveled down his body—the thin cotton of his shirt clinging to his slender frame, the loose boxers—and her expression shifted. The sleep-softened edges hardened into something hungry and deliberate. The films, the tears, the vulnerability of the night before were gone, burned away in the kiln of dreams he knew nothing about. What remained was pure, feral want.
“You’re up early,” he said, his voice sounding too bright, too normal in the charged silence.
She didn’t answer. She took a step into the kitchen. Then another. Her movements were fluid, predator-smooth. The confident swagger was back, but it was dialed to a dangerous pitch. There was no cheekiness in it now, only intent.
He took an involuntary step back, his hips bumping against the counter’s edge. The fork clattered from his hand onto the slate.
“Tek?”
In two strides she was on him. Her hands, strong as steel cables, gripped his shoulders and spun him around, pressing his chest and face against the cool wood of the kitchen table. The breath rushed out of him in a surprised grunt. Before he could process it, her fingers hooked into the waistband of his boxers and yanked them down to his thighs in one rough, decisive motion.
The cold air hit his exposed skin. Then the hotter, overwhelming press of her body, pinning him. He felt her, hard and insistent, against the cleft of his ass. A shockwave of understanding, dizzying and electric, jolted through him. This wasn’t an invitation. It was a taking.
“Wait—” he gasped, the word muffled against the wood.
One hand fisted in his hair, not painfully, but with absolute authority, keeping his head down. The other grasped his hip, her nails biting in. Her breath was hot against the shell of his ear.
“No,” she whispered, and the word was a low vibration that went straight to his core. “No waiting.”
There was no preparation, no gentle coaxing. She spat into her palm, a crude, efficient sound, and slicked herself. The next moment, she was pushing into him. The intrusion was blunt, a stunning, burning stretch that forced a choked cry from his throat. His knees buckled, but her body was an immovable wall behind him, holding him up, driving him forward onto the table.
She didn’t stop. She sheathed herself to the hilt in one relentless, claiming stroke, and stilled, buried inside him. A ragged groan was torn from her, a sound of profound, desperate conquest. They were both trembling, him from the shock of the invasion, her from the effort of her own control.
Then she moved.
It was nothing like the night before. This was raw, untamed, a physical expression of something that had no words. She set a brutal, piston-like rhythm, slamming his body against the edge of the table with each thrust. The windows rattled faintly in their frames. A spoon jumped from a ceramic jar and clattered to the floor.
He was adrift in a storm of sensation. The pain melted, transfigured by a shocking, deep-gearing pleasure that sparked from every nerve ending. The dominance of her, the sheer unapologetic force of her need for him, shattered every last fragment of his shyness. He pushed back against her, meeting her thrust for thrust, a raw, guttural sound escaping him.
“Yes,” she hissed, the word a crack of triumph. Her hand left his hip and snaked around his front, finding him hard and eager. Her grip was firm, stroking him in time with her punishing rhythm. “You are for this. You are for me.”
It was too much. The dual assault, the violation that felt like worship, the smell of bacon burning forgotten on the stove—it coalesced into a white-hot point of impossible tension. He came suddenly, violently, over her hand and onto the table’s wood, his shout muffled against the surface. His body clamped around her, spasming, and that was all it took to shatter her remaining control.
Her rhythm broke into a frantic, stuttering cadence. A sharp, elvish word he didn’t know—a curse or a prayer—exploded from her lips. She stiffened, her whole body going rigid as a bowstring against his back, and he felt the hot, pulsing rush of her release deep inside him. She collapsed over him, her weight driving him further into the table, her forehead pressed between his shoulder blades. They stayed like that, joined, panting, slick with sweat in the morning sun.
The world slowly seeped back in. The angry hiss of burning meat. The ache in his hips. The warm, sticky mess between them.
She was the first to move. With a soft, wet sound, she withdrew. The sudden emptiness felt vast. He heard her take a stumbling step back. He pushed himself up, his arms shaking, and turned to look at her.
She stood a few feet away, breathing hard. The flannel shirt was still open, hanging loosely. Her face was a mask of conflict—satiation warring with a dawning, horrified clarity. She looked at him, at his state of undress, at the evidence of their frenzy on the table, and then down at her own hands as if seeing them for the first time.
“Matthias,” she said, his name sounding strange and small in her mouth. Her voice, so confident moments before, was thin. She wrapped her arms around herself, a vulnerable gesture that seemed utterly foreign on her. “I… I did not ask.”
He pulled his boxers up, wincing at the tenderness. He reached out and turned off the smoking stove. The silence that followed was louder than their coupling had been.
“You didn’t have to,” he said finally, his own voice rough.
She flinched. “That is not…” She shook her head, her ponytail swishing. The confident rogue was gone, replaced by someone who looked young and scared. “On my world, that is something an… an enemy might do. To claim. To defile. I saw you there, and the dream was still on me, and I just…” She trailed off, her gaze skittering away from his. The raw need was gone, replaced by a deep, familiar shame. “I took you like an animal. Like you were nothing.”
He understood then. This wasn’t just about roughness. It was about the ghost of every leer, every slur, every rejection she’d ever endured for what she was. In her hunger, in her safety with him, she had become the thing she feared others saw: a monster, acting only on base instinct.
He stepped closer, carefully, as one would approach a spooked creature. He gently took her hands, which were clenched into tight fists. He pried them open and held them.
“Look at me,” he said softly.
It took a moment, but her eyes, bright with unshed tears, met his.
“You didn’t take nothing,” he said, each word deliberate. “You took me. And I was right here for it. Every second.” He brought one of her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles, tasting salt and skin. “I love that you want me that much. That it… consumes you.” He gestured weakly at the chaotic kitchen. “That it burns the bacon.”
A choked sound escaped her—half a sob, half a laugh. She looked from his earnest face to the ruined breakfast and back again. The tension in her shoulders began to unknot.
“You are a strange man, Matthias,” she whispered, leaning her forehead against his. “You see a beast and you call it beloved.”
“I see you,” he corrected. He nodded toward the bathroom. “Go get cleaned up. I’ll handle this mess. And then I’ll make more bacon. Unless you have other, less breakfast-destructive plans?”
The ghost of her old smirk touched her lips. “Plans require patience. I find I am fresh out of that particular supply.”
“Good,” he said, kissing her softly. “Then you’ll just have to be hungry for a little while.”
He watched her walk to the bathroom, the open shirt swaying, her stride regaining a hint of its old sway. He turned to the table, grabbing a dishcloth. As he wiped at the smeared evidence of their passion, he found he wasn’t embarrassed. He was… settled. The last of his own insecurities had been burned away in that frantic, necessary fire.
Outside, a raven landed on the snowy railing, tilting its head inquisitively at the scene through the glass. Matthias looked at it, then down at the cloth in his hand. A slow smile spread across his face. He had gotten his shot of the ravens. Now he had a far more interesting, and demanding, subject to attend to.
The water in the bathroom began to run. He set about making a new breakfast, the aches in his body a pleasant, persistent reminder that his quiet life in the Alaska range was over. He found he didn’t miss it at all.
He found he didn’t miss it at all.
The shower was still running. He finished wiping the table, his movements slow and thoughtful. The steam curling from under the bathroom door carried a faint, herbal scent from the soap she liked.
He pushed the door open. The room was thick with humid heat, fogging the mirrors. Tektah stood under the spray, her head tilted back, water sluicing through her blonde ponytail and over the elegant points of her ears. Her eyes were closed. The flannel shirt was a sodden heap on the floor.
"Room for one more?" he asked, his voice soft against the drumming water.
She opened one eye, a green gleam in the mist. "It is your cistern."
He shucked his boxers and t-shirt, letting them fall atop the flannel. The tile was cool under his feet. He slid the glass door aside and stepped into the heat. The water was a sudden, shocking benediction on his sore muscles.
They stood for a moment, not touching, just letting the water cascade over them. It ran in rivulets down the sculpted muscles of her back, over the faded silvery scars from her arrival. It traced the line of his spine, his own skin pale next to her sun-tan.
He reached for the soap, working it into a lather. "Turn around."
She complied, presenting her back to him. His hands smoothed the suds over her shoulders, kneading the tension he found there. She let out a low, appreciative hum, her head dropping forward.
"Your hands are clever," she murmured, the water catching the words. "For a man who spends his days clicking at beasts."
"They're good for other things," he said, his thumbs working a knot beside her shoulder blade. "Like fixing broken ribs. And burning breakfast."
She snorted a laugh, the sound swallowed by the shower.
His hands moved lower, soaping the lean curve of her waist, the dramatic swell of her hips. The atmosphere shifted, grew denser than the steam. His touch, practical at first, lingered. He was achingly hard, a fact made obvious in the open space. He saw her, reflected in the fogged glass of the door, saw the thick, heavy weight of her own arousal between her legs. Neither acknowledged it. It hung there, a silent, mutual truth in the streaming water.
He continued washing her, his movements slow and deliberate over the round curve of her ass. The pretense was a fragile, trembling thing. His breath hitched. Her back muscles tightened under his palms.
The casual fiction could only hold so long. The charged silence stretched, taut as a wire.
Matthias turned off the water. The sudden quiet was deafening. Drips echoed in the stall. He reached for a towel, his movements deliberate, and began to dry her back, the soft cotton dragging over her skin.
Then he stopped. He leaned forward, his lips close to her pointed ear. His voice was a raw scrape, all pretense gone. "I meant what I said."
He turned to face the white tile wall. He placed his hands flat against it. And he spread his legs. He looked back over his shoulder, meeting her wide, startled eyes. "Take me again. Show me how much you want me."
The towel fell from her hands. A shudder ran through her, part desire, part devastating relief. Her fingertips, calloused and strong, brushed his hip, then gripped it.
"On my world," she whispered, her voice thick, "this is a surrender."
"On this one," he said, pushing his ass back into her touch, "it's an invitation."
She didn't need another. Her body aligned with his, a hot, solid pressure. This time there was no roughness born of frantic dreams. This was deliberate, a slow, inexorable claiming. She entered him with a controlled thrust that made him gasp and push back, meeting her completely.
Her arms came around him, one hand splayed across his chest, pulling him flush against her. The other stayed on his hip, guiding the deep, rolling rhythm she established. It was possessive, intimate, a world away from the frantic kitchen table.
"You see?" she breathed into the damp skin of his neck, her thrusts measured and deep. "This is what I am."
"I see," he groaned, his head falling back against her shoulder. His hand came up to grip the back of her neck, holding her close. "I see you."
Her rhythm faltered for a second, overcome. Then she drove into him harder, a choked sound escaping her lips. This was the acceptance she’d never found, the brutal, beautiful truth of it meeting her in every join of their bodies. He was yielding everything, and in doing so, he was giving her back to herself.
The steam curled around them, the only witness as they moved, wordless now, in the quiet aftermath of a confession more honest than any words.
The steam began to thin, revealing the clean lines of the tiled wall. Her rhythm was a deep, pulling tide, and he was caught in it, willingly submerged. Each measured thrust was an answer to a question he hadn’t known he was asking.
“Look,” she breathed, her voice ragged against his ear.
His eyes, half-lidded, focused on their reflection in the fogged glass. A blurred impression of tangled limbs, her blonde hair dark with water against his shoulder, the powerful line of her body enveloping his. It was proof. He wasn’t a fantasy. He was here, real, under her hands.
“I see,” he gasped.
Her hand slid from his chest, over his stomach, lower. Her touch was firm, knowing. The dual sensation of being filled and gripped unspooled him utterly. Pleasure, sharp and bright, wired his spine straight. A broken sound escaped him.
“You are mine,” she stated. It wasn’t a question. It was a fact, whispered into the steam with the weight of a vow.
His climax tore through him, silent and blinding, leaving him shaking. She held him through it, her own movements turning urgent, chasing her release. It hit her with a stifled cry, her body locking around his, her forehead pressing hard between his shoulder blades. They stood welded together by sweat and water and spent feeling, the last of the steam condensing on cold tiles.
The outside world intruded slowly. The drip of the showerhead. The distant, lonely cry of a raven. The chill air seeping under the door.
She gently withdrew, her hands lingering on his hips. He turned, his muscles protesting, and faced her. Water droplets clung to her eyelashes. Her green eyes were wide, stripped of all armor, just raw and looking at him.
“That wasn’t a dream,” she said quietly.
“No.” He reached out, tracing the line of a silvery scar on her ribs—a souvenir from her violent arrival in his world. “The bacon is still burned.”
A real laugh burst from her, sudden and bright. It changed her face. She pulled him into a kiss, not dominant, but deep and searching. It tasted like clean water and shared truth.
They dried off with towels gone stiff in the dry air. He pulled on fresh jeans and a sweater; she commandeered another of his flannels, leaving it unbuttoned over her bare skin. The cabin was warm, the fireplace crackling with a fresh log.
The burnt pan sat in the sink, a guilty relic. Matthias filled a new one with water for oatmeal, a simpler, safer bet. Tektah drifted to the panoramic window, her fingers trailing on the cool glass. The sky was a hard, brilliant blue.
“On Azeroth,” she said, her back to him, “a bond like this… it is forged. In battle. In shared purpose. Not over moving pictures and burned swine flesh.”
He stirred the oats, watching them bubble. “What’s your point?”
She turned, leaning against the window frame. The sunlight haloed her, making her hair glow. “I do not know what this is. Here.”
“It doesn’t need a name from your world or mine.” He spooned the oatmeal into two bowls, adding a dollop of honey to each. “It just is.”
They ate at the small table, the same table. The memory of the morning was a live wire between them, humming under the casual scrape of spoons. She ate with a focused intensity, her eyes often flicking up to meet his.
When they were done, she took his bowl and put it in the sink with hers. She didn’t move away. She placed her hands on the counter, caging him where he sat.
“I want to see you,” she said. “Not in a frenzy. Not in steam.” Her voice was low, intent. “In the light.”
His pulse jumped. He nodded, once.
She took his hand and led him to the sprawling rug before the fireplace. The sun was high now, pouring through the windows, painting every detail in stark relief. She pushed his sweater up over his head. He shivered, but not from cold.
Then she shed the flannel shirt. It whispered to the floor. She stood before him, utterly bare, no shadows to hide in. Every scar, every curve, every part of her that had been a source of shame was offered up in the unforgiving alpine light.
He didn’t stare. He saw. He saw the warrior, the survivor, the woman. His gaze was a physical touch, reverent and calm.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, the words utterly simple, utterly true.
A tremor went through her. She closed the distance, lowering him onto the soft rug. The fire warmed one side of his body; her weight, settling over him, warmed the other. This was different. Slow. A meticulous exploration.
Her mouth was on his throat, his collarbone, the flat plane of his stomach. Her hands mapped his spine, the backs of his knees. She was learning him, committing him to memory. He lay still, letting her, his own hands resting lightly on her hips.
When she moved over him, guiding him onto his stomach, there was no violence. Only certainty. She prepared him with a slick, cool salve from her own discarded pack—a healer’s paste from her world, smelling of alpine herbs. Her touch was clinical, then intimate.
She knelt over him, pulling him up onto his knees. Her arms wrapped around his chest, holding him tight against her. He felt her, thick and heavy, press against him.
“This,” she whispered, her lips against the shell of his ear. Her voice held the ghost of old wounds, the strength of a hard-won self. “This is what I have. All of it. Do you understand?”
He reached back, his hand tangling in her hair, pulling her face to his. “Yes.”
She entered him in one smooth, claiming stroke. It was depth without tearing, possession without ruin. She didn’t move at first, just held herself there, fused to him. He could feel her heartbeat against his back, a frantic drum against his own.
Then she began to move. A deep, rocking rhythm that had nothing to do with taking and everything to do with having. It was a rhythm of undeniable truth. He matched it, pushing back against her, a groan ripping from his throat that was pure affirmation.
The world narrowed to the push and pull, the grip of her arms, the hot puff of her breath on his neck. The earlier frenzy was a distant echo. This was the core of the thing. This was the claim, settled into his bones.
“Matthias,” she chanted, his name a prayer and a portent with each drive of her hips. “Mine.”
He was unraveling, the coil of pleasure tightening beyond bearing. He came silently, his body seizing, clenching around her in wave after wave of blinding release. The intensity of it dragged a sharp cry from her. She followed him over, her rhythm shattering into a final, profound thrust that anchored her to the very center of him.
They collapsed sideways onto the rug, still joined, her body curling around his. The fire popped. A log settled.
Her breathing slowly evened. Her arm was slung over his waist, her hand splayed possessively over his stomach. She nuzzled the nape of his neck.
“Fully,” she murmured, the word a sigh of pure, exhausted contentment.
He covered her hand with his, lacing their fingers together. Outside, a snowshoe hare ventured across the clearing, a puff of brown against the endless white. The wilderness was vast, and silent, and indifferent. But here, in this circle of warmth, a line had been drawn.
She had claimed him fully. And he had anchored her, completely. The silence between them now was no longer a question. It was an answer.