Chapter 3: Chapter 3
The castle was a tomb in the third watch-cycle. The only sounds were the deep, resonant hum of the crystal drives and the occasional sigh of the ventilation system. Lace lay in her bunk, staring at the smooth ceiling, tracing the faint lines of light from her door’s seam.
Sleep was a traitor. It brought him back. The feel of synthetic rain, the bite of vines, the solid heat of him. She’d wake, pulse hammering in her throat, the ghost of his hands on her hips. It had been over a week since the service corridor. A week of stolen glances that felt like physical touches, of conversations with the team where his name in her mouth tasted like a secret.
She was going insane.
The soft, almost imperceptible sigh of her door sliding open didn’t register at first. Then the shadow fell across her bed.
She was on her feet in an instant, a stolen Galra energy dagger from her last mission flashing in her hand, pulled from under her pillow. Her heart slammed against her ribs, not from fear, but from a sudden, terrifying certainty.
“Get out.”
Lotor stood just inside the threshold, the door whispering shut behind him. He was dressed in simple, dark training gear, his hair loose. In the low light, he looked less like a prince and more like a wolf that had found its way inside the walls.
“We need to talk,” he said, his voice low.
“The time for talking was before you broke into my room.” She kept the dagger raised, her stance wide on the cool floor. “This is a great way to confirm every suspicion I’ve ever had about you.”
“Your suspicions are a luxury,” he said, not moving. “One we can no longer afford. This… distraction is compromising us both.”
The word ‘distraction’ from the corridor again. It ignited her. “I’m not the one sneaking into people’s quarters in the middle of the night. Whatever’s compromising you is your own problem. Deal with it somewhere else.”
“I have tried.” The admission was gritted out. “It persists. And you are not dealing with it either. You flinch when I enter a room. You over-compensate in training. Pidge asked you a simple question about ion frequencies yesterday and you answered with a five-minute rant about Galra troop deployments. You are thinking of me. Constantly.”
She hated him for seeing it. “I’m thinking of how to take you down.”
“Liar.”
He took one step forward. She didn’t retreat. The space between them crackled with a live, dangerous energy.
“You want to know what I think?” she hissed, lowering the dagger slightly. “I think you’re scared. I saw you. For one second, in that forest, you weren’t the calculating prince. You were just… there. And it terrified you. Now you’re here to what? Neaten it up? Put the genie back in the bottle with a midnight chat?”
His expression darkened. “You understand nothing.”
“Then enlighten me! Why are you here, Lotor? Really? If you’re so committed to your ‘noble ally’ act with Allura, this is a spectacularly stupid move.”
Something in him snapped. The cool control evaporated, replaced by a raw, blistering intensity. He closed the distance in two swift strides. Her back met the wall beside her bunk, his hands slamming flat against the metal on either side of her head, caging her in. The dagger was now a useless piece of metal pressed between their bodies.
“I am here,” he said, his breath warm against her lips, “because you are a variable I cannot calculate. Because you look at me and you do not see a prince or a pawn or a path to victory. You see a man you want to hate. And that… that is a novelty I have not encountered in ten thousand years.”
She stared up at him, her chest heaving. The anger was still there, white-hot, but it had fused with something else, something that made her lightheaded. “So this is research? Studying the primitive?”
“This is capitulation.” The word seemed to cost him. His gaze dropped to her mouth. “You were correct. I am predictable. I have mapped every possible outcome of this war, of my father’s reign, of Allura’s trust. Except this. Except you.”
He was admitting defeat. To her. The victory was acid-sweet.
“What do you want?” she whispered.
“I want you to stop haunting me.”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “You first.”
For a long moment, they simply breathed the same air, trapped in the magnetic field of their mutual frustration. Then, slowly, deliberately, Lace let the dagger clatter to the floor. The sound was obscenely loud.
She brought her hands up, not to push him away, but to curl her fingers into the fabric of his shirt. “You don’t get to call this a distraction,” she said, her voice rough. “You don’t get to minimize it.”
“What would you call it?”
“A mistake.” She yanked him forward and kissed him.
It was nothing like the simulator. That had been a wildfire, fueled by shock and adrenaline. This was a controlled detonation. It was all pent-up fury and denied want, a clash of teeth and tongue that was more fight than affection. He met her with equal ferocity, one hand leaving the wall to fist in her sleep-tousled hair, angling her head to take the kiss deeper. It was a conquest and a surrender all at once.
When they broke apart, gasping, his forehead rested against hers. “A catastrophic mistake,” he agreed, his voice wrecked.
He kissed her again, slower this time, a deliberate tasting. His hands slid down her back, over the thin fabric of her tank top, pulling her flush against him. The evidence of his want was hard and insistent against her stomach. A thrill, sharp and dark, shot through her.
She pushed him back, just enough to turn them. He let her maneuver him until the backs of his knees hit the edge of her bunk and he sat down heavily. He looked up at her, his eyes luminous in the dark, his usual mask utterly gone. What was left was hungry, wary, and utterly captivated.
Lace stood before him, the power dynamic shifted, thrumming through her veins. She kept her eyes locked on his as she reached for the hem of her tank top and pulled it over her head, letting it drop. The castle’s ambient cool air pebbled her skin. His gaze burned a path from her eyes to her breasts, his jaw tightening.
“Lace,” he started, a warning or a plea.
“Shut up,” she said softly, with no malice. “You don’t get to talk right now.”
She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her sleep shorts and underwear, pushing them down her legs in one motion. She stepped out of them, naked now except for the pendant she always wore. She saw his throat work as he swallowed.
She closed the small distance and went to her knees on the floor between his legs.
His breath caught. His hands, which had been braced on the bunk behind him, clenched into fists. She made no move to touch him yet, just held his gaze, letting him look his fill, letting the tension coil to a breaking point. Then, her fingers went to the fastenings of his pants. He lifted his hips to help her, a silent, urgent cooperation.
Free of constraint, he sprang into her hand. Hot, velvety steel. She ran her thumb over the head, smearing the bead of moisture there. A muscle in his thigh jumped under her other hand.
She didn’t tease. She took him into her mouth in one slow, relentless slide, her lips stretching to accommodate him. The groan that ripped from his chest was a raw, shattered thing. She felt the vibration of it through his body. Her own desire was a throbbing ache, but this was about control. About reducing the prince, the strategist, the enemy, to this—to a man whose entire universe had narrowed to the wet, hot heat of her mouth.
She set a ruthless rhythm, one hand working the base of his shaft, the other digging into his thigh. Her hair fell around her face, a curtain closing them in. His hands came down, not to guide her, but to bury themselves in her hair, gripping as if she were the only anchor in a storm. He was murmuring in a language she didn’t know, curses or prayers, his hips giving tiny, involuntary thrusts.
She took him deeper, relaxing her throat, until her nose brushed the coarse hair at his base. He shuddered violently.
“I’m— Lace, I’m going to—”
She hummed in response, the vibration pulling a choked cry from him. His release was sudden and fierce, hot bursts flooding her throat. She swallowed, staying with him until the last tremor passed, until his grip on her hair softened from desperation to something like reverence.
Slowly, she released him, sitting back on her heels. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, watching him. He was slumped forward, elbows on his knees, breathing like he’d run a marathon. Spent. Undone. By her.
The victory was complete. And hollow.
Because her own need was now a screaming thing, unignorable. The taste of him, the sight of him like this, had only stoked it higher.
He looked up, his eyes hazy. He reached for her, his thumb brushing her swollen lower lip. “Come here,” he murmured, his voice rough with use.
She stood on trembling legs. Instead of joining him on the bunk, she straddled his lap, her knees sinking into the mattress on either side of his hips. His arms went around her, hands splaying across the bare skin of her back, holding her close. He was still soft against her inner thigh, but the intimacy of the position, skin to skin, chest to chest, was its own kind of assault.
She buried her face in the crook of his neck, breathing him in—sweat, metal, something uniquely him. His lips found her shoulder, planting open-mouthed kisses along the ridge of her collarbone. One hand came around to cup her breast, his thumb circling her nipple until it peaked into a tight, aching point.
“You are… unparalleled,” he whispered against her skin, the words tinged with something like awe and despair.
Her hips began a slow, restless grind against his stomach. The friction was good, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough now. She could feel him beginning to stir again, growing hard once more against her thigh.
She reached between them, taking him in hand, guiding him. She positioned herself, the blunt head of his cock nudging at her entrance. She was slick, ready, aching.
She looked down, meeting his eyes. In the deep gray, she saw her own reflection: wild-haired, lips parted, wanting. She saw his complete, undivided attention. No strategy here. No empire. Just this.
Lace sank down.
It was a slow, devastating impalement. A fullness that stole the air from her lungs, that made her head fall back with a gasp. He filled her completely, a perfect, stretching fit. He groaned, a deep, resonant sound that seemed to come from the core of him, his hands clamping on her hips.
For a moment, they were perfectly still, fused together, breathing each other’s air. The world outside the room ceased to exist.
Then she moved.
She rose up, almost until he slipped free, then slammed back down. The impact jolted through both of them, a bolt of pure, undiluted pleasure. A sharp cry was torn from her throat. He echoed it with a guttural curse.
She set the pace, a hard, driving rhythm, using the leverage of her thighs to take him deep with every stroke. It was not making love. It was a physical argument, a desperate, sweaty attempt to fuse the conflicting parts of themselves—the distrust and the want, the duty and the desire—into something that made a shred of sense. Each descent was a question; each rise, an unsatisfactory answer.
His mouth found her breast again, sucking deeply, his teeth grazing her nipple. The dual sensation pushed her closer to the edge. Her movements became more frantic, less controlled. He took over then, his own hips driving up to meet her downward slams, his strength meeting her fury.
“Look at me,” he gritted out.
She forced her eyes open, her gaze locking with his. His face was a portrait of agonized ecstasy, all sharp angles and strained tendons. In his eyes, she saw the same war being fought. It was the most intimate thing she had ever seen.
The coil inside her snapped.
Pleasure erupted, white-hot and all-consuming, radiating out from her core in crashing waves. Her body clamped around him, milking him, as she arched back, a silent scream on her lips. The violent clenching of her inner muscles triggered his own release. He pulled her down hard against him, burying his face in her chest as he came with a shuddering, broken groan, spilling himself deep inside her.
The aftermath was a slow, boneless collapse. She slumped against him, her head on his shoulder, their sweat-slicked skin sticking together. His arms came around her, holding her up, holding her together. The only sounds were their ragged, syncopated breaths and the ever-present hum of the castle.
Minutes passed. The sweat cooled. Reality, cold and pragmatic, began to seep back into the room.
Lotor was the first to move. Gently, he lifted her off him and laid her on the bunk. The loss of contact felt like a physical wound. He stood, his back to her as he dressed with quick, efficient motions. The prince was reassembling himself, piece by piece.
Lace pulled the thin blanket over herself, watching him. The hollow feeling was back, bigger now.
He finished and turned. He looked at her, his expression unreadable in the gloom, but his eyes were clear. The vulnerability was gone, locked away once more.
“This changes nothing,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “The mission. The alliances. The suspicions.”
She knew he was right. She also knew he was saying it for himself as much as for her. “I know.”
He nodded once, a sharp, decisive motion. Then he turned and left, the door sighing open and shut behind him, leaving her alone in the dark with the smell of him on her skin and the chilling certainty that he was wrong.
It had changed everything.
She had seen the crack in his armor. And he had seen the need behind her anger.
They were each other’s secret now. And secrets, in a war like this, were the most dangerous weapons of all.
The hollow declaration echoed in the silence he left behind. Lace spent the next three days wrapped in it, a ghost in her own skin. She moved through drills, team briefings, and maintenance cycles on autopilot. Her body felt like a borrowed thing, every stretch and movement a reminder of a use it wasn't designed for.
She jumped at shadows in the corridors. The scent of the castle's recycled air sometimes twisted, teasing her with a phantom hint of him. It was pathetic. He’d gotten what he came for, hadn’t he? Catharsis. Capitulation. He’d named it and then he’d left. The variable, calculated and filed away.
By the third night, the sharp edge of humiliation had dulled into a heavy, sure conviction. He wouldn’t be coming again. It was over. The thought should have been a relief. It felt like a sentence.
Sleep was a distant country. She lay on her back, the blanket a weight, staring at the same line of light on the ceiling. The memory of his hands was a physical imprint, fading now, like a bruise turning yellow. Good, she told herself. Let it fade.
The door opened.
No hum of warning, no chime of request overridden. Just the silent slide of metal, and then he was there, a solid silhouette backlit by the hallway’s low glow. He stepped inside and the door sealed shut, plunging them back into the dark.
Her heart didn’t hammer this time. It just gave a single, hard thud against her ribs and then settled into a low, dangerous drumbeat. She didn’t move. Didn’t reach for the dagger.
“Get out,” she said, her voice flat. A formality.
He didn’t speak. He crossed the room in five swift, silent strides. The bunk dipped under his weight as he sat on the edge, facing her. He was still in his day clothes, boots and all, smelling of ozone and engine grease from the hangar.
“I have been mapping ion trails in the Quintessence nebula for fourteen hours,” he said, his tone conversational, weary. “The data is inconclusive. Pidge’s theories have merit, but the variables are… exponential.”
She blinked in the dark. “And you’re telling me this why? You think I care about your astro-cartography?”
“I am telling you,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, “that for fourteen hours, all I could think about was the sound you made when you came. Not the data. Not the war. That.”
The air vanished from the room. Lace pushed herself up on her elbows. “You’re a liar. You said it changed nothing.”
“It changed everything.” He said it simply, a fact. “And it is a problem we cannot solve with logic.”
“So you’re back to not be logical?” Sarcasm was her last, flimsy shield.
“I am back,” he said, turning his head to finally look at her, “because I have to be.”
He moved then, a sudden, fluid lunge that covered her body with his. One hand cradled the back of her head before it could hit the pillow, the other braced beside her shoulder. His mouth found hers in the darkness.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claim. There was no tentative exploration, no slow burn. It was all desperate, hungry certainty, as if the three days apart had been a famine and she was the only sustenance. The taste of him—sharp, alien coffee and something metallic—flooded her senses. All her resolve, that heavy conviction he was gone, shattered like glass.
Her hands flew up, not to push, but to clutch at the back of his fitted jacket, pulling him closer. A low, broken noise vibrated from her throat into his mouth. It was an answer, a surrender, a curse.
They fought with their clothes, a frantic, clumsy battle of zippers and fabric. His jacket hit the floor. Her sleep shirt tore at the neckline with a soft rip. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but skin. The glorious, shocking heat of it as he settled over her, his chest against her breasts, the hard plane of his stomach against hers.
He entered her in one deep, unbroken stroke. She cried out, her legs coming up to lock around his waist, her heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper still. There was no tenderness, only a driving, urgent need to erase the distance, the days, the doubt.
He set a ruthless pace, each thrust jolting the bunk frame against the wall with a soft, rhythmic tap. His breathing was ragged in her ear. One of his hands slid from her hip, up her side, to close gently around her throat. Not squeezing, just holding. The possessiveness of it, the sheer vulnerability of the pulse hammering under his palm, sent a new bolt of white-hot lightning through her core.
“This is a mistake,” he gritted out, his voice strained, his rhythm never faltering. “A catastrophic error in judgment.”
“I know,” she gasped, arching under him, meeting each drive. “We have to stop.”
“We will.” He dropped his forehead to hers, his eyes shut tight. “After this. We stop. Never again.”
“Never,” she echoed, the word dissolving into a moan as he angled his hips, hitting a spot that made her vision star.
Their agreement hung in the sweaty air between them, a transparent lie they both honored by immediately breaking it. He didn’t stop. His pace became more frantic, more precise. Her legs didn’t loosen from around his waist; they tightened, crossing at the ankles, locking him to her. The hand on her throat slid up to cup her jaw, his thumb stroking her cheekbone with a shocking tenderness that contradicted everything their bodies were doing.
The peak, when it broke over them, was silent and total. It wasn’t a cry, but a shared, shuddering collapse, a fusion so complete that for three heartbeats, maybe four, there was no Lace, no Lotor. Just a raw, unraveling thread of sensation. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his entire body rigid, then melting. She felt the internal pulses of his release as her own muscles fluttered around him, a final, desperate clasp.
Slowly, the world reassembled. Sound returned: their ragged synced breathing, the distant hum. Feeling returned: the ache in her thighs, the damp sweat between them, the unbearable weight of his body, which she never wanted to move.
He was still inside her. Still holding her. The promise to stop, the declaration of a mistake, lingered like gun smoke in the air.
They had both just looked directly at it. And then walked right through.