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It’s exciting, the first night. Taking off her clothes in the closet-sized room. Hoisting herself onto the blessedly clean table. Sliding the bottom half of her bare body beneath the velvet curtain.
She can’t see what’s happening in the room beyond. That’s the point of the curtain, of course, draping down the gap in the wall that bisects the lower half of her body from the top.
But she is viscerally aware that dozens of strangers will see more of her than anyone else has seen before.
Rey didn’t tell her friends what her plans were on this planet. They might be ashamed for her, if they knew. But Rey doesn’t feel ashamed. She is surprised to find that being on display this way makes her feel shockingly powerful. Maybe even a little dangerous.
No one passing by knows that the body stretched beneath the curtain belongs to one of the most powerful Force users in the galaxy.
And there are many, many clients passing by.
As soon as the doors creak open, the hushed whispering and sighs of the girls give way to the heavy thuds of feet on the floorboard. Some make crude comments, muffled through the curtains, as they prowl along the perimeter of the room, examining the lower halves of the women spread open like offerings from each booth in the wall. Others are silent, simply circling the room and—well, Rey assumes they’re just looking. But from the breathy noises outside, maybe they’re enjoying that part too.
An odd sort of pleasure spreads through her body at the thought that some of them may be looking at her. That they might find her desirable.
And then there are the ones that aren’t timid about collecting their entrance fee. They skip past the muttered conversations and dive straight into groans and grunting, the animal noises of bodies slapping against each other.
Rey listens to these couplings with curiosity—along with a sensation of deep and urgent excitement, coiling in the lowest part of her belly. It’s fascinating, the sounds men and women make together in these moments. Rey has rarely had an opportunity to observe such a thing up close.
Not that she will be experiencing this herself anytime soon. She makes sure of it. Whenever she senses a man lingering too long near her booth, she gives his mind a gentle nudge with the Force before he can reach out with his hands and claim her. It doesn’t take much effort at all for her to send them on their way.
She promised herself going into this unorthodox mission that no one would touch her. Even if she’s discovered the weight of a stranger’s eyes on her body doesn't bother her as much as she expected.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
By the end of the first night, Rey has made another important realization. When she can’t see the eyes of the men who stare at her, it’s easy to imagine they belong to someone else.
After the third night, Rey starts to let the clients linger outside her booth a little longer.
There are still no touches. That’s not what she’s here for. But she is slowly allowing herself to relax into the display. To open her thighs a little wider.
They still can’t see her face—the upper half of her body is hidden behind the curtain, draping down over the Rey-sized hole in the wall. Protecting her identity. It was one of the appeals of this disguise. As slim the risk may be that someone might recognize her face in this place, she feels safer when they can't see her face at all.
She can almost delude herself into believing there's no risk here.
She’s getting good at this. Lying to herself. The same way she lies when she tells herself, over and over, that she is not imagining any particular person watching her, hungrily, from the other side of the curtain. Absolutely not. She’s not thinking about how dark his eyes would be. The desperation that would fill his expression when he sees her like this, just for him. The same way he looked at her when he pulled off his glove and reached out to—
Rey feels the shape of a sweaty hand in the air nearby, extending toward her knee. Her Force push toward her latest visitor might be a little stronger than necessary this time, but it does the trick all the same.
It's the easiest money she’s ever made. Night after night, she need do nothing more than recline on the table in her booth, the lower half of her body thrust into the light of the big room for the inspection of the many clients that pass through each night.
She is cheating a little, of course, since she ensures that no one will actually touch her.
They pay her anyway.
“For the show,” the matron tells her every evening, when the sun is beginning to rise and the workers line up to collect their share.
Rey has a different kind of share she's looking to collect.
The first time any of them mention the First Order, it is early morning, and the other girls are curling up on their bunks to sleep. Rey is cross-legged on her mattress, trying and failing to look like she's not meditating. Fortunately, none of the other girls know what Jedi meditation looks like. Also fortunately, Rey is unable to fall deep enough in a trance to miss Genny on the bed next to her, speaking in a hushed voice to her bunkmate.
“—if the soldiers will be back again.”
Rey’s eyes snap open. “Soldiers?”
Genny and her bunkmate, a bespeckled young woman named Pola, look up with surprise.
“I thought you were meditating.”
“Me? Meditating?” Rey laughs uncomfortably. “As if I know how to meditate.”
This earns her an eye roll from Genny. “And I'm sure you don't know about the soldiers, either.”
“I don't,” Rey says, even though those soldiers are precisely the reason she has come here, night after night, stripping off her clothes for complete strangers.
“Everyone knows about the soldiers, Kira.” Pola crawls to the edge of her bed, always eager to share something someone doesn't know.
“Well, I don't.”
“The soldiers. You know.” Pola leans in dramatically, lowering her voice. “From the First Order.”
Rey’s heart starts to pound, even though this is exactly the answer she was expecting. She looks at her nails, feigning nonchalance. “The First Order? Why should we care about them?”
“Because their pockets are deeper than a sarlacc’s belly.”
“And credits aren’t the only thing they’re stuffing in those tight white pants of theirs,” Genny adds, waggling her eyebrows.
Pola snorts. “Only if you're lucky enough to get the one in charge.”
Across the bunks, a lightbulb bursts spectacularly, prompting several girls to shriek.
“The one in charge?” Rey says, a little too tightly.
She can hear the voice of her former master in her mind, repeating the calming Jedi mantras, but she is already starting to spiral. Of course she knew there were Stormtroopers frequenting this establishment—that’s why she’s here, for kriff’s sakes—but she never would have imagined he would join them.
Something sharp and acidic rises in her mouth at the idea of him walking around the big room. Looking at people who aren't her. Touching them. Which kind of client would he be? A watcher? A private session? Or would he simply take what he wanted, right in front of everyone else without a care for who might see?
“You only like him because his cock’s got freckles on it,” Genny tells her bunkmate. “Just like your face.”
“Wait, what?” Rey is jolted rudely out of her fantasy of her own large, freckleless man-in-charge. “Who has freckles?” Because she’s certain he doesn’t. Plenty of moles, maybe. Rey might just so happen to know the location of every one of them—at least, the ones that aren't hidden beneath all those heavy black garments he wears. It’s her solemn duty to know such intimate details about her greatest enemy. She is certain that one day, all her hours spent remembering his stupid face and every single one of its moles will come in great use.
“Keep up, Kira,” Genny says. “The one in charge. Snotty little ginger, but all the other soldiers still listen to him. Just like Pola.”
Hux. They're talking about General Hux. Rey’s nose wrinkles in disgust, even as relief begins to unravel the tension in her chest. Ben— Kylo— certainly wouldn’t be taking orders from Hux. Not on his ship, and certainly not in an establishment like the Watering Hole.
So he doesn’t come here, after all.
But when Rey stretches out in the quiet darkness several minutes later, meditation and conversation abandoned—that doesn’t mean she won’t imagine what it would be like if he did.
A week into her mission, Rey has almost finished collecting the information that she needs. In fact, she could probably get away with finishing up early—but she has blocked out a solid seven days on this planet, and really, what could go wrong if she decided to stay just one more night?
As it turns out, the answer is: everything.
The first sign that something is amiss is the excitement on the faces of her colleagues—the workers , she corrects herself firmly—as they primp and preen in front of the mirrors in the hallway. Rey assumes it’s just because it’s the end of a week cycle, which means more customers, which means more credits—until she hears Genny and Pola talking about freckles again.
“He said he would take me for a private session this time,” Pola says, smirking. “Time to see if the curtains match the rug.”
Oh. Oh no. Rey can’t stop herself. “Who’s taking you for a private session?”
Genny gives her a curious look. “You’re awfully interested in those soldiers, aren’t you, Miss Kira?”
“The soldiers are coming?” Her voice is nearly a squeak. “Tonight?”
“They are.” Genny smirks. “And that means we bust out the big guns.”
Before Rey can ask what she means by big guns, the voice of the matron is calling down the hall, telling them to get into their booths. There is the sound of bare feet scampering across wooden floorboards—sighs, groans, giggles—and doors opening and closing as the workers assume their positions.
Her stomach roiling with butterflies, Rey follows suit.
Her booth seems darker tonight than usual, though she knows that’s not possible—there’s never any light in here. But it makes her feel especially vulnerable as she begins to strip. As if there could be someone hiding in the corner. Watching her.
She pushes herself onto the table, cold against the back of her naked thighs, and maneuvers so that her feet, then her bent knees, push past the curtain in the wall.
She’s safe, she reminds herself. No one will recognize her like this, whether the First Order shows up here tonight or not. And the only member who truly knows her face doesn't even come here, no matter how often she might fantasize otherwise.
When a large, rough hand grasps her foot, Rey nearly shrieks.
“It’s only me,” says the matron from the other side with a soothing pat to her knee. “We’re going to try the binders tonight, since you've been having trouble getting the men down this way. They go wild for it. You’ll see.”
“Binders—?!” Rey chokes out, but before she can protest, she feels the kiss of smooth leather at her ankles, clasping firmly on the top. One foot, and then the other.
Holding her spread open.
Rey feels her entire body flush with heat, all thoughts of the First Order temporarily flying from her head. This new position is—not entirely bad. No. If she's being honest with herself, she might admit it's even more exciting than what she’s been doing the rest of the week. She knows she can use her word at any moment to stop if things get uncomfortable—hell, she knows there won’t even be anything to stop, thanks to her creative use of the Force these past several days—but it’s still unbelievably arousing to be held open this way.
She hardly has any time to adjust before she hears the doors swing open.
Things are different tonight. Her head is light and swimming with excitement as the clients pause near her booth. Rey still remembers to send them along if they get too interested—but it’s hard when her mind has conjured a new fantasy, thanks to the leather around her ankles.
It reminds her of a different kind of leather. Sliding off the long, elegant fingers of a hand she would very, very much like to touch again.
If only it didn’t belong to the most troublesome person in the entire galaxy.
In the darkness, it doesn’t matter so much. At least, not to her traitorous mind, which continues to bombard her with images of all the ways she would let him touch her, if he were here. The fantasy feels safer, now that she’s sure he doesn’t frequent this place—but also a little dangerous, since his soldiers could be on this planet at this very moment.
Rey is realizing that she might like it a little dangerous.
She is so busy mulling over this possibility that she almost doesn’t notice someone new has stopped outside her booth.
He’s been stopped there for quite some time, she realizes. Examining her. A familiar presence—and uncomfortably so. Rey has smothered her connection to the Force, lest she attract any attention from any Force-sensitive beings that pass through. She only opens up a small crack in the moments that she needs to push against the minds of the clients, prodding them to move on.
Like she does right now.
Rey closes her eyes. Stretches her fingers. They tingle a little as she casts her mind outward, reaching, grasping—searching—
And runs straight up against a solid wall.
Rey sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth with surprise. It quickly turns to anger. Opening the crack a little wider, she gives a harder shove—and still, nothing. There is a sharp pain in her temple this time, a crack of electricity that surges down her neck.
Who the hell is this person? Rey’s mind whirls with confusion—and then with slowly mounting dread.
No.
It can’t be.
With great trepidation, Rey opens up the crack a little more—stomach turning over with anxiety—just a little more—
But it isn’t. It’s not him. Whoever is standing outside her booth is not Force-sensitive—and even if their presence feels so damn familiar, it definitely doesn’t belong to him.
Rey is surprised by the wave of disappointment that follows her relief.
Abruptly, there is the sound of footsteps walking away. A burst of icy winter air as the front door is opened—and then the stranger slips out into the night.
Rey lets out a long, shaky breath.
It looks like her Force push was successful after all.
As she shivers on the dark table, listening to the other workers enjoy their clients all around her, Rey is surprised to find this small victory doesn’t make her feel any better.
The rest of Rey’s final night at the Watering Hole is turning out to be much less eventful than she expected.
No one else gives her any trouble. In fact, Kylo Ren’s troops often don’t get much further than the girls at the doorway. The Stormtroopers, as it turns out, aren’t really capable of making things eventful for her or anyone else. Rey wonders idly if it’s because of their long trips between solar systems, denied any form of intimacy aboard their ships. The Resistance certainly doesn’t have any such archaic rules, but it’s the only explanation Rey can fathom for why these clients, of all clients, seem to be finishing so quickly with the other women.
She knows of someone else who travels with them who wouldn’t be so hasty. No. He would take his time. Rey shifts her hips on the table, suddenly restless. He is impulsive with many things, but in the infinite moments they've shared, connected by the Force, he has always been so deliberate with her. Giving her his complete focus. Rey wonders if the matron raised the temperature in the big room beyond, or if she is simply growing warmer from thinking about someone who makes her so angry. Yes. That must be it. It makes her furious, to think about his bottomless eyes, drinking her in—dark with the same intention they held that night across the fire—but tonight, they would be focused lower, somewhere between her—
Rey squeezes her eyes shut and tries to Force-shove the fantasy out of her mind.
It almost works.
An hour into the evening, Rey is covering a yawn with her mouth and thinking dreamily about the stiff mattress waiting back in the bunks. Things haven’t been so bad, for her last night on this mission. She’s discovered she can add leather restraints to her list of strange situations she didn't know she’d find exciting—right next to displaying herself for hours to strangers while imagining large, faceless men in dark clothes and leather gloves who look nothing like Kylo Ren.
For all the talk about the soldiers, it doesn't seem much different from any other night this week.
And then the front door bursts opens again.
Rey’s entire body going still. Beyond her curtain, the rest of the room does too. No one is moving. From the sound of it, no one dares even breathe. Wintry air blasts into the room for a few long, whistling moments—this new visitor is certainly an inconsiderate one—and then the door clicks shut again, swallowing the room in silence.
Another footstep. And then another. The soft noise of uniforms rustling. Bows. Mumbles about someone living a long and prosperous life.
Rey’s heart lodges itself right next to her windpipe, which has the added effect of making it very difficult to breathe.
Heavy boots slowly thump across the wooden floor, approaching. Rey’s ears are starting to tingle, straining for any sign of an attack. She feels more vulnerable than she has any night she’s been here, acutely aware of the cool air wafting along all the naked skin between her legs. Her lightsaber is fastened securely underneath the table. She could reach beneath and grab it, before she is in any imminent danger. But then someone in the big room beyond the curtain actually whimpers— and not in the way people normally whimper in this establishment.
The danger, she realizes, has already arrived.
She doesn’t know what to do. People are still bowing—she can hear them, the breath stuck in their throats, the slight tremble of fingers and racing hearts. Clothes rustling. They are moving now—moving swiftly out of his way as his footsteps draw nearer.
Directly toward her.
They stop. Perhaps only a foot away. The silence is deafening. Rey’s fingers are now curled around her weapon. It’s cold in her grasp. It would be inconvenient to engage in a saber fight like this, of all circumstances, with her ankles fastened to the binders and her body completely nude—but Rey is willing to bet she could still beat him if she wanted to—opens her mouth to shout as much through the curtain when—
When smooth leather, still cool from the outside air, brushes along the instep of her foot.
Oh.
It’s the first time she’s been touched in all the days she’s laid like this, imagining this very hand while so many others have gazed upon her in his place. Imagining, shamefully, that he were here instead. Wondering if he would be able to provoke the same strange noises in her that the other women make, whenever the men outside are having their way with them.
Almost imperceptibly, his fingers tighten around her foot.
“Out.” His voice, distorted through the modulator, is so soft that it would be impossible to hear—if the room weren’t already bare of any other sound. “Everyone must leave.”
“B-but—but sir—”“ The shaky voice of the matron drifts across the room. “We can’t simply—shut down the entire establishment. If you’d like a private session, you’ll need to pay.”“
“I’ll pay.” His thumb is brushing slowly up and down the arch of her foot. Possessive. Rey resists the urge to squirm. “But if this room isn’t empty in the next thirty seconds, your empty pockets will be the least of your problems.”
There is a flurry of footsteps. Another blast of cold air from the front door—hushed voices from the girls as they flee their own booths, racing down the hall behind her—
And then silence.
Silence, but for the creak of his leather glove as he moves to stroke her other foot.
“My general,” he begins slowly through the modulator, “tells me you are Force sensitive.”
Behind the curtain, Rey remains completely frozen. Her knuckles are white around her lightsaber handle. She knows that any moment now, she’s going to leap up and plunge it through the curtain. She’s waited so long for this moment, after all—for the opportunity to finish the job she started two years ago in that snowy forest.
Any moment now, she thinks. Butr her body simply lies there. Paralyzed. Thrumming with tension and adrenaline and something like electricity, and she wonders if he means to keep touching her, wonders if he—doesn’t he—
Does he not realize who she is?
“You think you’re clever, not answering me. I don’t need you to speak to sense how much you enjoy this.” The sharp leather seam at the tip of his thumb drags up the bottom of her foot, and Rey barely muffles her cry of surprise. “There we are.”
She clenches her teeth and resolves not to make another noise again. From the other side of the curtain, Kylo Ren chuckles.
“My general sensed the mind trick you tried to pull on him. Or push, as it were.” There is a smirk in his tone, even through the modulator. Rey wishes very badly she could see it.
Suddenly, his hands leave her ankles. Rey’s chest tightens with panic— this is it, this is it, he’s going to attack her, she’s going to die —and then there is the hiss and click of his helmet. It thumps on the wooden floorboard as he tosses it to the ground.
“The new girl, is what he called you.” The drawl in his voice is clear, now, without the mask. “She thinks herself a little Jedi. Won’t allow anyone to touch her. Pushes them away with the Force.”
It sends a raw shiver down the entire length of Rey’s spine, to hear him speaking so. This same voice has whispered to her through so many dark dreams, both waking and sleeping—and now it is here. Right before her. So near—but it could be even nearer, couldn’t it? If he would simply lean through the curtain. If he would just lower his lips to her ear, the way his shadow does every night in the safety of her sleep—if he would press his mouth to her skin and murmur all the ways he plans to ruin her for anyone else—
Her breath catches when he slides his palms up her calves. She realizes with a jolt that he could wrap his fingers completely around them, if he wanted to.
“Do you think yourself too good to be touched, little Jedi?”
It takes a few moments for her to process that he is expecting an answer to this ridiculous question. Rey clenches her teeth. Before she can stop herself, the answer bursts out of her, tight with indignation:
“I didn’t want them to touch me.”
“So she speaks.” His voice oozes satisfaction, and Rey immediately begrudges him even this small victory. “I thought you might also believe yourself too good to talk with your clients. Since you won’t even let them take what they came here for.”
Rey can feel his gaze almost as intensely as his fingers. She resists the urge to squirm.
“But you’re letting me touch you,” Kylo murmurs, almost to himself. “Why is that?”
“My tricks won’t work on you.” Rey tries to snarl these words, but her voice is weakened by the dance of his leather-clad fingertips, creeping up the insides of her calves. Stroking little circles along the sensitive skin beneath her knees.
“Yes,” he coos. “That’s right. I’m too strong. And you’re helpless like this, aren't you?” He sounds almost proud of her. As though she’s guessed at a correct answer, and he is her teacher, rewarding her for her hard work. It makes her stomach squirm. With disgust, Rey thinks. “But even so…” His fingers linger above her knee, drumming lightly at the backs of her thighs. “I find it strange you haven’t tried.”
There is a long, agonizing pause. His fingers stop moving. And Rey tries—she really, truly tries—but she simply can’t find it in herself to do it. Because now that she's thought of it, she simply can’t stop thinking that—
That it might not be so disagreeable. If he continued touching her. She's been thinking of this for so long, after all—hasn't she? And if she didn't know better, from the way he is acting, she might assume that he—that they—
“I don’t do anything I don't want to.” She hears her mouth form the response before she has a chance to reconsider. It sends an immediate frisson of pleasure sparking through her body. His pleasure, she realizes with a jolt.
“Then tell me,” he says, voice low, “what it is you want instead.”
The lightsaber begins to tingle in the palms of her hands. She can’t bring herself to ignite it. It’s responding, she thinks, to the nearness of its bloodline. To Kylo Ren, standing so close, full of vitality and power and raw, infinite strength.
Her body is responding in a similar way. Against all logic and reason, it is responding. Every cell in her bones vibrates toward the shape of him, firm and large and so damn near to her. If she were standing, she’s sure she would be swaying in his direction, his inescapable gravity—but as it is, she can only lie there, legs held open by the leather straps. Quivering.
“I thought you knew exactly what I was thinking,” she manages.
“Is that why you wouldn’t let anyone else have you? Because they didn’t know your thoughts?”
No, Rey thinks. It’s because they weren’t you.
Behind the curtain, Kylo releases an unsteady breath. His hands are gravitating up her thighs again. Rey wonders if he even means for them to move.
“My general tells me you are called Kira.”
Her throat tightens. “I am.”
“Kira.” The words sounds like it belongs to another language, when he pronounces it like that. “An odd name.”
“Not so odd as Kylo Ren.”
Unexpectedly, he chuckles. “You remind me of someone, Kira.”
“That’s why we hide our faces.” The matron’s words roll easily off her tongue. “So that we can be whoever you want us to be.”
“What if I don’t want you to be someone else?”
Her breath stutters. “Then you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“No.“ He steps squarely between her legs, and the sound of his heavy boots creaking on the wooden floorboards, leaning toward her, shivers down her spine like sparks skipping along the mechanisms of the handle in her fingers. “I think I’ve found exactly what I’m looking for.”
This is madness. Complete, utter madness. They’re alone here—she is in danger, for kriff’s sake—but she doesn’t feel like she’s in danger. With his hands on her skin like this, she feels just like she did the last time he touched her. Alive. Radiant.
Unstoppable.
“But first,” he says, “you need to put down your weapon.”
And just like that, all her confidence vanishes.
“I don’t have a weapon,” she replies, as evenly as she can.
“And I don’t like being lied to,” he says, before adding, “ Kira.”
“We’re not allowed to have weapons.”
“Yet here you are. What would the matron say? Her newest employee, already breaking the rules.”
Rey doesn’t tell him that she will be leaving tomorrow. That she never intended to stay here long term. That she wishes he would stop talking and continue touching her already.
“For someone in such a compromising position, you’re very demanding.”
“Demanding?” Despite herself, Rey bristles. “I’m not demanding anything.”
“Aren't you?”
His hands leave her thighs—Rey barely resists the urge to arch her hips up, chasing their warmth—only for his palm, stretched in leather, to smooth up her bare pelvic bone. The resulting movement exposes her even further. Kylo holds her there, calmly, palm pressed below her belly button, five points of contact where his fingers curl like a star into the soft flesh of her abdomen.
“This,” he murmurs. “It’s demanding a great many things from me.”
It’s a ridiculous statement—laughable, really—but Rey isn’t laughing. The way he’s spreading her—it leaves little doubt for how much she wants from him. Cool air strokes her between her legs, made cooler still by the moisture that has gathered there, and Rey can hardly breathe for all the things she wants.
“Put down the weapon, Kira. And I’ll continue.”
Her knuckles are starting to shake for how tightly they grip its handle. She hears the rustle of leather, the bite of teeth into a fingertip—and then the slow slide of his bare hand as it is removed from his glove.
A whimper sticks in her throat. Slowly, almost of their own volition, Rey’s fingers loosen their grip. Until her hand is simply resting on the saber’s hilt, nestled between her breasts.
“Come, now. On the floor.”
She opens her mouth to snap at him that she would rather run naked into the snow than relinquish her only means of defending herself. But she is interrupted by the touch of his bare hand. It is—surprisingly soft. Warm. Gentle, as it slides up her thigh.
Exactly the way she remembers it.
“If I’d come here to hurt you,” he says, “we wouldn’t still be having this conversation.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Don't ask questions you already know the answer to.” His hand lingers at the top of her thigh, and Rey’s entire body quivers with the restraint required to keep her hips from shifting those final few inches. “I've seen it. All the things you’ve been thinking of, while you lie here. But you’ll need something sturdier to hold on to than that lightsaber.”
Her heart skips a beat. He knows. He knows she has a lightsaber. He knows she’s been—fuck, that she’s been fantasizing about him. He even seems to know she isn’t called Kira. So what is he playing at? Why isn’t he fighting her? Is it possible that he could truly want to—
Kylo swipes his thumb, firmly, right through the crease of her. It’s only the briefest of touches, but it’s enough for her to— “ah”— for her to startle, for her toes to curl and her veins to fill with rushing heat.
“I’m here,” he says hoarsely, “because you invited me.”
“I—I did no such thing.”
“You did.” In the blackness of the ceiling above her head, Rey can nearly see the intensity of his eyes, blazing back at her. “You’ve been waiting for me. That’s why you wouldn’t let anyone else have you, isn’t it?”
The truth in these words coils in her chest, smothers her protest before it has a chance to reach her lips. “I didn’t want them to.”
“But you still haven’t said you don’t want me to.”
He pauses. Licks his lips. She might not be able to see it, but Rey can feel the wetness of his tongue, swiping across his mouth, through the many tendrils of awareness she has reaching through the air for him.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” he says. “Tell me to stop, and I’ll leave this place. I’ll go.”
He sounds—unexpectedly sincere. Vulnerable, even. His voice carries with it the dark current of fear that lurks at the edge of his thoughts.
For the first time, Rey realizes he might be more afraid than she is.
With trembling fingers, she slowly, slowly allows the lightsaber to roll from her grasp. It lands with a thunk on the wooden floorboards below.
“Yes.” Kylo’s response is carried on a long, low breath. From the other side of the curtain, he radiates relief and triumph and—something much darker. When his thumb finally returns to her wetness, Rey can no longer contain the noise that rises in her throat.
“Yes,” he says again, echoing the mantra of her own thoughts. There is another heavy thud, but this time it comes from the weight of his large body dropping to his knees. Kneeling between her legs.
“You waited for me,” he says avidly. “I knew you would.”
I did, she thinks. She has spent her entire life waiting. And now he’s here, he’s finally, finally with her—even if he might not know exactly who she is—even if it’s the only time that they ever—
He makes a low noise, and two large palms grip her inner thighs, opening her further. A hot blush flames across her face at the idea of him simply kneeling there. Staring at her.
She has been spreading her legs every night in this room for the eyes of dozens of strangers. But never has she felt so vulnerable as she does right now.
Why does he even need to be on his knees for this? Rey doesn’t have much experience in these things, but she’s pretty sure other parts of him much lower on his body need to line up with her in order for him to do the things she’s been imagining.
His next exhale is a little sharper than before, and it is so close that she feels it spill across every single one of her nerve endings.
“You’ve been so patient for me,” he murmurs to the ache between her thighs. “You can wait a little longer.”
Rey clenches her teeth in frustration. “Actually, I don’t know if I— oh!”
She jolts. From the other side of the curtain, the binders rattle and strain against her ankles. There is— fuck —something wet and hot and firm. Stroking her. Blunt, deliberate passes, beginning at her spasming entrance and ending at her crest with a flick that makes stars explode behind her eyelids.
It’s not until he groans, a deep, guttural vibration sparking up her pelvis bone, that she realizes he is licking her.
“Ben,” she cries out, briefly forgetting herself. “That’s—you—“
He doesn’t seem to notice. He’s devoted every ounce of his focus to the slow, open-mouthed kisses between her legs. His mouth covers the entire aching mound of her, his tongue flat and hot and sliding against her like it was designed for this explicit purpose.
And Rey is bound to a table, helpless to do anything more than pant and arch her back and try desperately to keep herself from begging.
She wouldn’t even know what to beg for. He seems to know her better than she knows herself, teasing out her pleasure in all the precise ways it needs to be teased. Rey never would have imagined she would enjoy such a thing—never mind that Kylo would willingly participate in such an activity. Wildly, she wonders if he would appreciate something similar—if she weren’t a bound, faceless creature on a table and instead were kneeling at his feet, looking up into his face with wide eyes as she opened her mouth and licked him the same way he laps at her now.
This time, his groan resonates through her entire body. And then he wraps his lips around her clit in a way that robs her of the capacity to think of anything else—anything but the rushing urgency of her pleasure, pulsing through her in time with the way he suckles, rhythmically, tenderly, deliberately—
Rey has orgasmed before, but it’s never been anything like this. Like every muscle in her body, coiled tight with tension, suddenly shatters with the release of her pleasure. Like her thinking mind is briefly whited out by the intensity of the sensation he continues to pull from her with each perfect movement of his mouth.
When he finally releases her, Rey is a shivering and boneless, sprawled across the table. She blinks up at the dark ceiling, trying to remember where she is, as he presses too-tender kisses against the soft skin of her inner thighs.
“I want to make you do that again.”
Rey already feels like she has been wrung dry, but the rough urgency in his voice makes her squirm despite herself. “I don’t think that’s—what clients usually come here to do.”
“It’s what I came here to do.”
Against all reason, another trickle of wetness dribbles out of her, cool in the open air.
Kylo makes a low, satisfied noise. “Such a patient little thing. Wet and ready and waiting. Just for me.”
His fingers have started to play with the swollen lips of her vulva. Running along the smooth, wet creases of them.
“It’s all right,” he murmurs darkly. “I’m going to take such good care of it.”
Rey can’t breathe again. She finds she is even more grateful for the curtain, because the sight of his face, hovering between her thighs and whispering obscenities to the mess he’s made there—she’s certain it would ruin her.
It shouldn’t surprise her, the press of his finger inside. His hands are so big that she imagined ( not that she imagined this often, absolutely not )—that she imagined it might even sting a little, to have his fingers there. But he’s made her so soft and wet and easy that it simply slips right in, his last knuckle bumping right up against perineum.
He makes a noise that trips over something in his throat, low and hungry. “You’re so tight here.”
“It feels—” She shifts her hips. Her chest clenches. “Not too tight.”
“No?” He moves his finger in and out. She can feel each bump of his knuckles as they slide within her. “Perhaps you need a little more?”
The second finger is more of a stretch. He squeezes it right next to the first, and then he simply rubs them in slow, tiny movements inside her. Opening up her body for him. Rey tries to remember to breathe, but it’s so difficult when he’s filling her, there , in a way no one has ever filled her before.
From the short, shaky exhales against her thigh, it sounds like he’s having difficulty breathing too. Though Rey can’t imagine why— he’s not the one tied to a table, being driven slowly insane by the slow, coaxing strokes of a pair of fingers.
Kylo groans. “You have no idea, do you? The things I want to do to you right now.”
Rey presses her head back against the table, cheeks burning. “I—think I might have a few.”
“And what would those be?”
This is foolish. Even more foolish than allowing this to go so far in the first place. And even more so than it was to toss her lightsaber to the floor, stripping her of her only means of defending herself. But Rey still squeezes her eyes shut. She finds the shimmering energy that twines like an invisible web around them. And, her stomach fluttering with nerves, she lets him see.
He curses. His next thrust of fingers into her body is rough, like he’s lost a bit of his careful control—but it makes the tips of them stroke against something that causes her back to arch clean off the table.
“Ben,” she gasps, for the second time that night. He keeps making her forget herself—forget her mission, forget her loyalties, forget anything but the hunger that weaves and surges in the air between them.
But rather than anger him, it’s the sound of his name that seems to finally break him from this charade they’ve been performing.
“Rey.” He sounds broken. Wild. “Please, Rey. I need to see you.”
With trembling fingers, she reaches beneath her for the lever that will release the lock on the table.
Kylo does not waste any time. His fingers slip out from her body, and half a moment later, he has yanked the table roughly through the curtain. The light is so bright out here that Rey needs to blink a moment to adjust—but he doesn’t give her time to. A wave of crackling power snaps outward from his body. The overhead bulb flickers, and the bindings fall abruptly from her ankles.
Then his face comes into focus, and Rey’s lungs tighten around her next breath.
It’s been a year since she’s seen his face. A long, lonely year—but he’s gazing at her now with the same desperation his expression held when she last saw it, vanishing behind the hissing doors of her ship.
He is as fiercely beautiful as she remembered—and equally as awestruck. Drinking her in like she holds entire galaxies within her.
“Rey,” he says again, hardly above a whisper.
So Rey curls her fingers in the heavy black fabric he’s wearing, pulls herself up from the table and kisses him.
It’s surprisingly chaste, given all the things he’s just done to her. For a few blissful moments, it’s just her mouth moving slowly against his, his palms shaking a little as they find her hips and pull her to the edge of the table. Holding her.
But then her tongue presses into his mouth, and—oh, fuck—she can taste herself there. On his tongue. The way she came on his lips. His pleasure, his fervent pride, at his ability to unravel her in such a way. She can taste every part of it.
“Why did you come here?” she hears herself ask between searing kisses.
“I already told you,” he hisses. “You invited me.”
His fingertips are starting to dig into her naked waist. She realizes, with a wave of light-headed arousal, how hard he is right now.
She realizes she wants him to take what he came here for.
Kylo growls, low in his throat, and pulls her naked body flush to his front. His erection is large and insistent through his clothes, pressing into her abdomen, and Rey is dizzy with the knowledge that she did that. She made him this needy. Her. For her.
When she grinds her hips against it, his groan becomes something guttural. Like his desire for her runs so deep that he couldn’t bury it, even if he tried.
“Off,” she gasps into his mouth, tugging at his cloak. “Take this off. All of it. Please.”
In the end, he doesn’t manage to get quite all of it off, because Rey stops him as soon as he reaches his pants. She doesn’t mean to stop him, of course—but that ends up being the consequence of her fingers wrapping around the girth of him as soon as he reveals himself to her.
And from the helpless noise Kylo makes in response, Rey can’t think of anything that would convince her to ever, ever let him go.
He is large. Much larger than two fingers—though Rey decides to leave that concern for later. She squeezes her palm around him and moves it along his shaft, heart fluttering at how long it takes her to get from the leaking tip to the base.
“Does it always get this big?”
Kylo makes a strangled sound. “Yes.”
“All the time?” she asks innocently. “Or just when you’re thinking about me?”
His breathing is starting to come faster now. His eyes are fixed on the slow movements of her hand, which looks so small and delicate around his straining length. “Just when I’m—fuck, Rey. When I’m thinking about you.”
“Do you think of me often?”
His eyes snap to hers, black and burning in the dim light. “I never stop.”
Her hand must squeeze him too tightly, because he hisses out a breath between his teeth, shoulders tensing.
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly, “is that not—is it good? I didn’t—”
She tries again, loosening her fingers, but his hand flies to wrap around her wrist, halting her.
“It’s good,” he manages.
“So let me—” Rey gives another tug, and his grip falters, sucking in a breath. “I want to make you feel like—the way you just made me feel.”
His eyes are bottomless. Black fire, swallowing her whole.
“I have a better idea.”
He presses her back to the table with a palm, and Rey follows, obedient. Her fingers itch to wrap around his sex again, to make him groan and tense and shudder in her arms. But when she reaches for him, he pins her to the table with a single, simmering glance, working at the fastenings of his tunic.
“Don’t make me bind your hands, too.”
Rey’s nostrils flare. “Who says I would let you?”
He pauses, shirt discarded on the floor, to squeeze her ankle. It’s still a little sore where the leather bit into the skin, holding her open while she came on his mouth. “Another time, perhaps.”
Rey wets her lips. He finishes with his pants, and then he is just as naked as she is. Wrapping his hands around her waist, he pulls her firmly to the edge of the table.
“After all, you’ve been so good these past few days. Waiting for me.” His palms part her thighs wider, and god, Rey simply lets him. “Don’t you think you deserve a reward?”
His cockhead is a blunt pressure, nudging at her entrance. Much bigger than two fingers, she can now confirm.
“Yes,” he breathes. “I think you do.”
It takes a few tries, for him to fit it all inside her. It’s a slow, pinching stretch, and he keeps stilling above her, a few inches at a time. Trying to catch his breath. Rey is also struggling to breathe, because he’s—god, he’s so much, and she isn’t quite used to something this size pushing into her body—but also because it’s distinctly not bad in the way she was expecting. This was supposed to be about him, after all—but there is something so right about him filling her this way. Finally, irrevocably connected.
By the time he has worked himself completely inside her body, a pink flush has crawled across his broad chest, and Rey feels as though she is overflowing with emotion–with the gigantic stretch of him, with the heart-squeezing expression of wonder he regards her with when he’s finally able to open his eyes again.
Rey trembles on the table, impaled, and stares right back up at him.
“You were waiting for this,” he says hoarsely, “and I came here to give it to you.”
Rey nods—or at least she thinks she nods, because her head also snaps back against the table with a gasp as soon as he begins to move.
It’s even better with him moving, she quickly discovers. His size and the angle means that he is sliding firmly against that deep bundle of nerves inside her with each in-stroke, and it’s breathtaking, how good that makes her feel. To know she is taking him apart, listening to him murmur hot, nonsensical words into her throat, even as he is giving her an equal amount of pleasure.
His lips find her ear, a hot wash of air that rides the groan from his lungs. “Say it, Rey. Please. Tell me you waited.”
“Every night,” she gasps out. “I was waiting for you.”
He rewards her by settling into a steady rhythm, one that lights up her eyelids with each deliberate brush against that sensitive spot deep inside her. Impulsively, she opens a sliver in the Force as she has so many other times this week—but instead of pushing him away, she is pushing images toward him. The deep connection she experiences with their bodies so close together. The tightening in her chest when he stares down into her face. The head-spinning thought-melting sensation of him, thick and long and fucking into her.
“That’s right.” Kylo’s grip is nearly bruising, pinning her hips to the table so that he can slide into her exactly the way he wants to. “So good. Spreading your legs. Waiting for me. My good—sweet— patient —girl.”
The swell of their pleasure is starting to crash into one another, now that Rey has teased open their long-dormant connection. Between each of his sharp bone-tingling thrusts, she is also bombarded with glimpses of herself, flushed and gasping. The sensation of her body like a molten vice around him—pulling them both steadily toward their climax.
It comes as a surprise, and it is doubly as intense as before, with the wave of his release filling her as her own orgasm crests and stretches between them. Kylo stills inside her with a groan that’s nearly a shout, his hands grasping at her as he empties inside her in pulses that seem to wrack his entire body. The pleasure of it soars and climbs upward and upward still, until Rey is whimpering into his damp hair and he’s stroking her hips, panting.
Until the room is silent once more.
Rey’s eyes eventually open to the bulb overhead. Kylo’s breathing is starting to even out, his body still bent over hers protectively. As if he doesn’t want to ever let her go.
A shiver passes through her.
The thought of her lightsaber streaks through her mind. It’s on the floor behind her. She could call it to her, if she needed to. If he tried to capture her.
To her surprise, Kylo releases a soft huff of laughter.
He pulls out of her body with a wet, messy sound. Standing straight again, he begins to gather his clothes, stepping into each leg of his pants.
“You lure me to this brothel,” he says, “and you still think you’re the one being ambushed?”
Rey’s mouth drops open. “I haven’t ambushed anyone!”
“No defense in the galaxy could contend with the sight of you like that.”
“I was simply carrying out a mission,” she says, cheeks aflame.
“And did you get what you came for?”
Rey sits up, and he pauses in his dressing to look at her. His face is somehow softer, in his post-coital haze. Younger, even.
“I really have been thinking about you,” she says softly. “The whole time I’ve been here. I haven’t been able to stop.”
“I know.” Beneath his snow-damp hair, the tips of his ears flush a distinct shade of pink. “I can feel it. When you think about me. You’re very loud, you know.”
“Oh.” Rey’s face feels suddenly hot, and she’s fairly certain it’s turning a shade of pink to rival that in his ears. “I didn’t realize.”
“It’s been—very distracting.” His throat bobs. There is a mole she hadn’t noticed before, on the side of his throat. Rey is possessed by the ridiculous urge to lick it.
“I suppose I’ll just have to take more missions like this in the future. To keep you distracted.”
He tenses. His eyes dart to the other curtains in the wall, the glass booth near the entrance where the matron usually sits, accepting payment from clients. “There are other ways to distract me.”
Rey’s heart flips over. “Are there?”
“Yes. And they don’t involve—other men. Watching you like this.”
She sits up a little straighter. “I don’t mind being watched,” she says, biting her lip. “At least, not when you’re the one watching.”
Fire snaps in his eyes. “I like to do more than watch.”
Rey pushes herself off the table. Her knees are a little weak from the unnatural position she’s been held in all evening, but she still manages to keep her spine straight as she walks up to him. “We’ll see.”
He tilts his head, looking down at her. His lips, she notices, are still swollen from the abuse she put them through between her legs. It makes something hot and tight coil in her stomach.
“I look forward to it,” Kylo murmurs.
He pulls his cloak over his shoulders. She thinks he might kiss her, but he simply turns on his heel and walks to the door, leaving her tingling and dizzy.
“Oh, and Rey—”
Kylo pauses with his hand on the doorknob, a black shape against the wood.
“You’re not the only one capable of creating a distraction.”
Rey doesn’t wait for him to close the door behind him before she starts smiling.