Chapter 74 Episode 74: Almost R18

Akira’s POV

The session ends the way the last several have ended. The air between us already heavy with everything we have been refusing to finish.

Kael’s hands are still on me from the final correction. One at my waist, the other higher, fingers spread against my ribs like he is measuring the rise and fall of my breath. We are alone in the training annex.

The door is shut. The mats still hold the heat of the morning’s work. My pulse has not slowed from the last sequence, and I know his has not either. I can feel it where his chest brushes my back.

I turn inside the loose circle of his arms.

For a second we only look at each other. The soft kiss from days ago lives right there in the space between our mouths. The word baby lives there too. He has been saying it all morning, low, certain, like it belongs to him now.

And every time it lands I feel something in my chest give way a little further. We still have not named what we are. The absence of the name has stopped mattering. The want has grown larger than the silence.

I reach for him first.

My hands find the front of his training top and fist in the fabric. I push up onto my toes and kiss him the way I have been thinking about kissing him since he first called me baby and then sealed it with that careful, devastating mouth. This kiss is not careful. It is open and immediate and hungry.

Kael makes a rough sound against my lips and answers with the same hunger, one hand sliding up into my hair to tilt my head the way he wants it. The other stays hard at my waist, pulling me flush against him so I can feel exactly how hard he already is.

The contact undoes something that has been held tight for weeks.

I break the kiss only long enough to get my mouth against his throat. "Kael..."

"I know, baby." His voice is low and frayed. "Fuck I know."

We move without a real plan. He backs me toward the wall of the annex until my shoulders meet the cool surface. His body follows, pinning me there with the solid weight I have been craving since the night in my room.

I can feel the shape of him through our clothes, thick, hard, already leaking enough that the fabric between us is damp. The knowledge sends a sharp pulse of need straight down my spine.

I drop to my knees.

Kael’s breath leaves him in a single, punched-out sound. His hand stays in my hair, not forcing, just holding. I look up at him while I work his pants open. His eyes are dark and fixed on my face like he is memorizing the exact moment I chose this.

When I free his cock it springs heavy against my wrist, flushed and wet at the tip. I wrap my fingers around the base and stroke once, slow, watching the way his stomach tightens.

"Fuck baby.."

The name breaks on his tongue when I lean in and take him into my mouth.

He is thick enough that my jaw stretches around the first few inches. I sink down as far as I can and feel the head nudge the back of my throat. The taste of him... salt and heat and clean skin, floods my senses.

I moan around the length and feel the vibration travel through him. Kael’s hand tightens in my hair. His hips make a small, aborted thrust like he is fighting the urge to fuck my mouth properly.

I do not want him to fight it.

I pull back until only the head remains between my lips, then take him deeper again, working my tongue along the underside the way I have imagined doing since the first time he pinned me to my own bed.

Spit gathers at the corners of my mouth and slides down his shaft. I use it to stroke what I cannot fit, twisting my wrist on every upward pull. The sounds I make are wet and needy and completely beyond my control.

I have wanted this for so long that the reality of it, Kael’s cock heavy on my tongue, his voice cracking on the word baby, the tremble in his thighs, makes my own cock throb so hard it hurts.

"Fuck, look at you." His voice is wrecked. "Taking it so well, baby. So fucking pretty on your knees for me."

The praise lands like a hand around my throat. I moan again and hollow my cheeks, sucking harder. My free hand braces against his thigh for balance.

Tears prick at the corners of my eyes from the stretch and I do not care. I want him deeper. I want the evidence of how much he needs this painted across my tongue.

Kael lasts longer than I expect before he hauls me up by the hair and the shoulder, not roughly enough to hurt, just urgently enough that I stumble into his chest. His mouth crashes into mine. He must taste himself on me.

The thought makes me dizzy. He kisses me like he is trying to crawl inside the same way I had just tried to take him apart with my mouth.

"Mats," he rasps against my lips. "Now."

We end up on the training mats in a tangle of half-removed clothes. My top is shoved up under my arms. His is gone entirely. Pants and underthings are pushed down just far enough to free what matters.

Kael settles over me, knees bracketing my hips, and for a moment he only looks. The hunger in his face is almost frightening in its intensity. Then he lowers himself and our cocks slide together, hot and slick, and the sound that leaves me is high and helpless.

"I’ve got you," he murmurs, reaching down between us. "I’ve got you, baby."

His hand wraps around both of us at once.

The dual pressure is devastating. He strokes us together in a tight, filthy rhythm, the heads of our cocks catching and sliding with every pass. Precome smears between us until the friction turns liquid and perfect.

I arch under him, hands fisting in the mat above my head, thighs falling open to give him more room. The need has gone sharp and bright. I can feel how close I already am, and we have barely started.

Kael’s free hand slides lower.

I feel the tense in the way his fingers pause at the cleft of my ass. I answer it by lifting my hips and spreading my legs wider. The trust in the movement is so complete it almost scares me.

He makes a low, approving sound and presses one slick finger against me, slick with the same precome he has been spreading across our cocks.

The stretch burns in the best way. He works the finger in slowly, carefully, giving me time to adjust even while his other hand keeps stroking us both in that same relentless rhythm.

"Breathe for me, baby."

I do. The second finger joins the first and the burn deepens into something richer. He curls them and finds the place inside me that makes my vision white out for a second. A broken sound tears out of my throat.

My cock jerks hard in the tight circle of his fist, spilling another pulse of wetness across his knuckles and my own stomach.

"There," he says, voice rough with wonder and hunger. "There you are."

He fingers me in time with the strokes of our cocks. Every thrust of his fingers presses against that same devastating spot while the tight slide of his hand keeps both of us riding the edge. I am making noises I have never heard myself make; high, needy, completely shameless.

The word please falls out of my mouth without my permission. Kael answers by adding a third finger and leaning down to kiss the sound out of me.

The dual sensation is too much and not enough at the same time. I can feel how empty I still am, how easily he could replace his fingers with his cock and finish what we started weeks ago in my bedroom. The thought alone makes me clench around him. He groans into my mouth and strokes us faster.

"Not yet," he manages, like he can read the need on my face. "Not all the way. Not until you ask me properly. But I can give you this, baby. I can give you everything else."

And he does.

His fingers work me open with ruthless care while his fist keeps our cocks trapped together in that tight, slick channel. The wet sounds of it fill the annex. I am shaking underneath him, thighs trembling, stomach tight, so close that every breath feels like it might tip me over.

Kael’s forehead drops to mine. His eyes are open. He is watching every flicker of pleasure that crosses my face like it is the only thing in the world worth seeing.

"Come on," he whispers. "Come for me, baby. Let me feel it."

The command undoes me.

My orgasm hits hard enough that my back arches clear off the mat. I spill between us in thick pulses, coating his fist and both our cocks, clenching rhythmically around the fingers still buried inside me.

The pleasure is so intense it borders on pain. I hear myself cry out, his name, the word please, broken pieces of sound that do not form real language. Kael strokes us through it, slowing only when the sensitivity becomes too sharp, his fingers still moving in gentle, shallow thrusts that draw every last tremor out of me.

I am still shaking when he follows.

He comes with a low, guttural sound, forehead pressed to mine, cock pulsing against mine in the slick mess we have made. The heat of it spills across my stomach and chest.

His fingers stay inside me through it, like he cannot bear to lose the connection even while he falls apart. I feel every throb of his climax as if it is happening in my own body.

For a long time afterward we simply stay there, breathing the same shattered air.

Kael eventually eases his fingers free with careful gentleness. The empty feeling that follows makes me whine, soft and involuntary. He soothes the sound with a slow kiss, then another, then a third that lands at the corner of my mouth like an apology for stopping. His hand, still messy with both of us, strokes my side in long, calming passes.

"I’ve got you," he murmurs again. The name follows, quieter, almost reverent. "Baby."

I turn my face into his throat and breathe him in. My body feels liquid and used and cherished all at once. The undefined shape of what we are still sits between us, but it no longer feels like a problem. We have not needed the words.

The way he held me open and stroked us together and called me baby while I came apart under him said enough.

Emotions move through me in slow, heavy waves while we lie there on the training mats, half-dressed and sticky and unwilling to move.

Relief, first; vast and trembling. The weeks of careful restraint have finally broken and the breaking did not destroy anything. He is still here. His arm is still around me. The word baby is still soft in his mouth.

Vulnerability follows, sharp enough to sting. I let him inside my body with his fingers. I got on my knees in the middle of the training annex and sucked him until I cried. I came with his name in my throat and no armor left.

The trust in that is enormous. The fact that he met it with equal need only makes the feeling deeper.

Affection sits under everything, warm and almost painful. The way he kept checking my face. The way he refused to take more than I was ready to give even while we were both desperate. The way he is holding me now, like the climax did not end the claim but only settled it more firmly into both of us.

And beneath it all, a quiet, fierce certainty: whatever the system is preparing me for, whatever elevation is coming, I no longer have to meet it while starving for this.

Kael has seen the places where I am weakest, my defence, my history of taking damage, the need I tried to keep quiet and he has answered every one of them with his hands and his mouth and the name he gave me without asking permission.

I pressed closer to him on the mat as his arm tightened around me.

We still do not have full sex. We still do not have the words for what we are. But we have this: the taste of him on my tongue, the lingering stretch of his fingers, the drying mess of our shared release on my skin, and the soft, repeated sound of him calling me baby while the rest of the world stays locked outside the annex door.

It is enough to keep me right here, needy and open and completely his, for as long as he is willing to hold me.