I wrapped one arm around her waist and the other hand found her throat again, lighter this time, just enough pressure to feel her pulse hammering against my palm at a rate that couldn’t possibly be healthy. Her hips were moving in tight circles, grinding down onto me with the focused intensity of someone who had found the exact angle that worked and refused to deviate by a single degree.

My mouth found her breast one last time.

The milk hit my tongue in a warm rush, dark and rich and purely Addison, and I drank deep while my hips drove up into her and her body squeezed me with everything she had left.

\[You drink a mouthful of milk from a Silver-tier target. As a result, you get 50 points!\]

The System notification was background noise to the real event happening in my nervous system.

Addison’s fourth orgasm started as a full-body clench that tightened every muscle from her jaw to her toes, her inner walls closing around me in a grip so intense that pulling out would have been physically impossible even if I wanted to. Her legs locked behind me like a steel trap, heels pressing into my lower back, and the position held me deep inside her as her body worked in rhythmic pulses designed by evolution or something more perverse to drain everything from me.

I came.

The orgasm started at the base of my spine and traveled upward and downward simultaneously, expanding through my hips and my stomach and my chest until I couldn’t tell where the pleasure ended and the rest of me began. I filled her in long, pulsing spurts that she felt, her eyes flying open and her mouth forming a perfect circle as the warmth spread inside her.

"Oh." Her voice was almost gone, reduced to a rasp that wouldn’t have carried past the foot of the bed. "Oh, that’s. I can feel you."

I kept coming. The orgasm lasted longer than anything I’d experienced with anyone else, sustained by the feedback loop of her body clenching around me with each pulse, which triggered another pulse, which triggered another clench. Addison rode through it with me, her hips still rolling in those slow circles that milked every last drop from somewhere I didn’t know I had left to give.

When it finally ended, I collapsed forward and caught myself on my elbows to avoid crushing her. My forehead dropped against her collarbone. Her fingers came up and threaded through my hair with a gentleness that contradicted everything about the last forty minutes.

We lay there, connected, breathing together in the quiet that follows the kind of sex that rewrites your understanding of what the word means.

The candles that hadn’t been knocked over painted gold across the brick walls. Rain still streaked across the impossible windows. The fake city below us glowed in neon blues and pinks that reflected off the wet glass and scattered light across the ceiling in moving patterns.

Addison’s pulse beat against my lips where they rested on her throat, slower now but still elevated.

"You counted," she said finally.

"What?"

"You said two. After the second one. You were counting."

"Old habit."

"How many."

"Four."

"Four." She was quiet for a long moment. Her fingers kept moving through my hair with that same tender rhythm. "Is that a lot?"

"For a first time? Yeah."

"Good." Her voice carried something I’d never heard from her before. Satisfaction, maybe. Or peace. Or the particular warmth of someone who had been running from vulnerability for so long that she’d forgotten what it felt like to stop. "I want the record."

\[ABILITY THEFT SUCCESSFUL\]

\[Target: Addison Baxter (Rank #27, Silver House)\]

\[Ability Stolen: Reaper’s Edge\]

\[Starting Rank: Copper\]

\[LIBRARY UPDATED: Total Abilities: 4\]

The notification pulsed gold in my peripheral vision. Reaper’s Edge. Dual scythe manifestation. Death-aspected wounds. Teleportation dashes. Mana harvest from kills.

An A-rank ability, starting at Copper, sitting in my library like a loaded gun waiting for someone dumb enough to make me use it.

I dismissed the notification and pressed my lips to the fresh bruise I’d left on Addison’s throat.

"You’re still inside me," she said.

"Yeah."

"I didn’t say you could leave."

"Wasn’t planning on it."

Her arms wrapped around my neck and she held me against her like I was the stuffed bat she slept with, the one named Vlad that Aurora had told me about, the one Addison would rather die than let anyone know existed. Her legs stayed locked behind my waist with no indication of releasing me.

Plenty of time to lie here in the wreckage of what we’d done and listen to the rain hit windows that didn’t exist in a city that had never been built while the girl who carried twin scythes and ate lollipops and threatened everyone within earshot held me like I was something worth keeping.

"Jace."

"Hmm."

"You owe me three coffee jellies."

"I know."

"And you have to dye your hair black."

"We’ll talk about it."

"And if you tell anyone I cried I will literally end you."

"Wouldn’t dream of it."

Her hand found my jaw and tilted my face up until our eyes met. The violet contacts had shifted enough that her real brown irises were fully visible now, warm and dark and absolutely terrified in a way that she would deny under oath.

She kissed me softly. Once. The gentlest thing she’d done all night.

Then she bit my lip hard enough to draw blood.

"Now get me water before I die of dehydration, you psychopath."

The Sanctum timer hit zero while I was still inside Addison.

I knew it was coming. The red notification had been pulsing in my peripheral vision for thirty seconds, the countdown ticking from :30 to :15 to :05 with increasing urgency, and I watched every single number pass while making absolutely no effort to move. Addison’s legs were locked behind my waist with the conviction of someone who had decided that this position was where she lived now, her arms wrapped around my neck, her face buried in the space between my jaw and shoulder where she was breathing in slow, deep pulls that meant she was either falling asleep or memorizing what I smelled like.

Either option meant I wasn’t going anywhere.

The notification flashed one final warning.

SANCTUM DISSOLUTION IN 3... 2... 1...