Chapter 125 125
Annabeth's POV:
We separated just long enough to strip the rest of our clothes. No careful folding, no neatly placing things on chairs. Just desperate removal, fabric hitting the floor, and then we were pressed together again, skin to skin, nothing between us.
Through the bond I could feel everything he felt. The heat of my body against his, how much he wanted me, how overwhelmed he was by the sensation of being this close. I felt myself through his perception, saw myself through his eyes, and it was strange and intimate and unbearably hot.
"I love you," I said, pulling him down for another kiss. "I love you, I love you, I—"
He swallowed the rest of the words with his mouth. His hand slid between my thighs and found me wet, ready, and I whimpered against his lips as his fingers worked me open.
"Please," I gasped. "I need—"
"I know." He positioned himself, pausing just for a second. "I can feel it. Everything you need. Everything you want. God, Annabeth, the way you feel right now—"
"Wait," I breathed, and he froze immediately. "Condom. Nightstand drawer."
He reached over, fumbled with the drawer, found the box I'd bought weeks ago and never mentioned to anyone. His hands were steadier this time than they'd been at the cabin, muscle memory maybe, and then he was back, settled between my thighs.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him into me.
The stretch was familiar now, my body remembering his, and there was no pain this time, just fullness and heat and this overwhelming sense of rightness. He groaned as he sank all the way in, his forehead dropping to mine, both of us breathing hard.
"Move," I said. "Kaelen, please—"
He moved.
Not slow, not careful. He fucked me like he was trying to crawl inside me, hard and deep and relentless, and I matched him thrust for thrust, my nails dragging down his back hard enough to leave marks. The bed creaked beneath us, headboard hitting the wall, and I didn't care, couldn't care about anything except the feeling of him inside me and the bond singing between us.
"Harder," I demanded, and he obeyed, shifting his angle in a way that made stars explode behind my eyes. "Yes, fuck, right there—"
He was everywhere. In my body, in my head, in every nerve ending I had. I could feel his pleasure layered over mine, this feedback loop of sensation that kept building and building until I thought I might actually die from it.
"I'm close," he groaned. "Annabeth, I'm—"
"Me too. Don't stop. Don't you dare stop."
He didn't stop. His hand slipped between us, finding my clit, rubbing in tight circles while he kept thrusting, and I shattered.
The orgasm hit me so hard, crashing through my entire body, and I felt him follow a second later, his whole body going rigid as he came. The bond amplified everything, his release triggering aftershocks in me, mine prolonging his, until we were both shaking and gasping and completely wrecked.
He collapsed on top of me, his face buried in my neck, his weight pressing me into the mattress in a way that should have been uncomfortable but just felt safe. I wrapped my arms around him and held on, both of us trying to remember how to breathe.
"Holy shit," I said when I could form words again.
He laughed, this exhausted, satisfied sound. "Yeah."
"That was..."
"Different. From last time."
"Good different?"
He lifted his head to look at me, his eyes still ringed with gold, his hair a mess from my hands. "Very good different. Amazing different. I can't feel my legs different."
I grinned. "Same."
He rolled off me, both of us wincing slightly at the separation, and pulled me against his side. I rested my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow down, feeling his presence in my mind like a second pulse.
The diary was still on the nightstand. My mother's words, my mother's love story, sitting there like a silent witness to ours.
"She'd like you," I said quietly. "My mom. I think she'd really like you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. She had a thing for protective shining-eyed idiots apparently. It runs in the family."
He snorted. "Idiot?"
"You did almost die trying to save me. Multiple times. That's pretty idiotic."
"Fair." He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. "I'd do it again, though. Every time."
"I know." I traced patterns on his chest, feeling his skin warm under my fingers. "That's why I love you."
We lay there, tangled together in my unmade bed, and for the first time since everything went to hell, I felt genuinely at peace. Not the anxious peace of waiting for the next disaster, but real peace. The kind that comes from knowing you're exactly where you're supposed to be, with exactly who you're supposed to be with.
"Your mom wrote something else," Kaelen said after a while. "At the end of that section. I didn't read it out loud but I think you should hear it."
"What?"
"She said that loving your father felt like coming home after not knowing she'd been lost. Like her whole life before him had been wandering, and then suddenly she was somewhere she belonged."
I tilted my head up to look at him. His eyes were soft, warm, looking at me like I was something precious.
"That's how I feel," I said. "With you. Like I finally found the place I belong."
"Me too." He smiled, that real smile that always made my chest ache. "Me too, Annabeth."
I kissed him again, soft this time, and settled back against his chest. We'd figure out the rest later. The parents, the futures, the whole messy business of building lives out of the wreckage of what we'd survived.
But for now, this was enough.
He was enough.
We were enough.