Chapter Summary

Where our duo do what they do best, Rey wields a knife on Kylo then starts to make a mess in her pants, and Doctor Oheneia is probably extremely grateful she knocked first before opening the door.

Rey's bed was cold, uncomfortable, and her husband wasn't in it with her.

She didn't even try to sleep. Not that it would have come to her if she had, but her mind refused to silence itself.

Luke… just… shove off. You threw me at your nephew, you've done enough. Now kindly don't muddle yourself into our affairs anymore.

Except they also needed her old master's help. He was the liaison between them and the outside world. The Resistance was plotting, the General was devising, and quite soon Kylo would need to make a decision in where he fell within all of that before the choice was made for him.

On that note- one of need and wholeheartedly embracing the spirit of reconciliation, Rey gave up tossing and turning and went to her husband's door. The hallway between their bedrooms was silent and dim, with only a sing lantern burning at either far end of it. That likely meant it was daylight up above them, for the Fel kept opposite hours to the surface and were far more active during the night.

Rey thought about knocking on the door but then thought against it. When had her hard-headed husband ever extended her that courtesy? The door wasn't locked at least, she'd been wondering, and softly muted light spilled out when she opened it to slip inside.

Several hours had gone by since she last spoke to him, and Kylo was still awake and upright. He was sitting on the edge of his bed and the book Rey had been reading to him was resting unopened on his lap. He neither looked up nor said anything when she closed the door behind her and padded softly barefoot over to his side.

"Let's not fight anymore, Kylo," she said quietly. "You very nearly died then came back from the dead so let this be a new start for us. One where we don't fight with each other every day and about every thing."

He refused to look up from his gaze's spot on the floor, but one of his dark eyebrows rose slightly to her statement.

"Such a treaty of civility wouldn't last long between us," he said. "It never does."

Rey sighed and repressed a shiver. The floor was cold and she should have worn shoes, but she'd secretly hoped to just crawl right into bed with him and it wouldn't have mattered.

"You're likely right," she agreed. "But let us try anyhow. A new start. A new clean page turned over for the two of. Deal?"

She lifted one of her hands up and brought it into his line of sight. Kylo tipped his head but didn't take it.

"And how long would this deal last, my darling? How long until you force me to either honor my promise to let you go or I have to prove myself a liar and make you forever resent me?"

"Gods, Kylo."

She sat down next to him, leaning closer than she normally would sit. She tried to take his hand in her own but he obstinately refused to cooperate.

"I don't want to end our marriage."

Yet. Or ever. Maybe. Why did she have to decide now? Couldn't things just happen as they would happen and fate would decide on itself?

"I think," Kylo paused, tipping his head and seeming to consider his next words more carefully than he normally would. "I think it must have been very difficult for you being married to me. I keep thinking back to the things I would have done differently. All the mistakes I'd try and alter during the short course of our marriage. Honestly though? The answer was very little of them. In fact, there's only one thing at all from our short time together that I would change if I could."

Rey waited for a few breaths, then grew impatient and dragged Kylo's hand off his lap to hold with her own.

"Not getting stabbed in the stomach by some kriffing poker players to get money we didn't even need?"

Kylo huffed. He shook his head and smiled slightly.

"See? That would have been a good husband's answer," he said. "No, Rey, that was fine. I probably deserved it. What I wish I'd never done was tell you that you could ever walk away from me."

He turned his head to look at her, and his hand shifted to wrap across the top of her own. He squeezed surprisingly hard.

"No."

It was all he said and his tone was clear and concise. Rey swallowed, a lump building in her throat from the look in his eyes.

"Kylo-"

"My answer is no, Rey. No, I'm not divorcing you or giving you an annulment. I know that I promised I would and so now you know you're married to a liar. Maybe that should be the new page of our book together. A husband that can't be trusted and a wife that doesn't want to be there."

Indignation and pity both warred within her, but Rey opted to respond with neither.

"You said that-"

"I know what I said, Rey. Back then I meant it. Now I don't anymore. We're staying married and you have no say it that. You can run away and I may chase you or maybe I won't, but you're going to stay my wife and you'll never marry another."

He spoke the words with a soft conviction Rey fell still, trying to sift through her emotions. She held her breath as a feeling other than anger rose to the surface above everything else.

Acceptance. His to her and hers to him. She knew she should have been livid, but somehow what he said made her happy.

Rey almost smiled. Nearly.

"Get rid of them," she finally whispered. "Your other wives. I never wanted to divorce you, I wanted you to get rid of them."

She finally met her husband's eyes again. He was subtly cringing, as if he'd expected a much different outburst at his proclamation.

"Skywalker said-"

"You have the power to do it, Kylo." She turned to face him fully, catching both of his hands in her own "Annul them. Divorce them. Send them away. Get rid of them."

Rey punctuated every one of the last four words with a grit of her teeth and a bite of her fingernails into the flesh of his palms.

Kylo hesitated before answering. He opened his mouth slightly but didn't speak, and Rey's eyes fell for a second too long to his lips.

"Is that really what was bothering you this whole time?" he asked.

Rey's eyes widened then. She sputtered, lost for the millionth time in the thought of how karking clueless could he really be?

"Of. Course. Kylo, godsdamnit, I- I just- why the bloody hell do you think you can get it both ways?!"

She wrenched her hands free and shoved away from him, trying to stumble to her feet but he caught one of her wrists. When she tried to pull free he made a pained grunt of effort and she stopped.

When she looked back he was giving her a forlorn puppy dog look and Rey's shoulders slumped, some of the sudden burst of tension disappointing at the proof of how much of a nerf-header he really was.

"That was a cheap move," she huffed.

Kylo nodded.

"I know."

He tugged lightly on her wrist and Rey let herself be guided back down next to him.

For a while they sat together in silence. Whatever Kylo was thinking he was keeping to himself. Rey tried not to feel anything in particular. Tried to ignore how hard her heart started to pound the longer he didn't answer to her request.

It wasn't until she started to pull away again that he hugged her from behind, his face burying in her hair and making her next breath hitch.

"Most of my marriages are for political alliances, Rey," he finally said. "If I- breaking them would have serious ramifications. But I don't think it's those unions that bother you, is it?"

His head dipped, his lips lightly skimming across Rey's bare shoulder. She was only wearing her simply night slip dress and yet somehow his close physical proximity didn't make her feel as cold as she had only moments before.

Still, she absolutely couldn't let herself get distracted by her husband's… familiarity./Not this time.

"Most of them," she repeated. "But not all. What of the others then? The other wives that you chose for yourself to marry? What of them?"

Rey didn't bother trying to hide the jealous snarl from her voice. On a conceptual level she knew that political unions by marriage grew more common the higher up someone was within the royal court, but Kylo was right. Those weren't the ones that had kept at war with herself for this whole time.

Kylo nodded, resting more of his weight against her shoulder and trying to pull her closer to him. He was doing that trick again. The one where he'd distract her by any means necessary.

"Speak, Kylo. Answer."

She snapped the fingers of her free hand through the air in front of his face. She felt him swallow against her shoulder before he pulled himself back only very slightly.

"There were some I'd chosen myself for reasons that don't matter to me anymore," he admitted.

Rey glared at the gently flickering lights of the lantern on the far wall.

"And those reasons were?"

"I was young and foolish. I thought they were pretty. I didn't think of it any further beyond that. Now I don't think of them hardly at all since I've met you."

Rey frowned, shooting him an unimpressed scowl.

"We've been married less than a month, Kylo."

"A lot can happen in a month, Rey. Are you the same person you were when we first met? On our wedding day?"

Again a low blow. Rey wrinkled her nose, trying to will herself to be wholly unaffected.

"Do you care about them?"

Kylo kissed her shoulder and Rey's heart stuttered in expectation. He answered immediately.

"No."

He tried to kiss her neck and Rey bent her head away, dodging him.

"At all? Not even a little?"

Kylo paused, his brow pulling together as he thought about her question. Rey watched him from the edge of her vision, unable to fully face him.

"No," he finally answered, a slight lift of surprise to his voice as if he'd only now just come to that conclusion for himself. "I don't care about any of my other wives. Not in the way I know you mean. Sure, many of them I have in some sort of ephemeral sense of I wish them well. But do I actually care about any of them? No, Rey. I don't believe that I do."

His hands slid up and down her arms, trying to sooth her. Rey tried not to think about how they felt against her skin. How her husband always seemed to make her warm even when the air was cold.

"The way I see it, Rey," he continued, "we have two options. I can go back and fight for my birthright. Reclaim the crown my mother gave to me. I will- I can send away those wives you find the most objectionable, and the rest that I have to keep you'll simply have to ignore and trust me that they hold to attachment to me or me to them."

Rey twisted slightly to face him better. Her eyes scanned his face, unsure of what she was really looking for. His growing beard captured her attention and, after a moment's hesitation, she gave in and reached out to stroke it. Kylo's eyes fell half closed and he leaned into her touch.

"And the other option?" she asked.

He lifted his head and stared at her for a long moment. Then he shrugged.

"The other option is that the world is about to think I'm dead. The late Prince of Alderaan had many wives. Commoner Kylo Ren, on the other hand, only has the one."

Rey blinked. He'd thought about that, clearly. Oddly, she hadn't, even though she'd thought about almost everything else regarding this obstacle between them.

She swallowed and her voice came out as a raspy wisp.

"I married a prince," she reminded him. "If you're just a commoner than our wedding didn't count."

Kylo's eyes lit up at that. Rey's heart twisted, shards of painful joy working their way through her at seeing him look so karking alive.

"Do you want me to get down on one knee, darling?" he offered. "I'll do it happily right now, though I should think I'd need some help getting back up off the floor."

Rey smiled, shaking her head in mock exasperation. He'd do it, too. She knew that he would.

She let him kiss her, though, and that was all the answer to that nonsense that he was going to get tonight.


"Have you ever done this before?"

"Shaved a man's face? Certainly not."

"But I bet you're good with a knife, Rey. And you don't really want to kill me, you just make a lot of fluff pretending that you do."

"Hmmm..."

Rey didn't bother dignifying her husband's statement with more than a impassive hum. Truth be told, she was trying to delay things. After their latest truce, Kylo had asked her to help him shave his rapidly progressing stubble situation. On the surface it might have seemed like a perfectly reasonable and innocent request. Then he started making it into something more.

First off, he refused to sit upright for it. Rey had seen the barbers on the street side shops shaving their customers faces and it had seemed pretty straightforward. Kylo was being difficult. He insisted on laying back because he was just so tired. Then he had insisted that she couldn't stand and lean over him because she wouldn't be able to get the right angles.

So all in all, this simple act of grooming had become an excuse for her husband demand she straddle him. With his injury, that meant she either had to sit dangerously high up on his chest with her legs practically wrapped around his shoulders, or she had to sit in his lap. Rey had chosen the latter and now had to stay focused despite her husband's clear enthusiasm making itself evident against her rump.

"Stop moving," she told him for what felt like the hundredth time. "You're squirming too much."

Despite her husband's assumptions about her knife skills, Rey felt highly uncomfortable with every swipe of the straight razor she made against his skin. And highly uncomfortable about other things as well.

"Sorry," he hummed, tipping his head up to let her access the side of his jaw. "I keep getting distracted. It's so nice to have my wife take care of me for the remaining duration of our marriage."

Rey pulled the blade back to glare down at him.

"Kylo."

"Beloved?"

"Are you going to behave yourself?"

He sigh dramatically, making a show of slumping back with a pained grunt. The one second of sympathy that may have earned him was shattered when his hand sneakily shifted to cradle her hip and hold her more snugly against him.

"Always," he breathed, his hand sliding lower.

Rey swallowed, her grip on the slim metal handle wavering slightly as her pulse spiked. Despite the three layers of fabric separating their- separating them, Rey could still feel the hard ridge of her husband's flesh pressed firmly between her thighs. If his goal was to have her slit his throat by accident of distraction, he was doing a marvelous job of it.

"Stop that."

She didn't clarify specifically what she meant, but Kylo's soft grin and wink told her volumes. He could have done this himself. The doctor could have done this for him. But no, he chose Rey to assist him and she had to reluctantly admit she was as guilty as he was for playing along.

She dipped the straight edge in the bowl of cooling water and feather-lightly caught his chin to turn his head to the other side. For a few passes he remained quiet and well- behaved, then his hand on her rump abruptly squeezed.

"Kylo!" Rey flinched the knife back immediately, glaring at him again. "I bloody well should think that you'd know better when you're in such a vulnerable position."

His hand tried to shift, tried to slide more under her to fondle her in a highly lewd manner, and Rey had no choice press herself firmer against his lap to avoid his wandering touch.

"Vulnerable?" he asked. "Yes I am, Rey. Vulnerable, pinned under my wife, and completely at her mercy. Tell me, darling, what is one of the criteria for that annulment you seek?"

He knew perfectly well that she hadn't meant- well he knew perfectly well the answer to his own damned question so Rey certainly wasn't about to fall for his bait.

"Kylo, you're impossible. Now hold still so I can finish."

Her hands moved to the last last area of stubble but her husband broke out into a wide grin that thwarted her task.

"If it wasn't for this little bit of fabric between us, Rey, the point would be moot. We're practically unenullable right now, aren't we?"

It was impossible not to have any sort of physical reaction to her husband grinding against her. Or, technically, her husband grinding her against him. Rey started to feel a little lightheaded as desire began to bloom in her, and she hastened to complete her project so she could take flight and a cold sponge bath.

"I didn't ask for anything unbinding," she told her tersely. "I simply made inquiries of it to Uncle Luke and-"

Kylo interrupted her with a loud shush.

"Maybe don't call my uncle your uncle, darling? Or perhaps people would begin to talk."

Rey rolled her eyes, trying to find enough anger or at least irritation to focus on and not how Kylo's other hand was now skimming along the sides of her waist.

"That tickles," she scolded softly.

Finally finished, she set the straight edge down on the table and swiped the rest of the lotion from his face with a bath towel.

"Sometime I'll grow out a proper beard and show you what really tickles."

He'd threatened her with that lewdness before, and Rey simply shook her head and attempted to untangle herself from his grip. Every time she'd try and remove his hands from herself he'd shift his grip, creating a veritable game of tag across her body.

"In a hurry to leave, darling?" he teased.

Rey started to squirm harder, started to wriggle free, when he made an abrupt pained yelp and she stilled immediately.

"Did you fake that?"

Kylo shook his head, his dark hair swooshing against his pillow and his brows pulled tight. Rey hesitated, unsure of if to believe him or not, and both his hands circled her waist to hold her more firmly against him.

"Darling," he whispered, his voice low and strained.

Actually, that sounded more like a moan than a whisper. Rey's cheeks immediately heated.

"Let me go, Kylo."

She lightly slapped at his hands and his pain filled grimace only creased.

"Never."

Oh, that-

Rey rolled her eyes. She tried to wriggle further down his body to safely get away from his injury before she fought in earnest for her freedom. Kylo only bucked up, lewdly humping against her despite the sheet between them.

"Hell bent on running away are you? My sweet wife?"

His hands shifted, one of them knotting into the loose fabric at the back of her nightgown. The other slid up, cupping and cradling her right breast. This was all acceleration so quickly and Rey's head was spinning almost as fast as her pulse was racing.

"I think I should better," she gasped. "The doctor will be-"

"Very cross if I should tear my stitches pleasuring my wife? Yes, I should imagine she would be. All worth it for the sake of ensuring an annulment is no longer an option."

Before Rey could protest, his hand slid down under her neckline to palm her breast skin on skin. A whole body shudder gripped Rey, her back unconsciously arching into his touch.

"Kylo!" We can't she'd meant to say, but he began to roll her pebbled nipple between his fingers and for a few moments she forgot how to speak at all.

With a pleased smirk he tried to sit up, his focus falling heavily on her bared chest. However that move must have been genuinely too much for him and he contented himself with falling back and working her with his hands.

It was only when Rey felt his other palm begin to slide up along her thigh, dragging the fabric of her skirt along with it, that she collected herself enough to grab his wrist and stop him.

"The doctor!" she cried weakly. "I can hear her coming!"

Kylo paused for a breath, then his grin grew along with the total silence from the hall outside.

"Is she now, darling? And so what? Afraid that she'll hear you coming?"

Embarrassingly Rey didn't think she was that far from exactly that. Somehow within the span of only a few minutes of her husband's dedicated touch he had her panting and writhing against him, her body desperately craving something she had only experienced once before.

"More?" he asked.

She didn't answer, but she nodded, her eyes drifting closed. His warm palm shifted to her other breast, giving it the same sweet attention after being neglected for so long. The hand that was on her thigh pulled away to settle on her hip and he began to rock her against him.

Rey gave in. Tired of fighting him and fighting this. She leaned forward, letting him dry hump her through their layers of clothing. She awkwardly held onto his shoulders, watching closely for any sign that she was aggravating his wound. If she was, he hid it well, and the grinding of their bodies together only increased in both pace and friction.

Rey whimpered, feeling exceptionally slick and debauched. She started to rock back, her hips rising and falling along with Kylo's in a manner that seemed to be instinct-born.

"Well look at you," he hummed appreciatively, "you're a natural. If it weren't for this sheet between us I'd be inside you right now."

Gods! Rey didn't think she could feel any hotter- or closer- but his words were nearly her undoing. That and the low tones of his voice had her trembling, their lower halves beginning to move slightly erratically against each other.

Then a knock came from the door and they both froze mid-hump. Rey's eyes widened. She mouthed 'did you' and the knock came again. The door handle turned and Rey leapt off Kylo, her movement feather light and her legs feeling like a soft pudding that could collapse under her at any moment.

Doctor Oheneia paused two steps into the room to regard them. She looked first at Rey who luckily was still fully clothed but she didn't doubt her cheeks were practically glowing. Then the Doctor's gaze turned to Kylo and she frowned, a gloved hand reaching out to gesture at him.

"What's that?" she asked.

Rey turned back to see that he had- well he had concealed himself with the apparently the first thing he could reach which was the basin of washing water. It was resting on his lap and water was splashed all around him on the bed.

"Um… Rey was shaving my face," he offered. "I had asked her to."

Oheneia looked from him to Rey then back again, her expression growing more disapproving by each breath.

"He needs to rest," she told her.

Rey nodded, trying to subtly smooth out her nightgown in an effort to look more presentable.

Oheniea's eyes narrowed slightly and she stepped to the side, gesturing at the open door behind her.

"Four hours," she told Rey. "Please."

Er… yes. Rey nodded, avoiding the Fel's gaze as she hurried away and the door closed behind her.

Well that was plenty awkward, wasn't it?


Author's note:

Not a lot of plot in this chapter but I hope you all enjoyed it anyhow! I'll try to get the plot rolling soon, just been distracted by… well, all of that going on out there (gestures out the window). We're currently on incarceration day seventeen in my country. Seventeen. One seven. Yeah. Just. I want to hibernate until 2021 and see if the world sucks less then, who's with me?


Comment replies:

Paul Lenzen – Yeah, ch29 and this latest one are both kinda short. I've got like zero ability to focus right now, but I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for commenting!

Hobbitpony1 – Thank you! I'm glad you liked it!

TristanMon – Latest lover's quarrel resolved in less than a week, for me that's pretty good! Glad you liked it! Thanks for commenting :)

benfan1 – Thank you! I'm glad you're sticking with this story and enjoying it!

Ldsrsc – Haha, that's actually not too far from what Rye did say, only with more dry humping afterwards ;) Thanks for commenting!

LittleMissMarie10 – Lol, Rey's thought the same thing about her husband more than a few times, and in a few different terms! Thanks for commenting!

1Hurricane – Oh thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying this story and thank you for commenting!

Redstar96 – I'm so glad this story brightened up your day! I hope you liked this latest chapter too! Thanks so much for commenting!

Cdknelson – Ah Luke, he had such perfect timing didn't he? In his own way he only thought he was helping, but really he just made things worse all over again! I hope you enjoy this latest chapter though & thanks so much for commenting!