Part Four
Rey has grown used to Ren's shameless pursuit of her, but he hasn't come to her room since the night she called him by his true name. She tells herself it's better like this. After all, she's been trying to drive him away for weeks. I don't want you, she's told him a hundred times, in every way it could be said.
A lie, of course, because Rey has never needed anything in her life the way she needs this man. The hunger she knew on Jakku was more devastating, the desire to learn with Master Luke more pressing, but none of these necessities made her ache like this. Starvation weakened her and training strengthened her, while the affair they've carried on somehow seems to do both. She feels more alive, yet more helpless and out of control, than ever in her life. Only standing on the edge of a chasm, the Skywalker lightsaber in her hand, looking down on an enemy she viciously defeated, exceeds it. Nothing else has ever exhilarated or exhausted her more.
It's almost funny, how these moments always seem to revolve around Kylo Ren.
Rey knows she should be relieved that he's finally giving up, finally letting her go, and she is—but this relief tastes oddly similar to disappointment.
Ren admitted, once, in a vulnerable moment after she'd made him come, that he'd desired her from the first day they met. At the time, Rey thought he meant her body alone, but now she's not so sure. How many nights did he cling to her after their fucking, gentle in the wake of such sweet brutality? How many times did he ask to sleep by her side?
Sometimes he reminds her of a lost little boy, unable to bear the solitude he's brought on himself by wandering away. And at other moments he could not be more a man, violent and commanding in his arrogance. What a study in contradictions he is, this stranger and lover, enemy and ally, who brings such pain and pleasure to her life.
It's easy enough to avoid him, and on those rare occasions when they find themselves in the same space, Rey does her best to stay composed and dispassionate.
Ren doesn't bother with such pretenses. He still wants her, and he barely tries to hide it. Rey can feel his desire in the weight of his heated glances, the way his dark eyes linger on her body, so hungry and possessive. This is difficult to ignore, because every time he looks at her like this she remembers what it felt like to have him inside of her.
Today, he steals glances at her throughout an entire meeting. Lieutenant Reska brings important intel to the table—the First Order is planning to build a new base in the Unknown Regions on a barely-habitable aquatic planet—but Rey can hardly focus on the officer's report because Kylo Ren will not stop staring at her. He gives Reska the illusion of his attention, but whenever there's a lull in the report, it's Rey he looks to.
All she can think, every time he glances her way, is that's it's been forty-seven days since he touched her. Not that she's counting.
After the briefing is over, Rey strides from the room, hoping that the heaviness of her steps will hide the truth—that she's running away.
She goes to her quarters, climbs into bed, and rubs herself with shaking fingers until she comes, all the while thinking of the last time Ren fucked her. Afterward, she lies there, panting and frustrated, still aching between her legs because that wasn't nearly what she wanted. How sad her own touch feels now, how disappointing and pale compared to Ren's.
They no longer train together, but Ren still has to take time to practice his combat skills, and Rey develops the unfortunate habit of spying on him while he moves through his lightsaber forms. This time she squats behind a bellberry bush, hiding under the cover of the spade-shaped leaves, and peeks through the foliage.
Even when he has no opponent, Ren fights with such anger and purpose. He wields that crackling plasma blade of his, forceful in his every thrust and slash, and the air itself seems to hum with the energy around him. He spins his lightsaber between attacks, just as he does in battle, and uses his off-hand to wield the Force—a weapon just as deadly as the red blade he carries.
But today something changes, and halfway through an elegant form he gives up on restraint and takes his lightsaber to a nearby boulder. For a full thirty seconds he screams and vents his anger on an object that can stand the brunt of his temper. Then he tosses his unlit saber to the ground and rips at his own hair, cursing between heavy breaths.
She watches, half appalled by the violence of his frustration, half desperate to soothe him with what comfort she knows how to give.
She spent months sharing a bed with Ren, but in all this time Rey never bothered to ask him anything meaningful. Why did he abandon the cause he'd dedicated himself to? What finally turned him away from his Supreme Leader? And now that he's joined the Resistance, why won't he reclaim the name his parents gave him?
Rey watches him now, too stubborn (or perhaps too cowardly) to approach him and break the silence that's grown between them, but these questions haunt her. She wants the answer to the riddle that is Kylo Ren—that is Ben Solo.
She wants to know him, Rey realizes.
She sneaks back to the base, shaken and a little frightened by her own curiosity.
Rey wakes to someone pounding on her door. It's Ren, she knows. Maybe their fifty-third day apart was just one too many for him.
She lets him inside, closes the door, and backs away before he can touch her. Ren reaches out, his large hand suspended in the air, almost sad in its desperation, but he makes no move to grab her.
"Why are you here?" Rey asks.
"You know why." She expects anger to color his voice, but that isn't what she hears when he speaks. No, there's something more like shame underlying his words when he says, "I miss you."
"You miss fucking me," Rey corrects, because that's easier for her to deal with. His desire she can handle, but anything else—anything deeper or meaningful—is more than she can accept.
Ren frowns, and there it is, that fury of his that always lurks so close beneath the surface, like a match just ready to be struck into flame. "That's not what I said, and not what I meant."
Rey pulls her nightdress over her head and drops it to the floor. Now she's standing in nothing but her underwear, nearly naked beneath his hungry gaze. "Am I wrong then?" she asks. "This isn't what you're here for?"
He picks her up and sits her on top of the dresser. Ren yanks her panties down her legs, throws them to the floor, and cups her sex. Just that, the simple feel of his hand holding her, wrenches a pathetic noise from Rey, some cross between a whimper and a sob. She bucks against him, too desperate for more to care how pitiful she looks.
"This is all you'll let me have," he says, and now he's caressing her between her legs and trailing gentle kisses from her forehead to her temple, from the apple of her cheek to her jaw. He has to bend down so much to kiss her neck that he looks like a supplicant at worship, or a subject bowing before his queen.
When he slips two blunt fingers inside of her, Rey moans, weak legs trembling. It's been so long and he feels so good that right now there isn't anything she wouldn't do if he told her to. He thrusts in and out of her, slowly, sweetly—until he pulls his wet fingers from her sex and wipes them on her stomach.
"No," Rey says. "You can't tease me tonight. I can't take it."
She sounds wretched, needful, and hates herself for it.
Ren kisses her, but he keeps it frustratingly chaste. Then he whispers against her lips, "You haven't had anyone in your bed since me, have you?"
She refuses to answer, to stroke his ego with the truth.
He kisses her again, still softly. "It's all right," he says. "There's no one else I want either."
This frightens her almost as much as it thrills her. "Please don't say things like that."
Ren looks at her, splayed for his gaze on the cold surface of the dresser, his attention flitting from her peaked nipples to the thatch of brown curls at the junction of her spread legs. He unbuckles his belt, and the metallic sound sends an anticipatory shiver through her. "You belong to me," he says. "Get used to it."
She shakes her head, even as she lets him guide his cock to her sex. "You're wrong."
Then he pushes, and he's finally inside of her, stretching her so fully that it hurts a little. Ren pauses, gives her body a moment to adjust to the intrusion.
"You're mine," he says, and he starts to rock into her slowly.
"No," Rey says. Still, she's arching into his sweet thrusts, and already the pleasure is coiling low in her belly.
He keeps the pace steady and slow until she begs him to fuck her harder, faster. Then his thrusts turn so brutal that each one pushes her against the wall roughly, nearly knocking the breath out of her. Rey loves every moment of it, and she moans her pleasure into the darkness. Wordless cries that grow louder and lewder the closer she gets to her release.
Ren reaches between her legs and strokes her, his wicked fingers rubbing sweet circles on her sex while he pounds her against the wall.
"Who owns you?" he asks, breathless but savage.
He'll stop if she doesn't answer, and she can't stand that sort of taunting, not tonight. That's the only reason she whimpers, "You do."
Saying it aloud shames and pleasures her at once, and her climax crashes over her all of a sudden, a rush of bliss where their bodies meet. Ren lets himself go a moment later, shuddering and groaning as he comes.
His cock is still inside of her when Rey tells herself that she doesn't belong to anybody. Regardless of what she said in the heat of the moment, she is owned by no one. It was a lie, plain and simple.
Except she counted fifty-three nights without him, the same way she used to mark her days on the wall of a crippled imperial walker. Turned down a handful of offers to warm her bed, purely because she had no desire for any man besides Ren. Spied on him in the woods for the simple pleasure of watching his powerful body move through combat forms.
She yearned for him, like some kind of stupid, lovesick girl.
"Get off me," Rey says, pushing weakly against his chest.
He immediately freezes, pulls out of her. "What's wrong?"
Rey clambers off of the dresser on unsteady legs. She aches for his touch still, despite coming only moments ago. Needs it like she needs air to breathe, and that only makes matters worse. This thing between them, it was supposed to be easy, the simple slaking of shared lust. So how did it end up this complicated?
She can't find her underwear, but Rey pulls on her nightdress and turns away from him. "You should go," she says, arms crossed over her chest. "And don't bother me again."
"What?" Ren asks. "Why?"
Hurt and fury war in his voice. She can hear it as plainly as she can hear him fastening his pants and buckling his belt.
"I—I don't want you anymore," Rey says.
He grabs her by the shoulder and turns her around. She stubbornly stares at the duracrete floor beneath her bare feet, refusing to look at him.
"I know you're lying," Ren says. "What I don't know is why."
She dares to look up and sees that his beautiful face is twisted with frustration, anger, and something else. A sorrow so deep that she fears to discover its source.
"Just go," Rey says. She means to be commanding, but instead she sounds pitiable and pleading. Weak.
Ren kisses her with a tenderness that she didn't know he possessed. As if he thinks that this is the last of their embraces and he wants it to be the sweetest of all.
When it's over, he touches her cheek with impossible gentleness and whispers, "Goodbye, Rey."