CHAPTER FOUR
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Ben climbed off of Rey, the way she'd asked him to a few moments ago. He wanted to lie close enough to touch her, but that was a needy impulse, and he didn't like it. So he gave her the space she undoubtedly wanted anyway.
Rey was a hardheaded, mouthy girl, quick tempered and unpolished. Good on her back, yes, but that wasn't why the sex unraveled him so much. She intrigued him, made him want more when dallying with her was already immeasurably foolish.
Ben brushed her hair away from her face, then stroked her temple with his thumb. He closed his eyes and let himself savor the softness of her skin, the warm glow of the Force pulsing all around her, flowing through her the same way it flowed through him.
When he looked at her, Rey was frowning again, but softly now. Confused, not angry.
"What do you want for dinner?" Ben asked. "I'll go out and get it for us."
"Please take me with you. Or let me go get it? I can't stay cooped up in this room anymore."
Ben got out of bed and started pulling on his clothes.
"Get dressed," he said. "We can go wherever you want."
He was a fucking idiot, taking an unregistered courtesan to dinner in the worst part of Republic City. For a second time.
Reckless, impulsive, self-destructive: Uncle Luke had thrown all those accusations at him and more half a lifetime ago.
Well, he hadn't been wrong.
Rey took him to a small seafood restaurant she'd discovered during their two days apart. She ordered for both of them, and Ben couldn't keep from sneering at the dish set before him. More than one type of tentacle wiggled in his bowl.
"Don't worry," Rey giggled. "It stops moving once you pour the sauce over it."
Ben would have tried to hold in his opinions about the cuisine at this fine establishment, but Rey seemed to revel in his snobbery, so he didn't bother.
He doused his tentacle salad in enough brown sauce to drown its squirming.
"You've got to be kidding me," he said.
Rey's cheeks were round and full when she mumbled, "It's delicious."
Ben speared a blessedly still tentacle on the tines of his fork. It looked rubbery.
"Coward," Rey said.
He laughed. "I've eaten worse, I promise."
She set down her fork, took a long drink of her purple soda, and said, "I have a hard time believing that you've ever wanted for good food."
Ben tried the tentacles. They were surprisingly tender, the sauce rich. Not bad at all.
"I spent six years training to be a Jedi. It's a plain life. You're not allowed any possessions apart from your lightsaber and your clothes. No attachments, no passions. I wasn't very good at it—obviously."
He dared to glance up at Rey, who was watching him, wide-eyed. Then he shrugged and said, "Anyway, the food at the temple was terrible. I don't know if that was supposed to suppress gluttony or just a matter of funds."
Rey stared at him, an orange noodle dangling from her lips. She slurped it up, swallowed, and asked, "Do you—the Force?"
Ben would have found her awe much funnier if he hadn't known what she was.
"Yes," he said simply. "The Force runs strong in my family. But I wasn't suited to Jedi life, so here I am."
"How can you be so blasé about all of this?" Rey asked. "It's amazing!"
Ben couldn't think of an answer before she gestured wildly, hands windmilling in small, rapid circles. "Do something."
"What?"
"Do something!" Rey said again, tapping the table. "Make—make something float. Or—oh! Do you still have your lightsaber? I'd like to see that!"
The Force was not a party trick, and it would be irresponsible to use it to impress a girl.
Not that he particularly cared.
Ben glanced around the restaurant, satisfied to find that the only other customers were on the other side of the room. He summoned the bottle of brown sauce to his hand, then floated it across the table to Rey. Her eyes went as wide as the empty bowl in front of her.
"What else can you do?" she asked.
He stopped, tempted, before saying, "Nothing that I can show you in a public restaurant."
"Then let's go back to the hotel!"
Ben sighed so heavily that it felt like he emptied himself of something vital. Probably his patience. "I thought you were sick of the hotel. Bored out of your mind."
"You showing me what else you can do with the bloody Force is the furthest thing from boring! It's the most exciting thing I've seen in my entire life!"
Rey looked thrilled, staring at him with the sort of wonder that children held for new discoveries. The Force had that effect on people who were uneducated about it, which was nearly everyone.
Ben relented, if only because Rey's smile was so warm and he didn't want to go back to her frowns, no matter how pretty they were.
She bombarded him with questions all the way back to the hotel.
"Can you really make people do whatever you want?" Rey asked. "Oh, and why do darksiders always have red lightsabers? Is it just a fashion thing?"
Ben took her hand in his. She seemed happy enough to allow it.
He ignored her question about lightsabers (the less he had to answer about the dark side, the better), and said, "I can't make just anyone do anything, but yes, there are ways to trick the vulnerable into following orders."
Rey laughed. "I don't believe it. Try it on me!"
Ben hurried ahead. "Wouldn't work on you. You're too strong willed."
And too strong in the Force.
He would tell her the truth, Ben decided. As soon as he was ready to let her go.
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Once they got back to the hotel, Ben was all kisses and needy caresses, exhibitions of the Force forgotten. He seemed to have something to prove, and was willing to break her in half to do it. Rey didn't mind a bit if it meant he'd keep fucking her hard and deep, drawing this out to the point of frustration.
Ben had her in measured strokes, her legs over his shoulders, making it last. He'd been impatient earlier, greedy to make her come again and to get his, but he took his time now. Rey knew she'd be begging to stop before he was finished with her, so well used that she wouldn't be able to take a step tomorrow without thinking of him.
He appeared to be fine with getting her off, but he gave no quarter beyond that. He fucked her through her orgasm and was building her to a second when she finally spoke up.
"Ben!" she gasped. "I need a moment, please! It's—it's too much."
Ben stopped, then pulled away, hissing when their bodies parted. Rey whined, bucking up against nothing, instantly regretting that she'd asked him to stop. He turned her onto her belly, muffling her startled cry against the pillows. Then he was on her, inside her again.
"There," he grunted. "That was a moment."
"Fuck!" Rey shrieked as he pressed her into the bed, taking her so thoroughly she couldn't breathe. The climb to her second orgasm was arduous, near painful.
She was whimpering, pleading with nothing for some relief. "Please, gods, please—I need—"
Ben gripped her hips, rolling into her with a violence that should have ruined her by now.
Then, as if he'd been holding the reigns the entire time, she felt a catch within her, a clutch, and then—
"Finally, finally, yes—yes, thank gods yes—"
"Thank me, sweetheart. Gods didn't have anything to do with this."
If Rey had had an ounce of her willpower left she'd have told him to go to hell.
Ben gentled his thrusts, giving her a moment to rest, to sob into the bedding in peace—but not for long.
Being taken like this had torn at something raw in her, ripped open needs she didn't want to look at closely. Every inch of her body hummed with pleasure, focused where she was joined with Ben. The rest of the world went quiet when he rocked into her, hard and fast again, leaving just the two of them here, alone in a rented bed. Rey tried to catch her breath, to think, to feel anything besides Ben, but she couldn't, she couldn't.
She felt lost, helpless, beyond pleasure now, all tender, overwhelmed flesh. She was babbling, nonsense that didn't deter Ben from fucking her, drawing her outside of her own body.
Maybe this was a part of the Force he controlled, this mingling, a sensation that felt like more than just sex.
"Ben," she whispered, not sure what she wanted. Perhaps to ask if he felt it too, this affinity that ached in her throat. "Ben."
Rey kept saying his name, gasping it again and again, because he'd stolen all other speech from her.
Ben came, rocking into her so hard it hurt, the sweetest kind of brutality. And once it was done, both of them boneless, Rey had to bite her lip to keep from crying aloud. The noise choked in the back of her throat, a sob smothered before it had a chance to be born.
Ben was lying heavily on top of her, his cock softened inside her and his skin chilled with sweat. Spent, as utterly as she was.
She thought of her hovel of an apartment several blocks away, her green things growing under a lamp. They'd need water; she'd been gone for two days. She would have to go back to that. To her small room that contained her small life, far away from the man pressing her into the mattress. Back to sleeping with creatures that weren't Ben Solo.
She didn't like the idea. Didn't want to look directly at it. But she would have to, sooner or later; she'd have to get out of bed and carry on.
Ben climbed off of her languidly, like he didn't quite have the energy for it. In minutes, he fell asleep beside her, and oh, he was beautiful. Pale and ill-proportioned. Expanses of muscle under fragile skin. Full mouth slack in sleep.
Now would be a good time to leave. She didn't need the final thousand. The rest would keep her well enough for two months.
But she was drained, like he'd siphoned out all her energy to bolster his own when he'd had her with such abandon. She could sleep for just a moment, rest until she could stand without wobbling. Ben shifted, slinging a heavy arm over her, making the choice for her.
When Rey woke a couple hours later, she gathered up her things as quietly as she could. She was still dressing when Ben sat up, alert and angry. Then he got out of the bed to catch her by her wrist.
"Where are you going?"
Rey blinked up at him. "H-home, Ben. I'm going home."
"So you were just planning to sneak out," he said. "Not even going to say goodbye."
Rey pulled her hand from his grasp and finished buttoning her dress; her boots were already on her feet. If he'd woken up three minutes later than he had, she'd have been out the door, disappearing into the black district. He never would have found her then.
Rey kept her voice flat when she said, "It's morning. The time you paid for is up."
"Except I haven't paid you the last thousand yet. That eager to get away?"
Rey felt a hot pressure building behind her eyes, a knot in her throat. She didn't know how to answer. Yes was the truth, but not for any of the reasons he might think. She had to get away because she wanted to stay. And that alone was dangerous.
"You were overpaying anyway," Rey said in lieu of answering.
Ben pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her. An embrace meant to keep her here, to trap her.
"I don't want you to go," he said. "Please."
Rey laid her hands on his chest, resting her head on his clavicle. He was naked, his skin hot and soft, and she wanted nothing more than to take off her clothes and climb back into bed with him.
"Ben. You—you know what this is. You know I have to go."
He hugged her close, and Rey breathed in his scent. Hotel soap and sex and something distinctly masculine, completely Ben.
"Then I'll pay for the rest of today. And tomorrow, and the next day. I'll pay for all of your days. How does that sound?"
Rey was fine with being a courtesan. She didn't hate the work, and sometimes she actually enjoyed it. Like these last two days with Ben Solo. But right now, Ben was pleading with the courtesan only, the side of her that bartered for her body and her time. This man she could potentially care about wasn't asking this of the girl within, who would want nothing more than to finally be loved by somebody. That alone made her hate her profession. She hated that she was a paid girl. She hated every credit that Ben Solo had given her.
"I can't just stay in this hotel room and wait for you," she said. "That's not how it works." Not for me.
"Well of course not," he said gently. "I'll find you someplace nice to live in a better part of town. Somewhere with big windows, so you can enjoy the sunlight."
Rey's resolved faltered, if only a bit. He'd find her somewhere to live? Ben kept going.
"I'll spoil you rotten, sweetheart. Clothes, jewels, whatever you want. All the seafood you can eat. So fresh it's still moving, since that seems to be what you like."
Rey tried to pull away, but Ben wouldn't let her go.
"You don't have to stay cooped up," he said. "I'll pay you well enough that you can travel wherever you want on-world, so long as I'm in your bed at night. And I'll be good to you. I promise."
The more he said, the more he offered, the more Rey felt like she was breaking. Like the corroded seams inside her were coming apart and she was collapsing into herself. A decrepit starship finally giving in to the desert wind.
Rey had always known that life had a monetary value, the same as salvaged fuses or a fuck against a wall. She should be flattered that Ben thought her worth so much, and that he was willing to pay that bottom line. But she wasn't. Rey didn't understand until this moment that what she wanted was for him to keep her because he needed her. To offer her something—real.
He didn't need her, though. He wanted her, and his heart pumped blue blood, built a life on buying what it wanted.
She should say no, but Rey knew that she wouldn't. This wasn't much different than what she already knew; at least now she could be another thing paid for in a nice home with good food.
"All right," she said, her voice sounding hollow to her ears.
Ben picked her up and spun her around in a circle, laughing. He was breathless when he set her back on her feet, and Rey couldn't help but give him a smile.
"You won't regret this," he said. "I'll make every day a joy for you."
Rey had the fleeting thought that he could make her happy on water and portions alone, but that was a stupid thing to say to a man who'd just purchased his new favorite toy.
"You should go to work," she said, holding in a snort at how wifely she sounded just now. That wasn't what she was, not even close. "I'll—pack my things? I guess?"
"I don't want to go," Ben said. "But I'm supposed to cut a ribbon on a hospital in honor of my grandfather and deliver a very trite speech. In about three hours."
Rey looked heavenward. "Oh, poor thing."
"Yes, it's a true tragedy."
He kissed her again, then once more.
"I'll try to get your place set up within the next few days," Ben said. "Give me your address so I can visit you in the meantime, all right?"
Rey threaded her fingers through his hair, stroking with all the tenderness her heart would allow when it had just been sold.
"All right," she said. "I'll wait for you."
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Author's Notes: Please share your thoughts on this chapter if you have a chance to review! :)