Chapter summary:

The answer to last week's question is in the chapter title.

Author's note:

So sorry this is sooooooooooo late! This chapter fought me every word of the way. Hope you enjoy it nonetheless :)

The longer Rey sat stewing in her own frustrations and messed up clothing, the more angry at Kylo that she became.

How. Dare. He.

What he did was… a next level of antagonism. Was that all just a game to him? Did he really think that working her up and then leaving her high and distinctly not dry was going to punish her?

She'd done nothing to be punished for. She had left for her own good. Their own good, the both of them. Maybe, maybe, she could have done things differently. Not torn him from of her head so violently and then kept him locked out even when he'd been so desperate for her. That had been a horrible and brutal experience for them both.

Good.

Now she's glad that she had done it. The kriffer didn't deserve a moment of her consideration. She shouldn't give him even another second's thought. She shouldn't-

Oh why the hell is she so angry?! Rey has rarely felt this over-intensity of fury. These feelings coursing through her, rising higher and higher with each pulse of her heart, are strange and foreign. She's not an angry person, spiteful at times perhaps, but who could blame her for that? What with the way her kriffing Bondmate choses to behave.

This is different. Very different. She's seldom ever felt so irrational. Like she's ready to find him and stalk him and pounce on him and…

Well nevermind.

Thoughts of rough and primal sex are one thing, but what she needs to do is calm down. Rey is far too wired. Too full of energy. It makes her pace along the sides of the river, prowling from one end of the cavernous room to the other, always shooting the dark, distant corridor where he disappeared to her angriest of looks. If her conscience had been guilty, she could have blamed her irrational frustration on that. But it's not. Not really. Maybe sort of.

The lucid part of her brain, now mostly overcome by sheer pure emotion, had been telling her to let it go. She was blowing this out of proportion. Maybe she should run again? Take off down along the river or lose herself again in this endless maze of the underground. Kylo had given her some strange and ominous threat regarding her doing exactly that, but let's be honest, he's not going to do shit.

Whatever. Rey knows exactly who to blame for making her so angry, and it's not herself. She can't sleep. Can't relax enough to calm her thoughts. Can't leave because there's nowhere else to go and there's a scary glowing green thing out there with her in its crosshairs.

Enough is enough. Kylo doesn't get to treat her like this. Not ever and especially not now.

The kyber crystal in her hand, the one she found yesterday and somehow ended back in her hand after her and Kylo's little encounter, glows brightly. It pulls on her, drawing her away from the water's edge.

Strange as it may be, seeing this stone helps Rey makes up her mind. She must be fueling it with her own emotions, that's the only explanation. But she's willing to bet it's going to lead her straight to the root of the problem.

The path to him is a clear and blinding beacon in her mind. She doesn't even have to follow their Bond. The feelings of his smug radiance fuel her resolve. No matter what's about to happen, whether they finally lock blades or chose to battle this out with scathing words, this will be a fight to the death between them. Because Rey is sure as all the hells that she can't let Kylo think he can get away with what he just did.

No rest for the wicked indeed. Time to settle this.

Kylo didn't go far.

And, when she finds him, he's not meditating. Oh, he may be sitting cross-legged in a meditation stance, but his attention is on her alone.

Rey had been ready to attack him as soon as she saw him. Start with her words and then move on to her saber if need be. However, the cavernous chamber he's waiting for her in makes her pause in her building diatribe. The whole room is filled filled with flowers. The same red and white striped blooms that she'd been seeing since the surface are growing along all four of the walls, illuminated by the blue lights emanating from cracks in the stone formations. These are similar to the one that Kylo had tucked behind her hair up on that windy hillside at sunset. Then again down here in the caves where everything was a different version of itself, they had pricked him when he came to close to them.

For some reason, these blooms keep coming back into her story time after time like they were a preconceived facet to her journey. They had even been in her nightmare. The ghostly spirit had lead her right by them as it had dragged her through the cave.

Rey takes a step forward closer to Kylo, her suspicions raising. Unlike the flowers she'd seen before, these weren't fully blooming yet, though very nearly.

They'd been there, too. After she'd ran away and when she'd touched herself while Kylo had been projecting from a distance. The memory of it brings both shame and anger, and the latter is much easier for her to latch onto in her current escalating emotional state.

She doesn't try to be quiet as she stalks forward, keeping her feeling of growing fury close to her heart to steady her resolve. And she knows that he's knows she's there and he's not really in a meditative trance. Because, if he had actually been, he wouldn't have stopped in mid-air the coconut sized rock she had grabbed and hurled at him. It hovers suspended next to his head for a second before his hand drops and it clatters to the floor.

He scowls when he turns to look at her. Rey hopes her expression is as murderous as her thoughts are.

"Finished with yourself already, Scavenger?" he taunts. "I would have thought you would have wanted to take more time since-"

Rey screams and lunges, her patience breaking before she can hear whatever terrible thing Kylo was about to provoke her with. He may have sensed the rock hurtling on a projectile path towards his skull, but apparently Rey charging at him in a literal flying leap for him came as a surprise.

She collides with him knees first, slamming into his side so hard they both cry out. Very briefly Kylo is pinned under her, Rey wrestling him down with her legs as literal blind rage fills her. What the hells is she doing? She has no idea. Something has come over her. She wants to show him she's the one in charge. Prove to him that she's the alpha in their relationship even if she literally has to prove the truth of it into him blow by blow.

Those are blow by blows that never come. Kylo is stunned by her assault for the blink of an eye before he turns the tables on her. Catches her by her waist and throws her to the ground instead. It winds her, stars bursting behind her eyes.

And then he sits on her. The flustered, disheveled cause of all her suffering actually sits on her. His massive bulk pins her easily, her bones protesting from the weight bearing onto them.

"Rey!" he growls, seizing both her wrists and dragging them over her head.

She kicks. She thrashes. She howls and curses and tries to buck him off. He's too damned heavy. She might as well be trying to shift a boulder.

"Calm down!" he orders, fighting to keep his hold on the rabid woman underneath him.

Rey barely hears him. The blood is rushing through her ears, blocking out all her awareness beyond…

Beyond a green light.

Her vision in tinged with it, glowing green halos circling at the edges of her perception.

Rey immediately falls slack when she realizes it. This, this was that 'something' that was wrong. That force, that energy, had been filling her. Saturating her and supercharging her emotions. The urge to murder him lifts as her mind struggles to clear itself from the haze.

"Rey."

Kylo glares at her. He's wearing tracks from her fingernails clawing at the exposed skin of his neck. His hands are squeezing her wrists brutally tight, like he expects her to resume her assault at any moment. Pain lances through her right hand but it's not her own. It's his. His fracture from earlier. He must have aggravated it when he was trying to subdue her.

"Ky-"

"Shut up."

He doesn't let go, though. No, instead he has a faraway look in his eyes. This energy she'd felt… is it spreading? This could be very bad indeed if that's the case.

"Kylo?"

He's still so heavy on her that it's hard to breathe. She squirms, her mind reeling between rage and confusion. Her eyes dart from his face to his hands on her to the sides of the room. The green light is gone, but the strange feeling remains.

"Your hand is glowing, Rey."

Kylo's voice has an odd ring to it. He's right. The glow has refocused itself from inside her head to her palm. Green light is leaking out from the seams of her tightly clenched fist.

She stares at it, finding herself oddly unable to move at all. Not even when Kylo lets go of her to take her hand. He picks it up, giving her a slightly worried expression as he looks at her.

"Rey, what's going on?"

She can't speak, but she can shake her head. Mouths the word 'don't' at him.

Kylo has to peel back her fingers, twisting her hand so it's facing palm up. It's the kyber. She'd completely forgotten about it, but it glows with a renewed energy at Kylo's proximity. He moves to pick it up and she blinks, the pressure and remaining disarray in her mind lifting instantly.

"Don't touch it!" she whispers, trying to sit upright.

Kylo grips her shoulder with his other hand, holding her in place as he he regards the glowing rock.

"Why are you holding this?" he asks distantly.

Distantly? Yes. His eyes have a certain glassiness to them, the brilliant glow leaking out from the seams of her fingers reflected back in their dark depths. Whatever had been happening to her seems to be effecting him now, though less strongly.

"Rey."

Of all the ways that Kylo has ever said her name, this has to be the most dangerous. He doesn't tease her with it, and he doesn't insult her. Instead, the sound of her name rolls off his tongue like a prayer, now far more enticing than she could ever imagine it being.

An unnatural wind picks up, dusting along her skin and making the flowers all around them shake in the breeze.

Why is there a wind in these caves? There shouldn't be. There was one in her dream, but now she's awake. It doesn't make sense.

"Kylo."

Rey doesn't know what she's asking for. The confusion, the muddledness, that she had felt before returning tenfold as a sweet smell drifts down over her, the blooms around her seeming to shimmer and twist.

Kylo holds her tightly, watching her with a measured expression in case she tries to run away. Rey couldn't even if she wanted to. It's like her limbs are immobile, heavy beyond heavy, and yet her head is full of air. She feels so strange, the aroma of the flowers surrounding them making her restless. An emotion, a need, begins to bloom within her, but she can't find her voice to give it sound.

"Something is happening to us," Kylo whispers.

He's so close now that she can feel his breath against her skin. Suddenly Rey is both too hot and too cold, wanting to pull herself to him for warmth but also wanting to… take off all her clothes. That's… odd, isn't it?

"Yes," she manages to say, "something is."

A buzzing sound begins to fill her ears. A low hum singing along her veins. In the distance she thinks she can see that glow, that familiar, insidious green glow of energy that seems to form the very being of this planet.

Then Kylo lets go of her arm to stroke her face and it's all Rey can do to not gasp and arch into his palm.

Kylo's touch on her bare skin seems to be the key her body was searching for. He simply cups her chin, doing nothing more than that, and still it seems like so much more. It feels intimate, almost sensual. The look in his eyes was one of shock.

Rey has to swallow twice, dryly, before she can find her voice.

"Something is very wrong," she says.

She reaches out to him, towards his hand on her, but she's unsure of whether she was pushing him away or holding him closer. Kylo stops her, wrapping her palm in his, and the contact is so electric that Rey shivers, every nerve within her coming alight.

"Scavenger, I think we are in trouble here."

How can he be so calm when Rey's practically losing her mind? Or perhaps actually? How is it that he can still speak when her own breath is being robbed from her lungs, each inhale coming as shallower a pant that the last?

"Kylo."

Her lips tingle. His are so close. The glow and the hum increase and the background fades out of focus. All she can see is him.

Kylo leans down, bringing their bodies into further contact.

The air smells so heavenly. This isn't right. She hates him. Kylo is her enemy.

"Scavenger."

She was right. Something is wrong. Something is happening. Rey can't even form a coherent sentence in her own head, let alone on her lips.

His touch trails down to her neck, leaving tracks of cold fire in its wake. An itch begins to form, a knot deep within her starting to grow.

It's only when Rey realizes that her nipples are hardening and there's a slickness between her thighs that she realizes the true nature of her delirium.

"The flowers," she gasps, her eyes widening but never leaving his.

Kylo nods, his gaze focusing equally on her lips as it does from darting to her eyes.

"Yes. They are… I'd thought it was only me."

Rey tries to let go of him. Tries to force her body to start moving and working itself free of his arms. No limbs budge an inch. Kylo drops his hand from her. He can do that much at least. Then he peels himself away from her clinging limbs, shrinking back to the far side of the room. As he does, the plants shake, many of their buds popping open to reveal brilliant crimson flowers so beautiful they take Rey's breath away.

She scrambles to her feet, her moves ungainly and her limbs feeling like they're buried in the deepest Jakku sands. Kylo holds her away from him with his hand in the air, sending a half-hearted push of the Force into his gesture.

"Focus Rey. Fight this."

Yes. Fight it. Fight whatever this new development is.

Green light crackles around them. It last only for a few instants, but in that moment Rey can feel it. That presence from before, the one from her dreams and the one that had pushed her into the river from up above.

The whole room begins to swirl with it, the energy ripples around them and fanning over the flowers of this perverse subterranean garden. The plants shimmer, a fresh wave of their perfume rising along with it.

The movement is over in seconds, but it's seconds too late. Rey remembers why she had ran away from Kylo in the first place. It hadn't been purely an emotional choice; there was a very compelling physical reason as well.

Now, when she was surrounded by this air, he was all she could think about. The need she had felt for his touch since up on the Falcon had never gone away, it had simply transformed into something else. Gone into hibernation only to be fully awoken now when suddenly every sense was either him or the scent of flowers in bloom.

"Rey..."

She should run. Flee and hide from him forever.

Instead, her feet take a step towards him, not away. Kylo shakes his head, eyes widening and giving her a silent warning.

Stay back, Scavenger. Stay well back.

A whisper of a breeze picks up, bringing with it a compulsion. Need spreads out along her nerves, and Rey desperately tries to get a lock on her emotions.

"We shouldn't do this," Rey gasps, fighting her body with each stilted step it takes to her bondmate. "I want to. Gods do I want to. But we shouldn't."

Kylo closes his eyes, his upper lip curling into a snarl. Lust pools inside Rey, making her feel both hot and cold at the same time. Around them both, the plants shine, their ruby and snow striped petals shaking in the wind.

And she feels something else. Something in the darkness. Somewhere in the distance it feels like they're being watched. A force, not The Force but rather that force, flickers in and out of her awareness.

Kylo breaks first. She should have known that he would.

His eyes snap open and he turns to her, stepping forward and closing the distance between them in one smooth move. His hand finds her hip and she gasps, every exposed part of her skin feeling hypersensitive. Her clothes are too constricting, too scratchy. She's far too hot. Getting naked may be the only way for her to survive this heat.

"Scavenger."

Kylo hisses his favorite name for her, his grip on her tightening as he draws them together. Then his hand shifts around, catching the bottom edge of her tunic and sliding it to reach the bare skin of her back.

"Oh gods!" Rey whines, electricity shooting along her spine.

The energy that had been flowing through her finally has a conduit. His hand on her skin was the circuit that she'd been seeking unknowingly. There was no controlling this now, no stopping it, and Rey didn't even bother trying to fight it.

She throws herself on Kylo, wrapping her arms around him and pulling his head down to meet hers.

Their kiss is frantic. A clawing of hands, a messy, bruising connection of lips. She pants into his open mouth, blushing as her quickly hardening nipples rasp against his chest.

"Oh gods help me," Kylo moans, his hands sinking into her hair to control their pace.

He picks her up without even the slightest difficulty, lifting her into the air. Once again, just like only a few minutes before in the other room, she wraps her legs around his waist, sucking in a deep gulp of air when she feels his straining erection pressing needfully on her inner thigh.

It's a lucky thing that he's strong enough to be able to hold her up, because otherwise her legs would have surely buckled underneath her. All the blood rushes away from her head, making her limbs quiver with such an angry need she couldn't possibly have remained standing for much longer.

Finally she pulls away, gasping for breath. That only makes it worse. Her lungs fill with that sickly sweet perfume, and suddenly Rey is achingly wet. She grinds on him, writhing her hips against his hardening length.

Kylo kisses down her jaw, biting as he goes. When he gets to her neck he hoists her higher, drawing out a whine as their middle sections are no longer aligned. That's not right. That's not what she wants. What she wants is-

"Kylo!"

She screams his name, the sound of it choked as his teeth sink into her neck. Every part of her, every inch of her, being seared with this strange, paranormal pleasure.

Green light. Green energy. That's what she sees when she closes her eyes and gives into this.

Rey yanks on Kylo's hair, not caring that she's probably hurting him. If she is, he must be enjoying it. He hums happily, letting go of her neck to bite and suckle on the tight knot of muscles at the top of her shoulders.

She tries so hard to be quiet, but her willpower has quickly left her. When one of his hands slides to cup her breast, Rey throws her head aback and moans, holding him tight her with the strength of her legs.

"More," she begs, nuzzling her face into his hair until she finds the tip of his ear.

Kylo groans when she bites down, marking him like he had done to her. His ears are surprisingly sensitive, she dimly notes, shelving that thought for another time.

She shouldn't want him like this. Shouldn't want him at all. But she does, and deep in her heart Rey knows that she always has. From the moment they were bonded or perhaps even before that, she's wanted to both have Kylo and give herself to him.

The second she lets herself accept that as a truth, her mind becomes a puddle of nothingness. Her hips rock frantically to Kylo's, and she only pulls away from savagely gnawing on his ear when he squeezes her neck, holding her chin so that his lips seek hers out.

"Rey."

Her next moan is somewhat muffled by his tongue as he kisses her. His hand leaves her breast to dip into her pants. She'd knotted them again and again before, after he'd left her frustrated and alone. Kylo was never a man of patience, and he proves that to a fault when he simply grabs her waistband and pulls, nearly tearing the fabric open in his desperation to get to her.

Rey flinches, ripping her mouth away from his in an increasingly rare moment of clarity.

"Gods Kylo, that is my only clothing! Be careful with it or I'm going to have to walk around half naked!"

He scoffs, his breath hot and every bit as enticing as the perfume in the air.

"Fine by me," he tells her, returning his head down to bite and nip at her shoulders again.

His hand slides between her legs, working its way inside the now torn fabric to stroke her bare skin. His other hand squeezes her ass, and Rey is only dimly aware that he's still holding her as he drops to his knees.

When his fingers finds her slit she cries out, her voice echoing in the room and the hot breeze fanning against them finally slows to a stop. The damage has been done, though. By now she's far too deep into the throws of lust, far too beyond the point of no return, to listen to the voice of reason in her head.

"You're so wet," Kylo purrs, his voice sounding reverent in awe.

She should tell him they should stop. But then he finds her nub and what she does tell is the voice in her head to shut the hell up, she wants to get fucked and who the hell cares about the consequences-

"None." Kylo promises, following her thoughts so effortlessly. "There will be none. I absolutely adore you, Scavenger. I will take care of you, no matter what."

Rey feels all the heat rush to her face at his words. She shudders as he strokes her, alternating rubbing her little button with pinching it. The ache within her blooms, demanding she take care of it and sooner rather than later.

The truth was that Rey had never completely allowed herself to think about what this would be like, what would really happen when they finally connect again for this second time. Somehow she had assumed it would be softer, sweeter, slower. Not this frantic and all-consuming need to feel him inside her as soon as possible. She remembers the full feeling he gave her during intercourse, how it was so overwhelming but so welcome all at the same time.

There are still several things getting in their way, though, and they have nothing to do with her own rapidly fading reservations.

"Clothes," she pants, letting go of his broad shoulders to tug at his cloak. "I want you naked now, Darksider."

He had denied her this the last time. The last half time, she should say. She'd wanted to feel him next to her then as he'd projected himself to her, but he'd been difficult in the way truly only Kylo could be. Now Rey isn't going to take no for an answer.

She yanks on his cloak, the fabric creaking and probably choking him but she couldn't care less right now. Serves him right.

"Strip, Kylo, or I'm going to tear every piece of clothing right off you."

Kylo grins, her words apparently having the desired effect on his already dangerous ego. He hauls her into him, holding her to him one handed and resting most of her weight on his thighs. His erection presses firmly against her stomach, making fantasies off all the different potions he could claim her flash into her mind. He'd shown her a vision before, an erotic mental movie of him pounding into her from behind. That appeals to her very much right now, the sheer primitiveness of it feeling right for this uncontrollable and unstoppable moment building between them.

"No, Scavenger," he whispers into her ear. "Not this time. This time I want to see you. I want to watch your as you come undone for me."

He wrenches his cloak off of himself, the clasp of it breaks with his forceful action and serving as another proof that he's every bit as affected, every bit as wild, as she is right now.

Rey misses his touch as soon as it leaves her. He lays her down, the thick fabric of his cloak helping to keep the worst of the rough cave floor from cutting into her skin. Then he's back on her in an instant, rolling the whole length of his body against hers as he pins her underneath him.

He holds her wrists above her head, both keeping her in place and the bulk of his weight off of her. Rey pants, watching with fascination as the struggle plays itself across his far too expressive face.

"Rey, you need to tell me if-"

"Shut up, Kylo. We're well past the point of no return here."

She kisses him again, or tries to as much as her restrained position allows her to. Kylo groans, the sound of it spiking along her nerves and settling very low in her body.

He pulls away after a few breathless moments, and Rey can see that his lips are still swollen from her earlier assault on them by the river. She had bitten him then out of a mix of lust and spite, and now seeing the proof of her passions stirs something new in her. Beyond all the unnatural lust surging through her veins is a fresh desire to mark him. No, not just to mark him… Rey wants to really mess him up. Punish him for being such an utter prick to leave her like he did back there.

"You're taking the words out of my mouth, Scavenger."

Kylo shifts his grip, holding her with one hand as his other returns to between her legs. She struggles more for show than anything else until she feels a trace of pain come from his side.

Oh, it's his injured hand. The one the idiot had broken or at least cracked during his tantrum after she'd fled.

Immediately she stills, allowing him to more easily draw open the front of her pants and begin to ease it down her legs.

"Clothes," she repeats, this time more insistently.

The energy rises and falls through her in cycles, drawing with it an unsteadiness to her thoughts that make it impossible to consider any other notion but going forward. Things are beginning to get hazy again as he strokes her, nudging her legs wider with his knees to make room for his hand to play.

"Are you going to leave me again, Rey?"

The buzzing in her ears blocks out his words until repeats them again into her mind. Rey shakes her head, mouthing the words 'no, never again' to reassure him. It must be this coercion, because she's not in her own mind at all, so much more than willing to tell him damned near anything and everything he could ask for as long as he just keeps going.

Kylo hums to that, his fingers picking up speed.

"You're very lucky I'm not going to hold you to that, Rey," he tells her, giving her now damp and scowling forehead a soft kiss.

Then his hand pulls away and Rey shrieks, bucking and kicking him in a fear that he's going to leave her while she in the throes of rising need rises within her.

"KYLO! Don't you even-"

He lets go of her hands, shushing her impending tantrum with his palm over her lips.

"Be still, Scavenger. I'm not going anywhere."

Rey sinks her teeth into his finger, trying to bite down hard enough to fulfill her desire but the tough leather of his gloves gets in the way.

Around them the breeze picks up, washing across the heated skin of her lower limbs and reminding her that she's half naked and the arrogant prick above her has only lost his cloak. Kylo stiffens and blinks, shaking his head as he shudders lightly. Rey groans impatiently, finding herself filled with some sensation she couldn't describe. Not need. More like desperation.

She reaches to touch him and Kylo flinches, yanking his hand away from her. Whatever this thing is, it's effecting them in similar but different ways.

He seems torn. Rey isn't.

She drags him to her again, sending their lips crashing together as she claws at his back, working her hands beneath all his seemingly endless layers of clothing until her fingers find him.

Author's note:

Haha, no I'm not cockblocking you again. :P The continuation is up right now, I just reposted it in two parts instead of one long as hell chapter because I got an ask that it was too hard to read on a phone. :)