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I give her another pulse of it, slower this time, letting her ride the wave instead of drowning in it, and her entire body melts against the bed like she’s unraveling molecule by molecule beneath my hands.

“Almost done,” I murmur, voice thick, though we both know I’m lying.

I’ve got more to give her. I’ll pour every goddamned drop into her until there’s nothing left but ruin.

For both of us.

She’s wrecked beneath me. Lying there, sweat-slicked and breathless, trembling under every thread of power I’ve poured into her like I’m bleeding myself dry. But the worst part—the thing that undoes me—is that she’s still reaching for more. Her body arcs into my touch like it’s instinct, like she was made for this, for me, for the kind of need I’ve kept locked in my throat for months.

And I can’t stop.

It starts subtle—the way my fingers trail higher, from her thigh to the hollow dip above her knee, then drag slow, reverent circles over the inside of her leg, grounding myself in her skin because I’m unraveling.

She’s panting my name now, soft and wrecked, and I swear to every fucking god in this Hollow, I’d drown in the sound if she asked.

I glance up, and her eyes meet mine—glass-bright, unfocused, but wanting. Needing.

The restraint I’ve been holding cracks in my chest, and before I can talk myself out of it, I’m leaning over her, one hand braced beside her head, the other dragging slow, deliberate down her stomach to cup her over the thin fabric of her sleep shorts.

She gasps like I’ve branded her.

“Caspian,” she breathes, but it’s not a protest—it’s an invocation.

My thumb drags over her, slow and sure, and her hips jerk into my palm, chasing the contact, and something dark and sharp twists low in me. I want her like this—out of her mind, drowning in me, and I want to ruin her a little more.

I murmur against her ear, voice low and wrecked, “You’ve got no idea how good you look like this, sweetheart. Wrung out. Mine.”

She shivers at that word, her body arching, and I slip my hand under the waistband, skin on skin now, slick and so fucking warm. She’s already close again. I can feel it in the way she trembles under me, how her thighs try to squeeze together around my wrist like she can stop what’s already inevitable.

I don’t give her space to come down. I want her undone. Shattered.

My mouth trails down the line of her throat, teeth scraping lightly over her pulse point, and I press my fingers inside her at the same time, slow, stretching, deliberate. Her back bows off the bed, her hands flying to my shoulders, fingers digging in like I’m the only thing keeping her tethered to this plane.

“Stay with me,” I murmur, dragging my mouth down to her neck, kissing over her skin like she’s something sacred. “I’ve got you.”

And I do. Every inch of her.

She comes apart again with a strangled sound, thighs trembling, breath catching, and I don’t let up, grinding my palm against her, coaxing another climax from her like I’m starving for it. Because I am. Because it’s not enough. It will never be enough.

Her hand tangles in my hair, pulling me up, and her mouth crashes into mine, desperate and messy, and I lose whatever scrap of self-restraint I had left.

I kiss her like she’s air, like she’s everything I shouldn’t want but can’t stop devouring. And when she drags me closer, when her thighs part, silently inviting me to finish what I’ve started—I already know I’m going to.

Because I’d burn for her.

And I’d let her watch me do it.

Her leg shudders beneath my palm like a livewire, heat pooling in my veins as I watch her body tremble under the weight of my power. It coils out of me without mercy now, the restraint I’d started with unraveling thread by thread, until I can’t tell where I end and she begins. The Hollow around us, the cracked bones of this place, the shadows that watch us from the edges—they don’t exist. Nothing exists but her. The way she moans my name like she’s cursing me, like I’m wrecking her from the inside out.

I should stop here. I should pull back, let her catch her breath, but she’s pulling me under with every sharp exhale and I’m already too far gone.

Her thighs twitch, hips pressing upward without shame, without pretense, and it’s a prayer and a plea in one. I slide my hand higher, my thumb grazing her inner thigh with a drag slowenough to kill us both, and her eyes flutter open, wrecked and glazed like she’s drowning in me.

"You're taking it so well," I murmur, voice rough, breathless, reverent. "Greedy little thing."

She bites her bottom lip like that might ground her, like she isn’t already undone, like her pulse isn’t singing to me through every bond threaded between us. Her skin is flushed, slick, trembling, and I can feel her unraveling again as I let the next wave roll out of me—slow, precise, punishing.

I shouldn’t touch her like this. Not like this. But I want to—gods, I want to—and when her fingers fist the sheets like she’s trying to hold herself together, I slide my hand up her stomach, splaying it wide over her ribs, her heart fluttering against my palm like a caged thing.