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"We shouldn't be doing this," Leo whispered even as his hands clutched at my shoulders. The dim light filtering through the small window cast his face in shadows, emphasizing the flush spreading across his cheeks.

"Then tell me to stop." I brushed my lips over the sensitive spot below his ear. "Tell me you don't want me to fuck myself on your cock while my family celebrates twenty feet away."

Leo's answering groan echoed in the small space. "You know I can't say no to you. Not when you look at me like that."

"Because you belong to me." I punctuated the statement with a sharp bite to his neck, relishing the way his body arched against me. "Because you love it when I use you exactly how I want."

The grand reopening of Laskin if anything, it had deepened into something more complex, more all-consuming than simple possession.

Leo caught me watching and smiled, a quick flash of gratitude before returning to his call. "Yes, Xavier will be there too... No, Dad, you don't need to make the spare bedroom up. We'll get a hotel... Yes, I'm sure."

The easy way he included me in his plans, the certainty in his voice when speaking of us as a unit—these small moments still caught me off guard, reminding me how much had changed since that night I'd found him standing outside his burning trailer.

When he finished his call and rejoined me, his face was lighter than it had been all evening. "They want us to come for Thanksgiving," he said, leaning against me with casual familiarity. "My mom's already planning the menu."

"And your father?" I kept my voice neutral, though we both knew my opinion of the man who had rejected his only son.

"Working on it," Leo acknowledged. "But trying. He asked about the cosplay competition. Wanted to know if I won."

"Progress," I conceded, wrapping an arm around his waist. My fingers found the spot where I knew a bruise still bloomed from the night before, pressing just hard enough to make him inhale sharply. A reminder of who he belonged to, even as he rebuilt bridges I had once been tempted to burn permanently.

Across the room, Commander Reid was speaking with one of the security staff, making his rounds with professional efficiency. I caught his eye briefly and raised my glass slightly, a simple professional acknowledgment that he returned with a slight nod.

"I saw the memorial plaque on the porch," Leo said, following my gaze before looking back at me. "Yuri had it made for the opening."

"I noticed." My voice remained neutral, but Leo knew me well enough to hear what I wasn't saying.

"Fourteen names," he said quietly. "Richard Thackery's victims. It felt right to include them here, part of closing that chapter."

The thoughtfulness of the gesture, the perfect understanding of what those names represented to me—it hit with unexpected force. Richard Thackery, Felix Burns, the fires that had connected our lives in ways neither of us could have predicted. The circle completing itself here in this place of endings and beginnings.

As the night wound to its close, we said our goodbyes to the family, accepting Yuri's bear hug and Annie's cheek kisses with the understanding that Sunday dinner would bring us all together again in two days' time. The rhythm of family life had reasserted itself in the months since Felix's death, a normalcy that felt both foreign and precious.

"Ready to go home?" I asked as the night wound to its close, the word 'home' still carrying a weight I hadn't anticipated when I'd first invited Leo to stay with me.

"Always," he replied, leaning into me as we walked toward my bike.

Home wasn't the funeral home with its rebuilt walls and memorial plaques. It wasn't even the rebuilt trailer at the compound, now reinforced with security systems that would make most military installations jealous. Home was this—Leo's arm around my waist, his scent mingling with mine, the knowledge that whatever came next, we would face it together.

The hunter and his technician. The monster and his match. The fire and the spark that kept it burning.

Forever.