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TRAZ

T he fire crackles low in the hearth, casting amber light across Kelli’s bare shoulder as she rests her head on my chest. Her breath still comes uneven, her fingers tracing idle patterns over the scar beneath my collarbone—a relic from a job on Xyris Prime.

I catch her hand, press her palm flat against the steady thud of my heartbeat. She smiles, her lips brushing my skin.

“Never thought I’d see you still after sunrise,” she murmurs.

I grunt, my thumb sweeping over the ridge of her knuckles. “Farm’s got a way of…slowing things.”

She shifts, her hair spilling like pale silk across the quilt we’d dragged in front of the hearth. The scent of hay and woodsmoke clings to her. “You hate slow.”

“Not this.” My voice rougher than I intend. Her laugh is soft, a sound I’m still learning to map.

Outside, the night hums with crickets. No gunfire. No engines. Just the creak of old timbers settling. Kelli’s gaze drifts to the window, where the stars hang thick as spilled salt. “You think they’ll come looking?”

I pull her closer, my lips grazing the crown of her head. “Let them.”

She tenses, then exhales, her body melting against mine. “You’d burn it all down for this, wouldn’t you? For a patch of dirt and a roof.”

“Not the roof.” My hand slides up her spine, fingers threading into her hair. “The woman and children under it.”

Her breath hitches. She tilts her face to mine, eyes glinting like fractured glass. “Mercenaries don’t make poets, Traz.”

“Farmers do, apparently.”

She kisses me then—slow, deliberate, a language we’ve rewritten together. Her leg hooks over my hip, the quilt slipping. The fire pops, embers spiraling upward like dying stars.

When she pulls back, her thumb traces the line of my jaw. “I want you,” she whispers. Not a plea. A declaration.

I catch her wrist, press a kiss to her pulse. “Already have me.”

The words hang, simpler than vows. She settles her head back on my chest, her breath evening out. The farmhouse sighs around us, the night stretching endless and quiet. I close my eyes. Let the stillness take root.

Her mouth finds mine again, harder this time.

The quilt bunches beneath us as she rolls me onto my back, her knee pressing into the hay-strewn floorboards.

I taste woodsmoke on her tongue, feel the calluses on her palms as they slide down my ribs.

The fire licks at the edges of my vision, heat blooming where her hips meet mine.

She breaks the kiss to bite my lower lip. “Still think you’re the one in charge here?”

My laugh comes out a growl. I flip us, pinning her wrists above her head. Her pulse thrums against my thumbs. “Farm’s full of surprises.”

Her grin sharpens. She arches, bare skin catching the firelight as the quilt falls away completely. A scar along her ribcage gleams silver. I trace it with my tongue. She hisses, her heel digging into the small of my back.

All I hear is hitch in her breath, the creak of floorboards. No contracts. No gunpowder tang. Just her nails scoring my shoulders as I move, her choked laugh when I nip the hollow of her throat. Embers spiral upward, dying in the rafters.

She fists a hand in my hair, yanks my head back. Her eyes reflect the dying fire, twin supernovas. “Mine,” she snarls, voice raw.

I let her see the surrender in my bare teeth before crushing my mouth to hers. The farmhouse fades. The galaxy with it. Her thighs tremble against my hips, the only truth left spinning in the dark.

The fire’s warmth licks my skin as I hover above her, her body a map of stories under my hands.

Her breath hitches when I brush a strand of hair from her face, her eyes locked on mine like she’s daring me to look away.

I don’t. The quilt is rough beneath my knees, the air thick with the scent of woodsmoke and her.

Her hands find my hips, fingers digging in as I lower myself, my mouth grazing against her ear. “Slow,” she murmurs, not a plea but a command. I obey, my body moving with a restraint that feels foreign, deliberate.

My cock enters her achingly slowly. Her breath stutters as I press in that last delicious inch, a sharp inhale that softens into a sigh.

Her legs wrap around me, anchoring me closer. Every shift, every shudder is a language we’ve carved out in stolen moments.

The fire pops, casting shadows that dance across her face.

Her eyes are half-lidded, her lips parted as she murmurs my name like it’s a secret.

I catch it with my mouth, swallowing the sound as her hips tilt to meet mine.

There’s no rush, no frantic urgency—just the steady rhythm of skin against skin, the creak of the floorboards beneath us keeping time.

Her hands slide up my arms, fingers threading through mine as she pins them above her head. A smirk tugs at her lips, but there’s no challenge in it now. Just heat, and something softer. I let her hold me there, my forehead resting against hers, our breaths tangled.

When she comes, it’s with a quiet intensity that ripples through me, her body tightening like a coiled spring. I follow her over the edge, my orgasm muffled against her throat. For a heartbeat, all that matters is the pulse of her skin under my lips, the hitch of her breath in the silence.

She releases my hands, her fingers trailing down my spine as I collapse beside her. The fire’s embers glow faintly, the room bathed in a dim, amber haze. Her head finds the hollow of my shoulder, her exhale warm against my chest.

No words. None needed. The crickets outside pick up their chorus, filling the quiet.

Her breath evens out against my neck, the rise and fall of her ribs syncing with mine.

I stare at the smoke-stained ceiling, one arm pinned beneath her, the other draped across the dip of her waist. Her hair smells like the lavender soap she insists on making every spring, though I’d never admit how the scent clings to my shirts long after she’s gone.

Somewhere down the hall, a floorboard creaks.

Joren’s nightmares, probably. Kid’s been jumping at shadows since the harvest raid.

I count seconds until the soft pad of bare feet follows—Aria, always slipping into his room to hum those off-key lullabies.

Their murmurs drift through the thin walls, a language I still don’t speak fluently.

Kelli stirs, her knee brushing the old blaster scar on my thigh. I freeze, but she just nestles closer, her exhale warm against my throat.

Strange, how the weight of her doesn’t set my nerves alight.

Ten years of sleeping with one eye open, and now I’m here— letting a woman with vengeance in her bones and two half-wild strays she calls siblings press their luck against my ribs.

The hearth’s glow paints the rifle propped by the door, the security system blinking green near the windowsill.

All the traps I’ve laid, and still, the tightness in my chest isn’t about perimeter breaches.

Kelli mutters something, a half-formed word that might be my name. My arm tightens around her on instinct.

Mercs don’t retire. We bleed out or burn up. But this—her heartbeat under my hand, the kids’ muffled laughter at dawn, the godsforsaken rooster that pecks my boots each morning—it’s not an ending. It’s a ceasefire. A stolen rhythm I’ve started grafting to my bones.

The fire dims. I should move, bank the coals. Instead, I count the freckles on Kelli’s shoulder and memorize the way the moonlight cuts across the crib in the corner—empty still, but not for lack of trying, that's for sure.