We call it a training day, so we don't have to call it foreplay with homework.

Rhea loans us the little back room that used to be a storeroom and now looks like a tidy war confessed to a pegboard—racks of knives, coils of cord, a row of pistols laid out on a runner like cutlery, paper silhouettes clipped to a clothesline for a range we won't fire inside. Lemon oil and gun oil argue politely in the air; bergamot wins by a nose.

Asra stands in my T-shirt and her own black trousers, burn bandage peeking at the collar like a jealous necklace. She eyes the pistols the way a cat eyes a bath—and I can't stop my gaze from lingering on her, the way the fabric clings to her curves, stirring a desperate ache in me that's getting harder to ignore.

"I prefer knives," she says.

"I know." I set a compact, uncompromising nine on my palm. "And sometimes a room prefers bullets. Four rules?"

She smirks. "Treat every gun like it's loaded. Finger off the trigger until I'm ready to press. Don't point the loud end at anything I don't plan to eulogize. Know my target and what's behind it."

"Gold star," I say, and she looks at me like she could make that literal—a look that sends heat racing through my veins, making me crave her touch, her bite, everything we're holding back.

I clear the weapon slowly enough to be a sermon—mag out, slide, chamber check, visual and tactile, lock back, show clear. I swap in a mag of snap caps—bright orange dummies—and hand it to her grip-first.

"High tang," I say. "Choke up. Web of your hand tight under the beavertail. Support hand wraps—thumbs forward, not stacked. You're strong—don't crush it. Meet recoil; don't bully it."

"I don't bully," she says, and lifts the pistol into a stance that is 40% trouble and 60% ballet. "I persuade."

"Isosceles," I murmur, stepping in close, visible hands adjusting without assuming. "Square to target. Knees soft. Hips under you, not waltzing ahead."

She rocks her hips back obediently. The move is obscene by accident. "Like this?"

I swallow. "Yes. Front sight crisp, rear sight blur—equal height, equal light. Press straight back. Don't slap. Exhale on the break." My voice is rougher than I intend, the proximity of her body igniting a desperate fire in me, making it torture not to pull her against me right now.

She dry-fires. The front sight doesn't dip a whisper. Of course it doesn't.

"Again," I say, because I am a glutton for pain.

She runs five presses, each a prayer said correctly. The sixth, she cheats—a tiny jerk of the wrist she thinks I won't see.

I step behind and close my hands over hers. "May I?"

"Yes," she says, voice lower. "Please."

"Reset," I breathe against her ear, close enough to smell bergamot on her throat. "Let the trigger out only until you feel the click. There. Now take it up again." Her body presses back into mine slightly, a subtle grind that sends sparks through the bond, desperate and teasing, building the tension until I'm aching for release.

She inhales. Exhales. Click. Press. Perfect.

"That feels illegal," she says, smiling like a sin that paid its parking tickets.

"Best crimes are disciplined," I say, even as my branded forearm hums like an idiot every time my chest brushes her back—every brush fueling the desperation, making me want to spin her around, pin her to the wall, and devour her until we both shatter.

We drill: press, reset, press. I walk her through malfunction taps with snap caps, through slide-lock reloads, through the way your arms want to chicken-wing when you're startled, and how to shame them into behaving. She listens like a hunter being polite about adopting a new tooth. When she turns and returns the pistol to me, grip-first, her mouth is curved and her eyes are not sorry—eyes dark with the same hunger I feel, a desperate promise that we're both on the edge, waiting for the moment we can finally let go.

"Your turn," she says. "My lesson."

"What's the topic?"

"Not dying of our own bond at an inconvenient time," she says crisply. "Grounding."

She ties the strip of red silk around our wrists again—left on me, right on her—double-fisherman's, the knot sitting like a promise in the hollow of our joined hands.

"Hands visible," she says, and lays out the steps like rules on Rhea's wall. "If the bond spikes—fear, lust, pain, power—first: name. You say my name or yours. Second: anchor. Two points of contact. Wrist to wrist on the knot, and palm to sternum—yours on you, mine on me. Third: breath. In for four, out for six. We count out loud until our pulses choose the same song. Fourth: speak. One honest sentence each, about what is happening in the body, not the story in the head. Fifth: release. We do not drink unless we both ask and the room agrees."

"Room has veto," I say, amused and already a little wrecked by the competence.

"Room has veto," she repeats, solemn and obscene. "Practice. You get to be the problem."

I take her wrist gently and yank the bond like a bell with my mouth—kiss her knuckles, then the inside of her wrist above the knot, a soft scrape of teeth that makes both of us inhale too fast—the taste of her skin sending a desperate surge through me, my body hardening with need, begging for more than this teasing touch.

"Evander," she scolds, breathless.

"Ground me," I say, because the smart thing to do is ask for help.

She's at me in a heartbeat that we share. Wrist to wrist on the knot; her other palm plants flat to her sternum, my other to mine. Our chests rise and fall like the room is rowing us.

"In for four," she says, counting, voice low and merciless. "Out for six."

We do it. The fuse inside me stops fizzing like a brat and starts purring like a cat that has had exactly the right amount of attention.

"Speak," she orders. "Body, not story."

"My hands are too warm," I say. "My mouth is worse. I want you against something cold because I am not."

Her eyes go dark and bright at once. "My teeth feel heavy," she answers, honest as a sin-eater. "My burn doesn't hurt when you look at it. I want your neck, but I want your yes more." Her words hit like a spark to dry tinder, igniting a desperate fire in my core, making it torture to hold back from claiming her completely.

The bond settles—still hot, now obedient.

"Good," she says, smiling like she taught a saint to swear. "Again."

I don't know who moves first. I only know my back hits the weapons rack, and her body hits mine, and gravity becomes a hobby. The pegboard rattles. Somewhere, a length of paracord swings and taps a holster like an impatient metronome. Her hands plant by my head on either side; my palms find her waist and learn it like a psalm—her heat pressing into me, desperate and unrelenting, every curve fueling the ache that's building to an explosion we're barely delaying.

"May I?" I ask because if I don't, I'll regret the poetry later.

"Yes," she breathes, and kisses me like a dare.

It's loud without being noisy. Teeth. Tongue. The kind of kiss you'd apologize for in a confessional and then do again in the parking lot. She tastes like tea that forgot to be polite, and the peppermint of Magda's salve, and something sharp that is just her. I make a sound that doesn't belong in a library; she answers with one that belongs nowhere holy—a sound that drives me wild, desperate to hear it louder, to feel her shatter under my touch soon.

"Hands," she reminds me against my mouth, wrecked and laughing.

"My hands are at your waist," I say. "Climbing. May I—"

"Yes."

I slide them up to where the bandage meets skin and stop exactly there because I plan to like myself in the morning. She rewards me with a slow grind that teaches the rack a new religion. I exhale something profane. She bites my lower lip and pulls, gentle and not at all—the bite sending a jolt straight to my groin, desperation mounting as I fight the urge to flip us, to take her right here against the rack.

"Evander," she says, tone the exact midpoint between stay and ruin me.

"Asra," I answer, and she shivers like I shot her full of truth—a shiver that echoes through the bond, amplifying our desperation, making every touch feel like a prelude to the ecstasy we're denying ourselves.

We break to breathe and immediately regret it. She drags her mouth down my jaw to the place where my pulse has been living bolder since she moved in. She doesn't bite. She promises. I thread a hand into her hair and tug just enough to make her gasp and say my name like it's a rule—her gasp fueling my arousal, desperate and throbbing, building the tension until I'm trembling with the need for her.

"B-bond," I manage. "Ground."

She laughs, wicked and obedient, and slaps our wrists together at the knot, palm to sternum, counting, breath syncing until the world stops trying to be a bed.

"Again," she says.

"Cruel," I say.

"Accurate," she says, and pins me harder, one thigh sliding between mine, the rack cold through my shirt, and the room hot everywhere else. My branded forearm scrapes steel; pain lights up; the bond catches the spark and turns it into something useful. I groan. She curses softly and says sorry with her mouth on mine, and we are both, suddenly, very close to the line we promised not to cross—so close that the desperation is palpable, our bodies grinding with a frenzy that screams how badly we need to explode together soon.

"Stop?" she asks, voice shaking in that way that makes saints develop opinions.

I hate the word. I love what using it does to us. "Stop," I say, and I'm the one who pulls back first because I like my gods difficult.

We stand there, breathing like men who ran from a burning church, our wrists still tied by silk and our mouths red with excellent mistakes unmade.

She leans her forehead to mine and laughs in a way that saves me from several terrible decisions. "Mutual torture," she says, fond and savage.

"Practice," I correct, trying not to rummage for her hips again. "Makes perfect."

"Perfect is boring," she says. "I like us disciplined."

"Semantics."

"Foreplay," she says, and I could die of how she says it—her voice dripping with desire, stoking the desperation that's coiling tighter, priming us for the inevitable release.

We untie the silk like we're defusing a bomb, slow and reverent, then re-tie it around the weapons rack as if the room should remember what we did here the next time we need courage. She smooths my collar like she didn't just undo the last ten percent of my self-control. I check her bandage like I'm not trying to memorize the skin just below it for later—my fingers lingering a second too long, desperate for more contact, more heat, more of her.

"Again," she says for the third time, but it's business now. "Draw-stroke without printing. Step, press, reset. Marry trigger to breath. Then my turn to make you curse with grounding at speed."

We work until sweat, humor, and hunger are indistinguishable. I correct her stance with only my voice, because I like my hands alive. She cheats on purpose once, so I'll touch her. I refuse, once, so she'll make me earn it. We kiss on water breaks because we're terrible; we ground because we're good. She dry-fires until her front sight doesn't twitch when a bottle crashes in the bar; I grunt through three reps of her grounding drill while she whispers mine into the knot just to watch my pupils dilate—her whispers sending shivers down my spine, building the desperate anticipation for when we can finally let this heat consume us.

We stop exactly where we promised. The rack rattles one last time when she steps back, satisfied and starving.

"Live fire later," I say, holstering the nine. "Out by the pilings. Tide after midnight."

She nods, eyes bright. "Bond is grounded in a crowd. In motion." A wicked smile. "For science."

"We're going to die," I say cheerfully.

"Eventually," she says, and picks up my Saint Lucas coin from the table where I left it to watch. She flips it once, twice, and then closes my fingers around it with a look that binds better than silk. "Not tonight."

I slide the coin into my pocket, the knot into my other, and her name into the part of me that chooses. "Not tonight," I agree.

We leave the room smelling like oil and peppermint and the kind of restraint that makes the next yes matter more. Outside, the lilies have the decency not to smirk. Rhea raises an eyebrow, which means "wash your hands and good work." If you break the pegboard, you fix it.

Asra bumps my shoulder with hers on the way out. "Saint."

"Monster," I say.

We grin at each other, hungry and disciplined, like two people who intend to be very, very good right up until it's time to be perfect—but inside, the desperation is boiling, every glance a promise that soon, very soon, we'll give in to the fire we've been stoking.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter!! 🤞🤞