Rolling obediently onto his back, Ben blinked up at her, wide-eyed and awestruck, his hands clutching at her narrow hips. Like this, he could touch her, could see all of her, moving with increased confidence, all of her earlier nervousness slipping away.

She had always been deceptively petite, feisty in a way that could easily be dismissed as cute, by someone who did not know her, but there was a power she carried with her. Beyond what her bloodline gave her. Beyond the harshness of her childhood. Beyond the bond they shared. Her voice, as she spoke to him, was low and commanding, full of promise and certainty, and it left him shivering just as much as the friction of their bodies.

Groaning brokenly, Ben forgot about his mantra, about his tenuous control, and with eyes wide, he managed to gasp, "Rey, I—" Before it was all over for him, causing him to make a sound that would've been utterly humiliating had it occurred at any other moment, with anyone else.