Damian's declaration "I will never let you go" hung in the air, not as a threat, but as a vow. "Did I just just make soft promises?" He asked himself, It should have terrified Jace, but in the aftermath of such intimate surrender, it felt like an anchor in the storm that had been his life.
He was pulled into a searing kiss, Damian's taste still on his own lips, a stark and primal reminder of the power he had just willingly given. But it didn't feel like loss anymore. It felt like an exchange. His defiance for this... this devastating tenderness.
Damian laid him back against the pillows, his body covering Jace's not with crushing weight, but with a possessive warmth that seeped into his bones. The city lights painted silver streaks across Damian's shoulders as he moved, his eyes never leaving Jace's face.
"I need to be inside you," Damian murmured, the words a raw, honest admission that shattered any last pretense. "I need to feel you around me."
Jace's breath caught. The clinical preparation was a quiet, focused ritual. Damian's touch was deliberate, careful, stretching him with a reverence that made Jace's throat tight. The initial discomfort was a fleeting thing, chased away by the intensity in Damian's gaze, by the whispered words against his skin. "Breathe for me, Jace. Just breathe. I have you."
When Damian finally entered him, it was with a slow, inexorable pressure that felt less like an invasion and more like a homecoming. Jace gasped, his eyes fluttering shut, his fingers digging into Damian's back. It was an overwhelming fullness, a claiming that reached deeper than his body, touching the very core of the hollow space his anger had left behind.
"Look at me," Damian commanded, his voice strained with the effort of his control.
Jace forced his eyes open, meeting the stormy gray gaze. In that moment, he was completely laid bare physically, emotionally, spiritually. There were no more walls.
Damian began to move, a slow, deep rhythm that was pure sensation. Each thrust was a punctuation to the unspoken words between them. You're mine. I'm yours. This is real.
Jace's world narrowed to the points where their bodies joined the slide of skin, the hitch of breath, the press of Damian's forehead against his own. The pleasure was a rising tide, warm and undeniable, building from the place where they were connected and spreading through his entire being. He wasn't just allowing this he was participating, meeting Damian's rhythm with a desperate arch of his hips, his own need coiling tight.
"That's it," Damian breathed, his voice thick with awe and desire. "Let go. Just let go for me."
It was the permission Jace didn't know he needed. The coil inside him snapped. A broken, sobbing cry was torn from his throat as he came, his body convulsing, his vision whiting out. It was a release more profound than any orgasm he'd ever known it was the final surrender of his will, and it felt like flying.
Feeling Jace shatter around him was Damian's undoing. With a guttural groan, he followed him over the edge, his own release a deep, shuddering climax that left him collapsed atop Jace, spent and breathing heavily.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their ragged breaths mingling in the dark. Damian, with a tenderness that was entirely new, shifted them onto their sides, pulling Jace against his chest, tucking him into the curve of his body. His arms wrapped around him, holding him together as the aftershocks trembled through him.
Jace buried his face in Damian's neck, the scent of their sweat and sex a new, intimate reality. The quiet he had been offered was now here, inside him. The fight was gone. In its place was a terrifying, exhilarating peace.
Damian's lips brushed against his hair. "You see now?" he whispered into the darkness, his voice barely audible. "It was never about breaking you. It was about bringing you home."
And as sleep finally claimed him, wrapped in the arms of the man who owned him, Jace feared that for the first time in his life, he finally was.
The soft, grey light of dawn was filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows when Jace stirred. For a blissful, disoriented moment, he didn't know where he was. There was only warmth, a solid weight around his waist, and the deep, even rhythm of breath against the back of his neck.
Memory returned like a slow, inevitable tide. The fight. The shattered plate. The quiet. The... everything that came after.
He didn't move. He lay perfectly still, cataloging the sensations. Damian's arm was a heavy, possessive band across his stomach, his hand splayed possessively over Jace's ribs. The heat of Damian's body was a furnace at his back. It should have felt like a cage. It didn't. It felt like an anchor, holding him fast in a world that had, until last night, been nothing but freefall.
Shame tried to rise a hot, familiar flush. He had surrendered. He had begged. He had come apart in the hands of the man who held his debt. But the shame was a weak, sputtering thing, drowned out by the visceral, bone-deep memory of pleasure, of a connection so profound it had felt like being known for the first time.
He was still turning this over in his mind, this terrifying new peace, when the arm around him tightened. Damian nuzzled into the junction of his neck and shoulder, his lips brushing the skin there in a gesture that was instinctively, devastatingly tender.
"You're thinking too loud," Damian murmured, his voice sleep-roughened and intimate. It wasn't a reprimand. It was an observation.
Jace swallowed. "I don't know what I am anymore," he whispered, the truth spilling out in the vulnerable space of the early morning.
Damian was quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing a slow circle on Jace's skin. "You're mine," he said finally, the words simple, absolute. "But you were always mine. You were just fighting it."
The old Jace would have snapped at that. Would have shoved the arm away and launched into a tirade about ownership and freedom. The Jace who lay there now just closed his eyes, letting the words sink in. They didn't feel like a prison sentence. They felt like a definition, one he was too tired to argue with.
"What happens today?" Jace asked, his voice small.
"Today," Damian said, shifting to prop himself up on an elbow, looking down at Jace. His hair was mussed, his face softened by sleep, and the sight sent a strange flutter through Jace's chest. "Today, you get up. You shower with me. You eat the breakfast I make for you. You come to my office, not as a trophy, but because I want you there. And tonight..." He leaned down, his mouth hovering a breath from Jace's. "Tonight, we do that again. And again. Until you stop asking what you are, and you just know."
It was a schedule. A new routine. But it wasn't the cold, domineering schedule of before. It was a promise. A blueprint for a life.
Damian brushed a kiss against his lips, soft and lingering, before rolling out of bed. He stood, gloriously naked and unselfconscious in the pale light, and offered Jace his hand. "Come. The day won't wait."
Jace stared at the offered hand. It was the same hand that had signed his contract, that had pinned him down, that had touched him with such devastating intimacy. Taking it felt like the most significant choice he had ever made.
Slowly, he reached out and placed his hand in Damian's.
The grip was firm, sure, and it pulled him effortlessly to his feet and into the warm circle of Damian's arms. For a long moment, they just stood there, chest to chest, in the quiet of the morning. No debts between them. No contracts. Just this.
As they walked together toward the bathroom, the steam already beginning to fog the mirrors, Jace caught a glimpse of their reflection two figures, blurred and intertwined. He couldn't see where he ended and Damian began