Archive of Our Own ^beta

The water is warmer than the temperature of her blood, and that’s all that matters to Rey.

Outside, at night, under a thousand and one stars and the faintest dusting of slow, flat snowflakes, the world is silent. Private. Belonging only to her.

And it’s all spoiled but a sudden, obnoxious splash.

“Kriff, Solo!” 

Rey screeches, whipping the chlorinated water from her eyes, un-removed mascara staining the tips of her fingers. 

But he doesn’t hear her. He’s still under the blue-green water. Halfway across the pool in a few strong strokes of long, thick arms. 

He emerges moments later on the opposite end with a dramatic gulp of hair, whipping his dark hair back and wiping a too-big hand over his face, which lingers around his open mouth. 

Rey stares at him as aggressively as a humanoid has stared in the entire history of the galaxy.

Only, he doesn’t quite look at her. He looks past her, at the mountain range whose peaks lick the sky. The same ones Rey had been admiring just before.

So he doesn’t see it. 

“Are you serious?” She taunts him, the questions more of a deadpan knife as it falls from her tongue. 

“Hey, porg girl.” 

His tone is casual, light and calm as it carries over the water. Benjamin Solo turns to face her across the pool, treading water.

She wipes the pads of her thumbs quickly under her eyes, trying to do away with the makeup smudges. Frustrated with herself, for caring what he thinks.

Until she realizes just how misplaced that frustration is. 

“What are you doing here?” 

Rey crosses her arms over her chest, suddenly hyperaware of the small swaths of pearly white fabric which do little to cover her flushed skin. She wishes fleetingly she’d opted for her one piece racing suit instead when slipping into swimwear after the rehearsal dinner. It’s just that it was a size too small, leftover from when she joined the middle school swim team back on Takodana, between foster homes on Jakku and, finally, Coruscant. Where she'd met Kaydel. And, eventually, her big brother—

Ben Solo's eyes trace the fold of Rey's arms over her chest for a fraction of a second.

And then he looks past her again.

Pleased with his sudden, small blush, Rey only half-regret the little bikini now. It's pretty, anyway, with the extra-long strings that wrapped twice around her middle in a sultry, inner-rim style. Kaydel had gifted to her after the Bachelorette trip to Naboo. Little as it was, it still fit Rey better than the near-corset of the old racing suit. 

She hadn't exactly expected to see anyone else.

It was Kaydel and Snap’s grand idea to get married at a luxurious ice resort on Hoth. And if Rey was taking a mandatory vacation at the credits-per-night rate she was roped into through the wedding block of rooms, she would be taking advantage of all the amenities. Ice planet temperatures be damned. Besides, the resort proudly boasted of an extra-heated, all-seasons outdoor pool. Since, really, Hoth just had the one: freezing, disparate winter. 

Still. Leaving the wood-fired, pine-dressed grand hall of the rehearsal dinner not an hour before, it was clear that the other guests were headed to one of two places. Bed, or the bar. 

And since Kaydel dismissed her maid of honor rather early, wanting a long, quiet night of rest for herself before the morning wedding, Rey seized her chance.

A frozen, solitary midnight swim, it would be. 

Or, so she had foolishly thought.

Across the pool, Ben Solo swoops a heavy, braced arm across the surface of the water. Droplets turn to ice in the air as they splash towards Rey, and she whips up a palm to Force-freeze them. 

“Gods, Solo! Are you serious? I have to stand up in front of a hundred-plus people in ten standard hours. A bunch of tiny ice-cuts is not at the top of your sister’s very strict list of wedding ceremony makeup requirements.” 

She flicks her palm over the water, sending the ice particles back in his direction.

Which Ben Solo waves away with an aggravatingly casual sweep of the Force.

“Whatever, Niima.” 

“It’s not whatever, it’s—’

He dunks under the water, and Rey huffs. Crosses her fingers that, maybe, the universe will decide to balance itself and he’ll drown.

But that would really spoil things for Kaydel, so she bites the inside of her cheek and swallows the intrusive thought back down, actively ignoring the strange, hollow pit in the depths of her stomach that it brought. 

Rey is chewing on her bottom lip as the name of the feeling is just on the tip of her tongue— 

Suddenly, at her left ankle: a squeeze.

And then, she screams. 

“Gods,” she shoves his bare chest as he emerges once more with a dramatic breath. “How do you do that?”

“Swim?” He cocks a cocky brow and Rey swims a few feet back.

“How can you even call that swimming? You just… I don’t know. Water-creep.” 

Rey is still half-way through an eye roll, so she didn’t see it coming.

But his laugh knocks the breath out of her chest.

A sound she’s only heard before across a room. Over a Holocron call between Kaydel and Ben. In recorded clips of him being interviewed on Galaxy-wide news. 

Not a sound she’s been privileged to receive herself. Not before now, this.

And then he splashes her again.

Just a bit, really. Just a soft wash of water in her direction. No more than a drop or two actually reach her face.

But the last tender string of patience seems to snap in Rey.

“Great,” she deadpans. “Nice, that’s. Yeah. Awesome. Enjoy your swim, weirdo.” 

She swam to the steps, just a few arms lengths away. 

Of course he would spoil this for her, too. Her simple, luxurious, lonely nights win in the Force-damned ice hotel from Hell that was draining half her savings in her two-night stay.

Benjamin Solo spoiled everything for Rey.

No matter that Rey Nobody from Niima Outpost was the miraculous Nobody girl with the gift of wielding the Force.

She’d never be as good as Benjamin Solo. 

Never as strong.

Never as agile.

Never as learned.

Everyone made sure to remind her of that. Everyone.

Especially him. Most of all, him. 

“Hey,” he calls behind her. But Rey ignores the splashing sounds of him following her towards the pool’s exit. “Hey, Rey—”

A hand loops around her wrist this time.

No— not a hand.

The invisible wrap of his Force pull.

Rey crashes back into the water with a breathless gasp.

“Oh, fu—”

For a single, silent moment, Rey is fully submerged in the glowing warm water. 

And then, strong hands at the sides of her ribs. Real hands this time, big and reaching and somehow, inexplicably, known to her skin. Like the reliefs of those fingerprints has already been etched into her ribs, waiting to be filled by their counterparts.

It terrifies her— the understanding of this ancient knowledge of his body by hers— in hers. 

And she realizes it — that he’s never touched her before.

Before Rey can begin to make sense of it, Ben is pulling her up to the surface faster than she would have ever believed a humanoid could.

“Sorry, Rey, I’m so—”

“Sorry? You’re sorry ?” 

She hates it. All of it. The volume, the pitch of her shout. The whip of her own words that spill from her tongue before she even hear them herself.

But it’s been bottling up. So much, and for so long. 

The frustration, the confusion, the mess of it all… All too strong. 

Finally, cathartically, in the streamy air above the pool between them,Rey is letting all of it breathe. 

“Sorry for what, Ben? For pushing into my teenage brain and sifting through my thoughts? For storming out of your family dinner the first time I managed to finally push back?”

It was so cold in the late Hoth night.

His cheeks had been pink since he’d joined her in the water.

Now, they are red as poisonberry wine.

“For sneering down at me since the moment I realized I was Force-sensitive? For walking out without a word, leaving me alone and afraid with zero direction? Without a single flicker of guidance or support or godsdamned explanation?”

She sees it snap into place: a tug between his brows. The subtlest beginnings of an angry frown.

It incenses Rey. Fuels her rage.

In the water, she steps closer, and the heat of her loud anger and his building silence burn like a sun between them.

But she can’t seem to stop.

“Or, sorry for when you came back six months later? Without an apology, without the smallest show of kindness or care or grace. Only to say, ‘Rey. You need a teacher.’”

She can see his flinch at her caricatured impression of his deep, harsh voice from her memory. And it fills Rey with a horrid, hateful smugness.

Her own voice, though, grows almost sign-songy in its patronizing tone. 

“Or, let’s see. Maybe you’re sorry for going out of your way to never, ever, Gods-forbid speak to me! Force aside! Your sister’s best friend. Sorry for skipping out on family dinners when Rey Nobody has already accepted the Holo–vite? Sorry for not replying to a simple happy birthday Ben or even returning a polite smile? Sorry for—”

Rey never knew a kiss could hurt.

She never knew she’d want one to.

But she wanted this one, now.

Beneath the hot water, Ben Solo is hotter. His hand on her jaw, holding her mouth just where he wanted it. His other sliding down her back, her ass.

Her third squeeze of the night.

Rey wraps her thighs instinctually around his hips, and, Gods, he’s just so wide.

She kisses all the years’ collection of anger into him.

And he kisses it right back.

Their tongues are fighting. And Rey doesn’t understand it— can’t—

Until the world snaps into place. And there is nothing to understand.

Every place they touch— every brush of teeth and tongue and lip and chest— the Force sings.

I’m here, it says. I’m a living thing. I'm bound between you. Don’t move away.

They both made sounds.

Rey, small whimpers of confusion and desperation and acquiescing.

Ben, just primal, low groans of want and need.

And Rey can feel it. 

Feel him. 

His desire. The small shots of satisfaction with each press of her lips, each touch of her tongue. Only to slip into a new layer of urgent longing.

“Rey,” he growls against her lips. 

And Rey gasps at the contact of his hard body between her thighs as she instinctively presses herself harder to him. 

Everywhere, she is so achingly hot. 

Needy. 

Electric.

As they each pant for breath, her chest grazes his. Every soft brush of her hard nipples to his chest sends a fresh wave of her emergencied desire through her body. Through the Force. Through the—

Bond.

He spills the word from his mind into hers.

Bond. 

Rey.

Bond bond bond.

She’d heard of it only once before. Paid little mind to it. Thinking it was a thing of storybooks.

Then again, Rey had through the Force itself a thing of fairytales and galaxy lore. 

Until the day it had decided to wake her up.

The day she had first met her new friend’s brother. The day she met—

“Ben.”

His name is a song she sing to his lips. A fresh sound, born new as it falls ripely from her tongue.

Rey’s hands tangle in the thick, wet mass of his hair, pulling and combing as he tilts his face this way and that to meet her. 

Whatever she wanted, he gave willingly.

And she can feel it— the flare in his chest which so perfectly mirrors her own. 

She can feel it— how it pleased him so, to let her have her way. 

She can feel it— how it feels to finally have her want him. How he’s been waiting so long—

It floods the bonds. Fills Rey’s thoughts. His spill of memories pouring into her. 

The swell in his chest, the first time he’s seen her.

The urgent way he’d instinctively began sifting through every corner of her mind.

The utter shock of her power.

The shame of being caught.

The torment of her being so much younger.

The sentence of having to wait for her.

The mess he made of it all— trying and failing over and over— to do what was right.

How he’d decided it must simply be best to keep away. She had just been a girl then, after all. And Ben had been so afraid of it. The strength of their bond. The instant, spectacular, terrifying snap of it into its rightful, waiting place, the moment she’d felt him in her mind and stared accusingly into his eyes.  

“Rey. ”

He presses his brow to hers, and for a lifetime of a moment, Rey rests in his arms, gathering herself and her breath, her eyes still delicately closed. 

And then, she opens them.

And Rey sees something she’s never seen.

In his burnt-amber eyes, Rey sees unbridled, unmasked, unadulterated affection. 

Longing.

Love.

She means to scold him.

For not telling her sooner.

For keeping it to himself.

For taking so long.

But she forgets her intentions when she feels it:

Between them, the Force… 

It… Locks.

They both gasp in the cold night air. Wrap each other up a little more tightly in their midnight embrace. 

And then, he smiles. Something small and warm and private. Watery and glimmering. 

Something just for her.

Ben strokes slow knuckles over the round of her cheek. 

“Darling,” he whispers. “Sweetheart. Angel.” 

As his lips press so gently to hers, Rey feels a tear, and then another, roll down her cheeks. 

“You,” she whispers in slow, wild amazement.

He laughs again, a sob-ish sort of sound. Kisses the backs of her knuckles hard, looking into her eyes.

“Rey.” 

It didn’t matter how many times that night he said her name. Rey wanted to hear him say it forever. 

He laughs throatily, kissing slowly up the line of her jaw. 

“Then I’ll say it forever,” he muses, delicate fingers tracing her spine.

“You heard that?” Rey awes, tipping her head back to offer the stretch of her neck for more. 

“Mm. Mhm,” he mouths at her throat. Tells her so simply. “Bond.”

“Bond,” she echoes in quiet amusement, feeling the smile stretch across her face. “Wait— Ben?”

“Hm?”

His thick fingers are knotting through the loops of her bathing suit strings, his lips learning the shape of her jaw, her ear.

“Do you– um… You know?” Rey felt her confidence waver, her cheeks flush red with an entirely different reason.

Suddenly, she's bashful. 

“Know what, darling?” 

He kisses her shoulder. Her collar bone. The top of her chest. 

“Ben,” she guides his face with her hands, pulling his gaze to hers. His eyes are nearly black now, his pupils blown wide, lips full and a purplish-red in the moonlight.

“What, angel?” His eyes lock, pupils blown wide and dark, to hers, “Ask it, anything.”

His thumb strokes so soothingly over the round of her cheek that Rey realizes she already has her answer. 

Want this, Rey asks him in thought. Do you want this? The bond. Me.

In the warm pool, in the flutter of slow-falling snow, Benjamin Solo bring Rey’s hand over his pounding heart.

“Want,” he tells her, “is much too small a word for the subject of you, Rey Niima. Now, listen carefully.” 

But he didn’t speak. Instead, he opened his mind to hers. 

And it was better that way. To show her. To let her feel. Because, this way, Rey understands exactly what he means. There really aren't words…

So she kisses him once more. Slow and chaste, sealing their fate.

“So long,” he breathes against her mouth, the tips of his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thighs as he holds her close and warm. “Waited for you for so fucking long.” 

His mouth is at her throat again, and Rey bites her lip in weak attempt to swallow her unruly moan.

And she feels it— the surge of pleasure in his mind as she makes the sound. 

“Rey,” he whispers. “Come with— please—”

She was already nodding, her palm cupping his cheek.

Now, she tells him through the bond. Your room. My room. Don’t care. Now.

He nods, kissing her hard and fast a final time. And then, a final, quick kiss between her brows.

“Stay,” he tells her. 

And Rey is happy to listen. To watch the glory of his wide, rippling back as he emerged from the water, half-jogging over to the towel rack. To watch the drips of water roll down his body, some freezing into tiny icicle gems on his milky skin before twinkling to the ground.

He stands at the mouth of the pool a moment later, a gigantic, fluffy towel held wide open for her.

He wraps her up in his arms so quickly, she doesn’t have a moment to be cold. 

Show off, she smirks down the bond as he swaddles her in towels, scooping her up in his ridiculously strong arms.

Have to give me at least tonight to try to impress you, he counters, kissing her through their smiles as he carries her inside. 

Rey is shivering.

But not from the cold.

Her body, heart, mind… Her entire existence is in total overdrive. 

“Your place or mine?” He asks against her kiss.

“I have a mountain view?” Rey offers with a small shrug, looping her arms around his neck. 

And Ben simply counters with a skeptically raised brow.

If you really are so silly that you haven’t figured out I plan on looking at you and nothing else—

“Okay, your room then!” 

She laughs, kissing him hard to shut him up. Even the bond. 

And she feels something strange and new and bright. 

His laugh, on the inside. 

It was for the best that they went to his room in the end. The bed was twice the size of the one in Rey’s room. As was the sofa. And the windows. And the bathtub.

Suite, he shrugs, no doubt feeling her impression of the room as he carries her through the threshold. 

“Mhm,” she hums, taking his cheek in her palm, catching his lips with her own.

There you are, his mind whispers to hers.

Here. Right here. Don’t care where we are. She tells him silently, pressing her mouth to his. Any room. Any planet. Any view, Ben. Just want this. Just want you.

The thoughts come jumbled.

Of course, Ben is still infallibly slick. 

He slides Rey to the floor so gently, placing her on her feet. Peeling layer after layer of luxurious towel away, until she stands before him in her wet white bikini with the criss-crossing strings. 

Rey takes a deep breath. Looks up at Ben, who looks down at her with a soft, butter-melting smile. 

It gives Rey what she didn’t know she needed.

She reaches for him, unwrapping his towels in turn, letting them drop to the hotel room floor like he is her gift.

He chuckles, toying with the ends of her bikini strings. 

My thoughts precisely, he muses down the bond as his final towel falls to the floor.

Rey looks up into his eyes, stepping closer. Lets her palms fall gently to his chest. 

And it’s all different, somehow, now they are out of the water. 

Now that they are behind a locked door, blinds shut, minds open wide.

Ben smiles softly, cupping her hands in his. 

And Rey smiles back, suddenly timid in her flush. Slides her palms down his chest, his stomach, over his navel, past a light dusting of coarse hair. Right to the waistband of his swimwear. 

Rey curls her fingers into the fabric. 

I’m nervous, she tells him in the bond. 

And she feels his instant stab of self-beratement. For pushing her too far, too fast. For not being—

“No,” Rey shakes her head, speaking aloud to stomp out his worried thoughts. “Not of you. I’m nervous because— Ben— because it’s you.”

Standing face-to-face outside the water, their heights are at such a difference that he has to dip quite low to capture her lips in a slow, simmering kiss. 

“I’m nervous, too.” Ben whispers, nuzzling his nose across the bridge of hers. “Because it’s you.” 

Rey sighs in small relief. Rolls up on her toes to catch him in another kiss. Pushes the waistband of his swimsuit down his hips.

She already knows that he is… A big man.

Every part of him, huge.

So, really, she shouldn’t have been surprised. 

But pressing her body to his, feeling the immediate weight of his growing cock against her belly, Rey gasps into his mouth.

Thanks, he smirks against her lips, laughing lightly down the bond.

So she nips at his bottom lip, laughing along. 

You did say something about showing off tonight…

Ben groans at her thought, and suddenly, she is in his arms. In the air. Falling gently back across the bed. 

“Did I?” 

He smiles wryly as he crawls over her.

And he is fast. Really.

But he doesn’t know.

In all these years she’s had to train, Rey has become faster. 

Before he could settle his body over hers, Rey’s thighs are around his waist. With a rush of momentum and the boost of his surprise, she rolls him onto his back on the pillows. Smiles down at his shocked face, biting her lip. 

“What?” She chides, settling over him, her fingertips balancing on his chest. “You’re not the only one who can show off, Solo.” 

She let her hips sink over his. Rocks slowly, once, over the hard length of his cock.

The shiver that ripples through her body borders on violet. 

And it is so softly mirrored by her quietly whispered, “Oh.” 

His hands are in her wet hair, tangling. Tugging. Pulling her down, closer, her body over his. 

Ben’s fingers trace over her shoulders, closing at the halter-tie of her bikini top.

Yes, he growls into her mind. Say yes, say yes. 

His hands hover just above her breast, and in the bond, Rey can feel the torture of his want. His need. The pain.

But she didn’t need the bond to know it. Her own bottoms are soaked for an entirely new reason, now. 

So Rey takes his wrists. Leans her chest into the ready grip of his impossibly wide, warm palms.

“Yes,” she moans in double-meaning. Tips her head back and rocks her hips. “Yes, to all of it. Ben, anything . Everything. ”

His urgent, thick fingers are slow to work the knots.

“Stupid… Too many… Ugh!”

Rey hides her laugh in his hair as she waits, amused, for him to work out the knots. Until, finally, he remembers something.

“Ahh,” with a flick of his fingers, the strings unknotted themselves. 

And with the full strength of his Force wielding, her bikini top is whipped across the hotel suite, smacking wetly against the wall.

“Ben!” She laughs. 

But his face is already hidden in the crevice between her breasts, nuzzling and mouthing and sucking. Eliciting a wilder moan from her throat when he tests biting .

“Ben,” she whimpers. “Kriff, fuck!”

And his mouth is back on hers in a violent kiss. 

“Dirty mouth,” he groans, one of his hands sliding down her back to cup her ass. “Such a pretty girl with such a dirty fucking mouth.” 

He tugs her over his length and Rey yelps, panting into his mouth, nodding dumbly, lost of all language but need and more.

“Use your words, pretty thing,” he nips at her throat, fingers toying with the string at her hips, weakly holding her bikini bottoms in place.  

“Take them off,” she pants, her fingers knotting in his hair. “Off, Ben, please.” 

She can feel his smile at her throat. 

His voice is so raw she practically feels it scratch beneath her skin.

“Good girl,” he kisses at the shell of her ear. 

She’s too drunk on the heady swell of his kiss to be sure if he lifts her with the Force, or just the brute strength of his arms.

But in a moment, Rey is on her back on the bed. Her feet on the soft duvet, her thighs spread wide enough to fit his knees between them.

And before she’s even caught her breath, Ben has her hips suspended in the air with the simple swish of his fingers, bending the force. So that he can use his slow, warm hands to curl into the waistband of her bikini bottoms, teasing.

“Ben,” she pants, wiggling her hips nearer to his face, which had dropped close now, watching his every touch he makes with a microscopic lens. “Ben.”

“Hmm?” He sings, the pad of his first finger drawing a slow, tortuous swoop across the lowest line of her belly, just above the fabric. 

She has grown impatient. Overheated. Needy.

Rey reaches down to her own hips with a sigh, intending to claw the string open—

—only to have her fingers swiped away. 

She groans. 

His lips press to the base of her navel.

And she groans again, in an entirely different key. 

“Please,” she whimpers, her hands threading tightly through his hair. 

Guiding. 

Urging. 

For a man who supposedly has waited so long for this precise moment, he seems to be in no hurry at all.

And she feels the low, single chuckle he breathes against her belly. Her thoughts must have been louder than she’d realized. 

Always are, he tells her through his mind, his lips pressing slow, wet kisses along the waistline of her bottoms. Always have been. Screaming at me.

She makes a simpering sound between a moan and a plea.

“Angel,” he kisses at the dip of her hip. 

“Darling,” he kisses again in the spot’s twin.

“So fucking pretty.”

He nuzzles the tip of his nose along the line of her wretched bathing suit bottoms, and Rey—

She just can’t wait.

She reaches out through the Force, peeling his fingers away from where they curled into the bedding. Dragging them to the side of her hip, the ties of her swimsuit strings. 

Finally, he obliges. 

Ben’s hands are faster this time. Cunning and quick. 

As he releases his Force hold on her hips, lowering her back to the bed, Rey hears the full smack of her still-wet swimsuit bottoms meeting their counterpart on the floor across the room. 

And, on his belly on the bed, Ben nuzzles his face into the insides of her thighs. 

She can hear his intake of breath. 

She can hear everything. 

The beat of both their hearts, tangled in the Force, pulsing between them. 

The most beautiful sound she’s ever heard. 

“Rey,” he nearly sobs her name, quiet and scratchy as his lips bruise the lines of vee at the apex of her thighs. “Let me .” 

He begs her. 

And she can feel it. His plea of permission to touch, to kiss, scratching at the walls of her mind like a hungry kitten. 

Rey doesn’t understand why he is asking. 

She’d already told him: Yes to anything, everything. 

Besides. Rey had already crossed the threshold beyond the capability for words.

She sends him a returning plea down the bond. Not quite an image, but rather, the memory of a feeling.

His softest kiss, the slow, wet suck of his lips around at hers. 

She sends him that feeling, wrapping it in the invisible string of a desperate plea. 

Ben Solo touches her once. A single, delicate stroke of the very tip of his finger over the pressure point of her needy clit, her soaking entrance, ghosting so reverently over the pucker of her ass.

Fuck.

His single word crashes into her mind in his deep, ethereal voice as his mouth caught quickly at the inside of her thigh in a single, open-mouthed suck to her skin.

And Rey is still mid-scream as his lips finally, desperately, latch hungrily to her center. 

“Oh, Gods,” she whimpers, sliding a greedy hand down the nape of his neck, the back of his shoulder. Clawing weakly at his heated skin. Her other hand stays diligently threaded through his hair. 

She finally has him where she wants him. 

She doesn’t plan to let him go anywhere.

Where else would I be but here? 

He hums to her through the bond, the tip of his tongue flicking over her entrance, his lips smacking as he pants in quick, sharp breaths, tasting her on his lips. 

“Ben, please,” she whispers, fingers tightening around him everywhere. Not knowing what she needs, just knowing she needed more. 

“Patience, sweet thing,” he kisses her thigh once more. Lingers. Scrapes the soft skin with his teeth.

Can I mark you? He asks her silently, nipping lightly at her skin.

She nods, panting. Sends an urgent chorus of yes yes please to him through the bond, because she is too winded, too wound up, to speak. 

He takes his Gods-damned time. His nips and sucks deep at the insides of her thighs, pausing only to kiss and lick so chastley at her clit as he switches from side to side. 

In minutes, Rey is on the brink of tears, her face screwed up in desperate need.

And there aren’t words for it. It's something beyond language, beyond breath.

So she opens her mind to him a little more, projecting the sun-bright burn in her chest in his direction, hoping he’ll feel it. Needing him, desperately, to understand… 

“Good girl,” Ben whispers, his big hands guiding her thighs, spreading them just a bit further. Hooking her knees over his massive shoulders. “Pretty girl. Been so patient for me, hm?” 

Rey can only nod mutely, her lips parted, her tongue too thick to speak.

“Rey?” He sings her name like a lullaby, gripping her thighs around his face, kissing the spot of an already purplish-bloom. “Is there something you want to ask me?” 

“Please,” she whimpers. Rey bites so hard into her bottom lip, she worried she’s drawn blood. 

It would, of course, be worth it. 

“What is it, sweet girl?” Ben nuzzles his face tortuously, grazingly, at her wet, needy cunt. “Use your words. And I’ll give you anything.” 

“Ben.” His name is a cry of liquid fire. “P-please let me cum. Please make me. Please.” 

“Hmm,” he smiles, teasing her entrance with the tip of his finger. “So pretty when you beg for me.” 

Her scream is wild, rough, as he pushes a single, thick finger into her messy cunt.

“So good,” he groans, the words tracing over her clit as he teases her slowly. “So tight, my darling. So ready for me.” 

He pulls his finger out slowly, almost to the tip. Only to push back in with vengeful languidness, smiling drunkenly up at her with dazzling, flushed cheeks.

“Please, Ben, please!”

Rey can feel it. The edge creeping closer and closer. The knot in her belly. The hunger for just a little more. 

“We’ve teased you enough, angel, haven't we?”

It all happens so quickly.

The tears of frustration turn to tears of fulfillment as they spill down her heated cheeks.

The muffled groans from the back of his throat as he sucks at her peak. 

The unbridled waves of Rey’s screams.

She cums before his second finger is even inside her. Falling apart at the brush of its tip.

She cums, and he had two thick fingers inside her, curling smartly, spreading and coming back together inside her, sliding closer and closer as he licks and kisses her. 

Good girl, he tells her. Sweet girl. So sweet. Just like that. Keep cumming for me. 

She does.

It is so easy to oblige.

He wrangles another orgasm out of her so quickly, Rey isn’t quite sure when the first one truly ends. If it really ever does.

She is a mess of tears and slickness and a throbbing heartbeat. 

A storm of shivers.

A chorus of whimpers. 

Here, she begs him through the bond, too wrecked to speak. Here, come here, Ben, please.

He crawls up her body on his elbows, hovering just enough of his weight to crush her so deliciously. 

He brushes the tip of his nose over hers. Kisses her forehead. Between her brows. Her eyelids. Finally, her mouth, so chastely. 

It wakes Rey from her half-slumber of her comedown— the touch of his lips to hers.

She catches his mouth hungrily, brushes her tongue along his. Learns what she tastes like from the plate of his lips. 

Fuck, he groans mentally. And Rey isn’t sure if she was supposed to hear it. But everything is being shared between them at this point, now. She knows. 

She catches more flashes of sacred, scattered pleas from his mind. 

Need. 

So fucking hard. So wet. 

Ready for me, she’s ready… 

His cock is heavy on her belly. 

It’s not that it has gone unnoticed. 

Rey had simply been too consumed with her own desperate pleasure to remember to give him something so simple: touch.

And he must hear her thoughts. 

Because Ben catches her wrist not a moment before she can take him in her hand. 

“Rey,” he groans, sounding somewhat tortured, slurring her name wetly against her neck. “I want that so— fuck.”

He sighs heavily, sitting up on his knees. Looking down at her like a marble statue of a god has pinned her to the bed. 

“I want that so kriffing badly,” he tells her roughly, taking his cock in his hand and squeezing. 

And then, something shifts. 

He sighs sort of dreamily. Lowers his body close to hers once more. Kissed her throat. Her collarbone. Hides his face in the curve of her shoulder.

“Angel. Darling. Sweetheart, he moaned. And what could Rey do, but wrap her thighs around his hips. Pull him closer, so close. Fold his bulking shoulder in her arms.

“I want that so badly, I can’t stand it. So badly, I know I wouldn’t last.” 

He kisses her chin. Her cheek.

Rey nods once, not able to suppress her pout. 

But I want to, she can’t help but think.

And she’s sorry for it the instant she hears her own words in her mind. 

She understands what he needs, now. She knows there will be time…

Ben kisses her fiercely, shifting lower between her thighs. He nodded as he kissed her gently.

“We have all night. Rey.” 

His hand was huge and warm around her cheek, and Rey feels her own eyes burn against his. 

“We have forever. If you want it. Our whole lives.” 

If their first kiss was an argument, this one was a promise. 

Forever, Rey echoes into the bond, her lips sealing their fate.

And it was such a simple word. For something that contained her entire world. 

So she kisses him deeper. Slower. Rolls her hips, dragging her center along his hand, just able to tease his tip. 

“I’m clean,” she whispers.

“I have the chip,” he ghosts a kiss over her lips. 

Rey relaxes back onto the mattress. Winds her arms over her shoulders. Curls a hand into the hair at his nape, stroking his cheek with the other. 

“Forever,” he echoes, the word a whisper as he lines his cock at her entrance with a guiding hand. “Rey, you don’t know how long I’ve—”

Show me, she kissed him hard, impatient. Desperate to have him. Desperate to give him herself. 

There is pleasure and pressure as he slowly slides in. He’s bigger than anything she’s had before. And she feels the faintly satisfied spark of his ego be quickly muted by his visible concern.

She smirks and kisses him, smiling against his lips. 

A big ego for such a big man.

He makes a sound between a growl and a laugh, nipping playfully at her lips.

And when Rey opens her eyes, Ben Solo is smiling down at her. Eyes glassy. Cheeks pink. Smiling wide. 

Bondmate, he calls her, the word spilling perfectly into her mind. 

Rey traces the line of his lips with her thumb, blinking her own eyes clear. 

Soulmate, she calls him, sending the word to him with a silent, teary smile. 

“Rey,” he kisses her lips. Her chest. Her neck. “My Rey. Mine.”

She nods, kissing his ear, the crown of his head, his cheek… Wherever she can reach.

But she is growing impatient, now that she’s stretched to take him so deep. The pressure is gone. All that is left is her raw, urgent need. 

Ben gasps in her ear, no doubt feeling her flickering desire burst into raging flame as the stretch faded away.

He leans away, and Rey’s eyes snap to his sudden movement.

And what she sees— she can’t help but moan.

Ben is up on his knees, looking at the deep seat of his cock inside her.

Good girl, he tells her so quietly, his thumb stroking so painfully slowly at her poor, swollen clit. Perfect girl. Look at you. Taking me so deep.

As he teases her, Ben sends an image down the bond:

The exact projection of what he is seeing.

Rey cannot stand it. 

The fire. 

The need. 

And it is so easy to catch him off guard at this moment.

When Rey tugs him hard in the Force, Ben falls back over her with a gasp.

Which quickly turns to a chorus of moans between them, as the momentum somehow rocks him even deeper inside her. 

His fingers lace through hers by the sides of her head as he rocks against her, slow and close and deep.

And Rey only pulls him closer. Her skin humming. Her heart singing. The Force alive and bright between them.

Mine, he kisses her.

Yours, she nips.

And they both know:

Neither would last for long from here.

With the Force, Ben spreads her thighs just that much further. Pins them open on the bed, so he can meet her even deeper. Never having to unlace her fingers from his. 

And Rey has never been more grateful to be a Force wielder. 

She reached for it, too, tugging his back, his ass, closer. Deeper. Meeting him in the Force and in her body and in his mind. 

Ben tumbles first, her name spilling from his lips as she holds his gaze. 

She can’t find her voice, but she was certain he still understands her as she mouths it.

Cum for me.

For the first time since she’d known him, Ben Solo listens to her so terribly easily.

And at the first splash of his cum hot and deep inside her, at the small wrinkle that forms between his brows as he falls over his edge, at the burst of the words from his mind to hers in a shapeless, ecstatic rage, Rey follows him into the pool of pleasure. 

Love, he tells her.

Love, she echoes back.

It is a wondrous, amorphous thing. So new for her, so old for him. A strange and precious thing between them.

Rey kisses him as he collapses over her on the bed. She strokes his hair, whispering the prayer of his name.

His lips are warm and slow and trailing over her shoulder. Her chest. Her jaw. Her lips. 

His arms wrapping tightly around her waist, Ben rolls them onto their sides. And she can’t help but whimper at the loss of him.

But Ben is kissing her again. His fingers sliding between her legs, slipping in. He’s— Gods, he’s—

“Keeping my cum where it belongs,” he groans against her lips, nipping lightly. “Right here,” he thrusts his fingers slowly, the pad of his thumb so gentle it almost pets her clit. “Inside.” 

“You’re crazy,” she laughs weakly through a gasp, her heart swollen and warm and full. Rey reaches for his wrist, pulling his fingers to her lips. Licking and sucking as she looks into his eyes, unblinking.

“Rey, I—” Ben starts.

But he hesitates, swallowing his words.

He holds his her face very still between his hands.

Looks at her like he wants her to read his soul.

Ben kisses her fiercely, deeply. Pulls her body flush to his.

“I’m not asking you to say it. I know all of this is… New for you. But I’ve been sitting with it— living with it— for a decade, Rey. So I just. I need to. To say it plainly, that I—”

She kisses him.

Once. Hard. 

She speaks first.

“Love you— I love you,” she pants against his lips. “I can’t explain how, but— but, Ben, it’s not new. It’s like I always knew it, like it was locked somewhere inside me, til you—”

It’s his turn to kiss away her words.

And she feels his smile against her lips, which makes her smile, too. 

Eventually, Ben slows his kisses. Eases her, calming her in his arms. 

When he speaks, his voice is velvet, quiet and amused. 

“I wanted to say it first,” he tells her, fingers tracing the round of her cheek.

“You knew first,” Rey smiles, kissing the pad of his thumb as it glossed over her lips. “You had to give me something.”

“Mm.”

He kisses her gently. Tugged her even closer in his arms. 

“Be that as it may, Rey Niima. I really fucking love you.”

I know, Rey said into the bond.

Because her lips were already caught in the perfect envelope of his.

In the morning, Rey will put on an ice-blue dress of lace and silk, a white fur clock, and hold a pearly rose. She will stand at Kaydel’s shoulder, as Ben will stand behind Snap’s. 

Their eyes will meet as the officiant asks if the bride and groom swear to love each other forever always, to have and be had.

Ben will smile at Rey. And Rey will smile at Ben.

And, down the bond, they’ll practice for their future.

They’ll both say yes.