Location: A pocket fold between seconds, somewhere outside the normal flow of time.
A room that exists only when Hassan wills it: black marble floor reflecting infinite starfields, no walls, no ceiling, only slow-turning nebulae and the low thrum of creation learning how to breathe.
They arrived still burning with adrenaline and the taste of war.
Lin Kexin's coat fell to the non-existent floor first. Then Hassan's gloves, peeled off with deliberate slowness, each finger a promise. The darkness around them thickened until the only light came from their eyes: hers midnight-black, his galaxies collapsing.
She backed him against a column of night that solidified just to hold him.
"Eleven days," she whispered against his mouth. "Eleven days of watching you kill for me, bleed shadows for me, burn galaxies for me, and I still haven't had you."
Hassan's hands settled on her hips, thumbs tracing the sharp bones like a man confirming scripture.
"I was waiting," he said, voice rough with restraint older than continents. "Waiting for the moment you stopped seeing me as a weapon and started seeing me as yours."
She answered by biting his lower lip hard enough to draw starlight.
Clothes dissolved (not torn, not unbuttoned, simply ceased to be necessary). The marble was warm beneath her back when he lifted her, her legs locking around his waist with the same precision she once used to set tourniquets under fire.
There was no gentleness. They had both run out of gentleness somewhere between the obsidian scar of Beijing and the screaming corridor of laws.
He entered her in one slow, relentless thrust that tore a broken sound from her throat (half sob, half victory). The nebulae overhead flared white, as though the universe itself felt it.
Every stroke was a declaration of war against every rule that had ever tried to keep them apart. She clawed at his shoulders, nails carving glowing furrows that healed instantly, only for her to mark him again. He answered by angling deeper, teeth scraping the pulse in her neck, darkness curling around her wrists and pinning them above her head without ever touching skin.
She laughed (breathless, wild) when the shadows slid lower, cool and possessive across her breasts, her stomach, everywhere at once. A god's mouth and a god's hands and still not enough.
"More," she demanded, voice cracking. "I want all of you, every impossible piece."
Hassan's eyes bled gold.
Time stuttered.
Suddenly she was on her knees and he was behind her, one hand fisted in her hair, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise immortal skin. He took her like apocalypse, like worship, like the last living creatures in a dying cosmos trying to remember why life was worth the trouble.
The pleasure was too sharp, almost pain, and she chased it anyway, hips rocking back to meet every thrust, chasing the edge where mortality and divinity blurred.
When she came the first time, the pocket dimension shattered and reformed around them, starfields exploding into auroras that sang in frequencies only they could hear.
He followed moments later, burying himself deep and spilling heat like molten night. The darkness drank their combined release and gave it back as slow, pulsing waves that kept her trembling long after human bodies would have collapsed.
They stayed locked together, breathing each other's breath, sweat cooling into constellations on their skin.
Eventually he turned her face to his, thumb brushing her swollen lips.
"I love you," he said, simple and devastating. "Not because you summoned me. Because you looked at eternity and chose me anyway."
Lin Kexin kissed the centre of his palm, tasting starlight and salt.
"Then love me like the war isn't over," she whispered. "Love me like we still have something to prove."
Round two began before the echoes of her words faded.
Round three happened suspended in zero gravity while a newborn galaxy rotated slowly beneath them.
By the time they finally let the pocket dissolve and stepped back into real time, six subjective days had passed for them and only eleven minutes for the rest of the universe.
Her legs still shook when they materialised on the same rooftop, dawn still frozen on the horizon.
Hassan adjusted her coat with reverent fingers, stealing one last slow kiss.
"Ready to make them regret waking the devil, my queen?"
She smiled, lips bruised and glorious.
"Only if you promise to fuck me like that every time we win."
His laughter was low, dark, and full of teeth.
"Deal."
End of Chapter 9
The war resumes at sunrise.
But now they fight with teeth marks on their throats and the taste of each other still on their tongues.
Daddy, tell me where we burn next. I'm still dripping for you.