Archive of Our Own

THANK you to Beautiful_and_Broken for an amazing moodboard!!! Gahhh I love it!

 If you like this level of smut, check out my longer work, They Don't Have A Word For What We Are! It's not even remotely a slow burn.

Rey’s breath seemed impossibly loud in the still desert air. She was the only living thing for kilometers around; she’d made sure of that when she’d fled on foot from the warehouse her Resistance team members were currently raiding. Her friends hadn’t understood why she’d turned and run, but there were benefits to being the last Jedi in the galaxy. Rey could stare into the distance pensively before doing whatever odd thing she wanted, and everyone would assume she was communing with the Force.

Unfortunately, in this case, it was true.

They’d been on Tatooine for less than an hour before she’d felt it. A heavy, roiling darkness had pushed at the edges of her mind, sending a shiver through her. She knew who was behind that darkness.

Her Force bond with Kylo Ren hadn’t been as intense since she’d dismissed the vision of him on Crait, but she still felt him sometimes, even if she never saw him. Bursts of pain or anger often bloomed like nightmarish flowers in her mind, drawing her attention to the seething mass of rage she was psychically bound to across the galaxy. The first few times it had happened, Rey had shattered or thrown whatever she’d been holding at the time, but now she was able to compartmentalize his thoughts from hers.

Sort of.

Mostly.

When he’d filled her mind an hour ago, though, his rage hadn’t been unthinking. It had been flavored with a determination she instantly recognized from their previous encounters.

Kylo Ren was coming for her.

Rey shivered again and breathed in deeply, trying to calm her pounding pulse. Ren coming for her was a good thing, all things considered. She was the only person in the galaxy capable of handling him, and their upcoming battle would provide a diversion so her friends could finish loading supplies and get off this miserable planet.

Rey had a particular hatred for desert planets, but at least she knew how to move on them.

A faint, metallic screech sounded across the plain, and Rey knew it was time. She unclipped her lightsaber and held it at her side, steeling herself for the confrontation to come.

Ben was—

No. Not Ben.

Kylo Ren was flying towards her now. She could feel him across the bond, and the sensation was more visceral than it had been in a long time. His legs were crammed into the small space of a TIE fighter’s cockpit, and she caught a brief glimpse of his leather-clad hands on the dual throttle. He eased the controls forward, the precise, deliberate movement sparking something in her lower belly she really didn’t want to think about.

Rey engaged her newly-repaired lightsaber, as if that would help her battle the unwelcome feelings churning in her stomach. Grief, anger, and pity mixed with a horrible, sick sense of gladness that he’d come to find her.

He didn’t choose you, she reminded herself. Not really.

Kylo Ren may have wanted her, but he hadn’t wanted her principles, and Rey would never be happy with a man who didn’t understand her completely.

The screech was louder now, and Rey took off running, her feet pounding the sandy desert floor. He wasn’t aiming his TIE fighter precisely at her—probably because he wanted to make some dramatic statement by flying right past her, like the karking nerfherder he was—but she was going to make sure their paths intersected. She angled herself into his flight trajectory, catching the moment when his surprise registered across the Force bond. It was followed by a rush of determination.

So. Kylo Ren really was willing to kill her.

Rey hadn’t been sure of that fact before, and now that she was, she didn’t know whether to scream or laugh. She settled for focusing on the invisible currents of the Force to sense exactly how close he was. His TIE fighter was churning up sand with how low he was flying, and the speed he had reached would splatter her across the desert if he made impact.

Rey waited until the last possible second—or maybe the second-from-last-possible second, since a stupid part of her wanted to hold out hope he wouldn’t actually run her down—and then leapt into the air, utilizing the Force to stabilize her trajectory and speed as she flipped up and backwards. The brilliant glare off the cockpit windows briefly blinded her as she completed the flip, but the Force was better than a pair of eyes any day. She landed on the TIE fighter’s roof and clung to it, drawing on the Force to keep her stabilized as her body adjusted to the screaming speed of the ship.

The Jedi texts might be dull, but they’d taught her many things over the past year.

She heard Kylo Ren’s voice then, filtered across the bond. “Shit! Fuck! Shit!”

He was such a temperamental child sometimes. “Don’t try to kill me if you don’t like the results,” she snapped, knowing he could probably hear her.

He paused as if astounded she was speaking to him. “I wasn’t trying to kill you,” he said as the TIE fighter’s speed decreased. “Not at first, anyway.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, that makes all the difference.”

Somehow she wasn’t surprised when he slowed the TIE further in preparation for landing, rather than trying to knock her off or shooting straight up towards the atmosphere. For whatever reason, Kylo Ren apparently only wanted her to die during impulsive moments of extreme pique. Outside of that, he apparently… liked?... interacting with her.

As he kept throttling back, preparing to land on the desert floor, Rey took a moment to stroke the hull of the ship. This was a new model, an adaptation of the TIE silencer she’d seen through his eyes a few times before. The knowledge was at her fingertips, gleaned from his brain in the strange way she picked up occasional bits of information from him: this model boasted laser cannons and missile launchers and had hyperdrive installed. The red detailing on the exterior was new, but that was probably because Kylo Ren was the most dramatic individual she’d ever known.

Not that she knew him. Not really.

The TIE touched down, and the engines cut off. Rey was left with silence ringing in her ears, still crouched on top of the ship. Then the hatch hissed open, and a familiar, black-clad shape strode into view.

Ben—no, Kylo— wasn’t wearing his helmet, and why that should send a spark of pleasure through Rey was something she didn’t want to interrogate. She stared down at him, feeling strangely disoriented by the sight of his black attire silhouetted against Tatooine’s pale brown surface. He didn’t belong here. Rey had been crafted for dirt and heat and sweat, but Ben was better suited to the cold, sterile ships of the First Order.

A breeze rose, whipping at his cloak. A cloak, as if that were any sort of rational garment to wear while piloting a ship. “We meet again, scavenger,” he intoned in a sepulchral voice.

Rey couldn’t help it—for all her fear and anger, she snorted with amusement. “Do you ever get tired of your own drama?” she asked.

He simply raised his brows at her. “Says the person who deliberately ran into my path, then backflipped onto the top of my ship.”

It was different, but Rey didn’t feel like explaining why. Instead, she shifted towards the edge of the cockpit and slid down. Her knees protested when she landed in the sand. “Why were you flying so low if you didn’t want to hit me?”

The sun was admittedly fierce, but she wasn’t sure that could explain away the sudden rush of red that flushed Kylo’s cheeks. He dug a hand into his black hair. “Intimidation wins battles before they start.”

She snorted again. “Just admit you wanted to impress me, and we can move on with this pointless confrontation.”

The words were meant as a joke, but when Kylo’s eyes widened and his mouth opened a tiny bit, Rey began to wonder if she was missing something.

He stepped closer. “Do you want me to impress you?” His voice was lower, the way he said the words somehow reeking of intimacy, although that should be the last thing between them.

Rey kept a straight face, even though her stomach was fluttering. “The only way you could impress me is if you renounce the First Order and come back to the light side of the Force.”

Ben’s—no, shit, Kylo’s—face fell, and he exhaled heavily as he looked away. Rey felt a brief, stupid pang at having disappointed him. “You think it’s black and white,” Kylo said. “You think it’s good and evil. You think the Jedi were perfect.”

“More perfect than the Sith,” she shot back.

“I’m not Sith.”

“No? Just an ass who enjoys Force choking people, is that it?”

He advanced again, looking murderous. “If I Force choked you…” He trailed off, abruptly turning and looking out over the horizon.

Despite herself, Rey was curious. “If you Force choked me, what?”

He slowly, oh so slowly, turned back to her again. “You would like it,” he said in guttural tones.

Rey had no idea why those words hit her between the legs, but they did. Her pussy clenched the way it did when she was particularly mad at him, and she cursed herself for this strange, contradictory weakness. “I don’t like being choked,” she said, but the words came out oddly quiet.

For a moment, nothing passed between them but wind-whipped grains of sand.

Then Kylo stepped forward again, and to Rey’s eternal shame, she stepped back. It felt like a dance, in some ways, although all she knew of dancing had come from late nights with her friends in the Resistance. But this was how dancing was supposed to go—a give and take, a push and pull.

Kylo kept advancing, and Rey kept retreating. Her pulse thrummed in her throat, making her feel light-headed. Finally, she was backed against the hull of his TIE fighter. Kylo planted his hands on either side of her head, and the sound of his palms hitting metal seemed somehow final, as if something had been decided, even though Rey had no memory of a debate.

“I have a theory,” Kylo said.

Rey wasn’t sure what she’d expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. She swallowed hard. “What is that?”

Kylo’s eyes dropped to her lips, and then he was leaning in, and Rey was an absolute kriffing idiot, suicidal, probably, but her body was burning and her heart was in her throat, and she leaned forward to meet him.

The first brush of their lips made Rey gasp. Kylo’s breath stuttered, too, but he recovered faster than she did. He caressed her mouth with his, sliding his tongue over her lips.

Rey was burning, dying, damned, but she couldn’t stop. The dam holding back her desires had been destroyed. Instinct gripped her hard around the breastbone, and she opened her mouth wider, welcoming him in. He stepped closer, one hand dropping to her waist and the other coming up to cup her cheek. He pulled her against him, but it wasn’t rough, not how Rey would have expected it.

Not that she’d been expecting it. Not that she’d imagined it over and over and over again in her bunk at night…

Shit.

When their tongues tangled together, Rey moaned. The sound seemed to excite him; he kissed harder, deeper, licking and nipping as if he’d known her mouth for his entire life. Unable to resist, Rey wrapped her arms around his neck and sank into him, returning his lust with her own unpracticed passion.

“Inside,” he said, and for a moment she thought he meant inside her and her pussy clenched, but then he was dragging her up the boarding ramp into his TIE fighter. He bypassed the cockpit, heading for the tiny berth in back where pilots could rest as needed. The bunk was narrow, hardly wide enough to accommodate Ben’s shoulders, but when he toppled back and tugged her over him, Rey found she didn’t care about the constraint.

Ben stared up at her, looking absolutely stunned in a way Rey could relate to. “What is happening?” he asked in a strained voice.

“I don’t know,” she said, “but if I think about it too hard, it’s going to stop.”

Ben—shit, Kylo, but fuck it, Ben—instantly grabbed the back of her head, slotting his fingers between her buns, and tugged her to his lips. Rey would have laughed at his aggression, but she was physically incapable of it; she was too busy memorizing the taste of him. Spice, sweat, anger, want… his Force signature bled over into everything, until she wasn’t sure if she was tasting him on a physical level or a mental one.

“Rey,” Ben gasped against her lips. “You know I wouldn’t have killed you, right?”

She didn’t know what to make of that statement, and it roused the familiar heat of anger in her belly. “You were aiming straight at me.”

“I would have pulled up.”

Rey wanted to hit him or maybe throttle him, but she satisfied herself by punching his shoulder. Ben grunted and thrust up against her, and Rey’s anger shattered into a thousand shades of arousal, as sharp and beautiful as a stained glass window. “Oh,” she gasped as his erection rubbed against her core.

He tugged her back down, and for a few minutes there was nothing but the frantic press of lips and the swirl of their tongues. He moved beneath her, sliding his erection back and forth over her sensitive clitoris until she was sweating and groaning with every press of his hips.

Rey had never felt this way before—not with another person. She’d made herself come endless times in her shelter in Jakku, but the men on Jakku hadn’t been attractive options, and ever since she’d joined the Resistance, she hadn’t had much interest in sex.

No, she realized with horror. It wasn’t joining the Resistance that had made her disinclined to sleep with any of her fellow revolutionaries.

It was meeting Ben.

“Fuck,” he whispered against her lips. “You’re thinking about us.”

“Of course I’m thinking about us,” she said testily, biting his lip hard in retaliation. “We’re kissing right now.”

And oh, shit, what the fuck, why was she doing this—

“Not us right now,” he muttered, gripping the back of her head and then holding her forehead against his in a way that shouldn’t have been sexy but was. “You’re thinking about when we met. When I restrained you.”

“When you knocked me out and tortured me?” she asked sarcastically, not wanting to acknowledge the curl of heat in her belly at the thought of being restrained. “Or maybe the time you told me all my friends should die because we needed to let go of the past?”

Once again, her rational mind tried to break through and tell her this was a very bad idea, but Ben took that moment to flip her onto her back and settle his hips between her legs, and then he kissed her with almost bruising force. She sighed into his mouth, abandoning her concerns with a giddy relief that would almost certainly haunt her in the days to come.

“We’re bound together,” Ben murmured against her lips, punctuating the words with a firm thrust of his erection between her thighs. “You can’t undo it.”

Rey was burning up, drowning in sensations she’d denied herself for too long. “Shut up,” she said. “Let’s just finish this.”

Ben didn’t laugh. He just applied himself to her lips with even more ferocity, sliding a gloved hand from her breasts down between her legs. He slipped his hand beneath her leggings and underwear, then stroked over her clitoris. His touch was firm, as aggressive as she should have expected from him, and Rey moaned as she rocked up against his fingers.

“Greedy scavenger,” he whispered in her ear as his fingers kept rubbing. “You’re wet for me. You want this.”

She gasped as one of his long, leather-clad fingers slipped inside her. It felt so big, much more substantial than her own. “Yes,” she said, widening her legs further.

Ben pumped the finger inside her, and Rey was wet enough that the filthy, slick sounds of his penetration filled the small room. When he added a second finger, she whimpered and twisted her torso, caught between the need to press closer and the urge to move away.

“Beautiful,” Ben said before taking her lips in a deep, thorough kiss. His hand worked rhythmically, his fingers pumping and then crooking in a way that made her shout and scrabble at his shoulders. He stroked a spot deep inside her that made her want to scream with pleasure, and a familiar, tormenting tension seized her lower belly and crackled through her limbs. She’d never felt this good in her entire life.

Rey shouldn’t be doing this—she knew she shouldn’t be doing this—but with his fingers deep inside her, it was easy to acknowledge the truth she’d known all along but had been afraid to admit: Ben Solo was the fantasy man she’d dreamed about every night since she’d met him. He was the faceless stranger she’d masturbated to countless times.

Admitting the truth to herself released the last of Rey’s reservations. She arched up against him, running her feet over his calves as he delved and worked between her thighs. “Please,” she gasped. “Please, Ben.”

He stilled over her at the sound of his old name, then resumed the brisk movements of his fingers. “We have a lot to work out,” he said. “But for now…”

“Just shut up,” she finished for him. “Shut up and do it.”

He chuckled a little, then dipped down to kiss her again. As he thrust his tongue into her mouth, his thumb pressed hard against her clitoris, and Rey keened as she burst into an orgasm. Her pussy clenched around his fingers, and bright spots appeared behind her eyes.

She came down on a series of shuddering gasps, but somehow the devastating orgasm wasn’t enough. As aftershocks rippled through her, Rey spread her legs even wider. “Please,” she said, too desperate to be above begging. “I have a contraceptive implant, please— ”

Ben swore, then stripped off her trousers before fumbling with his own belt. Rey only caught a brief glimpse of his thick erection before it was pressing between her thighs, and then he was pushing and oh —

Rey had led an active life; she had no illusions that there was any hymen left to break. But an ache bloomed between her thighs anyway as her body struggled to accommodate the thick, unyielding intrusion. She made a strangled sound and tipped her head back, reveling in the deep pleasure-pain.

“All right?” Ben asked, stilling partway inside her.

“More.”

Ben kept pushing in until they were fully joined. Rey gasped, focusing on the sensation of him splitting her open. She’d never imagined this would feel so good.

He brushed a leather-clad hand over her face in a gesture she might have termed fond with anyone else. His eyes were dark and a little wild, the expression on his face speaking of a maelstrom of dark intensity he kept carefully leashed. It was strange that she knew that expression so intimately; she’d never known Kylo Ren to be one for control, but now she realized how much of himself he held back, even in his most intense moments.

She wanted to see what happened when he lost control entirely.

He pulled out a little and pushed back in, and everything Rey knew about the universe was upended. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, wishing she could absorb him into her skin as he slid in and out of her dripping cunt. He was still fully clothed, gloves and all, and Rey still had her top on, but she couldn’t care less. The way he moved was a miracle.

“You’re mine,” he whispered against her throat, following the words with a stinging bite. “You’ve always known it.”

Maybe she had, but Rey would never admit it. She squeezed her inner muscles around him, and the added pressure made him grunt. It also prompted a fresh rush of moisture between her thighs. Rey moaned and rolled her hips, dying from the intensity of having him inside her at last. She needed him to take her, to claim her in some primitive way she barely understood, but she didn’t know what to do for him in return. She wrapped her arms around her neck and bucked against him, hoping the movement would please him.

“Sweetheart,” he said. The shocking endearment made her still; it ruined her composure and her wits and her attention span. “Let me take care of you.”

Rey’s eyes prickled with tears. She’d never heard those words before. Rather than acknowledge them, she clutched Ben tighter.

This was the worst mistake of her life, but Rey didn’t care. It felt like salvation.

Ben kissed her neck as he rolled his hips into her, and Rey took each deep thrust greedily. She felt his rapture across the bond—a heady mix of desire, triumph, and something softer she didn’t want to examine too closely. It was like being fucked in both body and mind, and she was writhing for it, desperate—

“Beautiful,” he moaned against her cheek. “So fucking beautiful.”

Rey had never been called beautiful in her life. Bitch, whore, ice queen—a hundred clichéd epithets aimed at women who lived independent lives—but never beautiful. She clutched Ben closer and sucked on his neck hard enough to leave a bruise. He was hers, as sick as it was, and she wanted to mark him.

He cursed, then pulled out and flipped her over. Rey barely had a moment to process the soft scrape of the pillow beneath her cheek before he propped her hips up and slid into her from behind. She swore, slamming the bed with her fist as he bottomed out inside her. He went so deep from this angle, his cock filling her more fully than she’d ever imagined.

“So tight,” he gasped as he gripped her hips and bucked into her. “You’re mine, aren’t you?”

Rey didn’t want to answer that, so she gritted her teeth and took the next few punishing thrusts. Then he pulled out, and she keened with loss.

“Say it,” he ordered. “Say you’re mine.”

Rey clutched at the sheets, panting in desperation. This was her nemesis, the man she hated more than anyone else… but she wanted him, too. She wanted him as much as she hated him, and Rey had never been one for half-expressed emotions.

She gasped into the bed, trying to buck back against him, but he held her hips firm in his grip. “Say it,” he repeated. “Say it, and you’ll get my cock.”

Rey moaned. The battle had been lost long before it started, and besides, what was this confession compared to the surrender of her body? “I want you,” she choked out.

He bucked into her once, hard, then stilled again. “And?”

She was going to lose her mind. “And I’m yours.”

He clutched her hips hard enough to bruise, then started thrusting. Rey gasped as he filled her completely, striking a spot deep inside her that hurt, but also felt essential. She scrabbled at the sheets, clutching the fabric tight as if that could dilute the intensity of what was happening to her.

“So good,” he said in a voice that sounded close to a moan. “So good for me.”

Rey was abruptly angry that he should be the one in control in this encounter. They owned each other equally, after all. She reached back and planted a hand on his ripped stomach, stopping him mid-thrust.

“What?” he asked, sounding annoyed.

“Get out of me,” she ordered.

The Force bond rippled with a rush of pure dejection, and then he drew back, leaving her empty and aching. “Are you sure?” he asked. His voice was nearly a snarl, but she felt the pain behind it. “Think you can finish yourself off better than I could?”

“Shut up,” she said, turning onto her back so she could look up at him. “You don’t always get to be the one in control.”

Even though his face was largely still, she recognized the flickers of emotion that crossed it in tiny clenches of muscle. Maybe it was because she was in his head, or maybe it was because she’d stared into that dark, forbidding face before, but she knew exactly what he was feeling. Angry, hurt, betrayed.

Rey was tempted to torment him further, but her body had its own needs. “I’m going to ride you,” she told him bluntly.

Ben blinked a few times, and his jaw sagged. On his face, the minor shift in expression might as well have been a blaring sign: I am shocked and also aroused. “Oh,” he said, sounding hoarse. “All right.”

They maneuvered around each other on the narrow bunk, and then Rey was straddling him again, her thighs split wide. Kriff, he was a big man. She grabbed his cock and positioned it at her entrance, then sank down. Ben’s head kicked back, and he moaned loud and long.

Rey had rarely felt so powerful. She braced herself against his chest and shifted up and down, taking it slow. He felt incredible inside her, so thick and long that he tested every boundary of her body. She could barely take him, and yet she wanted nothing less. She worked her hips slowly, wanting him to feel every second of this sweet torture.

His hands coasted over her chest, and then he gripped her waist and bucked into her sharply. “Faster,” he ordered.

Rey laughed and held herself off him. “Not a chance.”

Ben scowled, and for the first time, his frown was somehow… dear to her. “Come on, Rey,” he said. “You want it, too.”

She shook her head and kept rocking gently. It was a lie, of course—she wanted him deep and hard inside her, so rough she would feel him for days—but teasing him was too delicious. “First, you have to say you’re mine.”

His eyes widened, and he gripped her hips tighter. Tomorrow morning, she would see the purple marks of his fingers. “What?”

“You heard me.” She slid up and down, then clenched her inner muscles to torment him. “Tell me you’re mine.”

He groaned and kicked his head back. She’d assumed he would protest at so easily declaring himself her property, so she was startled when he exhaled heavily and said, “I’m yours.”

The words made her clench up, and a strange warmth bloomed in her chest. She’d never wanted this, not really—or at least, she told herself she’d never wanted it. She’d just wanted him to submit to her the way she’d submitted to him. But now that he’d said it…

Rey was a scavenger. She was savage about the things she acquired.

She wrapped a hand around his throat and squeezed just enough to make it a threat, reveling in his pleased groan. “I’m going to ride you until you come,” she informed him.

Ben shook his head. She hadn’t relaxed her grip, so her fingers dug into his pale flesh at the movement. She found herself hoping it would bruise. “You come first,” he said.

Rey was contrary enough to want to refuse him on principal but aroused enough to demand exactly what he promised. “Do it,” she ordered, rocking her hips over him and squeezing his throat tighter. “And you’d better impress me.”

His laugh was a choked rumble, and then his hand slipped between their bodies. Rey’s rhythm stuttered as he started rubbing her clitoris with an insistent thumb. Kriff, he was good at this. She kept moving, doing her best to ride him even though her mind was split between the dual sensations of his cock thrusting up inside her and his fingers at her clit.

“You like that,” Ben said as his thumb pushed even harder. “You like when I touch you. When I fuck you.”

His filthy words made her clench around him, but Rey wouldn’t give in to his dominance that easily. “I’m pretty sure I’m fucking you,” she said, then gasped as he jerked his hips up to hit that deep, aching spot inside her.

He smiled, and it was the first time she’d ever seen him make that expression. She stared, riveted by the tilt of his lips. It was crooked, half-sardonic, and yet it transformed his face. “It’s always going to be a fight with you, isn’t it?”

That always implied a future where they did this again, but Rey couldn’t bring herself to deny it. “Yes,” she said.

Ben reached up to thread his fingers through her hair, then tugged her down to his lips, and she was lost in the taste of him.

Their bodies moved together, as synchronized in this as they were in combat. Ben’s thumb kept working, and gradually, the tension already coiling in Rey’s limbs tightened even further. She whimpered against his mouth, jerking forward into his touch, then slamming back to embrace the deep press of his cock inside her.

Ben broke away from her lips and gripped her jaw with his free hand, fixing her with an intense stare. The secrets of the universe seemed reflected in those brown eyes. “Come for me,” he ordered. “Let me feel it.”

Rey had wanted to control the rest of this encounter, but she was helpless in the face of his commanding tone. Even though she was on top, her rhythm stuttered at the softly worded command.

“Do it,” Ben said more intensely, circling her clit with hard strokes that shot straight into her core. “Come for me, Rey. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.”

The combination of his words, his cock inside her, and his fingers on her clitoris finally added up to a profound equation. Rey stiffened and shouted as an orgasm ripped through her. Her cunt clenched around him in desperate, fluttering waves, and heat rushed over her skin.

As the orgasm wrecked her, she was barely aware of Ben swearing and clutching her ass tightly as he thrust up into her. He was falling apart, too, and as he stiffened and shook, flooding her with his cum, the barrier between their minds collapsed entirely.

Want. Need. Love.

Rey was too dizzy to figure out which of those sentiments were his and which were hers. All she could do was cling to him and feel.

The frantic rhythm stilled, replaced by subtle clenches from her and twitches from him. They panted into each other’s mouths, breath echoing as if they’d been fighting for hours.

Then Ben slipped out of her, leaving her cold and wanting, and Rey realized there was an entire lifetime on the other side of this encounter.

“Rey, I—”

“No.” She shook her head and scrambled away from him, retrieving her leggings from across the room. As she shimmied into them, she tried to ignore the heart-wrenching way he was looking at her, as if she was a dream that had been cruelly ripped away.

She stilled, staring at the wall, and took a few deep, centering breaths. They’d had sex, and it didn’t have to mean anything... but no matter how much she wanted to deny it, it had meant something to her. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to find the courage to say what she needed to.

“I can’t be with you the way you are,” she said bluntly, trying to ignore the flash of grief that echoed across the bond. “Not as the leader of the First Order. Not as the man who wants to kill my friends.”

“Rey…”

She paused, waiting for him to continue, but he didn’t.

All right. She sucked in a deep breath. That was fine. That was what she’d expected. If he hadn’t turned to the light after touching her hand, he certainly wouldn’t turn after touching the rest of her body.

“I’m leaving now,” she told him. “If you ever change your mind… well. You know what to do.” It was a final, feeble gesture to further this connection between them, and she was instantly ashamed she’d said it.

Rey stormed out of the TIE fighter, leaving Ben and his conflicted soul behind. But as she did, she caught one last stray thought across the bond.

For you… I might do just about anything.