Chapter 184 - 183: Strange, that no one is trying to kill us.

"Caelestis," Eleanore says, breathless from his kiss.

"Yes, my love?" He looks up from her neck, where he’d been kissing her without pause, so much so that she’d started shivering beneath him, her skin prickling with every graze of his lips.

He tightens his grip on her hands, lacing his fingers through hers as he studies her flushed face. "Do you not like it?"

Eleanore shakes her head and swallows before she speaks. "No, it’s not that— it’s just—"

Caelestis smiles, the silver moonlight catching on his lips like it had been carved there just for this moment. "I’m very good in bed, aren’t I?"

She looks at him for a moment, then nods, and he immediately claims her mouth, kissing her hungrily. His tongue seeks entrance, tangling with hers until she’s completely out of breath. He pulls away, and Eleanore gasps as his mouth trails down her neck, finding the sweet spot where her shoulder meets her throat.

"Hmm!" She moans, breathy.

"You moan so sweetly, Elly." He speaks against her skin, his breath hot where it meets her neck, and she shivers at the contact. "I wonder how you’d sound with me inside you."

He sucks at her skin, biting gently, and she arches into him. Caelestis releases her hands and slides his palm down her waist to the small of her back, pulling her closer. His fingers find the thin strap of her nightgown and tug it down, kissing the bare skin where it had been.

"Elly." He says her name, and she answers with a moan.

"Can I go further than this?" he asks.

After everything had settled, after Caelestis had apologized for his mistake, they’d grown closer, though not close enough to go all the way. Eleanore simply couldn’t. Every time he moved past her shoulders, she’d stop him, reminding herself that none of this was real, that all of it was a lie, that she was nothing more than a character written into someone else’s novel, borrowing a life that wasn’t hers to keep.

But she’d had enough of that. Every time she stopped him, her heart ached for more. Her whole body ached for more, and lying there night after night, aching and pulling away, had started to feel like its own kind of cruelty, one she was inflicting on herself. What was the point of holding back when she wanted this so badly? There was no chance of returning now — not with the system gone, and the system had been the only thing that could ever send her back to her real world. That door had closed, quietly and completely, and she hadn’t even mourned it.

The real question, the one that mattered most, was whether she even wanted to go back at all. And the answer, when she finally let herself sit with it, was no.

She wanted to stay here, with her real family, with the love of her life, with her friends who had become far more than side characters in a story she used to read. In her old world, she’d had nothing waiting for her, no one who looked at her the way Caelestis did now. Here, she had someone, and that someone was no longer just one person to her; he had become everything, her home, her anchor, the reason the word real had started to mean something again.

Eleanore sinks into the mattress, Caelestis’s hand pinned beneath her weight as she cups his face in her palms and looks at him. A smile breaks across her face, unguarded. "Don’t stop, honey."

That’s his last straw. He pulls her nightdress down and kisses lower, cupping her breasts — one hand teasing her nipple while his mouth teething the other. Eleanore arches sharply, and Caelestis catches her by the back, drawing her even closer, as if he means to memorize the exact shape of her against him.

He looks up and watches her eyes go soft with pleasure. "You taste ravishing, honey." He lays his palm flat against her stomach as he gently draws the nightgown down her legs..

His fingers trace slow, deliberate circles along her thighs as she looks down at him. He spreads her legs apart and rises above her, positioning himself at her entrance. He strokes her hair gently, watching her, waiting for her to be ready, his own restraint trembling at the edges.

Eleanore slides her hand slowly up his back as she feels him there, hot, trembling, silently asking permission.

"Caelestis." She says his name.

"Hmm?" He buries his face against her neck.

"What are you waiting for?" she asks.

He chuckles softly. "You."

She laughs back, a little breathless. "I’m ready. Don’t worry." She strokes his back gently, and then she feels him push inside her, filling the space between them until there’s no space left at all.

She gasps, curling her leg around his waist, pulling him closer, and that’s all it takes for him to lose control entirely. Caelestis begins to move, slow at first, then faster, his rhythm matching the pounding of her own heart. Their breaths tangle together as they move as one. He stops just before they reach the peak together, kisses her once more, deep and unhurried despite the urgency beneath it, then thrusts in harder.

"Ahh!" Eleanore cries out, her eyes falling shut as heat floods through her, her whole body trembling in response, every nerve alight.

Her legs slip from his waist, and Caelestis collapses beside her, both of them breathing hard in the dark.

The room falls quiet, lit only by the low amber glow of the bedside lamp, the two of them tangled comfortably beneath the blankets, limbs heavy with the kind of exhaustion that felt more like peace than fatigue.

Eleanore rests her cheek against Caelestis’s chest, listening to the slow, steady rhythm of his heartbeat, letting the peace of it settle over her like a second blanket.

"Elly." He murmurs her name, his fingers tracing idle circles against her back.

"Hmm?" She lays her palm flat against his chest, feeling his warmth seep into her skin.

"You’ve gone quiet," Caelestis says. "That usually means you’re thinking about something serious."

She laughs softly. "You act like you know a lot about me."

He tilts his head to look at her, one brow raised. "I do."

Eleanore meets his gaze, and something in her chest tightens fondly at how certain he sounds. "I’m just thinking."