Lalatina Ford Dustiness — formerly known as Darkness, adventurer and faithful member of James’ small, ragtag party — hadn’t predicted this. Hadn’t expected her evening to unravel so completely, so thoroughly, until every shred of composure she’d ever carried was stripped bare. Yet here she was, sat upright on the edge of her own bed in the dim warmth of her chamber, golden hair clinging to her flushed neck in tangled, sweat-damp strands, her thick thighs spread wide around James’ hips as he stood between them, fucking up into her with a steady, brutal rhythm that jolted her whole body.

She clung to him, arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, her face buried against the crook of his neck where she panted hot and ragged against his skin. Her nails dragged red lines down his back, clawing at him like she’d fall apart if she let go. Her powerful legs, honed through countless battles and long marches across unforgiving terrain, hooked around the backs of his thighs, pulling him closer, forcing his cock deeper with every savage thrust until he bottomed out inside her. Each time he drove upward, her whole frame shuddered — a raw, broken sound punched from her chest. The wet, filthy noise of her pussy swallowing his cock filled the room, slick and obscene, her arousal dripping down his shaft and smearing between their pressed-together bodies.

Her fingers twisted into his hair, gripping hard, holding on as if he were the only solid thing left in the world. Her fat tits crushed against his chest, soft and heavy, her stiff nipples dragging across his skin with every jolt. Her lips had gone slack against his throat, drool slipping warm down his collarbone, her eyes glassy and rolled half-back, drunk on the feeling of his cock stretching her pussy open and filling her over and over. The sturdy oak bed frame groaned and knocked against the wall in a damning rhythm.

She had always been a woman of endurance, trained to withstand punishment. But this was a different kind entirely — one she had no armor against. And for the first time, she didn’t want any.

“Hnn,” he grunted, low and guttural, his hips pressing flush against her one final time as he buried himself to the hilt — and came.

She felt it immediately. The hot, thick pulse of him spilling deep inside her, flooding her insides in long, twitching spurts that made her stomach clench and her toes curl against the backs of his legs. His grip on her hips tightened, fingers digging bruises into her skin as his cock throbbed and emptied, and she could do nothing but hold on, arms locked around his shoulders, her pussy clenching around him involuntarily, milking every last drop from him whether she meant to or not.

And then, like a blade of cold water cutting through the fog of pleasure, it hit her. He’d cum inside her.

He’d cummed inside her — and she’d been a virgin.

The realization crashed through her mind with the subtlety of a warhammer. He had deflowered her. James had taken her maidenhood, spilled his seed in her womb, and in doing so had set into motion a chain of consequences that no amount of awkward morning-after silence could undo. She was a noblewoman. A Dustiness. Among the peerage, there were rules about this sort of thing — old, iron-clad rules written by men long dead who had very strong opinions about where unmarried women’s virginities should and shouldn’t end up. He would be forced to marry her. Not asked. Not gently encouraged. Forced. By obligation, by law, by the unyielding weight of noble custom that treated a deflowered daughter like a debt that required immediate settlement. Her chest tightened. Not because the idea of marrying him repulsed her — god, no, far from it — but because she didn’t want him shackled to her out of duty. She didn’t want to be a consequence he had to deal with.

“No,” she moaned, the word slipping out breathless and too late, muffled against his neck.

He twitched and pulled back just enough to look at her face. She was flushed from her chest to the tips of her ears, golden hair stuck to her damp cheeks, eyes wide with a panicked kind of clarity that hadn’t been there moments ago. He blinked at her. A bit late for no. They were done. His seed was already deep inside her, swimming like marathon runners on a mission, racing toward her eggs with the kind of blind determination that couldn’t be reasoned with or called back.

“Bit late for no,” he said, still catching his breath, still buried inside her.

“I may get pregnant,” she whispered. Her voice cracked on the last word. Her thighs trembled around him, and she couldn’t tell anymore if it was from the aftershocks of what they’d just done or from the raw terror blooming in her chest.

But it wasn’t really the pregnancy that frightened her — not entirely. It was what it meant. A child meant marriage. Marriage meant binding him to her by force of custom and scandal. And she would spend the rest of her life wondering if he’d have chosen her without the obligation. If he’d have stayed without the chains. She searched his face for something — disgust, regret, the dawning horror of a man who’d just realized the consequences of what he’d spilled. The trapped look of someone doing the arithmetic on how thoroughly he’d just ruined his own life. She found none of it.

“And?” he said.

She studied him. Really studied him. His dark eyes were steady, his breathing still ragged, his cock softening inside her but making no move to pull out. There was no panic in his expression. No scramble for excuses. Just calm. Calm and something warm underneath it that she couldn’t quite name and didn’t trust herself to believe in.

“That doesn’t bother you?” she asked, quieter now, her brow furrowed. Her hands had gone still on his shoulders, fingers no longer clawing but resting there, uncertain. “You know what this means. What you’ve done. My family — the Dustiness name — they’ll demand you marry me. You took my — you were my first. They won’t let that go unanswered.”

James pushed in — a slow, deliberate roll of his hips that pressed his spent cock deeper, stirring the mess he’d made inside her. She groaned, head tipping back, her pussy clenching weakly around him as a fresh wave of sensation rippled through her oversensitive body.

“No. Not at all,” he said, his voice rough and sure. “I want to marry you.”

She stared at him.

The room went quiet except for the guttering candles and the faint drip of their mingled fluids on the sheet below. She stared at him like he’d spoken in a dead language, like the words had entered her ears and gotten lost somewhere on the way to making sense. Not I have to marry you. Not I suppose we’d better. Want. He’d said want. Her lips parted. Closed. Parted again.

“Wait — what?”

He flushed. A real, genuine flush that crawled up his neck and painted his cheeks a shade she’d never seen on him before. He sighed, deep and shaky, and his shoulders slumped as though the admission had physically drained him — as though holding it inside had been the real effort, and letting it out left him hollow.

“I finally confronted my feelings about you,” he said. He couldn’t quite meet her eyes.

“Meaning Aqua slapped you,” she said flatly.

He inclined his head, a sheepish tilt that confirmed everything. “Yes. Sorta. We had a talk. About who I want — who I actually want — to be my wife.”

There it was. The thing she hadn’t dared to hope for, dangling in front of her like a blade she was sure would cut. Because that was how it always went for her, wasn’t it? The noble daughter who chose the sword over the parlor, who traded silk gowns for dented armor and threw herself into danger not because she was brave but because she craved something she could never admit aloud. She had spent her entire life bracing for impact. Expecting the worst. Preparing her heart for disappointment the way she prepared her body for battle — by tensing every muscle and praying the blow wouldn’t break anything vital.

“And you settled on me,” she said. It wasn’t a question. It was a verdict she’d already handed down on herself, spoken with the resigned certainty of someone who had already decided where she ranked. Dead last. The fallback. The one you ended up with when the prettier, smarter, more agreeable options had all been exhausted. The one you married because you’d cum inside her and noble law left you no other choice.

“No,” he said.

The word hit her like a physical blow. She flushed — not the warm, post-sex flush that still lingered across her skin, but something cold and sharp, the blood draining from her face before rushing back in a sickly wave. Her eyes went wide, glassy with a sudden, desperate fear she couldn’t mask. Her lips trembled. For all her strength, for all the monsters she’d faced and the pain she’d endured, she looked in that moment exactly like what she was underneath all of it — a woman who needed to hear that she was wanted. Not obligated. Not trapped into. Wanted. She was a hardcore adventurer, a frontline crusader, a member of a small, ragtag group that had faced demons and generals and the end of the world itself. But she was also human. And humans needed to be told, sometimes, that they were enough.