Chapter Text
Aang stepped out into the neighborhood he’d grown up in and inhaled deeply, jingling the keys to the dojo in his pants pocket. The sun had just set, the faint glow of the dying day lingering on the horizon beyond the buildings that had been the backdrop of his childhood.
Things hadn’t changed much. The buildings had been run-down then, and they were run-down now, but gentrification was creeping ever closer. There was a Starbucks within walking distance, and a new apartment complex three blocks up that wasn’t strictly for those on welfare.
Ghosts of himself sometimes haunted him on these streets—movement from the corner of his eye, the echo of familiar voices long gone. Memories jogged loose. He’d fallen on his bike there, near the busted old fire hydrant. The school bully had tried to punch him for the first time in that alley next to the McDonald’s, and Aang had tipped him into a pile of rotting trash. Gyatso had been disappointed, but the neighborhood kids had made him their hero.
Gyatso.
A name that carried so much warmth and joy, but bore sharp edges. Edges that carved deep if he wasn’t careful.
His phone buzzed in his back pocket, and he tugged it free. Katara, working late again, and a spike of concern tightened his shoulders. He was always a little worried about her…the nature of being in love, he supposed, but since they’d found out she was pregnant, that low-wave frequency had been amplified a hundredfold.
He let a breath out through his nose to get a handle on himself and texted her back, asking her if she wanted him to pick up dinner for them.
A baby. It was a thought he had at least twenty times a day. I’m going to be a father.
He’d never had a father.
Not in the traditional sense. But he’d been luckier than most of his friends growing up—their fathers in and out of prison or absent altogether. He’d had all the monks to look after him. A community of men dedicated to gentleness and enlightenment, teaching nonviolence and respect for all living things. Of course, all he’d cared about at twelve was the fact that he didn’t have a TV and an Xbox. It wasn’t an upbringing he would be grateful for until it was far too late.
The ache of their loss never really got easier to bear. Every new thing that happened to him was something he couldn’t share with the people he’d loved most. They would have loved Katara.
They would have loved their child.
“Damn,” he said aloud with a self-deprecating huff of laughter, blinking back sudden tears there in the flickering street lights on the stained, cracked concrete.
He glanced down the sidewalk at the corner market, the same one he’d bought candy bars from when he’d managed to find enough spare change as a kid, and was struck with a deep and inescapable need to reconnect with those ghosts. To find the pieces of himself he’d left behind.
He bought a small bouquet and a single orange and took off into the darkness, hand in his pocket, head cast down as he walked a familiar path. A trek his feet would never forget—the long road home.
They knew when to stop, even with the old temple long gone. It hadn’t looked like a traditional temple. Just an old storefront in a strip mall that had been torn down to build an office building—a project that had eventually fallen through. Now it was just an empty lot behind rusting chain-link fences, broken and forgotten.
Aang found a wide gap in the fence, and after a moment’s hesitation, he pushed past the grasping steel wires. It was dangerous to stumble around in the dark in this part of the city, but this had been his home; he wanted to believe nothing could hurt him here, even if it was foolish and headstrong.
Fortunately, only a pair of stray cats and a great deal of garbage awaited him. That, and a crumbling bit of wall, covered in graffiti. It would have to do.
Aang drew the orange and flowers free, shoving the plastic bag into his pocket. He set them between two exposed bricks, stepped back, and placed his hands together at his forehead and bowed low, uttering the mantras of his youth like flexing a rarely used muscle. Wind tore through the ruins of his childhood, and he could hear their voices, smell the incense, recall the touch of a hand on his head, and Gyatso’s gentle smile.
Father. Or the closest thing he’d ever had to one. His gentle strength as he taught Aang the practices of their people, both martial and otherwise.
“I miss you,” he said aloud, hardly meaning to, the pain of it a gnawing pit in his chest.
The day the monks left rose unbidden to his mind. Aang had been fresh out of high school, sleeping on Toph’s couch in her parents’ basement, angry and hurt and desperately afraid. In an airport, surrounded by people and their stares, Gyatso had taken his face in his hands.
“You are always trying to catch the wind by clenching it in your fist, Aang.” His eyes had been gentle and full of love. “You will only have empty, aching fingers. That is the trap of fear. Open your hands, set yourself free. All meetings must end…everything that is born dies. But we are here,” he’d said, placing his gnarled, wizened hand on Aang’s chest. “Always. Neither distance nor death can separate us.”
“Please,” Aang had begged. “Don’t go.”
Gyatso had patted him gently on the cheek. “You have made your choice, my boy, and we honor it. You must honor ours. We will see each other again, either in this life or the next.”
And then they had boarded a plane, and he had never seen any of them again. A few letters, two staticky phone calls, and then nothing. He’d been alone. The last.
He thought of Katara’s face, lovely and hopeful, tears bright on her face, the sunlight shining through her hair. “You’re not the last…not anymore.”
He would teach his child about them, the monks. He would honor the ways of his people—teach them the strength that came from kindness and empathy. Teach them to move like the wind, to be at peace with themselves in a world that was always trying to tear people apart.
“I will make you proud,” he said firmly, bowing one last time before turning back towards the glow of the street beyond. Back towards his future, whole and certain.
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Aang read every book on pregnancy and childbirth he could get his hands on.
Within the first week, he knew all the symptoms and warning signs. He knew what foods to avoid and which ones to buy in bulk. He made late-night cravings runs and soothed Katara when it wasn’t what she wanted anymore. Rubbed her feet, her back, her shoulders. Showered four times a day. Refilled her water bottle without being asked. Packed her lunch and snacks for work every day. Anything she needed.
The one thing none of the books prepared him for was his own reactions—specifically, the physical ones. He’d been raised with the concepts of impermanence and lack of ownership, both in terms of possessions and people. He’d been raised to be a Buddhist monk. Never to marry or have children… which had been the beginning of the end for him, in retrospect. Lack of ownership, yes, sure, made perfect sense…a lifetime of celibacy? That was less interesting to him, particularly as he grew up surrounded by Western society and women.
In a shocking turn for him, he’d been combating feelings of possessiveness with Katara from the very start. She made him want to protect her, keep her for himself, even though she didn’t need him to and would definitely rankle at the idea. It was manageable, though. Easy to ignore most of the time.
Visibly pregnant Katara was an entirely different animal altogether.
He could hardly bear to look at her; the rush of possessive pride was so strong. It might have been manageable if not for how devastatingly arousing he found her changing body. If someone had told him he could be more attracted to her, he wouldn’t have believed them.
She was so sick those first few months that it was an effective check on his libido, but after the day she’d come to him in his studio to seduce him, it was like he was a man possessed.
He would catch himself staring, dazed, every time she changed or walked out of the shower. When she moved above him, whimpering and moaning, he felt out of his mind with what he could only describe as male satisfaction. Something primal and dark was roaring to life in his chest. A feeling that always filled him with guilt later. A guilt that did little to tame his growing obsession with her body. Her breasts had grown, her nipples had darkened, and her stomach was noticeably expanding. Lush. Perfect. His.
Being near her was an almost perpetual distraction.
The night he came home after visiting the old temple ruins, he was like an exposed nerve rubbed raw. Tender. In need of comfort. In need of something to remind him he was still alive, flesh and blood.
Katara was in the kitchen as he stepped inside the house, dropping his duffel bag off his shoulder and kicking it under the side table. She was wearing one of his t-shirts that just fell past the tops of her thighs, hair loose and shining. She was finishing up making their dinner, wooden spoon tapping against the side of a steaming pot. His favorite by the smell of it—Tofu Tikka Masala.
She turned slightly and spotted him with a smile, the lenses of her glasses flashing as she set a hand against her growing belly. Desire, aggressive and consuming, scorched through him, stealing his breath and all coherent thought long enough that she frowned at him in concern.
“Aannng?” Her voice warbled, like it was coming from underwater, and he forced himself to take a breath.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
She tilted her head at him, setting the spoon on the counter. “Are you hungry?”
For you, he wanted to say. “Uh, yeah. Smells great.”
She beamed, pleased. “Just needs to simmer for another twenty minutes or so.”
Plenty of time, his evil, one-track mind supplied. His feet were pulling him into the kitchen, towards her. The need to feel her between his hands was all-consuming.
She’d turned back towards the countertop where she had a bunch of cilantro ready to chop. He hovered behind her, pressing slowly against her back, one hand falling to her waist to grasp her hip and the other sweeping her hair to one side. Lowering his head, he pressed a kiss to the exposed skin of her shoulder, listening to her sharp inhale, smelling jasmine and clean skin. Her hands stilled and flattened on the countertop as she leaned back into him. Unable to help himself, he drew his hand over her stomach, feeling the firm roundness of it as soft cotton dragged, the blood rushing down to where he was rapidly growing hard.
God, he needed her. So much. More than he could ever articulate.
She spun in his embrace, arms lifting to loop around his shoulders as their lips met. Tenderness that deepened. More than a kiss. She made him feel alive in ways he hadn’t thought possible. She welcomed his tongue between her lips with a sigh he felt in his chest, and he lifted a hand to grasp her face, the need in him driving her backwards, back bowing, the hardness of her belly against his abdomen.
He gathered her hair in his fist and gently angled her head so he could kiss down the column of her throat, tongue dragging. Together, bodies talking where words had failed them, he lifted, and she pushed until she was seated on the counter at eye level.
She studied him through thick lashes, gaze penetrating, fathomless, and she pulled him into the depths of her embrace. He went willingly, ready to drown, eager to dissolve. Their kiss turned heavy. Frantic. He cupped her breast through the shirt and tweaked her nipple as it hardened. Her head thudded back against the cabinets as she arched against him, seeking his touch
With a rough flick of his wrist, he snapped the hem of the shirt up over her chest so he could kiss her breast, taking her nipple between his lips and swirling his tongue. She made a soft, whimpering sound that he felt against his mouth, and her hands dragged up the back of his head and back down again, nails scratching down the top of his spine.
He turned his head to capture her other nipple, but she pressed at him, eager hands reaching for his belt as he kissed her again. Leather and steel swung free, and she made quick work of the button on his jeans, shoving his pants down with hands and feet until they clattered on the tile. Urgency drove him to cup her pussy through the damp material of her underwear, fingers dipping past the edge to find and tease her clit, dizzy at how wet and hot she was. Like she wanted him just as badly as he wanted her.
He pulled away enough to toe off his sneakers, stepping out of his pants, and then gathered her purposefully in his arms. She kissed the side of his neck and tugged at his earlobe with her teeth as he spun them around towards the dining table. He laid her across the gleaming dark wood between the simple place settings, her hair splayed and shining in the mixture of moonlight and warm electric bulbs. Katara drew the shirt up her body, and he yanked her underwear down, leaving it to dangle from one trim ankle as he shoved his briefs further down his thighs and then dragged her closer.
They were both breathing heavily in the silence, air thick with the smell of dinner cooking and unspoken desire as he dragged the head of his cock through the inviting folds of her pussy. She bit her lip, cheeks flushed, glasses slightly askew, as she grabbed at his arms, short nails biting. He’d never wanted anyone the way he wanted her. A bone-deep ache that he couldn’t shake free of, no matter how many times he had her, no matter how many times he broke apart inside her. She was so fucking beautiful, she hardly seemed real to him sometimes.
Aligning himself at her entrance, he pressed forward slowly, eyes locked with hers. He shifted his hands to grip her thighs, holding her steady and open as heat bled from her through him until he felt like he was burning. She sighed his name when he was fully seated, and he kissed her knee, her calf, desperate points of contact as he began to thrust inside her. He wanted to pace himself, to stay controlled, but Katara palmed her breasts and arched her back, rounded stomach jutting forward, and he was a goner.
He snapped his hips roughly against her, skin slapping, making her cry out. The sound was uninhibited, sharp, so he did it again, chasing her pleasure. Her thighs trembled between his hands as he anchored himself entirely in the heat of her skin, desperate to make her come apart. Lifting one hand, he dragged his thumb across his tongue, then pressed the pad against the nub of her clit. Katara shuddered and drew tight against the table, making the place settings shake as her mouth fell open. She tightened around him, panting as her head tossed, hands gripping the table's edge as if she were afraid she might float away. His reaction to her pleasure was unfiltered and unstoppable, and her breasts swung in time with his thrusts.
“You’re so fucking perfect,” he snarled, losing the thread of what remained of his restraint, teeth scraping over her calf as he dragged her legs straight, hooking them over his shoulders as he pounded desperately into her. “Come for me, sweetheart.” He meant it as a command, but the words broke into a stuttered plea as his orgasm raced towards him.
She gasped his name, and he used what little remained of his brain power to circle his thumb rapidly between them until she was tightening and shaking against him. His eyes slammed closed in blissful, mindless relief, bracing a hand on Katara’s hip as he shuddered, thrusting shallowly as he emptied inside her.
When he could breathe again and was sure he wasn’t about to tip forward and slump bonelessly across her body, he drew her up into his arms, cradling her against his chest as their hearts slowed. He smoothed a hand clumsily over her mussed hair, noting the watching moon and the twinkling shyness of the stars.
“You’re going to have to finish dinner while I clean up,” she said, her tone playfully accusing as she pulled back enough to look up at him.
He adjusted her glasses on her nose and swept the hair away from her face. “I think that’s a fair price.”
“Feel better?” She gave him a knowing, assessing look that made him chuckle. Apparently he’d been more transparent than he’d thought.
“You always make me feel better.” He shuffled back a step, sliding free of her as he pressed a kiss to her forehead and tucked himself back into his briefs.
She quirked a brow, snagging her underwear with her toes and then getting carefully to the floor. “With my magical healing vagina?”
Aang laughed, a surprised bark in the familiar, comfortable silence of their home.
Having her here still shocked him sometimes, like waking from a dream to discover it was real. The warmth she’d brought into his life… the joy—his throat constricted watching her clean her glasses on the sleeve of her borrowed shirt and then pull a face at the mess he’d left between her thighs. Silly domestic, intimate things. Small moments that felt big, little things that settled quietly into the fabric of his life. He hadn’t known he could be so happy.
“I think that’s just a nice bonus,” he said with a wink, and she rolled her eyes affectionately.
“Go stir dinner,” she commanded. “I’m going to go take a quick shower.”
He pulled her in for a kiss when she tried to step past him, and he turned to watch her walk away, that swell of male satisfaction he couldn't quite suppress ballooning inside his chest.
“Stop staring at my ass and stir dinner!” she shouted as she reached the hallway, and he snapped to attention, then hurried across the room to do as he’d been told.
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The round horn sounded, and Aang broke free of his opponent's arms, gasping for air, head spinning.
Fuck.
The noise of the crowd was a distant buzz he barely registered as he stumbled to his corner, where his coach and the cutman were waiting. He collapsed onto the stool, and Iroh immediately shoved him back against the cage, forcing him to keep his airways open as he dragged in air like he was trying to breathe through sand.
The cutman—face serious, movements precise—swiped away the blood that was leaking into Aang’s eye from a cut on his brow, and pressed a piece of cold, flat metal against the slice to keep the swelling down. His lips ached, and his chest and side were on fire. His knee—well, his knee always hurt, and it was a frustratingly dull pinch he would never be free of.
I’m losing this one.
His first loss. Had to happen sometime, he supposed.
Over the cutman’s shoulder, he found Katara’s face in the front row. Beautiful in a silvery dress with her hair pulled back. She was looking at him, eyes narrowed, full of command and a confidence he didn’t feel. She wasn’t ready for him to lose.
“Aang!” Iroh snapped, tone harsh, gaze fiercely penetrating. His coach was normally a soft-spoken, composed man, but there was real fire in his eyes. “Stop fighting yourself out there!”
Aang frowned, taking a long drink of water, trying to clear his head. “What?”
He shoved Aang in the shoulder, though he barely felt it. “Don’t fight like them.” He swept a hand out. “Fight like you.”
The cutman swiped cold adrenaline gel over his brow and down by his lip. Fight like me. The words rang like a clear note above the buzz of the crowd and his own fears. Resonating, driving back some of the pain and uncertainty.
Fight like me.
The horn sounded, and the ref stepped close, clapping his hands loudly together. “Seconds out!”
Aang got to his feet, handing over his water bottle as the stool was swept away. Iroh fixed him with a final, hard look. “Like you, Gyatso. Like you.”
The lactic acid in his legs was making him feel like rubber, and he forced himself to jump up and down, mind churning, trying to come up with a plan. A strategy. His thoughts were a scattered mess of missed punches and poorly timed kicks.
But his body knew what to do.
Like you, Gyatso.
He looked toward the center of the Octagon, where his opponent was already waiting. If Aang looked beaten to shit, the other man looked untouched, confident—arrogant. Aang’s entry into the UFC had been explosive. He was undefeated and a fan favorite; bringing him down was rapidly at the top of every other fighter’s list.
Breathe, my boy. Let it go. Let it flow. Gyatso’s voice echoed in his skull as the ref stepped between them. Sunlight on the temple floors, the smell of incense, steady, sure movements practiced a hundred thousand times for as long as he could remember. Movements he could perform in his sleep. As easy as breathing.
“Fighters ready?”
His opponent nodded. Aang fell into a stance, not the kickboxing stance he’d adopted for the UFC, but the stance of his youth—of his people. Low, sideways. Palms open. Inviting.
From the sidelines, the broadcast echoed over the arena monitors. "Gyatso has completely dropped his hands to start the third," the play-by-play announcer noted, sounding baffled. "It's a traditional Wushu stance," the color commentator jumped in. "But man, you cannot give a powerhouse wrestler like Theron an open target like that. One clean takedown and this fight is over."
Aang clenched his jaw and nodded at the ref.
The downward chop of the referee's hand. “Fight!”
There was no sportsmanly touch of gloves. Aang’s opponent launched himself forward, swift and lethal, looking to capitalize on the early damage he’d done to Aang’s right side. But Aang wasn’t there, slipping around him deftly. The other man spun quickly, but Aang hung back, watching, waiting—he needed to keep him at a distance. Another lunge, and he kept his foot to the mat, dancing out of reach and deflecting a punch with the palms of his hands.
His opponent squared up, fists raised, eyes blazing out at him, frustration bleeding plainly to his face. The sounds of the crowd and everything else were gone. There was just the measured sound of his own breathing and the steady thump of his heart.
The man dashed forward, over-committing, trusting his strength and speed. Aang vaulted off the canvas, aerial and flying, twisting his body into a rapid mid-air spin. His right leg snapped around like a whip, the side of his foot connecting flush with the man’s temple. The slap of skin on skin was loud, sharp.
Theron went rigid, eyes rolling back before he collapsed in a rush of broken momentum that sent him crashing face-first into the canvas. Stunned silence gave way to a wave of roaring cheers as Aang staggered back, wincing against the pull in his bad knee.
“Good night! It is over! He’s out cold!”
The ref rushed forward, shouting “That's it! It's over!” arms crossing back and forth over his chest.
“Unbelievable! A spinning tornado kick out of absolutely nowhere!”
Aang moved to the side of the cage, relief and sound washing over him as he searched for one face in the sea of color beyond the links of the cage. Katara was on her feet, cheering, shouting, face split wide by a brilliant smile, one hand resting on her stomach and the other raised in the air.
“A stunning kick by Aang Gyatso! The undefeated streak survives! He pulled that walk-off knockout right out of the fire!”
Katara found his stare and went still, smile softening, deepening. He kissed the tips of his fingers and sent his love out across a room where suddenly it was just the two of them.
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Katara was waiting for him in the small VIP locker room, shimmering jewel-like in her dress, face creased with worry. The door swung shut behind him, cutting off the noise from the hall beyond. He had maybe fifteen minutes before he had to meet the press, and he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do less than talk to a bunch of journalists.
It had been the hardest fight for him yet. His body ached, and adrenaline was still pumping through him from the sharp sting of the stitches in his brow and the high of the win. Adrenaline that shifted into something else entirely as Katara hurried towards him, dress clinging to her body, the split in the skirt revealing a great deal of gleaming, smooth skin. Looking at her visibly pregnant stomach made his aching fist clench involuntarily as his blood rushed in response.
He inhaled sharply as she stepped into his space, hand lifting towards his brow with a frown. She’d worn contacts, and the brute force of her blue eyes had him reaching for her, hands landing clumsily at her hips. So pretty. His Katara. The smell of jasmine and rose oil, warm skin, and the minty note of her breath.
“I guess these are good enough,” she groused, fingers still hovering near his brow.
Her eyes snapped to his as she swayed into him, her belly a slight barrier between them. He swallowed thickly, and she tracked the movement, the skin near her eyes tightening and her lips turning down in consideration.
“A tough fight.” Her tone was quiet…laden with something heavy that drew out the fire in his blood, made him want to crowd her back, taste the valley between her breasts. “How’s the knee?”
“Pinches,” he managed, voice grating.
He didn’t give a shit about his knee in that moment. Didn’t give a shit about any of it as her hand drifted over his chest, finding the bare skin between the open flaps of his zip-up hoodie. Bruises were already forming on his right side, down along his ribs and over his chest. Her fingers danced carefully around their edges, feather-soft, casting rippling shivers in their wake that made his fingers tighten.
God, I want her.
As if sensing his thoughts, her eyes fell to his lips, bruised and split as they were.
“Do you want me to rub it?” Her tone was teasing, but her expression was not.
The growing erection he’d been trying to ignore really liked the sound of that, and it twitched against her, making her lips curl.
“Maybe later.”
He leaned closer, and her hand flattened against his chest, holding him gently at bay. “Your lip,” she breathed, pressing closer to him in contradiction. She’d always been like that. Pushing him away one moment and drawing him closer the next. “We shouldn't.”
He smiled, briefly, stunted as he slid a hand up her back, dragging the cool material of her dress in a shift of cloth he could hear.
“I’ll live,” he said into the press of her waiting mouth, and he swept her into his arms.
The remaining adrenaline drove him to drive his tongue between her lips, and she clung to him, wavering on a pair of strappy, bedazzled heels. She made a sound that he could taste, eager but unsure—worried for him. But the pain in his chest and brow dissolved into a rush of lust so strong he felt almost faint.
All he wanted was her.
He spun them until he had her back against the wall, his body crowding into her, one hand clasped tightly against the back of her neck, thumb pressed below her chin to keep her steady for his desperate kisses. His lip burned, and he tasted blood, coppery and warm.
He pulled back, breathing heavily, a little afraid of himself. He’d wanted to fuck her after a fight before. The adrenaline was good for that. But this was different. Normally, he could keep it in his pants at least till they made it safely home, and he wasn’t groping her in a locker room with Iroh or Toph hovering outside the door.
He’d left a smear of blood on her lips, and he watched as her tongue slipped out to taste. Her expression darkened, her pupils dilating, and she swiped the rest of the blood away with her thumb. Something about the gesture, the rawness of it, cleaved his chest in two, and he braced his hands on either side of her against the wall behind her, breathing harshly through his nose. Her stomach was between them, and he cursed, looking to the side, trying to get a grip.
“You like it, don’t you?” The words were soft but sultry, almost purring as she guided his face back towards her with the press of her fingers.
“What?”
“This,” she murmured, sweeping her other hand over her breast and then down over her stomach. “What you did to me.”
The blood rushed in his ears, and he almost couldn’t breathe. The way she was looking at him, knowing and wanting, was eating him alive.
“Don’t you,” she pressed, hands leaving his face to grasp his straining cock, and he gasped.
“Fuck. Sweetheart, we can’t—”
She pressed forwards, laying her soft lips against his throat, tongue trailing. “Does it turn you on, Aang? Seeing me full of your baby?”
His chest roared, his cock hardened to the point of pain, and he felt like he was going mad.
“Yes,” he growled, “I fucking love it.” She trembled against him, breath catching, and something inside him audibly snapped.
He snatched her by her carefully styled hair and plundered her mouth, rough and uninhibited. A kiss that felt like fucking, as he ground against her and she met him in the rage of the storm that ripped through him—nails biting, tongue sliding in time with his.
Mine. She’s mine.
All his talk of ownership and nonpossession felt brittle against the powerful surge of his need for her.
He ripped away from her, stumbling back a step, and they both wiped his blood away from their mouths with the back of a hand. Katara was breathing heavily, her hair unraveling, one strap of her dress slipping down her arm, and god help him, he wanted to ruin her.
Her chin lifted, and she turned on her heels, locking the door with a decisive click that echoed, the sound settling in his pulsing cock. He felt like a caged animal.
“Katara,” he warned, voice choked, and he was clinging to his restraint like the lip of a crumbling cliff face, ready to drop into a freefall. “I–I’m not sure I can be gentle.
She cocked her head at him, expression charged and unflinching, and she turned to walk across the small room. Aang watched her in a daze as she knelt on the padded leather chair in the corner of the locker room. She looked back over her shoulder at him, dragging her dress up her thighs and the curve of her ass as she said, “Who said I wanted you to be gentle?”
He was across the room before he even realized he was moving, yanking off his hoodie, throwing it aside, and hooking his thumbs into the tight band of his fighting shorts and shoving them down as his cock sprang free.
They had to be quick, but his urgency was born of more than just limited time. He felt like he might die if he didn’t touch her.
Katara was watching him with dark, lidded eyes, spine curved in a sensual arch, and he gripped her ass roughly in both hands. She inhaled sharply as he used his knee to widen her legs, and he slipped his thumb around her thong and tugged it aside. The sight of her, face flushed, hair a mess, lip caught between her teeth with her pussy bared, made his ears ring. Aang kicked off his shorts, fully naked, and braced one foot beside her knee, lined himself up against her, and snapped his hips forward.
Katara gasped, and Aang bit back a groan as she enveloped him. Mine.
He ran his hands around her hips, over her distended stomach, and gripped her bare breasts beneath her dress as his hips pumped. He pinched her nipples, rolling them between his fingers and thumbs, and she clenched around his cock as he pounded into her. Each time he found his length inside her, she let out a whimpering little mew that made him want to burn the world down.
“Touch yourself,” he gasped against her shoulder, feeling her weight shift beneath him as she moved to comply.
Their labored breathing was loud in the silence of the locker room, and the slap of their skin reminiscent of the Octagon—a different kind of fight, one against his own desperation. A fight he was rapidly losing. Gripping her ass in both hands, spreading her wider, he watched himself disappear inside her again and again, all the tension and anxiety of the fight, the rush of victory, translating into the friction of their bodies. On impulse, he swept his hand across the top of one ass-cheek, a glancing blow that made a satisfying smack. He was distinctly shocked at himself, but before he could worry he’d overstepped, Katara keened, pushing back into his thrusts, her head thrown back.
She liked it, the feral part of his brain growled. She likes it when you’re rough with her.
He gathered her hair in his hand and pulled her back towards him while her fingers worked rapidly between her legs, his orgasm building behind his clenched teeth. He released her hair and found the long line of her throat with his other hand, pulling her back flush against him. She swallowed against his palm, and her head fell back to his shoulder, mouth slack as she gasped and whimpered. Gathering her dress in his other hand, he dug his fingers into her hip, holding her steady against the rapid tempo of his thrusts.
She began to tighten around him, wet heat coating both their thighs in a sudden rush.
“Fucking come for me, Katara,” he moaned into her ear. “Want to feel you come on my cock.” He felt like a man possessed, overwhelmed by her, reduced to the basest parts of himself.
She whined his name as she shivered her release, fingernails digging into his forearm hard enough to sting as he let himself go. As he severed the final thread of his control and surrendered to the kind of oblivion only she could provide—his climax roaring through him like a wildfire, consuming everything in its path.
Katara was limp in his arms, breathing heavily, head lolling as the echoes of her orgasm fluttered around his slowly softening cock. He kissed the edge of her jaw and the slightly damp curve of her shoulder as he released her dress and withdrew from her carefully.
A rough knock sounded on the door, making them both jump. “Five-minute warning, Twinkle Toes!” came Toph’s voice from the other side of the door.
Katara turned her head and smiled at him lazily, radiating self-satisfaction, and he gave a breathless huff of laughter. “Temptress.”
She hummed. “You like it.”
He chuckled and eased her down into the chair while he got them both towels from a nearby rack. “Now I have to go look fifty reporters in the eyes and try not to think about how I just….”
“Ravished your pregnant girlfriend in the locker room?” Her grin was cat-like and completely devoid of apology or regret.
His body ached, his temple was throbbing, and he still tasted blood, and he’d never been happier as he watched her readjust her dress over her stomach and pull pins from her ruined hair. The smile never left her lips, the light in her eyes bright and catching. He remembered their conversation about marriage from two weeks ago, thought about the word wife, and how much he wanted it to define her.
“Something like that,” he said with a wink, and started frantically pulling on his post-fight clothes.
-
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The clicking of camera shutters announced his arrival as Aang stepped into the media room. He blinked, focusing on his breathing as he forced himself to focus, the taste of Katara’s skin still lingering on his tongue. A wave of shouted questions washed over him as he found his seat next to the UFC president, who smiled at him in a dull, impersonal kind of way.
Theron, wearing a hat and baggy hoodie, was seated on his other side, looking serious and unenthused.
Aang plastered a smile on his face, threaded his fingers together on the table, and tried to appear excited to be there. His body ached, his ribs especially, and after his…encounter with Katara, the absence of adrenaline left him shaken.
“Aang,” came the first question. “You were down two rounds to zero on all three judges’ scorecards. What was going through your mind in that corner before the third?”
Aang sat a little straighter and wet his lips, flinching a little at the split. “Theron is a hell of a fighter, tough and dangerous. Mostly I was thinking about how not to get beaten to hell in the first fifteen seconds.”
A ripple of laughter and some of the tension in the room eased.
“You switched to traditional Wushu stance in the third round,” a woman from the front row asked, one of only three in the sea of men. “Dropping your hands was a real gamble. Tell us what your strategy was there.”
Aang met her eyes and smiled, his real smile, and she returned it with a hint of surprise. “Well, I think you saw it. Modern MMA is about explosive power. But I needed to keep Theron at a distance, bide my time, and strike if I found the opportunity. Fortunately, I did.”
A series of nods and blank smiles.
A rotund man cleared his throat. “Jet Lin currently holds the title. Do you think that you’ve got a shot at taking it from him?”
The name sent a rush of cold anger through him, and his smile grew tight on his face. “Lin has been a great champion. I’m not looking past anyone, but I have a goal, and I think everyone in this room knows what that is.”
“Aang,” one of the tabloid reporters asked, and he tried not to flinch. Couldn’t show fear; the bastards could smell it. “We saw your partner ringside tonight. Having a baby on the way must change your perspective on things. Do you think that is a factor in the cage?”
Aang considered his response for a long moment. “My girlfriend is my biggest supporter, and I’m hers. When I am in the ring, I am thinking about the fight and how I don’t want to let her or our future child down. They’re the reason, when I’m down to rounds and can barely breathe, that I was able to pull it together and change tactics.”
His answer hung for a moment, a ripple of uncertainty moving through the crowd. Someone coughed, and Aang held on to his smile.
“Your girlfriend is a doctor. What does she think of your injuries?” Another question from the woman in front, and her tone had taken on a tentative familiarity.
Aang chuckled. “I’m sure she will have some things to say about my ribcage later, but we’ll keep that discussion for the living room, not the pressroom. It can get a little…colorful.”
Another wave of laughter, and Aang caught a flash of silver from the corner of his eye. Katara lingered behind security, concealed in a corner behind thick curtains. She smiled and gave him a little wave, her hair loose and shining, and seeing her made his heart swell and the tension in his shoulders ease.
He smirked at the crowd, settling into himself. “Next question?”