Chapter 9
H is arms tightened around me as he stood, lifting me from the scattered toys with that liquid grace that made every movement seem choreographed by winter itself.
The journey from Nursery to master bedroom passed in a blur of ice-corridors that parted before us like breath.
My face stayed pressed against his neck, breathing in his scent while my fingers clutched at his shirt, needing the anchor of his solid presence as exhaustion warred with rising need in my transformed body.
The master bedroom announced itself before we entered—a shift in the air itself, like stepping from regular winter into the heart of a star. The doors swung open at our approach without Sereis touching them. What lay beyond stole what little breath I had left.
The bed dominated the space not through size alone but through impossibility.
Its frame was pure light, captured and compressed into solid form that threw prismatic rainbows across every surface.
The posts twisted up toward a beautiful canopy—living aurora borealis, somehow contained and shaped to flow in eternal curtains above where we would sleep.
Green- gold light rippled through purple-blue depths, occasionally sparking with colors that had no names, that made my transformed eyes water trying to process them.
The whole construction hummed with a frequency I felt in my bones, in the frost patterns that pulsed beneath my skin in response.
Cloud-silk sheets covered the mattress, their surface seeming to breathe with anticipation.
They were the white of fresh snow under moonlight, but when the aurora light touched them, they reflected back softer versions of those impossible colors.
The pillows—too many to count—had been arranged with the same obsessive precision Sereis brought to everything, creating a nest that promised to cradle without suffocating.
He laid me down with the kind of care reserved for holy relics, his hands supporting my head and lower back until the cloud-silk accepted my weight with a sigh that sounded almost sentient.
The sheets were cool against my skin, the perfect temperature of shade on a summer day.
Above me, the canopy shifted in response to my presence, the colors deepening, becoming more complex, as if it recognized me as belonging here.
Sereis didn't join me on the bed. Instead, he sank to his knees beside it, the movement deliberate, calculated. Reverent. His pale eyes had gone dark with something that transcended simple desire—this was worship, recognition, a claiming that went beyond the physical.
"Let me see you," he said, though it wasn't really a request. His hands found the hem of my pajama top, fingers tracing the tiny twinkling stars embedded in the fabric before beginning to lift it with agonizing slowness.
Each inch revealed earned his complete attention.
The frost patterns on my stomach made him pause, his breath catching as he traced one spiraling design with a fingertip so light I might have imagined it.
The pajama top whispered over my head and away, but his focus remained absolute—studying how the transformation had rebuilt me, how the silver-light in my veins created a subtle luminescence beneath my skin.
The pajama bottoms received the same methodical attention.
He hooked his fingers in the elastic waistband, and I lifted my hips to help him, the movement making the frost patterns flare brighter.
His intake of breath was sharp, appreciative, as more of my transformed skin was revealed.
The pants joined the top somewhere beyond my concern, because Sereis was looking at me like I was a miracle made manifest, like every second of his immortal existence had led to this moment of revelation.
"Perfect," he breathed, and the word carried weight, carried magic, carried the kind of truth that remade reality around itself. "Every line, every mark, every inch of you—perfect."
His worship began at my shoulder, at the exact spot where our bond had first manifested.
His lips pressed against the silver-blue tracery there, and the contact sent lightning through every nerve.
Not just a kiss but a claim, his mouth learning the new texture of my skin, the way the frost patterns were slightly raised, creating ridges and valleys his tongue could explore.
That tongue—impossibly cool against my fevered skin—traced the intricate design down my arm with devastating precision.
He followed every curl and spiral, mapping the transformation with his mouth while I writhed against the cloud-silk sheets.
The temperature difference should have been uncomfortable, but instead it made every nerve ending sing, made me hyperaware of each point of contact.
His tongue was like living winter, leaving trails of sensation that lingered long after he'd moved on.
"These marks," he murmured against my wrist, where the patterns had become so complex they looked like equations written in ice, "they're not random. They're a map of what you are to me. What we are together."
His mouth moved to my other arm, giving it the same devoted attention.
I could feel his need through our bond—not just to possess but to know, to understand every change, to catalog what I'd become.
His hands skimmed along my sides, never grasping, just learning the new topography of my body while his mouth continued its worship.
When his tongue traced the frost pattern that collared my throat, I arched off the bed entirely.
The sensation was too much and not enough, every nerve ending firing at once while the ache between my thighs became impossible to ignore.
My hands found his hair, dark strands sliding through my fingers as I tried to guide him lower, toward where I needed him most.
But Sereis had his own timeline, his own plan.
His mouth found my breasts, tongue circling nipples that had become almost painfully sensitive since the transformation.
The cool wetness of his attention there made me cry out, my body bowing as pleasure shot straight to my core.
He lavished attention on each peak, using teeth and tongue and the subtle chill of his breath to drive me higher.
His hands mapped my thighs, fingertips tracing the frost patterns there while his mouth moved lower across my stomach.
Every kiss felt like a brand, like he was claiming territory that was already his but needed the reinforcement of ritual.
By the time his fingers brushed against my center—just the lightest touch, barely there—I was trembling with need, my hips lifting desperately toward his hand.
"Please," I gasped, the word torn from my throat. "Sereis, please, I need—"
"I know what you need." His fingers pressed more firmly, finding my clit with unerring accuracy, circling it with just enough pressure to make my vision white out at the edges.
My body was already so close, transformed flesh so sensitive that even this simple touch threatened to send me over.
"But your pleasure belongs to me now, little one. You come when I allow it, not before."
His fingers worked with methodical precision, building a rhythm that had my hands fisting in the sheets, my back arching as the pressure built to impossible levels.
The aurora canopy above us swirled faster, responding to my climbing arousal, colors shifting toward the warmer end of the spectrum.
I was right there, right on the edge, one more stroke would do it—
He pulled his hand away entirely.
The denial hit like a physical blow, making me sob with frustration as my body clenched around nothing, searching for stimulation that wasn't there. Above us, the aurora flared wild, reds and golds mixing with the cooler tones in chaotic patterns that matched my emotional state.
"Not yet," Sereis said, his voice gentle but implacable. "I decide when you fall."
My frustrated sob still hung in the air between us when Sereis shifted position, still kneeling but now studying me with the kind of intensity that made me feel like a manuscript written in a language only he could read.
His eyes tracked over my flushed skin, the way my chest heaved with desperate breaths, how my thighs pressed together seeking friction that wouldn't come.
"I want you to feel everything, little one," he said, his voice dropping to that register that bypassed my ears and resonated directly in my bones.
"I want to heighten every sensation until you forget everything but me.
Until the world becomes nothing but my touch, my will, my decision of when you're allowed release. "
From the air beside him—from nowhere, from imagination given form—he drew out restraints that made my breath catch.
Not metal or leather or anything so mundane.
These were cuffs of living ice, but ice transformed into something impossible.
They pulsed with soft internal light, like aurora captured and compressed into solid form.
When he held them up for my inspection, they seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting slightly as if alive.
"These won't hurt," he explained, though his tone suggested he knew that wasn't my fear.
"They'll feel like cool silk against your skin, perfectly fitted, impossible to escape.
They'll hold you exactly where I want you while I explore what you've become.
" His eyes met mine, and in them I saw the question he wouldn't voice—would I trust him this much?
Would I let him make me this vulnerable?
My answer came without words. I extended my arms toward the starlight bedposts, offering my wrists to him with a gesture that felt like signing my name in trust itself. The smile that curved his lips was subtle but transformative, turning his ethereal beauty into something darker, hungrier.