Chapter Fifty
I WAS IN HIS ARMS THE MOMENT the double doors of his pavilion were firmly locked.
I cried out as he scooped me up like a bride, kissing me just as fast.
“Lucien—”
He didn’t answer—just kissed me harder as he carried me toward his bed. Heat poured off him in volatile, violent waves. The lamplight warped.
“Help me.” His kiss turned sharp as he clung to me as if I was the only thing preventing him from losing control. “Help me stop burning.”
So that was what this was about.
Uncle Wen’s bonsai.
The fact he’d set them alight without meaning to.
My heart ached for him as I licked him back.
He stumbled and clutched me hard. “What if it hadn’t been the trees? What if I’d burned him instead?” The fire inside him pulsed erratically, flaring hot enough to make the rafters creak. “I need you. I need you to make it stop.”
“Then take me.”
His mouth smashed to mine.
I clung to him as snow drifted over us.
I still had no idea how I did it but the hotter he became, the colder the air swirled. Ice crackled across the windows, frosting them so no one could see in. Icicles hung like translucent daggers from the rafters and the mosquito nets on his bed glittered with icy diamonds.
“You’re the only thing that calms me. The only thing...” His mouth trailed from my lips to my jaw, to my throat. I threaded my fingers into his glossy thick hair and basked in the warmth there—the living fire beneath his scalp.
Heat poured from his chest as a cloud of smoke exploded from his back. Dark plumes unfurled like vast, shadowy wings, stretching wide enough to swallow us whole. Whatever power dwelled in me answered, letting loose a flurry of snow.
Whisper darted out of the way as Lucien carried me to bed.
And then, I was falling.
I cried out as he fell over me, silencing me with a hot kiss.
My world shrank to nothing but his lips and the thundering beat of his heart.
His fingers tore at the shirt I’d borrowed, ripping it open and sending buttons pinging everywhere. I wore nothing beneath and his mouth locked around my nipple, making my spine arch.
His tongue laved the sensitive peak, making other things tingle.
Skating his hand down my belly, he growled as he found me already wet. “I can’t control myself around you. I can’t control myself without you. You’re killing me.”
I moaned as he slipped two fingers inside me. With his mouth on my breast and his fingers inside me, I had nowhere to run, no way to stop the building, tangling orgasm that already begged to detonate.
Kissing his way up my throat, he locked his teeth around my neck.
He shuddered as I ran my nails down his back.
“Fuck.” He convulsed as I burrowed my hand between us and fisted his hot, hard erection.
The second I touched his bare, burning flesh, he kicked off his offending trousers, then pounced on me. The smoke from his back thickened until I couldn’t see a thing apart from him.
The tips of his hair smouldered. Tiny flames danced over his fingernails as he touched every inch of me.
His scent of scorched cedar and caramelised sugar intoxicated me way better than the wine, and when he kissed me—plunging his tongue in time with his fingers—my mouth flooded with flavours of decadent toffee and molten rum.
With a savage curse, he mounted me so swiftly, so deeply, frost unravelled from my heart. It shot over my skin like lace as he completely corrupted me.
“Fuck, you feel so good.” He twitched inside me. “You’re the only thing that helps. The only one I trust. My leash. My Rook.”
I moaned as he kissed me.
Whatever was left of his self-control snapped as he dug his fists into the blankets and thrust. Hard.
I felt him everywhere.
Icy power spiralled around my bones, seeking a way out as he withdrew and slammed back in. His mouth sought mine, kissing me with feverish need.
My hands landed on his lower back, sinking my nails into his scorching skin.
Feeling the muscles flex on either side of his spine as he took me.
...Knowing he’d never been with anyone else like this.
God, it made that ice inside me crystallise and sharpen, splintering into brilliant, jagged facets that arrowed between my legs.
“Fuck, what are you doing to me? I need...I need...” He gave up trying to talk and gave me his body instead. With every brutal stroke, more snow radiated from my core—ice webbed over the sheets with patterns that looked like ancient spells...invoking elemental magic to bind him to me forever.
My hips rose to meet his, taking him deeper, harder, giving him everything I had because he gave me all of him.
Our energies synced and knotted.
A dance.
A wonderful waltz between our hearts and souls, connecting like living lightning.
The room crackled as if his fire had got loose.
My oath not to be responsible for damages made me smile against his mouth and...
White icy light burst beyond his smokescreen. Frost consumed the bed, racing across the floor and up the walls, cocooning his fire in a glittering cage where he couldn’t cause any destruction.
He kissed me as hard as he took me.
I hovered on the knife-edge of release.
“Lucien...” I clawed at his back. “Please.”
It was too much.
He’d come to me for help but now I needed him.
The ice in my blood was becoming too strong, too sharp. It was hungry and vicious.
“Let go,” he murmured, rutting into me with short, savage strokes. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
I clung to him as frosty whips punished me, demanding to be freed.
I needed to come.
I needed—
“I know.” Placing his entire, delicious weight on me, his scarlet-ringed gaze dove into mine. “So do it...”
All I could see was him.
All I could feel was him.
My orgasm struck a match and exploded.
Ice flung out in every direction. Snow burst from me in a furious cyclone. The room froze. The rafters groaned. The mosquito net disintegrated like broken glass. Frost climbed over Lucien’s shoulders as he rode me through my release, his eyes never leaving mine.
I couldn’t stop it.
I didn’t want to stop it.
He followed me.
A guttural groan tore from his lips as his fire roared in answer. He convulsed as he came, spilling deep, deep inside me as his inferno swallowed my snow with a violent heatwave.
Steam detonated between us with a thunderous crack. The room vanished behind a wall of white-hot vapor—a marriage of heat and cold.
We clung to each other, twitching and trembling. Only once we could catch a proper breath did we look away from each other, cringing in preparation for the mess we’d caused.
Incredibly, his room was mostly unscathed.
Instead of annihilating each other...our elemental power seemed to have fused. Steam drifted lazily toward the ceiling, and the ice that’d trapped his fire dripped and thawed.
Kissing the tip of my nose, Lucien stayed deep inside me.
His chest rose against mine, brushing my nipples as the furnace inside him turned into a gentle sauna instead.
“I keep losing control around you, yet you’re the only one who can bring me back.
Whatever happens, you need to stay close to me, alright? You need to stop me if I go too far.”
“I promise.” I stroked his back, making him shiver. “You have my word, I’ll help you. Just like you help me.”
“Being inside you is the only time I’m completely free of the fire.” Nuzzling into my neck, he added quietly, “I’m not afraid of what they’ve made me, Rook...but I am afraid of what I could become without you.”
I didn’t know how to reply, so I just hugged him close instead.