Chapter 30
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A perfectly (para) normal date.
This is the hottest thing I have ever experienced in my life, and—as previously mentioned—I have been subjected to an unfortunate number of racy encounters in my time. But. Well.
I’m on fire right now, so. I think this tops all prior heat levels I have ever found myself privy to.
Standing with me amid the flames as they lap against my skin, Castor teases my lips with his teeth.
A low murmuring sound leaves him as he skates his fingertips across the magic cloth ropes he used to bind me here.
Apparently, and thankfully, the clothing made of his magic is impervious to the flames.
Of course, I also am, but my brain hasn’t fully processed that yet.
Which is why I’m here.
Bound in the blaze.
Craving the cool tastes of my soulmate’s skin.
While my mind twists and writhes, I beg for the relief and the calm and the sheer unwavering peace pouring off Castor. Our bond is nothing short of a balm, and I’m doing everything I can to cling to it.
He’s delighted.
While my heart panics and my brain shuts down, he dances with ecstasy.
“You’re doing so well,” he whispers against my mouth, rewarding me with a nip, a tug, a pleased hum.
I am not doing well. At all. Mentally, I’m falling apart and grappling with the side effects of enduring psychological torture.
Even though no harm is coming to me, I am on fire. It’s burning hot. Everything I’ve ever known suggests I should be in immense pain. Agony. Suffering. Every last one of my cells screams with warning, ripping me apart from the inside out.
My hair is supposed to be smoking. I am meant to be suffocating on fumes and the scent of my own flesh singeing as it turns into char and falls off my bones.
Instead, I’m physically fine. I know I am. Because I keep checking.
“Dwell on me,” Castor whispers, and a cool night breeze fills my nostrils—even though it’s midday.
I scramble toward that promise of cold dark and find myself fighting the restraints in an effort to get closer to my mate.
He is the coolness of evening, the pledge of reprieve, the beginning and end of my hope for respite.
I want to curl up in him and escape this heat consuming me.
Lips surely cracked, I croak, “Why aren’t you burning?”
“I’m stone, love. Lifeless.” The dampness of his tongue provides a spare few instants of blessed relief.
“Lifeless and semi-permanent. It would take temperatures far greater than these to melt me.” He utters a swear and tangles the waves of my un-burnt hair around his fingers as he nestles his face against my neck. “Would you prefer that I burn?”
“No.” I swallow, expect my throat to be dry. It isn’t.
“Did you truly think I’d leave you to suffer this alone?”
Breaths hard, I say, “Yes.” I thought this was to be my obstacle and challenge alone.
He tuts and kisses a line down my throat. “Naive darling. I’d stand here with you even if it would kill me.”
An ache apart from the blazing heat constricts in my chest.
“You tremble, Mine.” He kisses my nose. “Feel me. Let the fire fall from your thoughts. Embrace it as regular, mundane even. Focus on me until you forget about everything else.”
I try. I latch my mind around the sensation of our soul bond and find him ecstatic, seduced, obsessed.
He’s drugged, high off the power I’ve handed him.
He’s drinking down the permission, the control, my helplessness, my desperation.
From the moment he murmured, Stand here, my feather, let me tie you up nice and pretty, he’s been blissful.
I long to join him in that euphoria.
Sometimes, in moments of stark clarity, I can almost convince myself that the only torture I’m facing right now is my inability to touch him.
But then fire licks at my eyelashes, and I remember I’ve kinda got bigger problems to worry about.
And they are less related to the fact my hands are tied to a log poking out of a pyre and more to the fact that pyre is crumbling around me as starved, crackling sparks devour it.
“This is terrifying.” I shudder.
“Isn’t,” he coos, gliding his palm from my thigh, over my hip, to my waist. There, his chilled fingers plant and his whisper near my ear taunts my sanity, “It’s fun.”
Fun.
Yes.
Of course.
Silly me.
Feeling like I’m burning alive is super duper jolly.
After all the pretty fire burns out, we will feed the monsters in the woods from our scrap bucket as though they are pond ducks, because this? All of this? It’s, actually, a date. A really, really cute and normal little date.
Just like bedroom cages, this—my dear unaware one—is peak romance.
I whimper.
For perhaps the seventieth time since Castor started this fire, I regret my decision to pretend I’m in a tampon commercial and not gonna let my cycle stop me! So the fact I’m still on my period ups the mental load of this nonsense by a rough two million percent.
I could have been safe and cozy and warm in my cage, watching the CapyZahra stream I missed last night.
But noo.
I wanted to be tied up in a bonfire.
Of all the stupid, idiotic, hair-brained—
Castor chuckles, breaking my inner monologue. “Imagine if Cael showed up right now.” Merry, he clasps my chin and indulges in nibbling my jaw. “He’d be appalled.” He kisses. Licks. “I’m truly…terrible.”
My stomach knots. “What makes you say that?”
“I’m loving this. You’re facing hormonal cacophony, terror, and mental suffering while I’m enjoying myself. I am reveling in your trauma response.”
“My…trauma response?”
“This is my fault. I suggested it. I tied you here. Instead of casting blame or leaning into anger, you cling to those who hurt you. Though my motivations are genuinely for your benefit, I am certain you’d find a way to excuse them even if they weren’t.
” He tugs on my hair and tastes me from my clavicle to my chin.
“I’m addicted to the way you are inclined to perceive me, even though I know it’s wrong.
Being seen as better than I am is a drug I’ve seldom had access to. ”
More heat assaults me, because my blood warms in me until it’s boiling. “I don’t want liking me to be wrong. Even if bad things are why I am the way that I am, it’s too late to undo them. I am this way now. I want you to like how I am. I want you to like me.”
“Like,” he echos. “How weak a word.” He wets his lips.
“What I feel for you soars realms beyond like. My adoration knows no limits. I want so much for you, but it conflicts with what I want for myself. I wish for your freedom—but only if you use it to choose to cage yourself in my hands. I want you bold—so long as you fearlessly beg me to shackle you. It seems I have taken quite fully to the allure of calling you mine. The delusion that you might wish for me to own you is one I must break, yet I fight the very thought of not possessing your every inch. Do you see me, my feather? Are you bearing full witness to the monster you have asked for? This is me when I am myself.”
This is, as I said before, the hottest thing I have ever experienced.
Resting my head back against the log behind me, I control my breaths and close my eyes.
Danger nips. Fire kisses. Heat settles against my fingernails.
I have been standing here, unharmed, for ten solid minutes.
Ten minutes in fire.
And I’m fine.
“I,” I begin, slowly, “like you as yourself.” A heavy breath enters, and leaves. “I like you.”
Castor swears, then his mouth returns to my lips, drinking me in, robbing my oxygen quicker than the flames ever could.
“Oh, darling,” he whispers when he’s had his fill of me for the moment.
“You say the most seductive things.” Cupping my cheeks, he presses his forehead to mine. “Are you easing yet, love?”
I reach for peace, and find it near, in him, in his touch, in his praise. “I think so.”
“That’s my girl.” His breath coasts against my lips—cool, like smooth granite in the shade.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” His thumbs paint over my cheekbones.
“Fire has always reminded me of someone I care about. In that way, it’s always reminded me of love.
I have spent much of my life hating the universe for the burdens it has given me…
but in this, in you, my soulmate…it has done perfectly.
I find myself unbelievably grateful. I find myself in awe.
I find myself compelled to love what I have hated and scorned, for if nature has given me you, there must be some point to it all.
You are so beautiful, so warm, so gentle, so precious.
The elation you spur within me consumes my chest, sets me ablaze with the sensation of being loved.
You, darling, are fire, and in you, I know warmth.
Even if I may never see you, feeling you like this is such a gift. ”
What a wonder that something so destructive and uncontrollable would equate to love in this man’s mind.
What a wonder…that I want to agree with him.
Love should be devouring like this. It should burn and blaze and consume.
It should leave nothing untouched. It should burrow into every crevice and make the strongest walls crumble.
It suits us—this love.
Exhaling, I let the sensation of being covered in heat overwhelm me. I let it dance in and out of my veins. I tell myself it is not painful. I tell myself it is love. And then…then I dare to believe it. “Castor?” I whisper.
“Ready?” he asks, voice a murmur against my lips.
I swallow. It doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. My throat isn’t raw. My skin isn’t chapped. I am at peace in an ocean of unyielding love. I am fae; I am fire; I am love. “Yes.”
He loosens the cloth holding me in place, purely for the seduction of it, I suppose, because once the ties come undone, he evaporates the magic.