Chapter 4 #3
But mixed with the agony was the sensation of his body against mine, oil-slicked skin sliding with each tremor, each involuntary arch of my spine.
The friction sent sparks of pleasure through the sensitized nerves, creating a contrast so intense I couldn't process it properly.
Pain and pleasure twisted together until I couldn't tell them apart, could only feel the overwhelming intensity of transformation and touch combined.
A sound escaped me—half sob, half moan—and I felt him still above me.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, and his control cracked, just slightly. "I'm trying to—the oil makes everything—" He took a shuddering breath that I felt through our complete contact. "I have not touched another soul in three hundred years."
The confession hit harder than the transformation's agony.
Three hundred years of isolation, of perfect control, of never allowing himself this kind of contact.
And now here he was, pressed against every inch of me, feeling my responses through hypersensitized skin while trying to save my life through ancient magic.
"Why?" I managed to gasp between waves of ice-fire racing through my veins.
His head dropped beside mine, lips barely brushing my ear.
"Because touch without meaning is worse than no touch at all.
Because I could feel them all—their fear, their greed, their desperate desire for what I represented rather than what I was.
" His voice dropped lower, raw with honesty.
"Because I was waiting, even when I didn't know I was waiting, for touch that meant something. "
Another wave of transformation magic crashed through me, and I cried out again, my body bowing beneath his. The oil made every movement electric, every shift of his weight against me a sensation that threatened to shatter my already fragmenting control.
"Let it happen," he whispered, his own voice strained now. "Don't fight the change. Don't fight the connection. Don't fight us."
Us.
Such a small word to carry so much weight. But I felt the truth of it through our skin, through the bond, through the magic remaking me into something that could survive in his world. We were becoming us, whether either of us had planned it or not.
The ice reached my heart like a fist closing around it, and I knew with sudden clarity that I was going to die. Not eventually, not slowly—right now, right here, naked and oil-slicked on an ancient crystal dais while the aurora bore witness above.
My ribs weren't just aching anymore—they were cracking.
I could hear them, feel them, tiny fractures spreading like frost across glass.
Each one sent splinters of agony through my chest, and my body bucked beneath Sereis's weight, trying to escape pain that came from inside.
My spine arched so violently I thought it might snap, every muscle seizing as my human form fought against what was being forced upon it.
"No, no, stay with me—" His voice came from very far away, though his lips were right beside my ear.
Through the bond, waves of calm tried to reach me, tried to soothe the savage rejection happening in my chest cavity.
But it was like trying to put out a forest fire with a cup of water.
The magic was too wild, too absolute, too much for a body that had never been meant to contain it.
My lungs stopped working entirely. Not gradually, not with warning—they simply stopped.
The muscles frozen, the capacity to expand gone, leaving me gasping like a fish thrown onto shore.
My mouth opened and closed but no air came, no relief, just the terrible pressure of suffocation mixing with the ice still spreading through my cardiovascular system.
Black spots danced at the edges of my vision. Through them, I could see our reflections in the infinite walls—a thousand versions of us, him covering me protectively while I died beneath him, the aurora painting us in shifting colors like some ancient tragedy being played out in real time.
He was saying something in the Old Tongue, words that felt like commands, but the magic wasn't listening.
My body wasn't listening. It wanted to live as a human or die as a human, but not this agonizing space between.
The cold had reached my brain now, making thoughts scatter like snowflakes in wind.
I was losing myself, losing everything, dissolving into ice and magic and pain so complete it transcended physical sensation.
I was desperate, beyond thought or dignity or any consideration except the need for comfort, for safety, for someone to make it stop.
My hand found his face, fingers clumsy and half-frozen, and I heard my voice as if from outside my body—raw and broken and instinctively reaching for the only protection I could imagine.
"Please, Daddy," I gasped, the words torn from somewhere deeper than conscious thought. "It hurts."
Everything stopped.
Not the pain—that continued its relentless advance.
But Sereis went absolutely still above me, like I'd turned him to stone with those two words.
Through the bond, I felt his reaction hit like a physical blow—shock, recognition, and then something ancient and primal and possessive beyond human comprehension.
When he pulled back enough to look at my face, his eyes had changed completely.
The glacier blue was gone, overtaken by silver-white that glowed with its own inner light.
These weren't the eyes of the controlled, careful man who'd maintained three centuries of celibacy.
These were dragon eyes, ancient and inhuman and focused on me with an intensity that should have terrified me but instead made me want to bare my throat in submission.
"Say it again." His voice had dropped to registers that made the crystal dais vibrate beneath us. Not asking. Commanding.
"Daddy," I whispered, because I couldn't not say it, because the word had unlocked something in both of us that couldn't be contained again. "Please."
His control shattered like ice in a spring thaw—sudden, violent, complete.
The kiss wasn't gentle. It was consumption, claiming, possession made physical.
His mouth covered mine with desperate hunger, and it was nothing like human kissing.
It was like swallowing winter stars—cold that burned, sharp enough to cut, and devastatingly illuminating.
I could taste magic on his tongue, feel it forcing its way down my throat, into my lungs, spreading through me with far more authority than the transformation alone had managed.
This wasn't just a kiss—it was a direct transfer of power.
He was feeding me his magic, his essence, three thousand years of accumulated power flowing from his mouth to mine.
I could taste centuries in it—lonely winters, frozen eternities, the particular flavor of isolation that came from being surrounded by people but never touched.
The ice in my veins shifted instantly. What had been invasive became invited, what had been agony became ecstasy.
My body stopped fighting and started accepting, opening for the magic like a flower for sunlight.
The cold no longer hurt—it sang, harmonizing with something fundamental in my bones that recognized its mate.
I moaned into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound like it was precious.
His hands framed my face, holding me still for his claiming, and I could feel his desperation through every point of contact.
Three hundred years of nothing, and now this—now me, writhing beneath him, calling him Daddy like it was his true name, accepting his magic like I was made for it.
Which, apparently, I was.
The kiss deepened, if that was possible.
His tongue stroked mine with a possessiveness that made me whimper, and with each stroke came more power, more magic, more of him flooding into me until I couldn't tell where he ended and I began.
The transformation accelerated, no longer fighting but racing to completion, eager now that it had permission.
Through the bond, I felt his dragon's satisfaction—primal and absolute.
I'd named him, claimed him as surely as he was claiming me.
"Daddy" meant protector, provider, dominant force that would keep me safe.
But from his perspective, shaped by millennia of draconic instinct, it meant so much more.
It meant I recognized him as my superior, my guardian, my everything.
It meant submission willing given rather than commanded.
The ice reached my brain properly this time, but instead of agony it was revelation.
I could feel my thoughts restructuring, expanding, developing capacities humans didn't have.
The ability to understand the Old Tongue he'd been speaking.
The perception to see magic as a visible force.
The strength to survive in a realm that existed partially outside reality.
When he finally broke the kiss, we were both gasping. His eyes were still silver-white, still dragon, and when he spoke his voice carried harmonics that made my newly transformed body sing in response.
"Mine," he said, and it wasn't a question.
"Yours," I whispered back, because the transformation had made it true in ways that transcended choice.
Above us, the aurora went wild, sheets of green and purple light dancing faster and faster, as if celebrating what had just occurred.
In the infinite reflections around us, I could see the frost patterns from his skin spreading onto mine—delicate traceries of blue-silver that marked me as his as surely as any wedding ring.