Chapter 18 #2
His frustration, when it came to his lack of magic. She didn’t know him from before, but it didn’t matter. Because he was a different man than he’d been back then. He wasn’t a famed Firemage anymore.
He was just Arawn Laroux...a man without magic.
And it didn’t bother her one bit.
This was not Soraya.
This was not the past.
And as he looked at Ezer, warmth suddenly surged in his veins. It came, not from the core of him, that part in his soul where he’d always felt his magic was kept. It came instead from his chest, right over his cold and broken heart.
And suddenly, as easy as breathing...
A flame surged to life in his hands.
She was alive.
And she was leaning against him, the heat of the fire nothing compared to the press of her body against his.
“I’ve always heard that Firemages are warmer than most,” he said.
And so, he lifted an arm...welcoming her to him.
An offer. A line of hope, cast out, and in that moment, he prayed she would accept it.
A sigh left her lips as she sidled up next to him, and by the gods, that sound nearly broke him.
There they sat.
Together.
It was a simple touch, so delicate as he held her, and yet every part of Arawn was swept up in it. Every part of him was about to be devoured.
He’d never been this close to anyone before. He’d never wanted it...not like this.
“You still smell like a raphon,” he said, because he needed something to lighten the mood, to break the tension he felt, to stop his body from shaking in carefully controlled wanting.
He could not give in.
He would not give in.
It wasn’t even Absolution. To act on this wanting?
It was utterly forbidden.
But then she dug her elbow into his side, and every part of him felt like it had been struck by lightning at that steady press. The joke had backfired, because now...
Now, he wanted her to touch him again, to press against him harder.
More.
He needed more.
“And you smell like ashes,” she said.
They fell silent, the crackling fire—his fire, because of her—still blazing.
“Your magic came back,” Ezer said softly. “Six showed me. You started the fire. A real flame, not just a candle this time.”
He took a deep breath.
Because how could he explain to her, the way she made him feel? How could he ever give her the words she deserved, the truth that was slamming against his heart like a war hammer?
Tell her. Every beat of his heart echoed it. Tell her, the way you never told Soraya.
He tried to shove those words, like intrusive thoughts of their own, into the castle he’d forged in his mind.
But...he found the doors locked.
As if he didn’t really want to hide them away.
“You...” He swallowed, giving himself a chance to hold back.
To not give in and take that plunge over the edge.
But...gods. He needed to. He’d never needed anything more than to tell Ezer the truth.
“You have done something to me, Minder. Something I have not felt before. Something...that scares me.”
Her head was on his shoulder now.
He relished the weight of it.
His heart was beating too fast, right against her ear, and he knew that she knew. He felt that she could sense it too, that fire that was burning inside of him again...and it was all for her.
“Why?” she asked.
He took an unsteady breath. “When I found you in the woods, I thought you were dead. And it broke something loose inside of me.”
She looked at him.
It was almost the tipping point.
“What sort of something?” she asked. He could see the way her hands had curled into fists. The way she was leaning, leaning, pressing harder against his side as if she, too, was holding herself back.
And he didn’t want her to anymore.
He wanted no walls between them.
No shields.
No bars.
“Something I’m not supposed to feel,” Arawn said. “Something forbidden.”
He’d said it.
He’d started the plunge, over the edge into darkness. But it was not dark. It was warm and bright, and it felt like coming home.
So, he reached for her chin, and tilted it up gently, slowly, until their gazes met. He nearly melted into a puddle of desire right there, with his fingertips on her skin. He’d never touched anyone like this. Not even when he’d held Soraya’s face in his hands...because she hadn’t belonged to him.
By then, she’d already given herself to the darkness.
Ezer was light.
Ezer was fire, and...
And he’d be damned if he didn’t let her burn him.
“And for the first time, Minder...I am doubting the laws for my matching. I am...” He sighed, nearly bridging the gap. “I am not sleeping, because when I do, I think of you.”
She sucked in a breath.
“When I see you, I feel like I can’t breathe.”
Her eyes were molten upon him.
“When I am near you...it is an effort to look away.”
“Why?” She asked. So boldly. Without hesitation, his Minder questioned him.
“Because you are different,” he said. “You are...like nothing I’ve ever encountered before.”
“And that’s a good thing?” she whispered.
“I’m still trying to figure that out,” he said.
But his mind whispered yes.
Because he could feel the war in his own heart, raging. He’d been fighting so hard, for so long, not to give in.
But in this moment...
He was waving a white flag.
He wanted to lose.
He could feel his entire body shaking, too weak to hold back any longer. He needed her. He needed her now, or he would combust.
“Are you afraid of me, Firemage?” she asked him.
Oh, gods, if only she knew.
“Terrified,” he whispered, as he stared at her lips.
He was her future king. And she was a Raphonminder, one who might die the moment she passed into the Sawteeth. His heart was a shattered thing, and it wasn’t his to give. Not to her. Not to anyone.
But in this moment...he didn’t care.
Because he might die right now, if he didn’t have her.
“You can kiss me now,” Ezer said.
And those words...
They ignited him.
They turned his insides into an inferno.
“I don’t know that I should, Minder.”
It was her that guided his hand to her face. Her, that requested he touch her again. “I don’t know that I care,” she whispered.
They leaned in at the same time.
And his world changed when their lips met. When they chose each other, such claiming in their first kiss. It was slow, gentle, at first.
He held himself back because he had never kissed anyone before. Because he had never felt such a wave of desire such as this. She wanted him. Oh, gods, she wanted him, in a way on one ever had before.
Her lips parted for him, and his tongue slid across hers.
He was floating. He was falling. He was flying.
He would devour her if she let him, and he’d let her devour him, too, as they dove headfirst together into the unknown.
“Ezer,” he groaned, unable to keep her name from his lips as he tasted her, and drank her in, and there was nothing forbidden or unwanted about the way his body shifted for her, how he turned to stone when he pulled her into his lap.
Her fingertips dug into his back, so hard he gasped against her as she took up space as if she’d been made for him, as if they were soldered together.
The kiss became a dance, a pulse, and she moved against him, and there was suddenly too much space between them, too much heat, too much need...and it could not be satisfied.
Not until they—
A growl sounded from Six.
And then a voice, like nails scraping against his senses as Kinlear spoke aloud...shattering the moment.
“Well. This is certainly an interesting sight.”