Chapter Thirteen
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I SNAPPED.
The fragile thread of control I’d been clinging to shredded. Who cared about where we were or what this meant?
We were dying.
A raw, starving sound tore from my throat as I launched myself at him.
Lucien staggered back as I crashed into his chest, my hands fisting his open shirt. I yanked him down and kissed him like I was trying to devour him whole.
He grunted in surprise, but I didn’t give him time to recover.
I bit his bottom lip like he’d bitten mine, then soothed it with my tongue before plunging back into his mouth. My fingers clawed at his shoulders, nails digging deliberately hard as I pushed him backward through the swirling mist.
“Rook—” he gasped against my mouth.
“Shut up.” I shoved him harder. The moment his back hit something solid—an invisible wall, a tree, I didn’t care—I climbed him. Literally. Legs wrapping around his waist, arms locking behind his neck.
I kissed him deeper, hungrier, grinding myself against the hard length of him.
He groaned, the sound vibrating through my chest as his hands instinctively gripped my ass, holding me up.
I rocked against him, rolling my hips with shameless need, feeling his cock throb between us through the thin fabric of his trousers. Heat flooded between my legs, slick and aching.
“Fuck.” His fingers dug harder into my flesh. “Rook—”
I silenced him again with another bruising kiss, sucking on his tongue, biting, claiming. My hands slid into his hair and yanked, forcing his head back so I could drag my mouth down the column of his throat. I licked the salt from his skin, then sank my teeth in just below his jaw.
A deep, guttural growl ripped out of him.
His hips jerked up against me, grinding his hardness right where I needed it most.
Power crackled between us—silver frost racing over my skin, golden fire licking across his.
I pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes. “I want you inside me. Right now.”
A wicked smile curved his lips as I tightened my legs around him.
In one powerful movement, he flipped our positions, slamming my back against the invisible wall. Mist swirled around us as he pinned me there, his body hard and unyielding.
“Careful what you ask for, Rook,” he growled against my ear, his hand bunching my nightgown up to my waist. Cool air kissed my bare skin before two thick fingers dragged through my wetness, testing me, teasing me, then plunged deep without warning.
I cried out, back arching.
I wanted him.
Not just sexually but desperately.
I wanted to crawl inside him and live inside his heart. I needed his fire flooding my veins. I needed every inch of him buried so deep inside me, we stopped being two separate souls and became one.
“Hearing your thoughts is going to get me into trouble.” He kissed me again, his flavour turning thick with smoke. His fingers pumped hard and fast, curling with devastating precision.
I moaned, hips rocking against his hand. Frost bloomed across the unseen wall behind me while golden flames licked over his shoulders. Our clothing vanished, leaving us gloriously naked.
Lucien withdrew his fingers. I whimpered at the loss—only for him to replace them with the thick head of his cock. He rubbed it against my entrance, coating himself in my slickness, then drove into me with one brutal thrust.
A wanton scream tore free.
He filled me completely, stretching me, burying himself to the hilt in one savage stroke. The feeling was overwhelming—pleasure edged with the faintest bite of pain.
Lucien groaned, deep and filthy, as he fucked me hard.
Each thrust slammed me back against the invisible wall, his hips snapping forward with raw, punishing force. The wet slap of skin on skin echoed through the misty realm as he took me exactly how I’d begged—fast, deep, and relentless.
My legs shook around his waist. I could barely breathe. Every brutal stroke dragged me closer to the edge, his cock hitting that perfect spot over and over until my vision sparkled with silver stars.
“Lucien—”
He released my wrists only to grab my ass with both hands, lifting me higher so he could drive even deeper.
Steam billowed thicker. The ground trembled. Our powers clashed—ice cracking, fire roaring—the entire dreamscape pulsing with raw, uncontrollable energy.
My orgasm crashed through me like an avalanche. I screamed his name as I clenched around him, wave after wave of shattering pleasure.
He followed with a guttural roar. His hips jerked into mine with short, sharp thrusts, wringing every last drop of pleasure from both of us.
For a long moment, the only sounds were our ragged breathing and the soft hiss of steam slowly fading.
Lucien pressed his forehead to mine, still buried deep inside me. His arms trembled as he held me pinned against the wall. “We could live ten thousand years, and I would still never get enough of you.”
I shivered in sated bliss.
He kissed my eyelids and the tip of my nose. “Do you forgive me? Do you still hate me for leaving you that night?”
I pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. My hands framed his face, thumbs brushing over the sharp line of his cheekbones. “Hate you?” I shook my head. “I love you. I love you even when I’m furious and terrified. I never hated you, Lucien, I just hated that you left me.”
He flinched with relief, his eyes suspiciously bright. “You don’t know what that means to me. How sorry I am.”
“Next time, promise me you’ll take me with you, okay? When our time is over, don’t try and be noble and trade your life for mine. When you die...I die.”
He groaned and kissed me hard. We fell into each other all over again, not sated, full of desperation to continue.
His pupils flared with molten flames. “I promise that when the end comes, I won’t leave you behind. I’m not going to let you go. Not ever.”
We folded to the floor, kissing all the way. Lying me down exquisitely gently, we clung to each other, skin to skin, soul to soul—naked and bare and begging. Blanketing me with his body, he slipped back inside me.
We rocked together, slowly, sensually.
Heat and need spiralled up my spine, preparing to release again.
“Not yet,” he breathed, withdrawing and sliding down my body.
My eyes opened, hazy and heavy as he left a wake of kisses down my belly before settling between my thighs and hooking my legs over his shoulders.
“But...you just came inside me.”
“So?” Spreading me open, he smiled another wicked smile. “I only care about how delicious you taste, not me.”
The first hot swipe of his tongue ripped a cry from my throat.
He licked me like he needed my taste to survive—long, filthy strokes that ended with his tongue devouring me. Every lap sent waves of liquid fire through my core, causing the frost in my blood to shockwave outward.
I arched off the misty ground, my fingers fisting in his hair. “Lucien—oh, God—”
He groaned, sending delicious vibrations shooting right from my centre and all the way to my toes. My legs trembled and tried to close around his head, sensitive—far, far too sensitive—but his hands locked around my thighs, holding me open to feast.
I looked down. Our eyes locked. He smiled as he licked me.
Oh fuck—
An orgasm hit me without warning.
It slammed through me like whitewater.
Scalding energy arrowed into my heart, healing me, fixing me, granting untold power as ice erupted with frost, stamping the ground with wintery fractals.
Lucien shuddered between my legs, drinking every pulse of my release, and when he finally lifted his head, his lips were glossy and eyes wild with fire.
“My turn.” Not giving me time to catch my breath, he flipped me onto my hands and knees. My elbows almost gave out as I took my weight—my entire body boneless.
His fingers locked around my hips, pulling me backward. I braced as he folded over me and shivered as he thrust from behind in one deliciously brutal stroke.
God, he was deep. So, so deep.
He didn’t wait for me to adjust, using the wetness of my two climaxes to take me rough and hard. One of his hands cupped my breast, the other braced against the ground. I studied his fingers as mist wove around his wrist and I lost myself entirely to him.
Every powerful thrust pushed his fire into my veins, forcing the ice to answer in perfect synergy. We fought a war of elements—hot and cold, fiery and icy.
The terrible weakness I’d carried since Ashfall Cliff simply vanished. Strength flooded my limbs, my blood, the very nucleus of my being.
His rutting turned fierce and shallow as smoke exploded from his back with those ember-etched wings. They swallowed up the strange world we existed in, blotting everything out as we rocked and moaned and fucked.
We healed each other. Fed each other from the polarising forces in our blood. We became a closed loop of pure, primordial magic.
“You’re glowing again,” he grunted. “Fuck, how am I supposed to stop when you feel this good?”
His hand cupping my breast caught fire just as a buffeting gust of flames broke free and scorched the sky.
“I might be glowing, but you’re the one who’s burning.” I moaned, pushing back against him, taking him deeper. “Less talking, more fucking.”
He chuckled at the same line I’d told him by the river the first time. “Such a demanding little thing. You want me deeper? Fine.” Leaning over me, he sank his teeth into my shoulder. “I feel you. I feel all of you. Take it, Rook. Take my fire. Take my soul. I’m all yours. I’ve always been yours.”
The bond blazed so bright, I could barely breathe. I heard his thoughts, felt his pleasure. I was him and he was me, and power detonated between us.
Another orgasm built—far more devastating than the others. “Come with me,” I gasped. “Please. Lucien—”
I tightened and spiralled and when the release hit, I almost passed out with euphoria.
He growled my name and followed.
My scream mixed with his roar and the bond exploded with a cataclysm of silver and gold. Divine, unbreakable power flooded back into our bodies as the sky cracked and thunder crashed.
For one breathless second, we were weightless.
But then, we plummeted—
Reality caught us hard.
Stone walls, iron bars, and black sheets.
I couldn’t get my bearings as I glanced around the cage where all of this had started. Everything was the same but also...couldn’t be more different.
I groaned as Lucien shifted behind me...inside me.
My eyes flew wide as I looked down to his arm lashed around my waist, pulling me against him as we lay on the mattress. Our clothes were still mostly on—my nightgown pushed up my legs and his trousers pushed down to his hips.
Unlike in the fantasy where we’d been naked and Lucien took me on all fours, here we were partially dressed and spooning.
“What...?” He cleared his throat, his cock twitching inside me. “How...?” He didn’t finish either of those questions as we fell silent and took stock of how this had happened.
I had no answers to the thousand questions of what was happening to us. I tried to speak but only managed a shaky whimper.
My body felt deliciously alive, and the terrible weakness was mostly gone.
The ice was back where it belonged, encasing my heart with wintery potential.
I caught snippets of his thoughts as he tried to unriddle what all of this meant.
I shifted, making Lucien groan behind me. His arm tightened, pulling me flush against him. “We’re still...connected.”
His hand slid down my stomach, possessive and gentle at the same time.
“I have no idea what we just did or how, but...I feel as if I’d just had the best medicine of my life.
” The tiniest flames danced around his fingernails, flickering against the white of my nightgown.
“The fire is back. I don’t feel so pathetically weak anymore.
And—” A huge yawn cut him off just as a wall of heavy exhaustion smacked into me.
The sedative afterglow of multiple orgasms turned into the worst sort of anaesthesia.
I tried to fight it.
Tried to stay awake.
We needed to untangle ourselves and run, but...my eyelids grew too heavy.
I had just enough energy to tap Lucien’s scorching arm and mumble, “Now what’s happening? I can’t keep my eyes open. I—”
Too late.
The darkness stole me.