Chapter 39 #2
My shift slid down to my hips as he trailed kisses down my abdomen.
“You want to know the worst part about waking up from a coma?” he asked, voice menacing.
I lifted a brow, confused, breath shaking.
“How fucking hungry I am,” he growled, and like an animal he dove between my legs and began to devour me.
I cried out, a shocked moan tearing free as I braced myself with one hand behind me on the counter. My fingers raked into his patchy, uneven hair, gripping hard as the sharp thrills built fast at my core.
He sucked on my clit mercilessly. My toes curled, my legs shook, and that delicious pain rose higher and higher until I broke. My arousal dripped from his glistening lips.
He scraped his teeth along his bottom lip like he was savoring it, then groaned, “Mmmm. My favorite flavor.”
How could I be this in love and this consumed by him?
I wanted him now, no restraint left to cling to.
Death had brushed against me twice, and it had left me craving something alive, something powerful.
Only Titus felt strong enough to anchor me back to my body.
Only Titus could answer the fire he lit in me.
“Do you remember the day you healed me from the bee reaction?” I asked, still trembling.
“I do,” he said, and his head tilted slightly, confusion flickering.
“The magic you filled me with… it was so intimate,” I admitted, cheeks burning. “I felt you in every fiber of myself, and ever since, I’ve longed for it.”
His mouth curved with a loving smile, and he kissed me—sweet and tangy with my own taste still on his lips.
“It was pleasurable for me too,” he murmured. “I’d never done that before, so it surprised me as well.” His mouth brushed the shell of my ear. “Do you want me to fill you with my magic while I fuck you, princess?”
Goosebumps prickled my skin.
“Will it strain you?” I asked, worry breaking through the heat. “You’re still recovering.”
He grinned, cocky and masculine, white teeth flashing. “Did you forget who your mate is? No, love. It takes only a small fraction of my power to fill you with my healing magic.”
He leaned in and took my lips, and then I felt it—warmth like sunlight poured into cold bones, slow at first and then everywhere, threading through my veins, remembering what it felt like to be safe.
Titus freed himself from his pants, and I wrapped my hand around his girth, stroking his impressive length. He groaned into my mouth, pressing the flared head at my entrance.
I shifted to the edge of the counter, bracing on my palms as I leaned back to take him.
His broad body hunched over me, connected at the lips, and he drove into my slick center while his magic thrummed through my veins.
I wanted his healing magic simply for the connection and pleasure, but I instantly noticed my irritated sunburnt skin had healed in a matter of moments.
It was euphoric—his warmth lighting up every part of me, his power smoothing jagged edges inside my chest I hadn’t even known were bleeding.
My burns healed beneath his magic, but it was my spirit that unraveled and rewove itself.
His soul threaded with mine as our bodies became one and I had never felt anything so strong.
The ache I had carried since Danny, since every version of myself I had buried, loosened its grip.
In Titus’s power there was heat, yes, but there was also mercy.
And for the first time in a long time, I did not feel broken.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught our reflection in the mirror— and we were glowing. The same amber that lived in his eyes illuminated our skin as his magic pulsed from him to me.
He pulled back from my kiss abruptly, breath ragged. “Oh, fuck, princess. I feel you everywhere,” he groaned. “You need to come for me, because I’m not going to last.”
He kissed me again and started thrusting harder, viciously, and I moaned his name so loud I couldn’t even control the sound. Pleasure built and built until my muscles clenched tight around him.
“Fuck, baby,” he groaned, breathless. “You’re squeezing me so tightly… are you going to come on my cock?”
The sound of skin slapping, our moans, our cries—it felt like the entire world narrowed down to this.
Then I released, and he did too, filling me to the brim. I panted like I’d run a marathon.
“Wow,” I said, breathless.
“Fuck, Pickles,” he rasped, still shaking. “I will never get bored of that. Let’s go again.”
I laughed weakly. “Ok, but first let’s get cleaned up. You smell like fish.”
He gave me a mischievous look.
“Don’t talk about your feminine odor that way, my love,” he said, teasing.
I shoved him with my foot and scoffed. “From your bandages, you ass. You smell like a salmon!”
He kissed my head and glanced at our reflection. “I can see if one of the servants can fetch scissors for my hair and a shaving blade,” he said, then he reached for the small bag I remembered seeing Antonias carry.
He pulled out the dagger of destiny.
“Or you can just use this,” he said, casually, like it was a comb and not an artifact that made my blood feel strange.
“What?” Panic flashed through me. “You want me to do it?
What if I cut you?”
“Then I’ll heal in ten minutes,” he said with a shrug. “Come on. I’ll teach you.”
He placed the blade in my hand.
The moment it settled into my palm, it didn’t feel like holding a weapon so much as holding a living thing—heavy, humming, awake.
The metal warmed against my skin, and something deep in my chest answered it before my mind could, like recognition without memory.
I tightened my grip instinctively, then forced my fingers to loosen again, unsettled by how natural it felt and how wrong that naturalness was.
Titus studied my face. “Is everything ok?”
“Yes,” I replied, then swallowed. “Just…” My voice cracked. “I miss her. Zephyros.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. Her loss still ached in a place I tried not to touch.
And holding the blade she had sacrificed herself to retrieve brought it all rushing back—the memory of her strength, her loyalty, the way the world had once felt safer with her in it.
But I didn’t dare admit how the blade had responded to me.
Or how I had responded to it. The sensation had been intimate, unsettling, almost aware.
And I had no idea what it meant. How was I supposed to explain something I didn’t completely understand?
His expression softened, and he brushed his thumb over my knuckles. “I know,” he murmured.
He guided me to the counter and steadied my wrist, showing me the angle. A large, claw-foot tub began to fill with steaming water, and there I was—sitting on the sink while the High Lord trusted me with a blade against his throat.
Row by row I scraped the shaving foam away. A few tiny nicks appeared, then healed almost instantly.
Next, he sat on the floor between my legs, facing away from me, and I trimmed the longer patches of his hair to match the shorter lengths.
The dagger was so sharp it cut through his thick tresses like butter, but it never so much as grazed my fingers, no matter how I held it—strange, and more unsettling the more I noticed it.
It would not cut me. I didn’t feel “comfortable” with it so much as…
familiar in a way I couldn’t explain, like it wanted my hand and my blood knew that.
We bathed together, washing away the remaining evidence of the Temple from his skin. He soaped me gently from head to toe, reverent and careful, and I did the same for him, as if we could scrub the memory from our bodies.
After, we crawled into bed with fresh linens—someone must have come in while we were in the washroom—and he pulled me close. We talked about everything: the revolution brewing in Ashenport, my dinner with Antonias’s family, their secret identities. But I had questions of my own.
“So you and Antonias planned all of this?” I asked. “To rescue me? Did Cercies know?”
Titus’s face tightened as memories pained him.
“Cercies was out of range for mind-to-mind when I tried to warn him the Holy Guards were coming for him,” he said quietly.
“But I passed Antonias a cryptic, after-burn note to give him. I told him that if he got caught and collared, I would manipulate the flame so he went first, so he could demand to leave and not fall with the Temple. I knew I could shield you, but I wouldn’t be able to save him from the flames.
” His throat bobbed. “I’m sorry you had to endure as much of the ritual as you did.
I had limited choices. I tried everything I could to save you both. ”
“So why wait to blow everyone up until after your turn?” I asked. “Cercies could’ve left and you could’ve done it then, right?”
He exhaled, eyes heavy. “That was the plan originally, but Caddver wouldn’t take his eyes off me. I couldn’t give him any indication I was going to attack, or he would’ve set off my collar. When it was Aurelius’s turn, he finally became distracted enough for me to unleash my flames.”
He looked at me, remorseful amber eyes searching mine. “I had an impossible choice,” he admitted. “I felt you would rather go through with it with Cercies than watch him die.”
I cupped his face. “You chose right,” I whispered. “He didn’t hurt me, Titus. And now Calpurnia has her mate.”
He closed his eyes and leaned into my touch, lips pressed into a hard line like he was holding himself together by force. "Nothing about what happened to you is ok, I even had to murder innocent slaves in the process. I did so quickly, and took their pain away, but I hate myself, Delilah."
I glanced down at the floor, attempting to suppress the uneasy emotions welling up inside me.
“Titus…I know something about being that kind of slave, and trust me, a quick painless death might have been the first mercy they’d known in a long time.”
He looked to me, startled and broken. His mouth opened to speak but I stopped him.
“One day, when I’m ready, I will share my story.”
“But what you did gave the revolution here in Ashenport a huge advantage,” I said. “They asked us to join.”
He nodded, respecting my boundary, then he quirked a brow. “Oh? And what did you say?”
“I said yes, obviously,” I replied, and the fire returned to me with the words. “After we get the God Dragon and scare off Folliade’s invasion, we still have a lot to fix in the Kingdom of Flame.”
His mouth softened into something proud and tender. “Seems like you finally figured it out.”
“Figured what out?” I asked, genuinely confused.
He grinned widely, stared deeply into my eyes while sweeping my hair behind my ear. “ That you are a ruler, Delilah.”
Emotion punched through me. I threw my arms around his neck and squeezed him like I needed to feel him solid and alive.
After the politics, we talked about our wedding.
We decided on a private ceremony on the cliff overlooking the sea.
He said he would find a Unifier in the morning—someone who conducted the blood binding ceremony.
He made one request: that I wear red. I told him I wanted a ruby ring to match, and his eyes went soft like the color itself meant something deeper to him.
We made love two more times after that, until our bodies finally refused to move from exhaustion. We ate artisan bread and fine cheeses with red wine, naked and tangled together, and I laid my head on his warm chest. Around Titus, I never had to worry about being cold.
“After the wedding we’re going to have to go back to Embris,” he said, hesitation threading his voice. “We need to find the God Dragon.”
“I know,” I murmured, eyelids heavy. “But let’s have one more day of this bliss, and then we can go back to war plotting and strategizing.”
“Every day that I’m with you… is bliss… Pickles,” he whispered.
“I can’t believe I finally get to marry you tomorrow,” I said softly.
In the moonlight, I saw a glistening tear roll down his cheek. He pressed my hand to his lips and kissed it, long and reverent.
“I’ve waited a couple lifetimes to be your husband,” he whispered. “You make me so happy—don’t break my heart, Pickles, because you have all of it, and if you break it, there will be nothing left of me.”
“I promise,” I whispered, and the words felt like a vow as I drifted into sleep, naked in his arms, held by warmth and love and the fragile, terrifying hope that this time we would get to keep it.