Chapter 10 Selene #2
“Selene.” He’s trembling, buried to the hilt, giving me a moment to adjust. “Fuck, you feel—”
“Move.” I clench around him, gratified by his sharp inhale. “Now.”
He moves.
Not gentle. Not careful. He fucks me like he’s been starving for this—hard, deep strokes that hit something electric inside me with every thrust. The bed slams against the wall. The sparks between us build and flare, lighting up the room in bursts of gold and white.
I match his rhythm, rising to meet him, nails raking his back, teeth finding his shoulder. He groans into my neck, one hand fisting in my hair, the other gripping my hip hard enough to leave marks I’ll wear proudly tomorrow.
“Harder,” I gasp. “Please—”
He hitches my leg higher, changes the angle, and I scream. The pleasure is blinding—white-hot and relentless, building with every snap of his hips. His forehead presses to mine, his breath ragged, his eyes locked on mine.
No hiding. No walls. Just this.
“Selene.” My name like a prayer. “I—”
“I know.” I pull him down and kiss him, messy and desperate, tasting my own moans on his tongue. “I know.”
He drives into me harder, faster, chasing the peak with me.
The pleasure coils tighter with every thrust, every drag of his cock inside me.
His palm presses flat over my heart, heat radiating from it, and somewhere in the haze, I register that he’s holding back—some essential part of himself still leashed.
But I’m too far gone to care. Too lost in the sensation of him filling me, the obscene slap of skin on skin, the way he groans my name like it’s being ripped from his chest.
“Come for me,” he growls against my ear. “Let me feel you.”
I shatter.
The orgasm tears through me, whiting out my vision, clenching around him in waves. His name rips from my throat as my fire flares bright enough to illuminate the room. He follows a moment later with a broken roar, pulsing inside me, his whole body shuddering as he comes.
For a long moment, we just breathe. Tangled together, hearts pounding, the sparks fading slowly from our sweat-slicked skin. His weight presses me into the mattress, and I don’t want him to move. Don’t want this moment to end.
But even as the pleasure recedes, even as my breathing starts to even out, I feel his tension returning. The walls rebuilding, brick by brick.
He rolls to the side, taking me with him, and I curl against his chest. His heartbeat is thunder beneath my ear. His skin is still furnace-hot, slicked with sweat. One arm wraps around me, holding me close, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my spine.
For a moment, everything is perfect. The afterglow. The quiet. The feeling of being held by someone who sees all of me—the fire and the stubbornness and the fear—and wants me anyway.
The sex was incredible. Earth-shattering. The kind of experience that ruins you for anyone else.
But there’s an ache beneath the satisfaction. A hollow space where more should be.
I press my palm over my heart. The skin is warm from where his hand rested, but there’s no mark. No lasting heat.
“That wasn’t everything.” I don’t phrase it as a question.
He tenses beneath me.
“It’s all I can give you.”
I push myself up on one elbow, looking down at him. His face is carefully blank—that stoic mask I’m learning to hate.
“Bullshit.”
“Selene—”
“Don’t.” I press my finger to his lips. “Don’t lie to me. Not after this. You held back. I felt it. Your hand on my heart—you were going to do it, weren’t you? The claiming. And you stopped yourself.”
His jaw works. His eyes won’t meet mine.
“The claiming fire could kill you.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“It’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”
“Maybe it should be my risk to take.” I sit up fully, the sheet pooling around my waist. “You just lit me up, Drayke. Set fire to every nerve ending in my body. And then you held back the one thing that would actually mean something permanent.”
“What we just did meant something.”
“Did it? Because from where I’m sitting, it feels like you gave me your body but kept everything else locked away.” The words are harsher than I intend, but I don’t take them back. “You lit me up and left me burning. Don’t pretend that was nothing—but don’t pretend it was everything either.”
He flinches. Actually flinches, like I’ve struck him.
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair.” I keep my voice steady even though my heart is cracking. “Rogues hunting me isn’t fair. Prophecies aren’t fair. Falling for a man who’s too afraid to love me back isn’t fair. But here we are.”
He sits up. Swings his legs over the side of the bed. I watch his back—the tense line of his shoulders, the way his hands grip the edge of the mattress.
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“And I’m trying to actually live.” I reach for him. He pulls away before I can touch him. “Drayke—”
“I can’t.” He stands. Starts gathering his clothes. His movements are jerky. Wrong. “I can’t give you that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”
“So that’s it? We share this—” I gesture at the rumpled bed, at our discarded clothes, at the air still thick with the scent of sex and smoke. “—and you just walk away?”
“I’m not walking away.” He pulls on his shirt. Buttons it with fingers that aren’t quite steady. “I’m protecting you. From me. From what I could do if I stopped fighting this.”
“I’m not made of glass, Drayke.”
“No.” He turns to face me, and the pain in his eyes nearly breaks me. “You’re made of fire. And so am I. And when fire meets fire, it doesn’t always create warmth. Sometimes it creates destruction.”
He’s out the door before I can respond.
I stare at the empty doorway for a long moment.
My body is still humming with aftershocks. My skin still tingles where he touched me. The sheets smell like him—woodsmoke and pine and that indefinable essence that’s purely Drayke.
I should be angry. Should be furious that he walked out after what we just shared. But the only thing I can muster is a bone-deep exhaustion and a stubborn determination that surprises even me.
I wrap the sheet around myself and move to the window. The moon is full tonight, washing the forest in pale light. Somewhere out there, he’s running. Fighting his own demons. Convincing himself that leaving me alone and unsatisfied is somehow noble.
Idiot. The thought is almost fond. Beautiful, infuriating, self-sacrificing idiot.
The fire in my blood is quieter now—satisfied, at least partially. But that hollow ache remains. That sense of incompleteness that no amount of physical pleasure can fill.
He held back the claiming. Pressed his palm to my heart and stopped himself at the last moment, choosing fear over faith.
I understand why. Centuries of guilt have convinced him that his touch is lethal, that loving him means burning. He carries that death with him everywhere—a wound that never healed.
But I’m not her.
I’m not fragile. I’m not unprepared. I’m a woman who’s survived poison and prophecy and the slow, agonizing fall into loving someone who refuses to be loved.
I touch the spot over my heart. The skin still hums with residual heat from his hand. Still waiting for the fire he refused to give.
He believes distance keeps me safe. But safety is an illusion—the rogues have proven that. The prophecy has proven that. Nothing about this situation is safe.
All we have is this. These moments between battles. These stolen hours of touch and want and hope.
And he’s wasting them on fear.
I stand. Pull on my discarded clothes. Move to the hearth, where the fire has burned low.
With a thought, I bring the flames back to life. They dance higher, brighter, responding to my mood with eager intensity.
My power grows every day, responds to threats and emotions with increasing strength. Maybe he’s right to be afraid.
Maybe the claiming would consume me the way it consumed the one before.
Or maybe—just maybe—I’m the one who can finally survive his fire.
I curl up on the couch, watching the flames dance. In the morning, we’ll train. We’ll pretend tonight didn’t change everything. He’ll try to put the walls back up and I’ll keep finding ways to tear them down.
Because I’ve tasted him now. Felt his hands on my skin. Heard my name torn from his lips in the darkness. And no amount of noble self-sacrifice is going to make me forget.
He thinks walking away protects me. Thinks that holding back the claiming keeps me safe.
He’s wrong.
Because here’s the thing about fire: it doesn’t stay contained. It spreads. It grows. It consumes everything in its path until nothing is left but ash and possibility.
We’ve already started burning.
There’s no putting this fire out now.