CHAPTER 239: A LITTLE LONGER...

SOREN

When her lips touched mine,

I stopped.

Not metaphorically. Not in the casual human sense of freezing. I mean my entire existence malfunctioned. My lungs forgot their function. My pulse abandoned its rhythm. My magic misfired. My mind lurched sideways like it had been struck with divine force.

Everything, every single part of me, halted.

Because Eris Igniva was kissing me.

Not accidentally. Not under duress. Not in delirium or madness or weakened judgment.

With intention. With choice. With a certainty that shattered every rule I had clung to since the day I first met her.

I couldn’t comprehend it.

My blood turned to ice, real ice, the kind born of divine instinct, the kind that responded to emotion I had never allowed myself to name, let alone feel.

Time bent. Warped. Paused.

And then,

My heart restarted violently, like the organ had decided to compensate for its brief death by trying to punch through my ribs. The rush of heat beneath the frost was so sudden it hurt. The beat that followed was so forceful I almost staggered.

My hands moved without the faintest permission from my mind.

One slid to her waist, fingers splaying like I needed to confirm she was real, warm, alive, here.

The other buried itself in her hair, a dangerous, strands of fire-softened silk slipping between my fingers like molten light.

I pulled her into me.

Not carefully. Not restrained. Instinct, pure, unfiltered instinct, took over. I eliminated the space between us because any distance at all felt unbearable, felt like suffocating.

The kiss deepened. Her mouth opened against mine, and I tasted her properly,

Fire. Smoke. Heat. Magic and mortality tangled together. Chaos shaped into woman. Divinity that hummed beneath her skin like a living sun.

It was overwhelming. It was perfect. It was everything I had tried not to want and everything I would ruin myself for in a heartbeat.

Fantasy had never come close. I had imagined this, of course I had, during nights where sleep refused to come and she lingered under my thoughts like a curse.

But imagining her was nothing. Nothing compared to her lips against mine, to the heat of her breath, to the way she kissed like the world wasn’t burning around us.

And she was melting against me.

Her body softened, tension draining out of her as if she had decided, finally, blessedly, to trust me with this, with her, with something sacred and frightening and precious.

Her hands slid up my chest, tracing the glowing runes etched into my skin, markings that pulsed in response to her touch, to the fire under her palms, to the reality that she was choosing me in a moment that demanded so much more from both of us.

She could feel my heart. Racing. Pounding.

Behaving in a manner that would have concerned a physician but felt exactly right, exactly fitting, exactly aligned with the crisis unfolding inside me.

And the world,

Disappeared.

It didn’t fade. It vanished.

The screams. The demons. The heat. The collapsing city. All of it dropped away like scenery in a play whose script no longer mattered.

There was only her.

Her mouth on mine.

Her breath mingling with mine.

Her body fitting perfectly against my own.

The soft sounds she made, gods, those sounds, that seared themselves into my soul.

We kissed like we had been doing this for years, like our bodies had always known this rhythm even when our minds refused to acknowledge it.

She breathed into me, I breathed into her, because sharing breath felt necessary, felt efficient, felt like anything else was a waste of precious seconds we had not earned but desperately needed.

Heat built between us, not destructive heat, not her flames threatening to consume me, not my cold threatening to harm her. Something new. Something balanced. Something impossibly harmonious.

We were opposites. Elements that should have annihilated each other. But instead we created equilibrium, a space where fire did not burn and ice did not freeze, where we met in the middle and became something neither of us could be alone.

Prophecy never accounted for this. It hinted. It whispered. But it never captured how right this felt, how inevitable, how terrifyingly simple.

I was falling.

Not metaphorically. Not romantically.

I was losing control, slipping under the weight of sensation so consuming it turned my mind to static and my magic to instinct.

Her hand slid higher, fingers brushing my neck, tracing the soft glow of divine light. And that touch, gentle, reverent, unbearably intimate, sent a surge of ice magic so powerful through my spine that my knees nearly buckled.

I needed to stop.

I should have stopped.

Demons were killing people. The city was burning. She needed protection. The spell needed casting. The situation was still catastrophic.

But,

Her mouth was soft. Her body fit against mine like destiny carved us from matching stone. Her hands trembled against my skin in a way that made my heart ache, made my restraint crumble, made the entire world feel small compared to the space where she existed.

Just a little longer.

Just one more breath. One more kiss.

One more moment to memorize the taste of her, the weight of her in my arms, the truth of her choosing me in the middle of hell.

Just long enough to make sure I would never forget this, never forget her,

Even if everything else burned.

But "a little longer" stopped being enough.

Because the moment I thought it,

The moment I allowed myself that fraction of indulgence...

Something inside me snapped.

Not something rational. Not something imperial. Not something trained or controlled or shaped by years of discipline.

Something older. Something instinctive. Something that had been holding its breath for far too long.

Her lips moved against mine, and I broke.

I kissed her deeper.

Not the careful, restrained kind of deep. Not a slow exploration. No, this was hungry. Desperate. The kind of kiss a man gives when he finally touches what he has wanted for so long he stopped believing he’d ever have it.

My hand in her hair tightened, pulling her closer until her body molded against mine like she belonged there, like she had been carved to fit into the spaces I didn’t show anyone else.

The kiss shifted, grew rougher, needier, more consuming.

Her breath caught, small sound, involuntary, but it unraveled me completely.

I tilted her head to deepen the angle, mouth claiming hers with a certainty I had never allowed myself to feel. I kissed her like she was air, like she was oxygen I had been starved of for years, like I could fill my lungs with her and still crave more.

She made another sound, somewhere between surprise and surrender, and the noise shot through my body like lightning.

My thumb brushed the edge of her jaw, tilting her up, guiding her mouth open so I could taste her deeper, so I could feel the way her breath hitched when my tongue slid against hers,

Gods.

Her fire surged, heat rolling off her like a slow, deliberate burn...

And my cold rose to meet it, not to smother but to hold, to temper, to balance.

Two forces that should have destroyed each other instead finding a rhythm so intoxicating I felt drunk on it.

Her hands clutched my shoulders, fingers curling into my skin like she was trying to anchor herself, or maybe anchor me. Her nails dragged lightly, and a low sound escaped my throat, a sound I didn’t intend to make, a sound I had no control over.

She kissed me back just as fiercely now,

Matching me, meeting me, pushing into me,

And I was gone.

Lost.

Utterly consumed by the taste of her, by the heat in her mouth, by the way her body pressed against mine like she couldn’t get close enough, like she needed me just as much as I needed her.

My other hand slid down, tracing the curve of her waist, memorizing every inch, every line, every place she shivered when I touched her. Her fire licked at my skin, hot enough it should have hurt, powerful enough to blister,

But it didn’t hurt.

It felt like being claimed. Marked by her.

My lips left hers only long enough to catch air, just a single, shaky breath,

Then returned, harder, deeper, more desperate than before.

Her lips were soft, perfect, parted just slightly, inviting me back,

And I went willingly, helplessly, greedily.

I kissed her like I wanted to drown in her.

Because I did.

Because in that moment, drowning in her was the safest thing I’d ever done.

And the world fell away completely, collapsing into a single point of sensation where our mouths met, where our magic tangled, where nothing existed except her.

The demons could have been a universe away.

Hell itself could have cracked open beneath our feet.

I wouldn’t have noticed. I wouldn’t have cared.

All that mattered, all that existed, was Eris.

Her breath. Her mouth. Her warmth. Her hands gripping me like I was the only solid thing in a collapsing world.

I didn’t just lose myself in the kiss.

I surrendered to it.

To her.

To the terrifying, exhilarating truth that I was already hers,

Long before she ever pressed her lips to mine.