She leans in.
It’s not calculated. Not seductive. Just an impulsive movement, closing the distance between us like she can’t help it.
Her lips brush mine. Soft. Tentative. A whisper of contact that sends electricity straight through my nervous system.
I freeze.
Every instinct screams at me to pull back. To remember that she’s twenty-one and I’m responsible for keeping her alive, and this violates every professional boundary I’ve ever maintained.
But my body doesn’t care about boundaries.
My hand comes up, cups her jaw without permission from my brain. Her skin is warm beneath my palm. Impossibly soft. I can feel her pulse racing under my thumb where it rests against her throat.
She makes a small sound against my mouth. Relief, maybe. Or surprise that I’m not pushing her away.
I should push her away.
Instead, I kiss her back.
It’s not careful. Not gentle. My control fractures as I tilt her head and take her mouth the way I’ve been wanting to since the moment she pressed against me in that fissure. Since I felt her lips against my palm in the darkness. Since I realized keeping her alive had become about more than duty.
Since the moment I first set eyes on her, if I’m honest with myself.
She tastes like cold air and exhaustion and something impossibly pure, something that makes every nerve ending light up. Her breath comes faster against my mouth, warm and unsteady. Her fingers slide from my arm to my chest, gripping my vest, pulling herself closer.
The kiss deepens. Her lips part beneath mine, and I’m lost, drowning in the feel of her, the way she responds without hesitation, the small sound she makes when my tongue toucheshers. Her other hand finds my jaw, fingers sliding into my hair, and the sensation shoots straight down my spine.
Heat builds between us, her dragonfire bleeding through despite the suppression, my own weakened power rising to meet it. I can smell smoke and summer storms, feel electricity crackling across my skin where we touch. For seconds, the magic surges. Almost there. Almost within reach.
Her scent wraps around me. Female. Hers. It fills my lungs with every breath, makes my head spin in ways that have nothing to do with oxygen deprivation.
Then the magic dies.
Crashes back into nothing, like hitting a wall.
The loss breaks the moment.
I pull back. Try to catch my breath and fail.
Ember stares at me, fingers still twisted in my vest. Her lips are swollen. Her eyes dark with desire and confusion.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t.” My voice comes out hoarse. “Don’t apologize.”
“But you—”
“I know what I did, Ember.”
The use of her name—not clipped, not professional—makes her eyes widen.
“Then why did you stop?”
Because you’re twenty-one and I’m centuries old and this is wrong on every level that matters. Because I’m responsible for keeping you alive, and kissing you complicates that in ways I can’t afford. Because if I don’t stop now, I won’t stop at all.
I don’t say any of that.
“Because we’re trapped in a cave with limited resources and no way out,” I say instead. “And that’s not a good time to make decisions we’ll regret.”
