I couldn't shift, not with my eye so damaged.
A roar of anguish rattled from my gut, and I launched into a full sprint after Maeve.
So much for my thought-out plan to drown her in giant’s cum.
I'd have to kill my beautiful human the boring way… by touching her.
My mind went wild. How would I touch her? Maybe with a kiss? It wasn't how I thought I'd end the bloodline that helped destroy my life and my people.
But I'd softened to the wee girl, and I couldn't explain why.
I was the king of the giants. Balor of the evil eye. Fiery death incarnate. Yet, something burrowed deep beneath my ribs, aching with a tenderness for Maeve I'd never felt for any mortal.
I still had to punish the girl. But I couldn't stop thinking about her lips, red and blistered beneath mine.
The thoughts pushed me to move faster, barrelling out of the alley and into the street. I flipped my eyepatch down to lock some of the magic in. It still leaked beneath the leather scrap, but kept enough power in to cast a spell that would make me invisible to any passersby. Not that there were any this time of night. The streets were dead.
"Please, someone, help!" Maeve sobbed, her voice cracked and paper thin from fear and exhaustion.
My long legs caught up with her tiny ones in moments.
She didn't see me coming, but she heard the thunder of my big boots smacking the road and my barrelling breaths, growing louder as I closed in on my target.
"Leave me alone!" she screeched at me over her shoulder. "Please!"
Maeve knew that at any moment I'd reach out and snatch her into death's embrace.
I let her keep running for several seconds more, even though I was close enough to grab her. Everything about her was exhilarating. The rabid beat of her heart, her short and panicked breaths.
It would all be over.
Before I could change my mind, I stretched my arms out and banded them around her waist. A yelp of surprise and terror clawed up her throat, and I brought us both crashing to the ground.
I rolled her over so she was beneath me, laying on her back with my massive frame caging her against the cold ground.
Her mouth opened on a scream, but before sound could escape, I brought my lips down on hers in a brutal kiss.
She was so damn small. I could crush her skull if I wasn’t careful, not that it mattered. In seconds she’d be consumed inmy flames. All because I couldn’t resist the temptation of her bare skin against mine.
It was the first time I’d touched a woman in ages. The simple kiss was almost enough to make my balls burst right there.
I drew back, expecting to see her blistered skin. Red and raw and burning.
Her chest heaved as she caught her breath. Her hair was a tangled halo around her head and shoulders.
And she was unscathed. Flustered, terrified out of her mind, and very much alive.
How could that be? I could control my fire with monsters, animals and inanimate objects, but humans had always burned at a fire giant’s touch.
“Yer immune to my flames.”
I could barely believe the words coming from my mouth.
She should be dead, nothing but a burnt husk. How was she alive? How was it that the only trace of flame on her was behind her eyes?
“I–Immune?” Her voice came out small, rife with relief and rage and something else I couldn’t put my thumb on. “Why?”
I bared my teeth, a snarl slipping out.Why?I didn’t fecking know why. This never happened before, not with a human. Giants could burn the shite out of one another, but it was said that when one came along with an immunity to the flames that it was the will of the gods that they should never part.
