“I love you too,” Damian whispered. “Enough to let you fall for me. Enough to catch you when you do.”
They undressed each other slowly, like ceremony. Cael’s fingers mapped the topography of Damian’s chest—scars that told stories of sacrifice, skin warm and imperfect, alive. “You’re beautiful,” Cael said, reverence thick in every syllable. “You’re like scripture written in flesh.”
“And you,” Damian said, hands tracing the curve of Cael’s waist, the sharp lines of his hips. “You’re becoming. Not just mortal. Becoming mine.”
Cael’s cock was hard now, achingly so, pulsing with a need he didn’t know how to articulate. It twitched when Damian’s thumb brushed down his chest, circled a nipple, then drifted lower. Every nerve ending sparked alive. He gasped.
“It’s… a lot,” Cael murmured. “Too much. But I don’t want it to stop.”
“It won’t,” Damian promised. “Not unless you ask me to.”
Cael’s breath stuttered when Damian leaned down, his mouth soft against his neck, then his collarbone, and lower still. Cael had never imagined pleasure as anything more than theory, a side effect of biology. But this—this was sacred. His cockthrobbed as Damian kissed the inside of his thigh, the heat of his breath ghosting so close to where Cael now ached.
When Damian licked a slow, wet line up the length of his cock, Cael nearly collapsed. “Gods—Damian…”
Damian smiled against his skin, the sound of Cael’s voice raw and wrecked igniting something in him. “Tell me what it feels like,” he said.
Cael barely managed, hips trembling as Damian took him in his mouth. “It’s… stars. I feel like I’m collapsing inward. Like I’m made of flame and light and skin that can’t hold either.”
Damian’s mouth was gentle but thorough, his blind hands moving with a healer’s knowledge and a lover’s care. He pulled Cael apart, piece by piece, until the former reaper sobbed out his release, body bucking, tears sliding down his cheeks without him even noticing.
Damian kissed him then—deep and slow and anchoring—and led him to the small bed. He reached for a carved wooden jar on the bedside table, fingers finding it by muscle memory. The scent of warm herbs and citrus rose as he opened it—salve, slick and golden, glistening on his fingers.
“I made this for you,” he murmured. “Didn’t know when you’d need it. But I knew you would.”
Cael swallowed, heat and vulnerability clashing beneath his skin. He lay back, knees bent, legs open in offering he barely understood but wanted with every fiber of his forming soul. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he confessed.
“You’re perfect,” Damian whispered. “Just breathe. I’ll take care of you.”
The first touch of Damian’s fingers at his hole made Cael flinch—not from pain, but from startling sensitivity. Damian took his time, circling gently, easing one finger inside with infinite patience. The salve made everything glide, warm andtingling, and Cael’s breath hitched again as he tried to process sensation he’d never thought he’d feel.
More fingers followed. Damian murmured praise against his thigh, told him how good he was doing, how beautiful he looked like this—open, trusting, shining with newfound need. Cael moaned, the stretch becoming something more, something addicting. He couldn’t believe his body could feel so empty and full at once.
When Damian finally moved over him, aligning their bodies, his cock hard and slick with salve, Cael reached up and cupped his face.
“Please,” he said. “I want to know what it means to be yours.”
Damian pushed in slowly, inch by inch, and Cael’s world tilted. It wasn’t pain—it was intensity. The sensation of being filled, being claimed, being held together from the inside out. He cried out, hand gripping Damian’s shoulder, then pressed their foreheads together so close they could taste each other's breath.
“I see stars,” Cael gasped. “I see everything. Even with my eyes closed.”
Damian chuckled softly, a tremble in his voice. “Then let’s make a universe here. Just for us.”
They moved together with gentle desperation, no rhythm at first—just instinct and awe. Cael clung to Damian like he was falling through space again, but this time, not alone. Every thrust made him feel more tethered to this body, this reality. Sweat mixed with tears. Gasps became moans. The world narrowed to the places where they touched—chest to chest, cock to hole, breath to breath.
Cael’s second orgasm came without warning, wrung from him by the friction and the depth and the overwhelming truth that he was loved. Damian followed soon after, his rhythm faltering as he spilled deep inside Cael, face contorted in pleasure so raw it looked like pain.
They collapsed together, trembling and tangled, their bodies sticky and aching. Neither moved. Neither needed to. Cael held him like he’d never let go.
Their joining wasn't perfect. They moved slowly, stuttered breaths and careful adjustments, both learning what it meant to be vulnerable with someone who saw everything. They broke apart when sensation became overwhelming, came together again when separation felt like abandonment, held each other through the terrifying intimacy of complete connection.
“I love you,” Cael whispered against Damian's throat, tasting salt and sweat and the indefinable flavor that belonged only to this man. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
“I know,” Damian replied, his voice broken with pleasure and emotion. “I can feel it. In every touch, every breath. You're rewriting my soul with your hands.”
Neither let go afterward, both understanding that this had changed everything in ways that went beyond the physical. They had crossed a threshold that made their previous connection seem pale by comparison, had created something unprecedented in the history of cosmic and mortal interaction.
Cael felt the change rippling outward from their joined bodies like waves from a stone dropped in still water. His cosmic nature, already strained by weeks of transformation, finally snapped completely. The last threads connecting him to his original purpose dissolved into starlight, leaving him anchored entirely to the mortal realm through the man lying beside him.
