Chapter 30
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A perfectly (para) normal date.
This is the hottest thing I have ever experienced in my life, and—as previously mentioned—I have been subjected to an unfortunate number of racy encounters in my time. But. Well.
I’m on fire right now, so. I think this tops all prior heat levels I have ever found myself privy to.
Standing with me amid the flames as they lap against my skin, Castor teases my lips with his teeth. A low murmuring sound leaves him as he skates his fingertips across the magic cloth ropes he used to bind me here. Apparently, and thankfully, the clothing made of his magic is impervious to the flames. Of course, I also am, but my brain hasn’t fully processed that yet.
Which is why I’m here.
Bound in the blaze.
Craving the cool tastes of my soulmate’s skin.
While my mind twists and writhes, I beg for the relief and the calm and the sheer unwaveringpeacepouring off Castor. Our bond is nothing short of a balm, and I’m doing everything I can to cling to it.
He’s delighted.
While my heart panics and my brain shuts down, he dances with ecstasy.
“You’re doing so well,” he whispers against my mouth, rewarding me with a nip, a tug, a pleased hum.
I am not doing well. At all. Mentally, I’m falling apart and grappling with the side effects of enduring psychological torture.
Even though no harm is coming to me, I am on fire. It’s burning hot. Everything I’ve ever known suggests I should bein immense pain. Agony. Suffering. Every last one of my cells screams with warning, ripping me apart from the inside out.
My hair is supposed to be smoking. I am meant to be suffocating on fumes and the scent of my own flesh singeing as it turns into char and falls off my bones.
Instead, I’m physicallyfine. I know I am. Because I keep checking.
“Dwell onme,” Castor whispers, and a cool night breeze fills my nostrils—even though it’s midday. I scramble toward that promise of cold dark and find myself fighting the restraints in an effort to get closer to my mate.Heis the coolness of evening, the pledge of reprieve, the beginning and end of my hope for respite.
I want to curl up in him and escape this heat consuming me.
Lips surely cracked, I croak, “Why aren’t you burning?”
“I’m stone, love. Lifeless.” The dampness of his tongue provides a spare few instants of blessed relief. “Lifeless and semi-permanent. It would take temperatures far greater than these to melt me.” He utters a swear and tangles the waves of my un-burnt hair around his fingers as he nestles his face against my neck. “Would you prefer that I burn?”
“No.” I swallow, expect my throat to be dry. It isn’t.
“Did you truly think I’d leave you to suffer this alone?”
Breaths hard, I say, “Yes.” I thought this was to be my obstacle and challenge alone.
He tuts and kisses a line down my throat. “Naive darling. I’d stand here with you even if it would kill me.”
An ache apart from the blazing heat constricts in my chest.
“You tremble, Mine.” He kisses my nose. “Feel me. Let the fire fall from your thoughts. Embrace it as regular, mundane even. Focus on me until you forget about everything else.”
I try. I latch my mind around the sensation of our soul bond and find him ecstatic, seduced, obsessed. He’s drugged, high off the power I’ve handed him. He’s drinking down the permission,the control, my helplessness, my desperation. From the moment he murmured,Stand here, my feather, let me tie you up nice and pretty, he’s been blissful.
I long to join him in that euphoria.
Sometimes, in moments of stark clarity, I can almost convince myself that the only torture I’m facing right now is my inability to touch him. But then fire licks at my eyelashes, and I remember I’ve kinda got bigger problems to worry about. And they are less related to the fact my hands are tied to a log poking out of a pyre and more to the fact that pyre is crumbling around me as starved, crackling sparks devour it.
