I KICKED THE DOOR CLOSED, RIGHT in Whisper’s face, leaving him outside with the stone lions.
Heatroaredthrough me, growing worse with every heartbeat.
Dillon.
Something ugly tore loose inside me.
I didn’t trust him.
I didn’t trust myself—
Rook backed away from me, her eyes wide. “Lucien...?”
That bastard had had her for years.
I’d only had her for a few weeks.
Jealousytorethrough me. Smoke poured out of my back. Cinders floated around us, looking like fiery snowflakes.
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t think.
Iburned.
I caught her in three strides, imprisoned her cheeks with my hands, and kissed her punishingly hard.
She gasped as I took her.
She moaned as I licked her.
And she knew.
She knew this wasn’t about sex.
This was deeper than territorial jealousy. This was primal and urgent, and Ineededher to calm me down. To balance me out. To help me.
Icy air buffeted me as her power answered mine.
Her skin crackled with frost, and I kissed her harder with a grateful groan.
She kissed me back, gripping my hips and pulling me into her.
Marching her backward, kissing her all the way, I didn’t stop until her back hit one of the carved pillars.
She moaned as I sucked her bottom lip into my mouth.
Fire snapped along my teeth and...I bit her. Not by choice but by something far bigger than me. Something colossally powerful that couldn’t contain itself in this feeble human body—not unless it had her.
The taste of her silver-shine blood filled my mouth—sharp as frost and bright as lightning and every smoky, unstable part of me locked onto her.
If she was right that we’d kept each other alive during the crux of our evolution—if we’d somehow become more than mortal the moment our bones had healed and blood had turned metallic, then...that meant we weren’t just lovers but the very key to our existence.
A furnace heart and an ice heart.
A never-ending ouroboros where we nurtured and fed off each other, staying sane beneath gifts we never should have been given.
Our kiss turned reckless and breathless as I sucked her taste right into my soul.
