Didn’t balance.
“Win,” I pressed. “Now. It needs to be now or I’ll damage you.”
He stared back at me. “I’m fine.”
“What?”
“Keep going,” he insisted, grinding his jaw. Against the heat—or a rush of sensation as he would register it—I was inundating his body with, his body that he was leaving unprotected, even as my flame spread outward beyond his chest, up his collarbone, to his arms.
“It’s gonna burn you. I’m talking tissue damage, Win.” He fucking knew that.
“Don’t… care. Don’t stop… please.”
He went to grab my hands to anchor them to his chest, but I jerked back, breaking contact.
I grimaced as he let out a pained cry, tears swimming in his eyes.
“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he choked out, scrubbing his hand over his face.
“It’s all right.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “No. It’s really not.”
“Did it help at least? Or are you hurt? Shit, or both?”
“I’m already healing.”
So it had hurt him, then.
I swallowed down the distress of that—and a lecture. Now really wasn’t the time.
He wasn’t… right.
And in the next few moments, he started shuddering again, revealing it hadn’t even at least helped. So he’d just sustained that damage for nothing.
I hated this.
I hated seeing him like this.
Distressed. Desperate. Pained.
“Feed from me, Win.”
He jolted. “You can see I’m not fully stable… emotionally either. Mentally. Using your fire is one thing. It’s in your control. Feeding, though, that’s on me.”
“I get it. And I’m still telling you to go right on ahead if you think that will help.”
“Z, what if I go too far?”
“You won’t.”
“We don’t know that.”
I reached out and fingered his soft dark hair. “Ido. I knowyou. In bad times and good. In calm and in your obsessive states. In solid judgment and fucked-up judgment. In joy and pain.” I winced. “In passion and heartbreak.”
His eyes swam with more emotion.
He grasped my hand on him, stroking my fingers softly.
