It was weak to give in, but maybe she was just that.
Slowly, she touched Vane’s face, tracing down the curve of his cheekbone and lifting his chin to look at her. He froze, a kind of predatory stillness a mortal could not achieve. His shock did not last long, though, and he rose up fully onto his knees. He was so tall and her so short, they were nearly eye level like this, with her sitting on the cot.
His hand cupped the back of her head, fingers splayed across her cheek. He leaned his forehead to hers, his breath shuddering as the tips of their noses brushed. Her lips parted, the rush of exhaled air that escaped her audible in the quiet of night. She threaded her fingers in his dark hair, pulling the strands free soit fell loose around his face. He groaned softly, his other hand coming up to grip her thigh.
She wanted to kiss him, but even now, they were still on the edge of a barrier, and if she did that, it would finally shatter.
Her resolve was pointless in the end, as it always had been when it came to him.
“Please, Soren,” he whispered, their lips nearly touching.
He was on his knees, begging, but he couldn’t know she was just as desperate. He was fire, and for so long, she had felt so achingly cold. She hadn’t realized it was not merely of her own choice that her heart was coated in ice—it was the absence of him.
She closed the final distance between them, both gasping as their lips met. There was no soft build-up, only a collision of two powerful forces. He parted her lips, and she moaned in his mouth as she tasted him finally—finally.
Fire and Night.
Death, burning and ablaze.
“Gods,” she breathed between kisses.
He paused, pulling back, his eyes nearly black as he traced her swollen lips with his thumb and said in a low voice, “You and I are the only gods here, my love.”
A strange, heady sensation spread through her at his words—the feeling of power. She nipped at his bottom lip, and he hissed, but as she looked at him again, his eyes widened.
“There she is,” he murmured, his gaze locked on hers.
She blinked. “What is it?”
His mouth curved. “Ether, in your eyes. I can see it again.”
Ether…something only a powerful god possessed. Silver-hued magic, imbued into their bodies, intoherbody, and he had finally pulled it to the surface.
She curled a hand in his tunic and tugged him closer, kissing him desperately now. Need coursed through her, a current shecould not—did not—want to fight. Not now, not anymore. But Vane hesitated. She could feel him holding back.
“You’re still healing,” he murmured.
She pressed her lips together. In the minutes that passed, the ache in her abdomen had faded even further. Something was happening to her, some change, perhaps brought on by the ether. Maybe she was becoming more of Sora than of the mortal she had been born as.
Carefully, she lifted her shirt up to find there was still a raised red scar where Kelshie’s dagger had embedded itself in her stomach, but the wound was closed, and it didn’t hurt any longer.
“I think I’m alright,” she said, tracing her fingers over the scar.
Vane put his hand over hers and nodded once. His eyes were dark and heavy-lidded as he said in a rough voice, “Scoot to the edge.”
Heat flooded her everywhere as she realized what he was intending to do, half from desire and half from embarrassment. No one had ever seen her, not even in the state she was now, and he wanted to seeallof her.
“Now, Soren,” he ordered, flicking his gaze up to hers.
She bit her lip, and before thinking, she replied in a sharp voice, “Yes, sir.”
He smiled darkly as the power play began. It had been like this between them, or at least it felt familiar enough that she thought it must have. She would submit, and he would bring her to the edge, but in the end, she always won. She was a god, after all, and he washers.
His calloused hands slid up her thighs, widening them. “You’ll need to stay quiet,” he said against her skin, his mouth migrating further and further up. “Do you think you can do that?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but then he pressed his mouth to her center, over her thin underclothes, wetting the fabric. She had to bite her lip hard enough, she tasted copper to stop herself from moaning.
He chuckled, the feel of the vibration against her core driving her mad. “Good, darling. You’re doing very well.”
