I gasped, my back arching against the steam pipe. His skin was a brand. It was searing, blistering heat that bypassed my skin and slammed straight into my freezing core.
"Take it," he commanded, wrapping his arms around me, locking me into a cage of muscle and fire. "Take the heat, Aria. Pull it from me."
"It... burns," I wheezed, my head falling back against the iron.
"Good. Burn." He buried his face in the crook of my neck, right where the Silvering was creeping up my throat. "I won't let you go cold. I refuse to let you fade out."
He rubbed his hands up and down my back, generating friction. It wasn't gentle. It was rough, desperate. He was trying to start a fire with dry wood.
"Focus on the sensation," he growled against my skin, his lips brushing the sensitive spot behind my ear. "Don't think about the transformation. Feelthis."
He bit me.
Not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough to send a jolt of sharp, stinging awareness through my nervous system.
My breath hitched. The shivering stopped, replaced by a sudden, violent tension.
"Kaelen," I breathed his name, my hands sliding up his bare back. His skin was slick with sweat, hot and smooth over the hard ridges of muscle.
"There you are," he murmured, lifting his head to look at me. His pupils were blown wide, swallowing the gold. "I feel you coming back, little fireheart."
He kissed me.
It was a collision. It tasted of smoke and desperation. He kissed me like he was trying to breathe his own life into my lungs. His tongue swept into my mouth, hot and demanding, and the fire inside him poured into me.
I moaned, the sound lost in the hissing of the steam vent. My body, which had been shutting down, numb and unresponsive, suddenly woke up with a vengeance.
My hips snapped forward, grinding against him.
He groaned, a low rumble that vibrated through his chest and into mine. One of his hands slid down my spine, gripping my waist, while the other tangled in my hair, pulling my head back to deepen the kiss.
"Mine," he whispered against my lips, fierce and possessive. "The metal doesn't get to have you. The silence doesn't get to have you. You belong to the fire."
He pressed me harder against the pipe. I could feel the hard ridge of him through his breeches, pressing against my stomach. The urge to wrap my legs around him was overwhelming, a primal need to be as close to the heat source as possible.
My left hand, the metal one, dug into his shoulder. I realized with a start that I was squeezing hard enough to bruise, hard enough to crush, but he didn't flinch. He leaned into it.
"That's it," he urged, breaking the kiss to trail hot, wet open-mouthed kisses down the column of my throat, right over the silver runes. "Use the strength. Don't fear it."
I looked down.
Through the haze of lust and heat, I saw my arm.
The matte grey of the star-metal wasn't grey anymore. Where Kaelen's skin touched mine, where his dragon fire beat against the infection, the metal was changing.
It was glowing. A soft, warm gold was bleeding into the silver, softening the harsh, industrial lines of the transformation. The metal didn't look dead; it looked... tempered.
"Kaelen," I gasped, pushing weakly at his chest. "Look."
He stopped, breathing heavily, his forehead resting against mine. He followed my gaze to my arm, still gripping his shoulder.
The gold runes were pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
He let out a shaky breath, running his thumb over the metal skin. It was warm to the touch now.
"Tempering," he whispered, awe softening the hard edges of his face. "Dragon fire softens the alloy. It makes it malleable."
"You're not just warming me up," I realized, the hope blooming in my chest painfully bright. "You're prepping the steel."
