I freeze.
Beneath my hands, I feel the shift.
His skin—his cold, rigid, unyielding stone skin—suddenly splits its matrix.
The calcified ridge fractures. The mineral seam breaks apart. And in its place, I feel something else entirely.
Warmth.
Not surface warmth. Not the faint ambient heat of the lamps.
Deep, radiating, molten internal warmth.
It spreads beneath my palms like liquid fire, seeping up through the layers of stone, transforming the freezing granite into something smooth and yielding and alive.
The heat intensifies.
It radiates up through my forearms, into my elbows, spreading across my skin in waves.
I suck in a sharp breath.
"Holy shit," I whisper.
The transformation is stunning.
His skin—his slate-gray, marble-hard skin—is softening. Not just easing. Not just releasing tension. It's becoming somethingelse entirely. Something warm. Something that pulses with internal heat, glowing faintly beneath the surface.
I can feel it under my hands. The way the stone is melting into something molten, something that threatens to blister my palms if I press too hard.
The amber veins beneath his skin flare brighter. They pulse with a steady, rhythmic glow, and I can feel the heat radiating from them, spreading outward in concentric waves.
"Cyprian," I breathe. "What—"
And then he makes a sound.
It's low. Gravelly. Uninhibited.
A deep, rumbling growl that vibrates straight through the table and into my core.
I feel it everywhere.
In my thighs, pressed against his sides. In my hands, still resting on his back. In my chest, where my heart is suddenly pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears.
The sound is raw. Vulnerable. Completely stripped of the formal, controlled exterior he's maintained for the past three weeks.
It's the sound of something breaking.
I stop moving.
My hands are still on his back, my palms resting on the newly warm, yielding skin. The heat continues to radiate, pulsing beneath my touch, and I can feel the way his body has shifted—the way the rigid stone has transformed into something alive and responsive.
"Cyprian," I say again, quieter this time.
He doesn't respond immediately. His breathing is ragged. Uneven. Like he's fighting something.
"Talk to me," I say gently. "What's happening?"
"I do not—" His voice cracks. He stops. Tries again. "I do not have words for this."
