My own pleasure fades into background noise, but I don’t mind. I just lie there as his hips snap against mine, getting faster and more desperate. The sound of skin against skin fills the clearing, and in the back of my mind I know this should feel good, because it usually feels good when he’s rough and needy. But the golden haze is wrapped around me so thick, and I’m happy to let him do whatever he needs so he can feel good, too.
Eventually, his rhythm falters, his body goes rigid above me, and he buries his face in my neck with a soft groan. He pulses inside me, warmth spreading, and I hold him through it, my fingers tracing lazy patterns on his sweat-slicked back.
When he stills, he doesn’t pull out immediately. He just shifts his weight to the side and gathers me against his chest, our heartbeats syncing, slow and steady.
My eyes are heavy as sleep pulls at me like a tide, warm and irresistible.
“I want it to be like this forever,” I tell him again. “No destiny. No monsters. Just me and you, always.”
His hand strokes through my hair, slow and rhythmic.
“Get some sleep,” he says, and his voice is soft and strange, as if he’s here but not actuallyhere.“We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Morning. Yes. That sounds nice. We’ll figure everything out in the morning.
My eyes drift closed, and then I’m drifting into a place filled with golden light where nothing hurts, nothing matters, and I don’t have to be anyone at all.
6
EVIE
I’m standingwaist-deep in the freshwater pool with Kieran Cross.
The excuse was cleaning up after days at sea, because that’s a perfectly sensible reason to strip down to undergarments and wade into a moonlit spring together.
His weapons are laid out on the nearest rock in a pattern that suggests he could arm himself in under two seconds if necessary, because even paradise doesn’t turn off Kieran Cross’s survival instincts. He’d sleep with a blade under his pillow in the Garden of Eden and call it practical.
Normally, I’d know the exact temperature of the spring. My scanning would map the mineral content, the depth, and the flow rate. But after eating that fruit and the magic went quiet, the silence in my head is restful—almost blissfully so.
Except for the fact that I can’t feel Kieran’s heat signature. At first it was peaceful, but now, I miss it. Because the furnace that’s told me the truth about him since the first day of classes—through the Fury Loop, waking up in his bed after he found me at the Crown, and through Jade’s hurricane that tried to kill us—is gone.
I’m experiencing Kieran Cross the way everyone else does.
Even without the data, I’m not scared of him. I’m standing waist-deep in water with the deadliest man I’ve ever met, and my heart is racing for reasons that have nothing to do with fear.
Maybe the heat sensing was never the reason I felt safe around him. Maybe it was just the proof that I should.
Then his fingers brush my hip, and I lose the thought entirely.
Because Kieran Cross is touching me. Not accidentally, or in the context of combat training, or forced proximity during a crisis. He’s just... touching me.
His thumb is tracing slow circles on my skin,each one wider than the last, like he’s testing how much of me he’s allowed to claim, and his eyes are dark and intent on my face. The moonlight catches the water droplets on his collarbone like scattered silver, making him look more god than man, and I want to touch every single one of them.
My gaze catches on his left bicep, whereSteel Before Spellsis inked in ornate Gothic script. It’s familiar from glimpses during training when his sleeves ride up, and from when I fire traveled into his room seconds before he got out of the shower.
Now, my fingers move before my brain grants permission, tracing the letters across his skin. He stills under my touch, his muscles coiling, but he doesn’t pull away.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he observes, studying me closely.
“I’m always thinking.”
“I know.” His other hand finds my hip, and suddenly I’m pressed against him, chest to chest, with only thin wet fabric between us. “That’s what makes you dangerous.”
My laugh comes out soft and warm, like honey, and I lean into him instead of pulling back. “I’m not dangerous. You’re the one with seventy-three…”
I stop myself, but it’s too late.
His hands don’t leave my waist, but his entire body stiffens.
