The kiss isn’t tentative. It’s wildfire—hungry and immediate and merciless.
He kisses me like he’s been starving for it, like I’m the first breath after drowning. Like he’ll never get enough. His mouth claims mine, teeth catching on my bottom lip, tongue sweeping in to taste, to take, to give.I press against him, desperate and gasping, and he meets me with equal force.
I feel the hard lines of his body everywhere.
His fingers sink into my waist. His chest rises fast against mine as he moans softly into my mouth when I deepen the kiss.
The machine roars—a guttural, grinding sound that vibrates through the walls, through the floor, through me. Gears shriek. Steam hisses. The whole Tower shudders, as if it’s been holding its breath for centuries and has finally decided to exhale.
It’s not just noise.
It’s response.
I flinch against Alder as metal clangs above us like a warning shot fired in the dark. My breath catches. We both freeze, still tangled in each other, eyes wide as the heat between us mixes with something ancient and awakening.
For one suspended second, I’m ripped back to where we are. To what this is. The Tower—this machine—is shifting, breathing, waking up.
“I thought it was broken,” I whisper, terrified of what this means and of the fact that I don’t want any of it to stop.
“So did I.”
Silence follows. Then his hands find the curve of my waist, and the moment is over. The pause between heartbeats ends. My body responds like it was built for him.
He kisses lower—along my jaw, down my throat—and each brush of his mouth is a spark to dry kindling. I shudder, breathless, helpless against the way he devours every inch of me.
“You’re delicious,” he growls against my neck, voicerough and reverent, a scrape of need that sets every nerve in my body alight.
My knees nearly buckle, and I clutch his shoulders.
“I want to taste every inch of you.”
The Tower moans again—stone grinding, metal clanking, steam rising like breath from the lungs of a sleeping god. The walls shiver. The air thickens, electric and charged and watching.
The machine isn’t just waking.
It’s bearing witness.
Still, I don’t pull away. I don’t ask questions. I don’t run. Because deep down, somewhere beneath the rational voice screaming at me to get a grip, I know this connection, this hunger, this impossible, dangerous thing between us is what I’ve been waiting for.
The boundary between us dissolves, melting into the kind of hunger, the kind ofneed, that doesn’t ask permission—it just takes.
And I let it.
For the first time since reuniting with Alder, I don’t want to be saved.
And then—
A scream.
Sharp, piercing. It splinters through the cavern like a crack in glass. The sound is so sudden, so wrong, it doesn’t register at first.
Another scream. Battered. Choked.
I jerk back.
The machine keens, a high, metallic whine that rakes down my spine like cold fingers.
There’s a screech of pain and terror and everythingthat should not be as the world crashes back into focus.
