"No, I—" I closed my eyes, mortified by the heat climbing my neck. "Your hands are warm."
"That's generally how humans work, yes."
"I mean—it's a lot. The sensation. I'm not used to—" I gestured vaguely, unable to articulate that every point of contact betweenhis warm skin and my cold felt amplified, electric, like my nerves had been recalibrated to register him specifically. "Everything feels... more. With you."
His expression softened into something I couldn't look at directly, like staring into light. "Is that the dragon thing?"
"Partly. Mostly it's just... you."
He pressed his forehead to mine. "I'm going to take your shirt off now. And then I'm going to touch you everywhere. And if it's too much at any point, you tell me. Okay?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He peeled the Henley over my head with careful hands, easing it past my shoulders, his fingers trailing fire in its wake. When the fabric cleared my head and he tossed it aside, I fought the urge to cross my arms over my chest. Stupid. I was a professional athlete. I'd been shirtless in locker rooms a thousand times. But this was different. This was Cinder looking at me—at my too-pale skin and the faint bluish tinge that never fully faded, at the scars on my ribs from a fight I'd had at sixteen when I couldn't control the ice and it had cut me from the inside—and I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with nudity.
"You're beautiful," he said quietly.
I turned my face away. "I'm not—"
"Shut up." He said it gently, pressing a kiss to my collarbone that made my whole body jolt. "You are. You look like something carved from a glacier. Like you belong somewhere ancient and impossible." His mouth moved lower, tracing the ridge of my sternum, and I made a sound I'd never made before—small, desperate, embarrassingly needy.
"Cinder—"
"I've got you." His lips found the scar on my left side—the long, thin one that followed the curve of my ribs—and he kissed along it with a tenderness that made my eyes sting. "What's this from?"
"The ice," I managed. "When I was young. Before I learned to control it."
He didn't say sorry. Didn't wince or pull back. He just kissed the next inch of it, and the next, mapping the damage with his mouth like he could rewrite the memory through sheer gentleness.
My hands hovered uselessly at my sides, fingers opening and closing against the couch cushions. I wanted to touch him back—God, I wanted to—but every time I reached for him, a spike of fear shot through me. Too cold. Too dangerous. What if the ice surged again, what if I lost control, what if—
"Hey." He caught my wrist, guiding my hand to his waist. "Touch me."
"What if I hurt you?"
"You won't."
"You don't know that."
He pressed my palm flat against his stomach, holding it there, and I felt the warmth of him through the thin cotton of his shirt—the steady rise and fall of his breathing, the softness of skin over lean muscle. My dragon rumbled, and the cold in my hand receded like a tide pulling back from shore.
"See?" he whispered. "You won't."
My fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, tentative, testing. When nothing froze, when his skin stayed warm and unharmed beneath my touch, something inside me loosened by a fraction.
He pulled his own shirt off in one smooth motion, and I forgot how to breathe. Pale skin, freckled shoulders, that lean swimmer's build I'd traced in the dark of his apartment but never properly seen. He was slight compared to me—narrower, softer—but there was a quiet strength in the way he held himself. The scar on his left side caught the lamplight, and I reached for it without thinking, my cold fingers tracing the raised line.
He shivered. But he didn't pull away.
"Good shivering?" I asked, echoing his earlier question, my voice coming out barely above a whisper.
"The best kind." He leaned down, capturing my mouth again, and this time I kissed him back with something closer to hunger. My hands found his back—carefully, so carefully—and I marveled at the warmth of him, the way his muscles shifted under my palms, the sound he made when I pressed my fingers into the groove of his spine.
He rocked his hips against mine, and the friction sent a bolt of sensation through me so sharp I gasped into his mouth. He did it again—deliberate, slow—and I arched up before I could stop myself, my cold hands gripping his hips hard enough that I immediately let go.
"Sorry—did I—"
"Do that again," he breathed against my lips. "Harder."