The admission lands between us like a stone dropped into still water, ripples spreading outward through everything that’s happened since the moment she touched my flame and made it burn brighter than it had in decades. The blood on my hands. The violence that still vibrates through my muscles. The way she stands here in a locked room surrounded by monsters and still looks at me like I’m the only thing in the world worth paying attention to.
Something cracks inside my chest, not loudly, not obviously, but deep enough that the ice surrounding whatever passes for my heart fractures along lines that have been forming since the first time she refused to break.
The distance between us closes without either of us making a conscious decision to cross it. The space shrinks until the warmth of her skin becomes a temptation I cannot resist. Her hands find my shirt first, fingers curling into blood-stained cotton as if anchoring herself or maybe claiming me. I barely register the motion before my restraint finally gives way. A low sound tears from my chest as I catch her wrist, not to stop her, but to pull her closer, until there’s nothing left between us but breath, heat, and the crackling tension that’s been building since the moment she refused to fear me.
When our mouths meet, it’s anything but gentle. The kiss is fierce, unguarded, all heat, hunger, and collision, Roxy’s lips parting beneath mine as if she’s been waiting for thisexact moment to stop pretending distance mattered. I taste her defiance, her courage, the quiet fire she carries like a challenge, and it ignites something savage and aching inside me in return.
My hand slides to her jaw, thumb brushing her cheek as I deepen the kiss, pouring everything I didn’t say into the press of my mouth against hers, the violence, the certainty, the promise I never intended to make and no longer have the strength to deny.
She kisses me back without hesitation.
Like she knows exactly what she’s choosing.
And for the first time in centuries, I let myself choose her too.
Chapter Fifteen
ROXY
His mouth finds mine again before I can think, before I can brace for it, and the kiss steals what little air I have left. It’s rougher this time, urgent, his lips pressing into mine like he’s trying to make a point he doesn’t trust himself to say out loud. My hands clutch at his shirt on instinct, fingers curling into the cotton at his chest while heat floods through me, sharp and dizzying, my body responding faster than my mind ever could.
I make a sound against his lips, something soft and breathless, and his hand slides up to my jaw, tilting my face just enough that the kiss deepens, turns hungry, consuming. For a heartbeat, there is nothing else, not the locked room, not the blood, not the monsters, just the way he kisses like restraint is a lie he’s been telling himself for years.
One second, his mouth is crushing mine, all hunger and promise and barely leashed violence, and the next he’s pulling back so hard it steals the air from my lungs. His hands fall away like he’s been burned, not by me, but by whatever thought slams into him without mercy.
The room chills instantly, the warmth ripped out so fast it feels like whiplash. His jaw locks, breath coming hard, eyes going distant in a way that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with something older and crueler than either of us.
“Raze?” I step toward him, reaching without thinking. “What—”
“Don’t!” The word is a growl, raw and sharp, and it stops me cold. He turns away, dragging a hand through his hair like he’strying to tear the thought out by force. “You can’t…fuck!Youcan’tlook at me like that. Youcan’tkiss me like that!”
“Like w-what?” My voice cracks despite myself. “Like I’m here?”
He laughs once, harsh and empty. “Like you’re staying.”
“So that’s your excuse to keep your distance?” I close the gap between us with steps that feel deliberate and reckless in equal measure, my chin lifting in the way I know makes his jaw tighten. “You kissed me like you were starving, and now you want to pretend it was some kind of strategic miscalculation?”
The frost on the window cracks audibly. “It’s pointless!”
“Then why did you come to see me?” The question lands with the weight of everything that has been building since the moment he told me his name. “Why are you here, at two in the morning, pacing like a caged animal?”
He turns, and the look on his face strips away every layer of ice he has built around himself, and it’s sufficient to make my breath catch. The distance collapses without conscious choice, his hands finding my waist with enough force to lift me back a step, and then his mouth is on mine again, and this time there is nothing gentle about it.
The kiss tears through me like a current, tasting of frost and the desperate need that comes from three centuries of believing contentment was something that happened to other people. My hands fist against his shirt, pulling him closer even as something screams that this is the edge of a cliff. My teeth find his lower lip, and I bite hard enough to draw a growl from his chest.
Then he wrenches himself away, and the look that crosses his face is close enough to horror to make my chest ache.
“Thiscan’thappen, Roxy.” The words grind out between breaths too fast for someone who usually controls every molecule of air around him. “You’re human. The witch’s laws areabsolute. Being with you is futile.” His chest heaves with heavy breaths.
I watch him retreat for exactly three seconds.
Then the stubbornness that has kept me alive in this place makes my decision for me. I cross the space between us and press my palm flat against his chest, right over his sternum where the ice is thickest, and hold.
The reaction is immediate and devastating.
The frost fractures beneath my hand, cracks splitting outward as heat bleeds through my skin into him, and I watch the crystalline armor dissolve in waves spreading from where my fingers press against scales and skin. His breath catches, sharp and almost painful, his pupils blowing wide as his eyes lock onto mine with something bordering on frantic. Beneath my palm, his heartbeat slams against his ribs like something trying to break free, and the cold, the pervasive, bone-deep cold that has radiated off him since the moment I met him, simply stops.
Warmth floods through the contact, tentative at first, then rushing forward like a dam breaking, everything it was holding back pouring through in a single staggering wave.