It freed me.

Released me.

I groaned and plunged my tongue into her mouth as my cracked and charred skin sealed and healed.

I tasted everything she was.

I drowned on snowfalls and starlight.

Her energy flooded me, intoxicating and inevitable, sinking into every hollow place, rewriting everything I was and making sure I was nothing but hers.

My self-control snapped.

The blood-laced kiss we’d shared turned into a breathless war of teeth and tongues.

Power spiralled between us, battling each other, clashing with fire and frost.

It grew stronger and stronger as we kissed faster and faster.

The hunger was unbearable.

The need absolutely maddening.

We were both driven to a disastrous edge.

An edge that promised total destruction if we didn’t stop.

But we couldn’t stop.

Wouldn’t stop.

I tore at her soaking clothes and let go.

Chapter Forty-Two

HEAT AND COLD, FIRE AND FROST.

That was all I was and all I’d ever be.

Every element braided tightly in my chest, humming and mending, erasing my pain and every piece that had been broken.

I twitched as the wound in my side knitted over, sealing my inner workings as if I’d never been punctured. The numbness in my lower body vanished with a gush of searing sensitivity and I almost sobbed with gratitude as I wriggled my toes and they answered.

Everything happened so fast, so miraculously, it couldn’t have been real. My bones and muscles defied logic and law, reversing death itself to become whole and strong and powerful.

How?

How had Lucien brought me back to life?

What had he become that his blood—his incredible healing blood—could do something that defied nature itself?

I should be dead.

Yet I was being kissed within an inch of my life and suddenly, nothing else mattered.

Clutching him closer, I gasped as whatever self-restraint he had left snapped.

His tongue delved into my mouth, kissing me desperately. He held onto me as if he was terrified I would vanish. His hands were everywhere—my hair, my neck, my breasts—touching everything as if he needed constant proof I was real.

The more he touched, the more my body responded.

Wicked, dangerous power flooded me with every heartbeat. That odd coldness that’d started answering to Lucien’s heat no longer just tiptoed through me but gushed. It turned wild and hungry, sending frost rippling through my veins and freezing my heartbeats...but I wasn’t cold.

I was...perfect. Absolutely perfect because I didn’t feel any pain.

For the first time since I could remember, I didn’t suffer a single drop of misery—no headaches, no nausea, no weakness.

The floodgates unlocked. Frost turned to snow, whipping the air into eddies as my emotions burst free.

Every feeling I’d done my best not to feel—every worry, every fear, every joy and ecstasy and desire—feelings that always ended with me in agony and passed out—erupted all at once.

My body plunged from icy to arctic.

My vision fractured as the connection I felt to Lucien turned feral—demanding, wanting, clawing, claiming—

I couldn’t stop it.

Couldn’t control it.

I arched under the force of far too many things.

“I’ve got you.” Lucien was there in the heart of my storm, the fire in his blood parting my coldness like a hot knife. “You’re safe.” His arms tightened in the fiercest embrace and his lips captured mine again.

I kissed him with everything I had.

I’d never felt so...free.

My fingers fisted in his hair, tugging him closer, needing more, more, more. Needing his heat, his weight, his fire. That sparkling tether lashing us together grew stronger and stronger.

I could feel him everywhere—in my blood, my soul, my heart.

I couldn’t extract him from where he’d taken root, consuming me with every breath.

Mine.

The word echoed like a tuning fork as his mouth slid along my jaw, my throat, my collarbone. I arched without thinking—hungry and unashamed, shaking with need so sharp, it turned every other thought into confetti.

The more we kissed, the more my senses magnified until I dwelled in a different dimension of hypersensitivity.

His scent...something I’d never even thought about, suddenly became the best thing in the world.

Burning cedar. Charred amber. Rich and smoky, male and powerful.

Every inhale made me dizzy and drunk.

My entire soul locked onto him with predatory focus.

Mine.

Mine.

Mine.

I wanted him.

Not gently.

Not later.

Now.

My hands dropped to his hips, clumsy and urgent. Burrowing between us, I fumbled with his ruined trousers. I brushed against something hard and straining against the fabric, making him hiss and bite my bottom lip.

I managed to get the top button undone—

Lucien wrenched backward, landing on his ass.

He came to a stop a few metres away—breathing hard, raking both hands through his hair.

My gaze fell on our surroundings.

Rocks and trees, water and darkness.

H-How did I get here?

Why were we on a riverbed, surrounded by foliage, and blanketed by moonlight?

Last I remembered, I’d fallen into a swirling pool—well, blown in was more apt.

My heart kicked, remembering how his power had ignited—tearing through his skin and detonating the entire cave.

But then my eyes met his again and questions ceased to matter.

Nothing mattered apart from finishing what we’d started.

“Why are you over there and not here?” I asked softly, my voice almost swallowed up by the babble of the river. It seemed to snap him awake—yanking him out of the same trance I kept falling into whenever I looked at him.

This wasn’t normal. This level of awareness and need wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt before. I swore I could sense him. Sense him buckling beneath the same craving as me.

Once again, my heart grew impatient, no longer urging but demanding me to touch him, kiss him, tear off his clothes and—

“Stop looking at me like that,” Lucien groaned, scrubbing his face with both hands.

“Like how?”

“Like you want me to fuck you right here. Outside in the dead of night. On a bed of leaves with no roof over our heads, no soft blankets, no privacy.”

“Oh, I think there’s privacy.” I waved my hand at the very dark, very empty riverbed. “It’s just us.”

“Fuck, this is crazy.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, his bare chest tight with strained muscles. The metal disc over his heart was slightly misshapen from his internal heat. “Tell me this is crazy. Tell me there’s no way I should even think about doing to you what I’m aching to do.” He looked at the star-dotted sky. “We need to talk about what happened. Talk about how you healed me. How—”

“I healed you?” I frowned. “You healed me.”

“See?” he groaned. “There’s so much we need to talk about.”

“But...I don’t want to talk.”

“Fuck, neither do I.” He laughed blackly. “It’s taking every shred of self-control I have not to be inside you right now.”

I suffered a full-body shiver. “Then screw self-control and screw me instead.”

“Rook...” He groaned again. “You’re not helping.”

“Neither are you, Lucien.” Slipping onto my hands and knees, I crawled toward him. The soft dampness of the leaves set my skin singing with heightened awareness. The chattering river and crashing waterfall somewhere upstream kept us trapped in our own little world.

A world where I really, really needed to be with this man.

It wasn’t even about sex at this point; it was deeper than that. It was a fundamental requirement to my existence and if he didn’t give in, the icy power stalking through my veins might very well explode.