Page 238 of Alchemised

She gave a startled laugh as they both went still. Their faces were so close, they were almost touching.

“Just like that,” he said, panting. “Just push in. It’s right there.”

She looked up sharply. He was watching her, making no move to stop her. Waiting.

Her smile fell, and she stared at him in horror.

That bitterness in his eyes—she finally understood it. He had been waiting for her betrayal.

This was what held him back.

He’d known from the beginning, before the possibility had ever occurred to her, and he’d trained her anyway.

She didn’t need a book or Crowther to tell her what the expression on his face meant. She could feel it.

His hand was warm against her throat, and his thumb ran slowly along the scar below her jaw.

She leaned closer, her hand sliding up from his chest to his shoulder to pull him forward and kiss him.

It was not a slow, sweet kiss. It was not a kiss caused by alcohol or insecurity.

It was born of rage, despair, and desire so hot, it threatened to burn her into oblivion.

It was possibly a kiss goodbye.

She wanted him to know. It was real. For her, it had always been real.

He froze when their lips met. She felt his hand on her shoulder and braced herself to be pushed away even as she deepened the kiss, gripping the fabric of his shirt tighter, her lips frantic.

He wavered a moment and then something broke inside him, like a dam bursting, and Helena was drowning in him.

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her savagely.

The heat was like wildfire.

The tension, the waiting. Months of expectations. After being told this was what she was sent for, why she was wanted. All a ruse. A feint to conceal his true motive. Demanding her had been the same trick of misdirection he taught her to use to protect her memories.

A lie, until it wasn’t.

Somehow she’d shifted in his estimation, manipulated her way into becoming the very obsession he’d pretended she was. His palm pressed against the side of her neck before he slid his fingers up under the braids and anchored her in place as he kissed her, twisting so that she was under him on the floor.

Her fingers slipped beneath the collar of his shirt, following the dip of his collarbones, the curve of his neck.

She ran her fingers through his hair, wanting to lose herself completely in the nearness. Her fingernails bit into his shoulders. She could feel the scars on his back, the thrum of energy inside them.

Despite how cold he often was, a dragon was an apt sigil for the Ferrons. He kept walls of ice around himself, but there was fire in his heart.

Her shirt ripped as he tore it out of the way. She pulled him close, tight against her body until she could feel his skin on hers. She bit him without thinking. There was a hunger inside her that she couldn’t explain, a pit of want to taste and feel and hold and not be always, always empty. She wanted to curl up so tight alongside him that she vanished.

Her clothes were slipping out of the way as he ran his hands along her ribs and waist, kissing across her breasts, body pressed between her legs. Her skirts sliding up as his hand trailed along her thigh.

It happened so fast. She’d never thought it would be something soft or slow, but it was more like a collision, like breaking across each other. The rush of skin and teeth as she let herself be consumed.

He sank into her, and her heart stopped, eyes going wide. She bit down on her tongue so hard she tasted blood, her eyes squeezed shut. He paused and kissed her, his lips so searing she felt it in her bones, and she nuzzled her face against his, but it hurt.

She’d known it might hurt if not done slowly, but she was glad it did.

Certain things were meant to hurt. She’d seduced Kaine when it was abundantly clear that this was a line he had no desire to cross. She had pushed and persisted and done it anyway, because she was desperate.