Page 48 of Feeding Beauty (The Lost Girls #5)

The Power of Touch

AURORA

T he cursed magic breaks through my spine, my ribs, sinking sharp teeth into every nerve.

The air disappears.

It’s not just pain—it’s hunger . Amplified. Multiplied. Multiplied again .

My lungs seize. My throat convulses. My eyes burn. I can’t scream. I can’t even breathe.

Hunger threads through every muscle, guiding bone and nerve, answering a need that doesn’t belong to me but feels carved into my marrow. Thought dissolves. Will shatters. Craving is all that’s left.

The body moves. Not from choice. Not from thought. Just hunger pulling the strings.

“Aura?” Talon asks, his voice tight with panic.

I’m already reaching for him.

“Aura, don’t,” he says, scrambling back. My curse whips out of me with an invisible maw with drooling fangs, and sinks into him. And it feeds.

Talon stiffens under the attack.

Not close enough. I need more. Oh fae lords, I need every piece of him. I’m empty, caving in on myself. My insides scrape raw, curling tighter, tighter, until I can barely breathe. He is salvation and I drink like an addict, gorge on his life force.

Every cell in me shrieks for more of him. Not just his magic. Him . His fire. His soul.

I gorge myself.

A harsh guttural sound rips from him as his head whips back in pain. I know I took too much. I would have killed anyone else from just that but there is so much more of him. Ancient, powerful Dragon energy, and I must have more.

My hand finds his face.

His bare skin.

"Aura, no.” His voice cracks, fear splitting through the pain in his eyes.He scrambles back, hands raised. “Aura, stop—don’t?—”

The curse doesn’t listen.

Neither does my body.

Something inside me unspools, and whips out. It lashes through the space between us and hooks into him.

Talon jolts, eyes going wide as the drain begins.

His life—his fire—is flowing into me, and it’s everything.

Every part of him calls to me: the molten fire that lives under his skin, the ancient thrum of power that no one else could ever match. I need it. I need him.

He tries to pull away, but I’m faster. My hands find his jaw.

His body arches as he cries out. Not a grunt.

Not a cry. A full-bodied, pain-ripped scream that tears down to his soul.

A similar sound rips from my own body as blistering pain sears across my palms. I scream, trying to yank my hands back, but I can’t.

I am tethered to him, siphoning, consuming.

But the drain doesn't stop. I clutch harder. I’m latched onto him with both hands now, frantic to drain him even as I yank him tighter, burning, blistering, but still pulling, always pulling.

Flames erupt. The fire quickly eats away both our clothes, hot enough to disintegrate even his fae leathers.

Then my arms catch. Skin splits. But I feed . My power opens its mouth and takes big deep swallows, devouring. I feel the energy repairing my arms even as they burn, a sick cycle of healing and destruction that can only lead to one end. Will I burn to death before I suck him dry?

My body is fire and need, drowning in a hunger that burns through bone and thought and love.

“Aura, stop,” he chokes, but it’s too late.

I’m tethered. Anchored. Devouring.

He’s burning me alive. I’m draining him dry.

Flames crackle along my arms. I smell my own flesh cooking, but I can’t let go.

Not when he tastes like this, not when he fills me so completely even as it all drains away. I’m a sieve, and his life force is draining away into me.

My skin rips open, and somewhere beneath the pain, I feel myself knitting back together, healed by the very life I’m stealing.

He groans again. The sound is low, guttural. His legs give out. His hands slam into the ground beside me, clawing for something to hold on to. Heat pours off him in waves as his power spirals out of control.

His body starts to glow from deep within. More orange fissures bloom across his ribs, his neck, his thighs, like magma breaking through rock. His breath comes in ragged bursts.

I sob, the sound swallowed by fire and power. My hands shake as they sear, skin peeling from muscle. And still I don’t stop.

I’m still empty and I can’t resist him filling me over and over.

But it’s killing us.

Talon’s heartbeat stutters again, then flutters like wings failing mid-flight. His scales dull further, paling from obsidian to soot. The light in his body gutters like a candle about to go out.

And still, I hold on.

Still, I feed.

My arms are fire. My chest a furnace. My throat a clawing void. I’m crying, I think. Or maybe it’s just the burn in my eyes as his magic pours into me in uneven pulses, his strength hemorrhaging straight into my marrow.

He looks at me with that same unflinching devotion that’s never once wavered.

There is no rage in his face.

No betrayal.

Just heartbreak.

The kind you can’t scream through. The kind you can’t fix. The kind that’s always been coming.

His lips part. A name, maybe. A prayer. Maybe a final breath.

My hands convulse. More screams tear from my throat, warped and feral, the sound of a soul splitting down the center.

I’m killing him.

I’m healing from the fire with every breath I steal, but he’s unraveling under it.

And still I can’t let go.

Because this is the last time I’ll ever touch him.

I want to say his name.

I want to tell him I’m sorry.

But we don’t need words. We never have.

Even in our worst moments, our eyes said what our mouths never could.

Every time I was with someone else, I found his eyes. Letting him know, silently, I wished it was you. It was always you .

Throughout our days together I looked at him like I loved him, because I did.

And he returned that look with such intensity I felt it burrow under my chest where his love took permanent residence.

Even if we couldn’t touch. Even if I had to keep sleeping with other people.

We loved each other more than most people were capable of and even in our last, tortured moments, in the culmination of our worst fears, we still loved each other more than anything in this world or heaven above.

And he’d look back.

With that same fierce, steady love that split me open every damn time. No jealousy. No resentment. Just that quiet, endless promise: I’m here. I’ll always be here.

We spoke with glances. With silence. With everything we couldn’t afford to say out loud.

And now, as I kill him with the very power that cursed me, we speak again.

I’m sorry.

I love you.

I didn’t want this.

It was always you.

As if knowing there is no stopping the end for us both now, his hands find my waist, bringing me closer. Even as the fire climbs higher, devouring me inch by inch. His scales flash once more before flickering out.

Let the fire take me.

Let it take us both.

My lips meet his, and flames consume me as I finish devouring him.