Page 67 of Intense (Beneath The Blaze #3)

STEPHANIE

Song- over me, Camylio

T he heavy door opens again.

Finn steps inside, and he’s holding something. I see the ripple of muscle beneath midnight-black scales, the slow movement as the snake coils lazily around his tattooed forearm.

My breath catches.

“Meet Nyx,” he says, his voice low but holding that edge, the kind that makes the air too heavy to breathe.

My feet stay rooted in the spot. I can’t move. I can’t breathe as he closes the distance between us.

“Please, take a seat, love.” He motions to the medical chair behind me.

But it’s the way he’s still calling me love that makes my heart race. That electricity between us is still there.

My gaze fixes on the beautiful creature sliding up him.

She’s exquisite. Her scales catch the faint light like polished obsidian, each ripple moving with a grace I can’t look away from. Her head lifts slightly, tongue flicking the air.

“Black snakes have always been my thing,” I mutter without thinking.

He smirks faintly.

“I did wonder whether that tattoo was just for aesthetics or something deeper. I was always hoping it was the latter.”

He moves closer, letting the snake’s body rest higher on his arm. She winds herself around him like she owns him.

“H-how old is she?” I ask.

“I found her around eight years ago, back in Ireland,” he begins, his tone turning darker.

“She belonged to a man I was… dealing with. He didn’t just hurt people.

He hurt her. Starved her. Used her as a threat in his little games.

” His jaw tightens. “When I got to her, she was weak. But she was still a fighter. Everyone else was too frightened of who she could become. But I wasn’t.

I saw past that. So I took her. Nursed her back to strength. ”

Nyx moves up toward his throat, coiling loosely around it. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t tense. His hand rests over her body like it’s second nature.

“She kills for me now. Doesn’t take orders like a dog would. She just… knows. Reacts to me. To my breathing. My body temperature. The state of my pulse. She’s an extension of me.” His pale eyes find mine. “She knows what’s mine. And she knows what to do if anyone tries to hurt me.”

The image is hypnotic—this man standing there with a lethal predator draped like a crown around his throat. Not a hint of fear in him. Just trust. A deadly, intimate kind of trust. Snakes can’t be trained, and yet, somehow, he’s gone beyond that with Nyx.

He stops in front of me. “Do you know why I keep her here?”

I shake my head slowly.

“Because she’s my last line of truth. People lie. People break. Nyx doesn’t.”

His gaze hardens as he reaches into his pocket, pulling out the handcuffs.

“I thought I told you to sit down,” he says sternly.

I obey, my skin prickling. He cuffs my wrists to the arms of the chair, then crouches to secure my ankles to the legs, each click of the lock echoing in the quiet. My pulse thunders in my ears.

When he’s done, he steps back, studying me like he’s imagining the next move.

“You’re going to sit here with her,” he says finally. “We’ll see what she thinks of you. She gets to decide our fate, temptress. You may have fooled me, but you won’t fool her.”

The room turns to black as he slides a blindfold over my eyes.

“And I’m taking away your sight. The eyes can deceive. She doesn’t need the light, and neither do you.”

Then I feel it. The cool, smooth slide of scales against my bare arm.

He’s placed her on me.

“She won’t harm you unless she feels a reason to,” his voice rumbles from somewhere in the dark. “And if she does… you won’t have time to scream.”

“Finn,”

“Yes, love?”

“If I’d have known how hard I’d fall for you, I’d have told you the truth at the start. I fucked up, but I really didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He lets out a chuckle.

“It’s funny. People keep saying I’m hurt. Like I’m not already dead inside.”

My chest aches for him.

“You aren’t. I’ve seen that,” I whisper.

“Maybe, if you pass this test, you’ll find out more about me, and then you’ll figure out how wrong you are.”

The door shuts. I’m alone.

Alone with Nyx.

I keep my breathing slow. She’s heavier than I expected, and the warmth of her body seeps into my skin.

I should be terrified. But instead, I’m captivated.

The darkness presses in, swallowing everything except the sound of my own breathing.

Nyx shifts against my arm, her scales cool and impossibly smooth, muscles tightening in a slow wave as she moves higher. Every ripple feels deliberate, like she’s studying me with her body.

Her head brushes my shoulder, tongue flicking, tasting the air around my neck.

I fight the instinct to flinch. Any sudden movement feels like a challenge, and I’m not stupid enough to test her.

My wrists pull lightly against the cuffs, a useless reflex, and the steel bites back. I force myself still.

I’ve always loved snakes. Their silence. Their elegance. The way they move without apology. It’s why I inked one into my skin, coiled in black between my breasts. But loving them from afar and sitting handcuffed in the dark with one draped over me are very different things.

Nyx slides across my collarbone, the shift of her weight making my pulse spike. She’s not heavy enough to crush, but she’s strong enough to remind me she could. Her tail winds loosely around my forearm, not trapping me, just holding me.

Her head lifts, and I feel her presence more than I see her.

The warmth from her body bleeds into mine, almost intimate, her movements unhurried.

Nyx shifts again, this time gliding down over my chest. Her scales whisper against my skin before finding the curve of my hip.

I swallow hard. My breaths are so slow now they’re barely there, like I’m trying to trick her into thinking I’m part of the furniture.

But she knows.

She knows my heartbeat doesn’t match my stillness.

I can feel her reading me the way Finn said she reads him—temperature, pulse, the rhythm of breath. Every tiny shift in my body is hers to interpret.

And I can’t decide if I want her to find me worthy… or if part of me wants her to decide I’m not.