Page 279 of Elemental Becoming
Ruins me.
I was ready for a fight. Ready for another teasing remark. Another challenge. Some clever way to turn the conversation back on me. But not this.
This man finds new ways to surprise me every day.
Thane exhales, his breath skimming my damp skin as he drags his lips over my knee again, barely a whisper of a touch. And then he says it. Something so quiet, so raw, that I feel it crack through my chest like a fault line splitting open.
“I want to ruin you like this.”
His hands move higher.
“Not in training. Not in sparring.”
His gaze lifts to mine.
“Like this, Amara.”
The intensity in his eyes pins me in place.
“I want to be the reason you forget the weight of all of it.”
The prophecy.
The war.
The expectations.
Everything.
“I want to be the reason you let it go. At least for a little while.”
His fingers dig into the muscle of my thigh, and I let out a soft, shuddering gasp.
“I want to know what it feels like to have you fall apart beneath me. Just because I willed it.”
I stare at him, unable to speak. Because this isn’t just desire. It isn’t a game. It isn’t about winning. It’s about surrender. And the Fire Warlord does not surrender.
Yet somehow, he has handed me every vulnerable part of himself and trusted me not to break it.
The moment his fingers slide higher, pulling me towards him, the bond flares. He loses the focus to block. It doesn’t come as a whisper or gentle pulse.
It’s a flood. Like a dam breaking, thoughts that are not mine crash through my mind.
“Mine. She’s mine.I can’t—gods, I can’t lose her.”
My breath catches. My fingers tighten around his arm as the full weight of it slams into me.
And then I feel him go rigid. Because he feels me hearing what was never meant to be spoken aloud.
His breath hitches, hands stilling.
He didn’t mean for me to hear that. Didn’t mean to let his shields slip. Didn’t mean to let me see the fear beneath everything else.
My throat tightens.
“Thane, it’s okay,” I whisper.
His eyes lift to mine, burning, torn. Fear flickering behind them. The kind that only comes when you love something enough to lose it.
