Page 129 of Immortal Sun

Cleo’s eyes fill with tears. “Maybe I want to drown in your flames, just once.”

My self-control is gone. I grab her by the hips and pull her against me, kissing her so deep and hard my mouth almost hurts. My armor slams against her hips with a thud.

She grips me by the hair and holds on while our mouths meet. She tastes like the cooling rain, like a thunderstorm in the spring followed by flowers.

A tear slides down my cheek before I even realize what’s happening. I toss her into the bed and follow her down then kiss her deeper. I let myself drown and pull her into the depths with me.

She follows willingly into the heat of my arms.

“Come,” I rasp, cupping her face. My eyes burn into hers and then I draw her in. I pull her into the very thing I’ve warned her of.

With a gasp she goes limp, her eyes white, and I bring her with me into the very flames that I created with.

I give her my breath as we fall beneath the heat and into the cooling water, I tug her deeper and deeper still kissing her.

She clings to me as a hurricane of currents spins us around, until stillness falls around us. There is no sound in the water, there is no pain, there is only us.

No death.

No sacrifice.

We have water.

We have life.

When I pull away, Cleo starts to panic, so I kiss her again, and again. I give her the very breath of life from my lips until she wants nothing but me. The water slowly recedes as we float to the surface.

We’re back in the cave, she heaves out a gasp “What was that?”

“Me,” I say simply, “drowning in your own personal flame of chaos.”

Tears fill her eyes. “I thought you were going to kill me.”

“It felt like death a bit.” I steal another kiss from her swollen lips. “But what good is kissing if you don’t feel like you might actually die a thousand times to experience it?”

I shouldn’t find her frown adorable.

I shouldn’t move my hands to her thighs and spread them wide. And I sure as hell should not be showing her how to please other gods as I rip her clothes apart and my head descends between her thighs.

She grips me by the hair again. I take it as encouragement as my tongue coats with more than just water.

I taste her.

And the only thought I have is this: Has the sky really been my home? Or has it been here this entire time?

The fire in my soul roars, her ice cools it just enough to keep me in control, but I know I’m close to losing my grasp on my purpose.

Her ankles hook around my body or attempt to. She moves like the flames against my tongue. Hot. Needy. I keep sucking and licking until I feel like I might be devouring her whole.

Maybe it should have always been this way, the gods worshiping the humans, the humans showing the gods what reality truly is.

I’m fixated on her mouth.

“More!” She’s yelling other things too, but I’m so lost in what I’m doing that all I can hear is the word “more” and my name, “Cyrus!”

I know Daggon knows what’s going on; this is not how preparing a sacrifice typically goes. Normally we instruct, we put fear in them a bit, and then they start to think how they want their ending. Never, has it ever gone this way.

I instruct. I give her a choice before her sacrifice, and we move on to the next person that needs to be found. This was the hardest trial of my existence—and that was before her mouth met mine. That was before her soul tried to reach out. That was before she actually touched sunshine and didn’t jerk away—no, Cleo embraced the burn and begged for more.

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