Page 46 of Claimed By Flame

“You’re going to make me come again,” she panted. “You’re hitting something—*fuck—*right there?—”

He adjusted his angle, gritting his teeth, then slammed into her again—harder, faster now. The sound of their bodies colliding echoed through the ruins, joined by moans, whispered curses, breathless pleas.

She cried out as another orgasm ripped through her, her walls fluttering around him, her nails digging into his back.

Cassian groaned, hips stuttering. “Seraphine—I’m close?—”

“Come in me,” she gasped. “I want all of it.”

With a growl that was nearly a roar, he thrust one last time and spilled inside her, cock pulsing as he came deep and hard. His whole body trembled, sweat slicking their skin where they pressed together.

They collapsed together in the grass, wrapped in one another like armor.

He kissed her temple, then her shoulder, murmuring something in the old tongue that she couldn’t translate—but felt in her bones.

Something like worship.

Later, when the stars were fading and the ruins quieted, she lay beside him with her head on his chest, listening to the fire in his breath.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” he murmured.

“We shouldn’t have done a lot of things.”

“And yet…”

“And yet,” she whispered, fingers tracing the scar on his ribs, “I don’t regret it.”

He didn’t respond. Because regret had no place in a moment borrowed from a fate neither of them controlled.

But even as she drifted to sleep, warmth cocooned in him for the first time since childhood, Seraphine knew that they were on borrowed time.

The debt would come due soon.

TWENTY

CASSIAN

Cassian woke before the sun.

The ruins of Skyforged still slumbered around them, stone bones curled under the weight of centuries. The wind had turned colder in the night, brushing over his bare skin like a warning.

Seraphine lay beside him, her breathing slow, peaceful. One arm draped across his chest like she still thought he might disappear.

Maybe she was right. Because for the first time since this whole cursed quest began, he was afraid hewould.

Cassian didn’t move at first. He stared up at the open sky, watched the stars blink out one by one as dawn tried to bleed through.

Last night had been...

Real.

Too real.

Her fingers had trembled like his. Her mouth had searched his like she was trying to memorize the shape of what they’d never say aloud.

Itmeantsomething. That was the fucking problem. Because meaning came with a cost.

He slipped away as quietly as he could, dressing in silence and stepping through the skeletal remains of the temple. The others were still camped near the fire, curled in their own tired corners of the world.

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