Page 18 of Sereis
Three thousand years. The number bounced around my cold-dulled mind without finding purchase. All I could focus on was how the aurora light made his white hair glow like spun moonlight, how the frost patterns on his visible skin seemed to pulse in response to the Grotto's power.
He carried me to the center, where a raised dais of white crystal stood like an altar. The moment we got close, I gasped—the crystal radiated warmth. Not just warmth, but heat, blessed and impossible in this frozen cathedral. My body tried to lean toward it even through the blankets, desperate for any relief from the cold that was killing me by degrees.
"The Dais of Binding," he said, setting me down carefully on its surface. The warmth soaked through the blanket immediately, and I made an embarrassing sound of relief. "The only warm thing in the Grotto. It exists at the exact intersection of ice and fire magic, holding both in perfect balance."
My fingers had gone past blue to a greyish white that looked like corpse flesh. When I tried to grip the blanket's edge, they barely responded. Sereis noticed—of course he noticed, those glacier eyes missed nothing—and his jaw tightened.
"The transformation requires complete contact," he said, and there was something in his voice I'd never heard before. Uncertainty? Fear? "Skin to skin. The magic must flow between us without barrier."
I understood what he was saying but my brain couldn't quite process it. "The nightgown . . ."
"Everything." He moved with that same clinical efficiency I'd seen when he'd wrapped me in the blanket. "This isn't aboutintimacy, little one. This is about survival. The ritual demands it."
His hands found the blanket's edges, and I should have protested, should have felt embarrassed or afraid or something other than desperate for the warmth I could feel radiating from his palms. But when he pulled the weighted comfort away, the Grotto's cold hit me like a physical blow, and all I could do was curl into myself with a broken whimper.
"Quickly now," he murmured, reaching for the nightgown.
The magical fabric dissolved at his touch, unraveling into threads of moonlight that dispersed into the air. I lay naked on the crystal dais, skin pebbling with cold despite the warmth beneath me. The aurora light played across my body, turning my too-pale skin into something otherworldly. Through the walls' infinite reflections, I could see myself from every angle—small and vulnerable and dying by degrees.
"The oil first," he said, producing a vial from somewhere in those pristine robes. "Then the connection."
The words were clinical, controlled. But through the bond, I felt the storm beneath—his desperate need to save me warring with centuries of rigid self-control, the dragon's possessive fury at Caelus's threat tangling with the man's careful restraint.
Above us, the aurora danced wilder, as if sensing what was about to begin.
Sereis shed his robes with the same efficiency he'd used to strip me—quick, purposeful movements that suggested a man disposing of unnecessary barriers rather than undressing. The white fabric pooled at his feet like spilled milk, and I got my first real look at what three thousand years of ice magic did to a body.
He was leaner than I'd expected, all long lines and subtle muscle rather than bulk. His skin held that same alabaster paleness I'd noticed before, but now I could see it was shot through with those frost patterns everywhere—delicate traceriesthat looked like someone had etched winter itself beneath his skin. They glowed faintly in the aurora light, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. The patterns concentrated along his spine, spreading across his shoulders like frozen wings, down his chest in spirals that drew my eyes lower before I forced them away.
But it was the stillness of him that struck me most. No fidgeting, no self-consciousness, no wasted movement. He stood naked in the freezing Grotto like it was his natural state, which I supposed it was. This was his element, his seat of power. The cold that was killing me sustained him.
My eyes strayed to his cock, and I felt a warmth spread through me despite the cold. The sight of him was outrageous, intoxicating, perfect.
The vial's cork made a soft pop when he pulled it free, and immediately the scent of winter pine flooded the space—sharp and clean and so intense it cleared my foggy head for a moment. The oil inside caught the aurora light, turning silver and green by turns, moving with a viscosity that seemed too thick for liquid, too fluid for anything solid.
"Dragon oil," he said, kneeling beside the dais with that same controlled grace. "Infused with essence of winter pine and crystallized starlight. It will prepare your body to accept the change."
His fingers dipped into the oil, and I watched it cling to his skin like it recognized him. When he reached for me, I flinched—not from fear but from anticipation. The first touch of oil to my shoulder sent warmth racing through me, unexpected and overwhelming after so much cold.
"Breathe," he instructed, spreading the oil in careful circles. "The sensation will intensify."
Intensify was a criminal understatement. Within seconds, every nerve ending he'd touched was singing, sensitized to an almost painful degree. The warmth spread outward from eachpoint of contact, meeting the cold in my bones and creating some impossible middle ground that made me gasp. His hands moved lower, coating my arms with the same methodical precision, and I had to bite my lip to keep from making sounds that had nothing to do with pain.
"Turn," he said, helping me shift onto my stomach when my muscles refused to cooperate properly.
The dais's warmth against my breasts and belly made me whimper, but that was nothing compared to his hands working oil into my back. Each stroke sent cascades of sensation through me, the oil's magic making my skin feel like one enormous nerve ending. By the time he reached my lower back, I was trembling for entirely different reasons than cold.
"Almost done," he murmured, but his voice had lost some of its clinical detachment. Through the bond, I felt his reaction to my responses—a tightly controlled storm of want and need held in check by centuries of discipline.
His hands moved down my legs, and I couldn't suppress the moan that escaped when he worked the oil into my inner thighs. The touch wasn't sexual—his movements remained carefully professional—but my body didn't care about the distinction. Every nerve was firing, every inch of skin alive with sensation that existed somewhere between pleasure and transcendence.
"Now," he said, and I heard him applying oil to himself with quick, efficient strokes. "The connection must be complete."
He helped me turn onto my back again, and then he was moving over me, positioning himself with careful precision. Not sexually—though I was achingly aware of every inch of him—but with the focus of someone performing a crucial ritual. He covered my body with his, maximizing skin-to-skin contact, his weight carefully distributed so as not to crush but to press every possible surface together.
The moment our oil-slicked skin met completely, lightning struck.
Not literally—though in the Grotto, with the aurora writhing above us, it might have been. The connection blazed to life between us, power arcing from his body to mine through every point of contact. I cried out, back arching, pressing closer to him instinctively even as my mind reeled from the intensity.
