She saw him.
Cedric groaned, bedsheets clenched in his fists, the shadows pinning his wrists their own kind of torture. Perhaps it was better like this. The restraints keeping his hands bound helped him keep his head too. Helped him remember not to let the fire in his veins burn too hot.
Well, they helped for a while, at least.
But then she pulled back to his tip before dragging his full length into her mouth, her tongue tracing the underside of his cock. Cedric’s head slammed back into the mattress, thoughts fractured. He felt his flame consolidate in his chest—blooming, growing, hot and bright as the sun.
It was too much.
It was everything.
Cedric gritted his teeth together in an attempt to keep his magic at bay, to keep it contained, but a whisper of a thought skated through his mind.
Let go.
Just like before, when Elyria was clenched around his fingers and that first “Mine”had echoed in his thoughts, the words came from nowhere and everywhere at once.
As if she felt it all, Elyria’s eyes met Cedric’s, her gaze soft, that vulnerability flitting across her features before she shuttered it away.
“Elle—” Her name was half a plea, half a prayer.
Don’t stop. Let go.
The words were something like a murmur, half-formed, a ripple in his mind. If he hadn’t been paying attention, he might’ve missed them entirely.
Cedric obeyed.
His body bowed off the bed, the magic in his chest flaring unbidden, white-gold flames dancing along his arms, burning through the shadows binding his wrists. His magic wanted her, needed her, cried out for her.
And then the bed sheets were on fire.
Cedric’s eyes widened, but before he could open his mouth to release a sound of alarm, the flames were extinguished. Like an instinctual response, another wave of shadows had surged from Elyria, a cooling blanket that settled over the bed, over Cedric, helping him reel his power in.
Elyria never even broke her rhythm.
Cedric wanted to laugh. And if it hadn’t been for the tightly coiled pressure continuing to build at the base of his spine, he might have. If she thought he’d be able to simply walk away after this, she was even more deluded than he was. If she thought he wouldn’t spend every waking moment of the journey to Elderglade replaying this—that he wouldn’t be thinking about it every minute for the rest of hislife—she was insane.
“Elle,” he gasped, his fire rising again. “I’m going to?—”
He didn’t finish his sentence. She didn’t let him.Didn’t relent. Her hand moved faster, and with one final swirl of her tongue, hitting the ridge on the underside of his headjust right, Cedric shattered.
Light burst behind his eyelids as he groaned her name, heat erupting from the center of his chest like a dying star. Elyria’s own magic pulsed in response, fire and wild, shadow and sun, twining together.
It took Cedric a moment to remember how to breathe.
Another to remember how to move.
But when the haze began to clear, Cedric pushed himself back up on one elbow, chest heaving, and reached for her.
Elyria still knelt between his legs, shadowy ribbons curling around her wrists, trailing from her fingers like living tendrils of night. The satisfied look on her face was something Cedric wished he could engrave in his vision forever. But even as she smirked at him, dabbing at the corner of her mouth, he also saw theshift. Saw the way she tried to school her expression, tried to bring her walls back up.
Saw the moment she tried to physically retreat.
No, didn’t just see it.
Hefeltit.
Felt her instinct to run, to bolt, shimmering down their bond.
