I wasn't gentle. I couldn't be. This wasn't a caress; it was a shock. I pushed the energy out of my lattice and into his flesh. I felt resistance, the cold density of his void-poisoned soul trying to block the current.
I pushed harder.
"Take it!" I screamed.
Kaelen’s hands flew up, gripping my waist. His fingers dug into my hips, bruisingly hard. He wasn't pushing me away; he was anchoring himself.
His eyes snapped open, locking onto mine. The gold was swirling, panicked.
"I've been holding back," he choked out, his voice scraping like sandpaper. "Afraid that if I gave you all of me, the dragon would consume you."
I leaned down, pressing my chest against his, heart to heart. The heat between us began to rise, turning the sweat on our bodies into steam. I looked deep into those terrified, ancient eyes.
"Then let it consume me," I whispered fiercely. I grabbed his hair, pulling his head back, forcing him to bare his throat. "Let it burn me. Hephaestus himself reforged me, I can take your fire."
I kissed him.
It wasn't a kiss of affection. It was a seal. A closed circuit.
The moment our lips met, the dam broke.
Pain exploded through me. It wasn't the dull ache of a wound; it was the searing, purifying agony of the furnace. Kaelen gasped into my mouth, and the dragon woke up.
He didn't maintain the human facade. He couldn't.
The psychic weight of the Dragon slammed into my mind. I felt the urge to hoard, to burn, to fly, to destroy. I felt the millennia of rage and the crushing loneliness of the Gate. It poured into me through the connection, hot and heavy and overwhelming.
My star-metal skin began to glow white-hot.
Clothes became unbearable. I tore at my armor, needing skin-to-skin contact everywhere. I needed to maximize thesurface area of the conduction. I pressed my metal leg between his, wrapping myself around him like a coil around a magnet.
He surged up to meet me, his movements sudden and violent with renewed life. His hands roamed over me, one hand on my soft flesh, one on the hard metal plating of my back. Where he touched the metal, smoke rose.
It hurt. Gods, it hurt. It felt like I was being welded to him.
"More," I gasped against his mouth, tasting blood where I’d bitten his lip. "Don't hold back. Fill the lattice."
Kaelen groaned, a sound that started human and ended as a roar. He flipped us, pinning me to the hard, cold stone floor. His weight was crushing, but the cold was gone. He was burning up.
He entered me with a desperate, unified thrust, and the circuit closed completely.
White light exploded behind my eyelids.
The cave disappeared. I wasn't on the blackened rock of the Underworld anymore. I was floating in the center of a star.
Every thrust drove a pulse of pure, liquid gold through my veins. I served as the ground wire for his overwhelming power. The Void had clogged his vents, suffocated his flame, but my star-metal body was a new chimney. I took the toxicity of the cold and burned it away, refining his fire within my own soul and pumping it back into him, hotter and cleaner.
My back arched, grinding against the unforgiving stone. I screamed, but the sound was lost in the roar of the magic swirling around us.
My metal arm was blindingly bright now, illuminating the jagged walls of the cave with distinct, harsh shadows. The gold light spilled out of my runes, out of my eyes, out of the cracks in my soul. It bathed Kaelen, turning his pale skin to bronze.
He was trembling, sweat pouring off him, his muscles bunched and rock-hard. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, right against the seam where metal met flesh.
"Aria," he roared, his voice layered with the harmonic vibration of the dragon.
"Burn," I commanded, digging my nails into his shoulders, drawing blood that sizzled on my skin. "Burn it all away, Kaelen!"
He did.
