“Lillien,” he chokes. My name breaks from his lips—a plea for mercy he knows I won’t grant.
I roll my hips harder, punishing, desperate. “Don’t stop,” I whisper, my voice sharp and shaking. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He doesn’t. He can’t. He drives into me, each thrust sharp enough to split me open, every stroke angled to break me and bind me at once. My head tips back, hair sticking to my damp skin, mouth open on a cry that won’t stop. His hands are everywhere—cupping my breasts, clutching my ass, gripping so tightly it borders on bruising. He doesn’t know which part of me to worship first, so he worships all of me.
And worship he does.
With every groan dragged out of him. With every taut, trembling flex of muscle. With every reverent whisper of “mine” rasped against my skin. He isn’t holy anymore. But right now, he is something far more dangerous. He is divine.
And when I reach for him—not just flesh, not just heat, but the part of him buried deepest, the part that breathes in time with my own—I feel something stir.
A pulse. A spark. Something ancient, aching, waiting for us.
The pressure under my skin, heavy and hot, each thrust winding it tighter, dragging me closer to the edge. My body coils, trembling, the orgasm too near, too sharp?—
And then it happens. It doesn’t snap like a climax. It ruptures.
A bond.
I feel it tear open in my chest like a comet tearing through the sky. Cassiel’s fire—his holy fire—searing through me from the inside out.
He screams, the sound ripped from him raw. I scream with him.
We convulse together, muscles locking, every nerve seized with something too vast to name. Light pours through my veins, blinds my vision, burns white-hot until I’m certain I’ll be ash by the end of it.
Cassiel—I feel him. All of him. His guilt, his endless ache. His fragile hope. His grief, black and suffocating. His love, raw and unguarded. And mine—bleeding into him, flooding into fire. Fusing. Merging. Binding.
A bond not carved by force. Not sealed by ritual. But chosen. Claimed. Earned in flesh and spirit both.
It doesn’t fade as we come—it blazes. Our orgasms crash together, violent and brutal, burning through us. My body shudders uncontrollably as I collapse against him, sobbing into the heat of his neck. He’s trembling beneath me, clutching me with a ferocity that borders on fear, his lips pressed hard to my temple as if kissing me is the only way to stay tethered.
The fire dulls, slowly, painfully, to embers. But the bond remains. A thread wound tight between us—silver scorched with gold. Invisible to the eye, but undeniable.
Unbreakable.
We don’t speak. Words would ruin it. We just hold on—two shattered creatures, suddenly whole in ways we never asked to be.
I don’t know how long we lie there, tangled and trembling on the floor. My heart still echoes with fire. Cassiel’s lips brush over my shoulder again and again, slow and reverent, as if he’s mapping the moment into memory so it can never be taken away.
“Was that…” I pant, my voice hoarse, unable to finish the question.
His fingers flex against my back, his voice rough with awe. “A bond… yeah.” He swallows hard, throat working. “Are you okay?”
I nod, chest rising too fast, my skin still buzzing with aftershocks. “That was intense.”
He lets out a hoarse chuckle, a sound more relief than humor. “Yeah,” he echoes, voice breaking. His hand slides up to cradle my neck, thumb stroking the line of my jaw as he peers into me with eyes still glowing silver-bright. “God, Lillien…”
He doesn’t finish. Instead he pulls me back in, kissing me like he’s begging for confirmation, like he needs to feel the fire still burning. And it does. Even with the embers cooling. Even with the ache settling deep into bone. The bond still hums—bright, molten, coiled tight as a brand around my heart.
It feels different than the others. Not wild like Deimos. Not sharp like Bastion. Quieter. Deeper. A river running unseen beneath everything.
I open my mouth to tell him I feel it too—when the door slams open. Cassiel reacts instantly, yanking me tighter against his chest as we lay tangled on the floor.
“Seriously?” Deimos snarls from the doorway, chest heaving like he sprinted through the fortress. “What the fuck was that?!”
Bastion strolls in behind him, a grin carved sharp across his face. “Felt like someone set off a holy hand grenade in here.”
Cassiel groans and, with a rough sweep, gathers me up and deposits us onto the bed. “God, no. Not you two.”
