The dragon capital hummed far below them, a thousand neon heartbeats pulsing in rhythm with the stars above.
The kiss wasn't a beginning.
It was a detonation.
Esmeralda's mouth crushed into his like a war declaration, her lips tasting of dark wine and centuries of withheld desire. She kissed like someone who'd held back for too long, and Pyris answered in kind—his hand curling around her lower back as her body pinned against the minibar with a soundless gasp.
Her breath hitched the second his aura bled out—that pink-gold heat like molten silk unraveling into the room. Her skin prickled in response as the air thickened with something wrong, something hot, something lethal.
It wasn't divine.
It was corrupted.
Lust made real. Desire incarnate. Power you didn't bow to, you drowned in it.
