Ascension - Book Eight - Man x Man

Chapter 139

"Kiss me?" I manage, rewarded with a smirk as he brushes his nose against mine. 

"I'm a bit on edge, love. I don't want to hurt you."

Maybe I wasn't as sore as I thought I was? Maybe I could be convinced to partake in one more round?

"You don't scare me." I tease him, snagging a strawberry off my plate to offer him. Reluctant, he allows me to feed it to him, kissing my palm as I caress his cheek, dragging the edges of his teeth over the skin of my thumb.

"Are you sure?" he growls, flashing me a sultry gaze as I swallow back my own desire. 

"Well you do have much more prominent fangs now... but I'll take you any way I can have you. Hold out your palms," I suggest, he responds obediently, palms up for me to examine. 

I hover my fingers over the broad hands and carefully skirt my fingertips over the electric-feeling skin. While I could feel the charge, and that the magic was brewing under the surface, nothing about it felt deadly to me. There were no alarm bells, nothing sending me away from his touch.

 So what had happened to the phone? To Eve? This would require some more in-depth probing but at the cost of lives, I was reluctant to explore how to test my theory. 

Gingerly, I trace my fingers over the lines of the smooth hands, trailing to his fingertips, admiring the chill and smooth texture. The charge seemed to travel up into his arms, a pathway of current almost like the pumping of blood through veins, I followed the track of his forearms, only to flick my gaze up at his sharp inhale as I rested my palms on his biceps.

I note that he's closing his eyes, hyper-focused on the task, perhaps willing himself not to hurt me.

"Care to share?" He prompts as my hands hesitate, cocking a brow as I sheepishly wrinkle my nose at him. Locking eyes with me now, I was always surprised by just how pretty they were. Light, like iced-over water, so clear around the pupil and then darkening towards the edges. 

"I'm following the 'path' of magic. I'm trying to get used to what your neutral state feels like, if we can understand it, we can control it. Usually, magic does have a reason..." Seeing how that could be taken the wrong way, I can only squeeze his arms in reassurance before trailing up towards the strong shoulders.

To him, magic was something that had taken everything from him, but also given him me. If he was going to gain a grasp on this ability, he would have to come to terms with that one way or another.

I rest my hands on his chest, finally, the void where his heart should be, and wait patiently for any indication that there is an origin to this current. But, I feel nothing under the solid wall of chest muscle. "The trail goes dead around here."

"Haha..." Verando grumbles.

Stretching up on my toes, I gather his face between my palms, enjoying the casual lean of his cool cheek into my warm embrace. "You're particularly foul this morning, my dearest love," I tell him, doing my best impression of his accent only to get the heaviest, most dramatic eye roll he can toss at me. "Look at me... I'm ok. I'm so much better than ok, you don't have to punish yourself for something that I thoroughly enjoyed and if you're worried about the people you sent to the underworld, we are going to figure this out. 

So, how are we going to see these bodies?"

"I know. I'm just.. struggling. It feels like I should sleep, mentally I'm absolutely spent, but my body feels as if I'm well rested. Besides that, I'm just uncomfortable with the entire lot of it."

Considering this, he stepped away to grab a shoulder-slung laptop-style bag and slid his book inside of it as well as a few of the limited belongings we had brought in from the car. I dawn the pair of softer, aged jeans and the heavy sweater as the weather was damp, cool, and misty.