Chapter 7
964 Words
There were no clocks in the Devlin Manor. No ticking to remind them of passing hours, no mechanical heartbeat of the world outside. Here, time wasn’t linear—it was an ache, a loop, a wound reopening.
Calla stood in the doorway of Ares’s private chamber, barefoot, hair loose around her shoulders, eyes still wet from the storm of truths that had fallen in the night.
Ares looked up from where he stood at the window, shirt half-unbuttoned, shadows cast across his chest like sin incarnate. The city lights glinted off his skin, tracing the lines of his muscle, the sharp angles of his collarbone, the tension brimming just beneath the surface.
He didn’t speak. Neither did she.
They had shared a kiss. But this was something else.
She stepped inside.
He didn’t move. But his eyes never left her.
Calla closed the door behind her with a soft click, the sound like a seal breaking.
“I can’t sleep,” she murmured.
“I didn’t think you would,” Ares said, voice low, thick, edged with something that made her knees feel weak.
She took another step forward. “You said once we start, there’s no going back.”
“I meant it.” His chest rose and fell, slow but deliberate. “Every piece of me is bound to you. If I touch you again, I won’t be able to stop.”
Her breath hitched. “Then don’t stop.”
The silence between them grew charged—alive.
Ares turned from the window and crossed the room in three strides. He didn’t reach for her gently this time. His hands claimed her waist, fingers digging into silk and skin, and pulled her flush against him. Her body melted into his, like water returning to the sea.
His mouth found hers—fierce, starved, unrelenting.
There was no patience, no question. Only need.
He kissed her like a man possessed, like a curse had been carved into his bones and her lips were the only way to break it. She responded with equal fervor, her fingers threading through his dark hair, pulling him deeper, closer, into the place where her breath ended and his began.
He lifted her off the floor, and she wrapped her legs around his waist with a gasp. Her back met the wall, the cold stone a shock against her heated skin. His mouth traveled to her neck, trailing fire with each desperate press of lips and tongue. She arched into him, and he groaned against her throat.
“You drive me mad,” he growled. “Every night I dream of you—your voice, your scent. Even in my past lives, I was addicted to you.”
“Then show me,” she whispered. “Show me how much.”
He carried her to the bed, laying her down with reverence and urgency all at once. His hands slid up her thighs, beneath the hem of her shirt, fingers dancing across skin like a painter rediscovering a masterpiece. She trembled, not from fear—but from the raw, unfiltered sensation of being wanted beyond reason.
His shirt came off with a single motion, revealing the ancient mark over his heart—the Devlin seal, glowing faintly like it remembered who she was.
Calla reached out and traced it with her fingertip. “It burns for me, doesn’t it?”
Ares leaned down, his forehead against hers. “It always has.”
Then he kissed her again, slower this time, like a storm sinking into the sea. His hands roamed, memorizing every inch of her body, peeling away the layers of fabric that separated them, until there was nothing left between them but truth.
Their skin touched.
And it was electric.
Like a veil had been torn away. Like the world itself held its breath.
Ares moved over her, fitting against her like he’d been made for this—like they were meant to collide, again and again, in this life and the next.
She moaned his name, a whisper of surrender.
And when he entered her, it wasn’t just physical. It was soul-deep.
The connection exploded—memories, images, lives flashing behind her eyes. Céleste in white, chained to an altar. Ares falling to his knees, blood on his hands. A kiss beneath a silver eclipse. Fire. Betrayal. Death.
But this time, she wasn’t afraid.
She pulled him closer.
And they moved together like they had done this a thousand times before.
Like the curse didn’t matter.
Like they were rewriting it with every breathless moan, every trembling gasp, every whispered name in the dark.
Hours blurred.
The only sound was their mingled breathing, the creak of the old bed beneath them, and the desperate rhythm of two souls finally finding home in one another.
After, they lay tangled in sheets and silence, her head on his chest, his arm tight around her waist.
“I’ve never felt anything like that,” Calla whispered.
He ran his fingers through her hair. “Because it wasn’t just this life. It was all of them.”
Her eyes fluttered shut. “Then let’s make this the last one we ever have to fight for.”
He kissed her forehead. “We will. No matter what it takes.”
But neither of them noticed the faint crack forming on the seal over his heart.
A crack that hadn’t been there before.
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Outside the Manor, Cain Devlin stood at the gates, dressed in midnight-black, his expression unreadable.
He held a blade in one hand, and a rose with silver petals in the other.
A whisper curled from the shadows beside him.
> “Tonight, the cycle breaks. But not the way they hope.”
Cain’s lips curled into a smile.
- Writer
