BOUND TO THE AVERNUS FAMILY

Chapter 8: Reading Between Sessions

I am systematically working my way through the mid-period carrier journals in the third-floor library. It is day five, and I am treating these cracked leather volumes as primary source material for understanding the exact parameters of the life I am now locked inside.

I am hunting for the precise moment the previous carrier’s analytical register broke. Instead, in the fifth volume, I find the moment it shifted.

She didn't stop cataloguing; she simply stopped cataloguing the arrangement itself and started cataloguing the men.

The shift is subtle at first, and then entirely abrupt. The rigid paragraphs detailing mist processing efficiency percentages give way to small, specific observations. The way the oldest one’s eyes darken before he speaks. The terrifying precision of the middle one's hands when he thinks no one is watching. The absolute, blistering heat of the youngest.

The mechanics of biological survival slowly dissolved into the mechanics of personal observation.

"You found the personal journals."

I don't hear him approach. I look up from the heavy leather volume. Davion is sitting across the long, polished mahogany reading table, watching me with bright, amber eyes. He did not announce himself, merely waited for me to register his presence in the quiet room.

"You've read them," I say. It is not a question.

"Some. The earlier ones," Davion replies, resting his warm forearms on the dark wood of the table. "I stopped when they stopped being useful for my research."

I carefully close the journal, marking the page with a slip of blank paper. "What research?"

Davion smiles. It is a sharp, entirely genuine expression. He reaches into the inside pocket of his dark jacket and pulls out a heavily folded piece of ancient, yellowed parchment. He slides it across the polished mahogany toward me.

Before I can unfold the delicate paper, the grandfather clock in the distant hallway chimes.

The evening mist requirement surges without warning. The dusty air in the library suddenly turns dense, metallic, and heavy. Across the table, Davion's skin immediately flushes with blistering, structural dragon heat. The temperature in the room rises sharply, radiating off his body like an open furnace.

"I've always thought this room was underused," Davion murmurs, standing up.

He doesn't bother clearing the ancient texts off the table. He walks around the mahogany surface, grips my waist with his incredibly hot hands, and lifts me directly onto the edge of the table.

I don't resist. The heavy mist toxicity is already prickling beneath my skin, demanding the chemical exchange.

He parts my thighs, stepping between my knees. He strips us both with effortless, fluid speed. The blistering heat radiating from his bare chest is a stark, shocking contrast to the cool, dusty air of the library.

He grips my hips, aligning his rigid, thick c*ck at my entrance, and pushes into my soaking w*t p*ssy in one smooth, devastating glide.

I gasp loudly, my hands gripping the beveled edge of the mahogany table as my tight internal muscles stretch to accommodate his heavy girth.

"You approach this entire arrangement as a research problem," Davion observes, his voice warm and conversational as his hips snap forward, setting a deep, relentless rhythm. "It is incredibly attractive."

He doesn't have his custom ceiling mirrors in this room, but Davion is an exhibitionist of opportunity. He always finds the angles.

He looks down at the dark, highly polished surface of the mahogany table, watching our blurred reflection sliding together. Then, he looks at the framed glass of the historical maps hanging on the adjacent wall, where our moving silhouettes are perfectly mirrored in the dim light.

"Look at the glass," he commands softly, his hot hands tracing the dark flush spreading across my collarbones. "Watch what happens to your body when you take it."

I look. I watch myself arching under his brutal, blistering heat. My analytical mind is trying to process the sensory input, but the sheer physical friction of his thick shaft grinding against my swollen cl*t is melting my focus into a sl*ck, liquid mess.

Davion talks through every thrust, praising the way I yield to his size, narrating the exact visual of his heavy c*ck sinking to the hilt inside my w*t core. He is not performing; he is observing with specific delight, completely fascinated by my biological responses.

The heavy, unpurified mist from his system transfers into my bloodstream, coiling tightly at the base of my spine. The poison intersects violently with the blistering heat of his dragon physiology.

"Davion," I choke out, my nails digging into the dark wood as the edge rushes up to meet me.

"Look at the glass," he repeats, driving his hips forward in a final, punishing thrust.

I shatter. A broken sound tears from my throat as a violent *rgasm rips through my core, my internal muscles frantically crushing his hot length.

Davion groans—a sound of pure, delighted surrender—and unloads a scorching flood of c*m deep inside my womb.

The mist processes instantly. The stark, silver-blue light projects from my wide eyes.

Because we are surrounded by reflective surfaces rather than true mirrors, the glow fractures. It bounces off the polished mahogany, the framed glass maps, and the brass reading lamps. The dark library is suddenly illuminated in fractured, multiple beams of luminescent, silver-blue light.

Davion watches the visual spectacle with absolute, fascinated awe, the heat of his skin searing against my trembling thighs.

When the light finally fades and the heavy metallic air clears into clean, breathable oxygen, Davion withdraws with a wet, heavy sound.

He dresses quickly, entirely unbothered by the sheer impropriety of using a centuries-old reading table for an emergency purification. He reaches out and taps the folded piece of ancient parchment he slid across the table earlier.

"Look at this," he says, his breathing finally leveling out.

I pull my clothes back on, my legs still trembling slightly, and look down at the text. It is written in an ancient, sweeping script that looks like jagged architecture.

I stare at the faded ink. My brain automatically begins translating the syntax before I even realize what I am doing.

"I can read this," I say, genuinely shocked.

Davion leans against the edge of the table, crossing his arms over his warm chest. "Of course you can."

He says it like a fact he predicted years ago.

I trace the specific paragraph he has marked with a faint pencil underline. It speaks of a future Eclipse carrier. One who seeks to understand the hidden mechanisms of the curse rather than simply accepting the biological arrangement.

She will find the seam.

I look up from the fragile parchment, the residual coolness of the processed mist humming in my veins. "What is the seam?"

Davion leans back, the playful, exhibitionist warmth entirely absent from his amber eyes for the very first time since I met him.

"I don't know," he answers quietly. "But I've been looking for it since I was seventeen."

I watch him closely, my analytical mind instantly snagging on the timeline. "Why did you start looking at seventeen?"

He doesn't answer immediately. The silence in the sprawling library feels heavier than the mist toxicity.

"Because someone I cared about couldn't be helped by anything I knew how to do," Davion finally says, his voice stripped of all its usual, easy performance. "I started looking for something I didn't know about yet."

He reaches out and gently closes the ancient text.

"Tomorrow," he says softly, turning to walk out of the library.

I sit alone at the polished reading table, watching his broad back disappear into the shadowed corridor.

He is not researching the seam for me. He is researching it for someone who is already gone. I touch the closed parchment, my mind instantly recalibrating the new data. This revelation changes the entire shape of the alliance I was considering forming with him.