Through Flame and Blade

Ch. 16 Touch of Sin

*Chiara

Chiara regretted her suggestion already.

"Is a kiss a sin?" Logan stalked forward, matching her backward steps.

"Doing anything with a demon anything that doesn't involve a blade is a sin," she muttered. She edged further away, cursing herself for revealing the secret.

"Then we've been sinning for weeks, months," he said. He stepped closer. Slowly. Deliberately.

"Being held captive in the same room doesn't count."

"But we haven't been simply captives in the same room." He moved closer. She tried to move back, but was getting too close to the slime-covered wall. Instead, she side-stepped. He followed, tsking. "We've been whispering, talking, and teasing each other in cover of darkness all this time. Such sins with a demon."

"Obviously, not enough to darken my wings. A kiss then. Nothing more," she breathed.

"A kiss then." He stopped moving, and dipped sideways to place his axe on the ashy ground. "Show me how angels sin."

She swallowed hard. Where her mouth had been dry before, now water rushed in as she involuntarily imagined the feel of him, the soft press of lips, the scratch of his unshaven chin, the velvet of his tongue.

No.

Yes.

"A kiss," she breathed. "Nothing more."

"I'm waiting." The corner of his mouth ticked up.

His mouth. She couldn't stop staring, and she couldn't make herself move forward. Nervous, she didn't know what to do with her sword. She held it behind her back, unwilling to let go of the weapon. Her hands shook. Her whole body shook. She was an idiot to invite a demon to toy with her.

It was utter madness to ache for his touch.

To want that mouth on hers.

Even shadowed and half hidden, the lines of his taught body were glorious, heartbreaking in their beauty, and a promise of death. Faint light from above glinted on the scraps of armor he'd found, as well as on the sheen of his light brown skin. Unruly hair nearly covered his eyes, but she divined a spark in them, watching her. Those eyes that had always been watching her through the months, always from across the room, always at a safe distance, while both of them were chained to their separate spaces. Nothing separated them now but a few inches of air.

No chains held him away.

His mouth. So close.

His lips curved. She started to lick her lips, but stopped herself. There had to be another solution. Sin was never the answer, angels knew this truth. There had to some other trick, a heavy cloak, or more ashes and dirt than her wings could easily shed—

It wasn't simply air between them anymore. Chiara's back arched, lifting her chest as an almost perceptible electric charge hummed around her. Her wings brightened, glowing fiercely, jarring in their blue-white. The light fell on Logan's face, setting his eyes ablaze.

"A kiss then," he whispered. His voice rumbled from the depths—as if she stood on the edge of dark abyss, ready to fall into it.

A deal with a demon, then.

There was no time to figure out a different way. She closed her eyes and stepped forward, sensing her way to his mouth. Her hands fell on his chest, heaving from the fight and slick with sweat. And a solid wall of muscle and bone.

It almost struck her as strange to touch him after all this time. As if she wasn't sure he was real when chained to the other side of the room. Before, when she caught his hand to try and fly them both upwards, she hadn't had time to think.