The Crushing was an apocalypse made intimate.
The cave shrank around them like the jaws of some vast, grinding leviathan. Walls of jagged stone pressed inward with deliberate, pulverizing slowness, centimeters at a time, the screech of metal on rock a continuous assault on their sanity. Shards of dislodged stone pelted them like hail from invisible fissures. The air thickened to sludge, heavy with dust that clawed into lungs and eyes. Winds howled through cracks, carrying the screams of distant islands fracturing under pressure. The chain itself moaned, a low, world-ending groan that vibrated through bone and soul.
Sunny was their only shield.
They screamed silently, essence fraying at the edges as tons of pressure bore down. Sunny's arms locked rigid, muscles corded to snapping, veins bulging like cables under sweat-slick skin. Blood trickled from his nose, dripping onto the floor in rhythmic splats. Every breath was a knife in his chest, ribs straining against the suffocating force.
Cielle was trapped behind him, body flush against his back in the coffin-tight space. Her arms clamped around his waist, fingers dug into his abdomen, her nails were piercing skin, drawing thin lines on the shroud. Her breath ghosted hot and erratic against his nape, each gasp laced with suppressed pain. Her wings, crumpled ruins from the fall, squeezed awkwardly against unyielding rock, the pressure grinding her feathers to pulp.
The stone advanced. Barely six inches from Sunny's straining face now. Shadows splintered, wisps evaporating into nothing.
"Sunny," Cielle whispered, her voice was shattered, small as a child's. "Sunny, it… it hurts."
He felt her tremble, shudders rippling through her frame, her heart jackhammering against his spine.
Sunny bared bloodied teeth, shoving with everything left. "I know," he snarled through clenched jaws. "Breathe. With me. Hold—on."
Her nails raked deeper. A choked whimper escaped her, muffled against his shoulder. Her legs tangled with his for purchase, thighs clamping tight as the floor buckled upward.
He risked a glance back. Her face was ghost-white, green eyes glassy with terror, lips bitten bloody. Tears carved clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks. Wings spasmed weakly, essence flickering like a dying flame.
Rage ignited in Sunny's gut.
With a roar that echoed off stone, he pushed. They could endure it, he knew they could. Cielle had told him of her previous times with the crushing, it was not really a good thing for her.
Cielle sobbed once, quietly, burying her face in his neck. "Don't… don't leave…"
"Never," he gasped.
Eons passed in agony. The stone crumbled. Sunny's vision tunneled, black spots, roaring in his ears. Legs gave out, spite alone kept him vertical. Cielle's grip was an anchor and a wound, nails bloody, body heat his only reality amid freezing pressure.
Then—
A groan like creation reversing.
Roar dulled to thunder.
The Crushing relented.
Sunny's shadows imploded. He collapsed forward, his palm slamming into the stone, gasping like surfacing from drowning. His lungs burned. His muscles seized in cramps. Blood streamed from his nose and split lip, mixing sweat in rivulets.
Cielle sagged against him, her arms vise-tight, breaths made into shuddering sobs.
They slid down the jagged wall and collapsed onto the floor in a tangled, exhausted heap.
Sunny's back hit the cold stone, his legs sprawled out in front of him, while Cielle landed half in his lap, her thighs bracketing his hips. The cave offered absolutely no room to maneuver; their bodies were pressed flush against each other, chest-to-chest, slick with sweat and grime. In the suffocating darkness, the only sound louder than the distant settling of the Chained Isles was the frantic, synchronized thundering of their hearts.
Sunny let his head loll back against the rock, letting out a ragged, breathless laugh that bordered on hysteria. "Told you," he rasped, his chest heaving beneath her weight. "I told you we'd live."
Cielle lifted her head slowly, her hands planted on his chest to steady herself. Her face was a battlefield. She was terribly pale, her cheeks streaked with dust and the clean tracks of silent tears. Her lips were swollen, bitten raw from holding back screams of pain during the Crushing. Yet, despite the exhaustion, her massive green eyes were wide, the pupils blown so large they nearly devoured the irises. They swam with a chaotic mixture of lingering fear, profound relief, and a sudden, primal hunger. Her brown hair was a wild, matted mess clinging to her damp skin, and her broken white wings draped behind her like a shattered halo, the snapped feathers rasping softly against the unyielding stone.
Even covered in blood, sweat, and ruin, she was absolutely devastating.
Sunny's breath caught in his throat. "Are you okay?" he asked, his voice dropping into a rough, gravelly whisper. Operating on pure instinct, his hand rose, his thumb gently brushing a streak of dirt from her cheek, letting his skin linger against the feverish heat of her face.
Cielle just stared at him. And in the depths of her eyes, something instantly ignited.
There was no warning. No gentle recovery from their near-death experience. Her hands, still trembling from adrenaline and smeared with the ash of stone, flew up to cup his face with a desperate, inescapable grip. Her fingers dug fiercely into his jawline, her thumbs pressing hard against his neck, and she yanked his head down.
Their lips collided.
It was a cataclysm. It was messy, bruising, and entirely filthy with suppressed need. Her mouth crushed against his with hot, unrelenting force, their teeth clashing harshly for a fraction of a second before her tongue swept inside to claim him in a slick, desperate war. She tasted of salt, sweat, and the sharp copper tang of bleeding lips, mixed with the faint, bitter metallic scent of the Chained Isles.
Sunny's brain immediately vaporized. The shock of the contact paralyzed him for half a heartbeat before a wave of hunger roared to life in his chest.
With a guttural growl that vibrated deep in his throat, Sunny surged upward. His hands clamped onto her hips with a bruising, possessive grip, yanking her flush against him so that she fully straddled his lap. The claustrophobic tightness of the cave amplified everything, her thighs locked in a vice grip around his sides, the searing heat of her core pressing against the thin barrier of his damn shroud.
Cielle moaned directly into his mouth, a low, broken, chest-rattling sound that sent fire straight to Sunny's groin. She fisted her hands in his dark hair, tugging sharply enough to sting his scalp, her nails raking down the back of his neck and leaving thin, stinging lines in their wake. She broke the kiss for just a heartbeat, panting heavily, before she deliberately bit down hard on his lower lip, drawing a fresh bead of blood. She immediately soothed the sting, her tongue swirling over the cut with a slow, deliberate stroke, gathering the salty copper taste before plunging deep into his mouth once more.
"F-fuck—Cielle—" Sunny gasped as she broke away to trail open-mouthed, drool-slick kisses down his chin and throat. He was completely wrecked, his hips bucking in a desperate, involuntary grind against her. His hands roamed feral and wild, his thumbs pressing firmly into the sensitive dips of her back before sliding down to grip her perfectly rounded ass, squeezing hard and lifting her to rock against him.
She grounded herself against his response, rolling her hips in slow, deliberate circles that created a searing, torturous friction. A muffled moan vibrated against his neck.
Asserting her absolute dominance in the enclosed space, Cielle brought her elbows down, bracketing his shoulders against the stone and pinning him with her full weight. Her knees locked his thighs in place, her core pressing perfectly against his aching, teasing bulge. She leaned forward, pressing her sweat-slicked forehead against his, their ragged breaths mingling in the scalding air between them. Her eyes were abyssal, her lips swollen and hovering mere millimeters from his.
"Warm," she growled, her voice a husky purr. "Dont go"
Then, she dove back in.
The kiss grew even messier, hungrier. Her tongue curled dominantly around his, exerting a pulling suction that drew a thick, slippery strand of saliva between them when she briefly pulled away, the drool dripping from her chin to glisten on his collarbone. She trailed her mouth along his jawline, sucking hard enough to bloom a dark purple mark into the skin, before her tongue flicked wetly against his earlobe. Sunny's head lolled back against the rock with a loud, hollow thud, a groan echoing off the cave walls as his hands trembled, his fingers digging deeper, bruising the soft flesh of her hips.
Her nails raked viciously across his chest, they would have shredded the fabric and raised angry red welts if it weren't for the memory. In retaliation, Sunny's teeth grazed the curve of her neck, biting down to hold her in place as he sucked at the wildly throbbing veins beneath her skin. Cielle shuddered violently, grinding down on him with a punishing, slick-sounding drag of cloth against cloth. She pulled his hair back, exposing his throat, and dragged her tongue in a long, wet stripe from his collarbone all the way up to his jaw.
"Sunny," she panted, her voice rough with raw sex, her lips ghosting over his skin. "More."
Sunny was an absolute ruin. His hair was a sweat-matted tangle, his lips glossy with blood and saliva, and his eyes were glazed with a feral, mindless haze. His chest heaved and his skin flushed with fever, his hands quaked with the impossible urge to both possess her entirely and yield to her completely. He was completely gutted of essence, his legendary control burned to ash, but he was entirely, willingly hers.
"Yes," he groaned, his head thudding back against the stone in utter surrender. His thumbs hooked into the waistband of her trousers, teasing the bare, heated skin just beneath the fabric.
Cielle smiled, a slow, dangerous, curve of her lips. She pinned his wrists against the stone, dragging them upward. She kissed him again, a deeply claiming, endlessly wet kiss.
When she finally broke away, a string of saliva snapped between their chins. Her eyes were completely black with want, her breaths coming in hot, scalding pants. She released his wrists, dropping her hands to fist the collar of his Puppeteer's Shroud. With a violent jerk, she yanked the fabric.
"Off," she demanded, her voice gravelly and commanding, her nails clawing at the material.
Sunny—a total disaster, rasped out a desperate plea. "Cielle—"
"Off," she repeated fiercely. Her fingers dipped into his neckline, her nails scraping over the welts on his collarbone.
The last fragile thread of Sunny's control snapped. With a flex of his will, the upper half of the Puppeteer's Shroud dissolved into sparks. He was left bare-chested, his torso heaving, coated in a thick sheen of sweat. His corded muscles trembled under the strain, the faint, his chest rising and falling rapidly in the cold cave air.
Cielle's eyes darkened even further at the sight of his bare skin. She flattened her palms against his chest muscles, dragging her nails in a slow, fiery path that grazed his nipples. She leaned down, licking a long stripe up the salty valley before biting hard into it, making sure to leave a blossoming red mark. Sunny arched his back completely off the stone, a shattered moan tearing from his throat as his hips bucked desperately against her.
Then, it was her turn.
Cielle's eyes locked onto his, and her will flexed. The ethereal armor memory she wore dissolved in a shower of shimmering light.
Her tunic vanished.
Sunny's breath was literally punched out of his lungs.
Gods.
She was bare, and she was terrifyingly perfect. Her skin glowed with a faint, divine moonlight pallor, slick with sweat. Her breasts were full and heavy, swaying gently with her ragged breaths, the dusky peaks hardened and begging for his touch. Her toned muscles which were well defined, and her milky skin. Her waist narrowed impossibly before flaring out into plush, deeply grip-able hips, and her thick, powerful thighs clamped around him like a vice. He could see the brutal, beautiful silver scars laced across her spine at the base of her ruined wings—a testament to her survival. A bead of sweat traced the deep valley of her cleavage, trickling down over her flat stomach to pool at her navel.
Sexy was a pathetic, insufficient word. She was lethal. She was divine. And she was straddling his lap.
"Fuck!" Sunny strangled out. He lunged upward, his hands slamming into her chest, his palms catching the full, overflowing weight of her breasts, his fingers spilling over the soft flesh. He circled her nipples with his thumbs, teasing them slowly before giving them a sharp, light pinch.
Cielle gasped loudly, her head falling back to expose the long column of her throat. Her ruined wings twitched wildly against the cave walls as she ground down onto his lap, her legs pressing a punishing, agonizing rhythm against his bulge. She was just as much of a mess as he was, her hair wild, lips swollen and glossy, cheeks flushed with a high fever, her eyes glassy with uncontrollable want. Her skin erupted in goosebumps beneath his calloused touch, her entire frame trembling with the raw, post-terror need to feel alive.
She pushed his chest flat against the stone, establishing her total dominance as she leaned over him, her heavy breasts swaying intoxicatingly close to his mouth. She dove down, kissing him with a sloppy intensity, her tongue invading, her teeth nipping at his lip. Her hands pinned his shoulders down, nails biting into his skin as her hips rolled in a continuous, torturous friction.
Sunny thrashed beneath her, his moans echoing loudly in the tight confines of the cave. Cielle wrenched her mouth from his, breathing literal fire. She stared down at him.
"Cielle—fuck—wait—" Sunny gasped, a final, desperate thread of reason trying to assert itself. His shaking hands flew up to catch her wrists. "The cave… it's unstable… the crushing—it's dangerous—" His voice cracked with sheer desperation, his wild eyes pleading with her to maintain some semblance of sanity.
She stilled completely. She locked her abyssal eyes with his, the smirk never leaving her face.
"No," she whispered.
Her fingers twisted out of his weak grip. She reached down, her hands finding the thick material of his trousers. With a sudden, violent burst of augmented strength, she pushed the waistband and almost ripped the zipper open by force.
Sunny's denial vaporized instantly. His protest choked off into absolute silence. His brain underwent a total, irreversible whiteout. He made the puppeteer's shroud disappear completely.