Sophia’s POV
In the beginning, I had been scared of things changing too fast. It had only been three months after all, not nearly enough time to decide that Leo was the man I would be with forever, so I was all for taking things slowly. Then another couple months passed, and everything was still the same. We were still sleeping in the same bed, the air still electrified with tension, but he hadn’t made a move. Fair enough, 5 months isn’t that much better than three. But then we hit 6 months. 7 months. 8 months. And finally 9 months of nothing. Why hadn’t he made a move yet? I was literally waiting for him in his bed on a nightly basis, my face so close to his, why hadn’t he kissed me? Or lost himself to a frenzy of passion? Grabbed my butt, just something?!
When he started petting that random girl’s head I became beside myself with rage. Three seconds and he’s already getting that close?!? That fucking cheater!!! He has me here waiting for him, GET AWAY!! When Ash started opening up about her feelings for the boy Mike I was finally able to calm myself down a bit, at least enough to acknowledge that she was in fact rather adorable. And then…
And then I heard Leo’s words about me. About how worried he was about ruining the one good thing he had. I remembered how lost, and how isolated he had seemed when I had stopped responding to him for just a few hours. That I was the one thing holding him together, and I realized that as big of a deal as this was for me, it was so much more than that for Leo. If this didn’t work out I would be upset and angry for a decade or two, sure, but I’d get over it. Leo? I recalled the first time he had used Evil Eye, and the sheer pressure that was always on his mind, driving him to the brink of stability. If it didn’t work out between us, what would happen to Leo’s grasp on his own mind? On his sanity?
Almost instantly, I was able to forgive Leo. So when he finally got around to setting up the scouting spike, I immediately pulled him into the subspace without waiting for him to ask. I declared that he was mine. No, not enough, I needed to claim him. Make him understand that he belonged to me, and not any of these other girls he would potentially meet.
I dragged him to our bedroom, to the place where I had waited for months now, to finally do that which I desired. When we arrived, I threw him onto the bed, and took off my dress, forcing him to appreciate the only body I would allow him to see in this life. His touch was cold upon my skin, biting into it, grabbing me. I wanted more. I moved his hands to explore my body, my face, my neck, my arms, my breasts, my stomach, my thighs, my feet. I gave him familiarity with that which was now his, and he moved his hands between my legs. He grabbed me around the waist with his other arm and spun me down onto the bed under him, his rough hands breaching their way inside me, fingers expertly stroking the top as he circled my nub with his thumb.
He bent down and kissed my stomach, then trailed his lips upwards, working his way around the breasts, gently sucking and nipping my nipples with his teeth, before trailing upwards again, this time to bite and suck harder upon my neck, the flames in my body moving to where he touched, responding to his will. I felt like he was claiming his rightful place atop me, as he finally trailed his lips high enough for us to have our first proper kiss.
An explosion sounded in my mind as my body screamed for more, More, MORE. I pulled his fingers out from inside of me as I rolled him onto his back, this time taking my rightful place atop him. I tore off his cloak and rather than even try to loosen his pants just ripped them in half, throwing them to the other side of the room, revealing that which was mine to claim.
I finished the action I had almost taken 6 months ago and grabbed his throbbing member, stroking it as I worked my own lips down from his. I bit and sucked at his throat, succeeding in marking him as mine as he had attempted to do to me. I kissed and nibbled and licked his collarbone, his pecs, his abs, before finding my face in front of his rod. I gently closed my eyes, and kissed the tip, licking the shaft, nuzzling my face against him as I worked my way down to kiss and suck on his balls, stimulating them to fill me as much as I desire. I then worked my way back up, placing his cock in my mouth, licking and sucking until I hit the base. Once it was satisfactorily wet, I got up, and crawled over him, placing my vagina right on top of his dick, before kissing him hungrily.
His left hand was at my throat, squeezing it ever so slightly, not enough to hurt, but enough to make the pulse in my head rush all the more loudly. His other hand placed his head at my entrance, before staring into my eyes, and whispering to me, “You belong to me now.” It was not a question, it was not a statement. It was a declaration. A commitment. I nodded and responded, “Yes.” and in one smooth motion, he was completely inside of me.
As we battled on, I felt the flames in my body grow in intensity. I wanted him, I NEEDED him, more, more, More, More MORE….
He is mine.
The flames all started rushing to my head…
He is Mine.
I stared into his eyes, the forest in the middle of spring, now filled with euphoria.
HE IS MINE.
The next thing I knew, my flames were rushing into those eyes I so adored, and Leo was screaming.
Leo’s POV
Everything was awesome, up until my face was on fire. “COCYTUS”, I yelled, before using as much mana as I could on healing magic. From my eyes, the heat seemed to burn into the rest of my body, next thing I knew, it seemed like my entire body was on fire from the inside out. It was the most horrific pain I had ever imagined, and the only things keeping me conscious were the belief that if I passed out I would die and Sophia’s panicked voice next to me.
I was managing to heal the damage as fast as it was occurring, until there was a shift. The fire had spread beyond just my body, and seemed to be attacking something far more important. My soul. At that moment, nothing seemed to exist. Not the room, not Sophia on top of me, not even me myself. The only thing that existed was the flame. The heat. I didn’t know if I was even still conscious or if I had already died and gone to Hell. No wait, hell isn’t actually part of the afterlife… I started losing my train of thought, my identity as Leo, my life. Until I heard her voice. Not from the outside, how I had been hearing it just seconds ago, but within. The way I hear it when I’m down on Earth. And suddenly, the flame was doubled. I just barely managed to hang on to the last thread of my consciousness, and realized that they were burning each other out. But I was also fading fast. I went back to using healing magic as much as I could, hoping against hope that it could also do something for a burning soul.
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I have no idea how long I was fighting, but at some point, I’m fairly certain I lost consciousness. The reason for that is that I definitely remember waking up. Not to state the obvious, but I felt fucking terrible. Like every hangover everyone had ever had or would ever have in the future somehow got merged into one single state of awfulness. I heard a choked and broken sob off to my left, and turned to reassure Sophia, let her know I was okay…
But…
I couldn’t see her.
I couldn’t see anything, it was all just dark.
I reached my hand to my face, and touched my eyes…
Well…
Where my eyes used to be anyway…
They had been burned away, leaving me completely blind.
No, not completely blind. I had one thing that might work. I rolled off the bed, and felt around for the torn shreds of my pants. I searched through them, taking each knife and running my mana through them, hoping to find the one that I used as a drone. Eventually I found it, and vision returned to me, just from a third person perspective. I took a look at the damage and felt my body grow cold. On my face, where my eyes used to be, was nothing but scarred and burned skin, the sockets dark and empty. Along my body were what looked like cracks in my skin, spiderwebs of scarlet everywhere I could see.
Normally, my emotional color blindness is nothing but a burden, a way to make my life harder. However, where it does spectacularly well is in moments of crisis. When shit hits the fan, the brain tends to get rid of whatever it deems to be useless information, and focuses on how to address the glaring issue. The only issue is, for most people, the brain considers everything that isn’t ‘fight the problem’ or ‘run away from the problem’ to be useless information. However, for me, the useless information to be thrown away are my emotions. You can feel however you want about it later, but right now, this is the problem, solve it.
The problem was the fact that it was fire. Sophia had somehow shot fire into me through my eyes, and damn near burned my body and soul to ash in the process. The questions in order of importance are:
Was it intentional?
If it was an accident, how did the accident occur?
Is there risk of it happening again?
If so, is there something I can do to prevent it?
What are these new lines on my body?
I tilted my knife to look at Sophia, and saw her hysterical state. I think I can cross off the first question. As for what happened? The top theory is that the flames that are a part of her body, but not something she has 100% control over, came through my eyes to claim me. She is Desire’s Flame, so that indicated that her own intense desire is what caused it. If I had to guess, I would say unintentionally, as she had felt that way in the middle of me answering her desires.
I remembered a conversation we had had six months ago:
“Hey, you think there’s anything we can do about the fact that you run a lot hotter than I do?”
“Nothing that doesn’t have significant risk attached. Basically, it would require you to be baptized in my flames, so I would either have to light you on fire, which you probably wouldn’t survive, or send it through the soulbond, and basically light your soul on fire, which you definitely wouldn’t survive. There are a couple other things I could do, but those would risk accidentally enslaving you. Sorry.”
Piecing that moment together, I came to the likely conclusion that what had happened was that her flames had somehow acted on their own to mark me as the one she desired, which set my body on fire and risked enslaving me. Then, when I thought of how the fire doubled and seemed to fight itself, it seemed like she saved me by sending her flames through the bond and directly into the parts of my soul that were already burning, trying to stop the spread as much as possible.
So putting it into perspective, Sophia almost accidentally killed or enslaved me, burning my eyes away in the process, then fixed the accident in a way that should have killed me but didn’t due to the perfect circumstances under which the accident had originally occurred.
This leaves only two questions. One, what the hell were these lines on my body? Two, what does this change about me and Sophia? I considered it for a while, but honestly? Men are stupid creatures. They tend to give their loyalty to the first person who ever really made them feel wanted. And at the end of the day, this accident had happened because of how desperately Sophia had wanted me. I sighed, then got up, my entire body screaming at me not to move. Now that I understood the problem, emotions trickled back into me, still incomprehensible, and oddly enough, far more muted than I would have thought. I walked over to where Sophia was huddled against a wall, still crying her eyes out uncontrollably.
I sat down beside her and started stroking her head, the way I knew she liked from all of our nights together. She moved her head away from my hand and whispered, “I almost killed you Leo”.
“True.” I responded, the frankness in my voice making her finally look up and at my face, and the odd grimacing sort of smile on it. “Shit, that was probably the second worst I have ever felt in my life. So first things first, is there any risk of that happening again? Does being baptized by Desire’s Flame grant me immunity now?”
Sophia was trembling, but she managed to shake her head. “Once baptized, you become impervious to all flame, not just mine, but there is still risk. I’m still a semi-divine being Leo, I could accidentally kill you just by touching you a little too hard. I don’t-”
I interrupted her with a finger on her lips. “The fire is all I was concerned about though, since that’s the only part you don’t have control over. I have some ideas on how to temporarily seal your power too so if you’re that worried, feel free to use them.”
Sophia started shaking her head adamantly, “No I-I-I can’t, what if I-” She couldn’t finish the thought, and broke down into tears again. I sat there, patting her head, and when the volume was low enough for her to hear again I joked,
“Y’know it could’ve been worse. All I lost were a pair of really boring ass brown eyes anyways. Could you imagine if the flames had gone through my dick instead? God.”
Finally, a small giggle broke its way into the tears. I continued on, “With my enchantments, I should be able to see for a full day even without my eyes, so the blindness isn’t really a problem. I’m a little weak from everything that happened right now, but my body’ll bounce back to fighting shape soon enough, so that’s not a problem either, though I’m not really sure what all these lines are exactly. As for you almost killing me, I know it was an accident, so that’s not really a problem for me either. Nothing has changed for me Sophia. My only problem now is that I’m worried about you, and how you’ll react to this.”
She looked at me again, and avoided the main part of what I said. “The lines are something like a preview into what your titled form will look like. Basically, since I used my flames to fight my flames inside of your body, they annihilated all of the power of each other, but left behind the primary concept of being Titled. Because everyone has a title, no matter how powerful they are, this concept resonated with the one you already have in your soul to make it fit you better. Basically it’s a hint into your true name.”
I gave a short laugh that turned into a grunt of pain. “That just proves that it isn’t a problem Sophia.”
“I really liked your eyes Leo.. and now they’re gone…not gone, I burned them away-”
“Sophia.” I stated firmly, finally realizing that the only way for her to stop freaking out was to let her feel her guilt, rather than trying to assuage her of it. “If you are truly sorry about my eyes, then make it up to me.”
“How?” She asked, desperation forcing her voice out breathlessly.
“Stay. Stay with me, as long as you still want to. I would rather be blind than be alone again.”
She hesitated, before finally nodding in acceptance. I pulled her head into my shoulder as she wept.