A Light in the Flame (Flesh and Fire, #2)

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

“Because you just tore apart a god with your hands, and I found that…kind of hot.”

“I can sense your need. Feel it. Taste it. You’re drowning in it.” His eyes slammed shut. “I’m fucking drowning in it.” A sharp dart of desire sliced through me. “Then drown with me.”

Nyktos reached around me and picked up the reins. “The next time you put a dagger to anyone’s throat,” he said, his breath coasting over my cheek as he guided Odin toward the palace, “you’d better mean it.” I stiffened. “Even if it’s yours?” Nyktos’s arm folded over my waist, tugging me against his chest. “Especially if it’s mine.”

“Heartmates usually only occur between two people whose unions are linked to some great purpose.”

“If you ever change your mind, I know a guy who can get it done.” I shook with a wet-sounding laugh. “Was that a Primal of Death joke?” “Perhaps.”

“Sera.” I thought I heard Nyktos whisper my name as I began to doze off. “You were never a ghost to me.”

I felt wonder. A wild fluttering in my chest and stomach. A need for him that went beyond the physical. A powerful empathy for him—the need to protect him even though he was more than capable of doing that himself. A feeling of rightness, or as Aios had said, the feeling of being at home. Of being seen. The knowledge that I’d do anything for him. Anything. The fear that I would never be worthy of what he had sacrificed for me. And the determination that I would do everything to be that. I was drowning in all those feelings until my heart began to pound with the intensity of what I felt—with the knowledge that it was he who held my heart—only him.