She doesn’t bend the way that he perhaps expects her to. She doesn’t peel away or fall beneath the edge of his flame and it is at once infuriating and enthralling. His red eyes flare a little hotter in response to it, turn a touch sharper. “Fine,” he says, although he doesn’t have any true intentions of being owned by her, by becoming hers. He is barely his own; how could he possibly hand ownership of his soul to another?
Still, it is the terms of the agreement and he is greedy enough to accept.
Greedy enough to lie.
When she asks if she can burn him, his lips peel back from his blunt teeth and his smile turns almost wolfish. “You can try,” he asks as the flames on his skin flare higher. But it is not just the flames that mark him as one of the fire. Beneath it, his body of coal and ash begins to smolder, the temperature of it beginning to creep upward. Beneath his feet, the plants begin to wither and he can feel the hiss of it as he presses in closer to her. “Come on, little Brun,” he croons, feeling her flames licking out at him.
It is is a dangerous game that they play but suddenly it’s the only thing in the world that he wants.
He takes another step toward her, his bones suddenly aching with the need to feel her own heat clash with his own, to find out if her fire could cut through the strength of his. Would he feel it as an alien thing? Would he feel it as painful? Would it feel like coming home? The flames overtake his mane and tail, the both of them becoming living fire, his eyes turning hotter. “Let’s find out what it feels to burn alive.”
@[brunhilde]