Xie Wangchen blurred across the distance.

Before Ji’an could even take three steps, Wangchen’s hand shot out, his long, pale fingers closing around her bare, slender ankle with the unyielding, iron grip of a vice.

Ji’an shrieked, a breathless sound of sheer panic as her forward momentum was violently arrested.

She crashed flat onto her stomach on the plush silk, her fingers desperately clawing at the fabric, trying to drag herself forward.

"No! Let me go! Wangchen, please!"

Her pleas were agonisingly beautiful. They fueled the dark, twisted fire in his chest until it was a roaring inferno.

Wangchen didn’t let go.

He slowly, deliberately dropped to his knees behind her, his grip on her ankle remaining absolute.

The Ice Demon, the proud, arrogant genius of the Eternal Cloud Peak, bowed his head.

He brought her captured foot to his face.

Then, his lips brushed against the soft, sensitive skin of her instep.

Ji’an gasped, her entire body shuddering violently at the contact. "What are you doing?! Stop it! Let me go!"

Wangchen ignored her completely, entirely consumed by an obsessive, manic reverence.

He pressed open-mouthed kisses against her ankle, his tongue darting out to taste the salty, sweet sweat on her skin.

He licked the delicate line of her arch, his teeth lightly scraping against the tendons.

It was an act of profound, terrifying worship, an intimate degradation that blurred the lines between utter subjugation and absolute devotion.

"You always ran away from me," Wangchen whispered against her skin, his voice a ragged, dark rasp. His thumb stroked the inside of her ankle, feeling the frantic, fluttering pulse beating wildly beneath the surface. "You bolted from the bathing chamber and ran to the Black Market. You left me alone in the ice, without a single explanation. Tell me, Ji’an, how am I supposed to take it?"

He kissed the inside of her calf, the soft, intimate contact sending violent shivers up her leg.

"You will never run from me again," Wangchen vowed, a dark, possessive promise that echoed in the golden cage.

He tightened his grip on her ankle and pulled.

With a single, effortless, terrifying display of physical superiority, he dragged her violently backwards across the slippery crimson silk.

"AHHH!!!"

Ji’an cried out as she was hauled back, her desperate grip on the fabric failing completely. But her crying didn’t terrify Wangchen; rather, it made his blood boil.

Ah, this pretty sound of crying he made, if Ji’an were to be crying beneath him, how long would it take till he stops crying so prettily?

She was pulled flush against his kneeling body.

Before she could thrash, before she could even attempt to strike him, Wangchen released her ankle and lunged forward, throwing his entire weight over her.

He pinned her flat against the mattress.

His long legs bracketed her thighs, entirely immobilising her lower half.

He grabbed both of her wrists, the delicate, fragile wrists that he could snap with two fingers, and slammed them into the silk above her head, pinning them securely with his left hand.

Ji’an was completely, utterly trapped beneath him.

She looked up at him, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and an undeniable, answering heat that the dream had conjured to torture him further.

Wangchen hovered over her, his own chest rising and falling in harsh, ragged breaths.

He looked down at the prize he had finally captured.

The loose white tunic had slipped further, exposing the smooth, pale curve of her shoulder and the erratic, frantic beating of the pulse at the base of her throat.

He felt the searing heat of her body pressing against his.

The contrast was agonising; his skin, naturally cooled by his Flawless Ice Root, clashed violently with the boiling, radiant Yang energy she naturally emitted.

It was a physical collision of fire and ice, creating a localised, suffocating steam that wrapped around them like a secondary cage.

"Mine," Wangchen snarled, a feral, guttural sound that tore from the very bottom of his soul.

He didn’t wait for permission.

He didn’t care about the consequences.

In the realm of the Inner Demon, there was no master to scold him, no plot to navigate, no friendship to preserve.

There was only the hunger.

He dropped his head, burying his face in the crook of her neck.

He breathed her in, a long, desperate inhalation that filled his lungs with the intoxicating scent of her skin. And then, he opened his mouth and bit down.

Ji’an arched her back, a sharp, breathless gasp tearing from her lips as his teeth sank into the sensitive flesh where her neck met her shoulder.

He didn’t break the skin, but the pressure was intensely, deliberately bruising.

He sucked hard, drawing the blood to the surface, leaving a dark, furious, purple mark of absolute ownership against her pale skin.

He licked the bite mark, soothing the sting, before trailing an agonisingly slow, wet path of kisses up the column of her throat.

"Wangchen... ah... wait..." Ji’an whimpered, her resistance melting under the sheer, overwhelming sensory assault.

Her cuffed hands flexed weakly in his iron grip, her body instinctively arching up to meet his downward pressure.

He was drowning in her.

The taste of her skin, the soft, desperate sounds she made, the feeling of her completely helpless beneath his dominating weight, it was a euphoria so profound it bordered on madness.

He wanted to consume her. He wanted to tear away the thin, frustrating barrier of the white silk tunic and devour every inch of her.

His free right hand moved down, tracing the curve of her waist, the heat of her skin burning through the thin fabric.

He slipped his hand upward, intending to push the loose tunic entirely out of the way, driven by a desperate, vulgar need to touch her bare chest, to feel her heart beating directly against his palm.

But as his hand slid upward, over the flat, binding-wrapped plane of her chest... the dream violently fractured.