10x God-Tier Stealing System: Pumping S-Rank SuperHeroines Daily!-Chapter 141 - Manipulating Her Into Awakening
She screamed it into the roaring inferno.
Not because she wanted to burn.
But because she couldn’t bear the cost.
She couldn’t watch the man who had just claimed every inch of her body burn alive simply to carry her dead weight.
She clutched at him, her weak fingers curling against his ruined shoulder as if to shove his broad chest away.
She recoiled in horror. He was so hot. His back actually sizzled beneath her soft palm.
"Please!" she sobbed, her voice splintering over the crackle of splitting wood. "I-I can’t—I c-can’t take this—Cruxius—y-you’re..."
Her whole frame shook, jarring her sensitive, swollen core against his hip. Her limbs remained totally useless. Her soul was screaming.
Her trembling lips grazed his jaw. A few tears finally managed to fall—but the moment they struck his scorching skin, they gave a vicious hiss, flashing into steam.
She choked, a wet hiccup stumbling past her teeth.
"I-I thought... I thought you’d run... b-but... y-you stayed, you..." She whimpered, pressing her sweat-slicked breasts closer to his ruined chest. "You’re carrying me... e-even when it’s... it’s k-killing you..."
The fire roared around them. The hallway walls collapsed in a shower of sparks.
But he didn’t stop.
Even when his bare heel dragged through a pool of flame—the sickening smell of crisping flesh threatening to empty her stomach.
"I’m sorry," she whispered. Her head shook wildly, her voice quaking. "I’m so sorry, I—I should’ve been stronger—I shouldn’t have made you—!"
Another hiccup. Wet. Heartbroken.
Her voice shrank to the tone of a broken girl begging a deaf god.
"I don’t want this... Not like this—Cruxius, please... please just put me down..."
She buried her face in the crook of his neck. She pressed her naked body as flush against him as possible, as if her soft, shivering curves could somehow shield his tall frame from the flames.
"Okay," he said.
And then, he halted.
But the word wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t a surrender, or a sudden breath of hope.
It felt far colder. Far deeper.
She didn’t understand it at first.
Not until the rigid lock of his arms shifted. Not until the searing, solid heat of his chest pulled away from her flushed front, and the terrifying tremble of his strides ceased.
She felt herself descending.
He lowered her gently, agonizingly slow, as though laying her bare spine into a bed of silk rather than onto the cracked, blistering marble.
Her bare ass and shoulders met the baking stone with a dull thud. Her exhausted muscles offered zero resistance.
Everything inside her hollowed out.
Her arms slipped from his thick neck like wilted vines. Her fingers twitched, reaching on pure instinct for the brush of his skin, craving that final, anchoring connection.
But he was already stepping back. Already turning his broad, blistered back to her.
Her tear-filled eyes went wide.
"No..." she mouthed. The word was nothing more than dry, heated air.
She watched the space between them grow. Too fast. Too final.
No farewell kiss, no lingering glance, no parting order—only the nauseating stench of burning flesh trailing in his wake.
Her chest caved in, as if a vital organ had been ripped out and tossed into the roaring fire.
She wanted to scream. To beg. To sob harder than she ever had in her life.
But her lungs refused to work.
He was leaving her.
No... he was saving her the burden of his death.
The truth of his choice—his ultimate sacrifice—twisted through her ribs like a serrated blade.
She lay entirely naked on the floor, fresh tears slipping down her temples only to hiss and vanish before they could pool in her ears.
The stone beneath her pulsed with an angry, scorching warmth, searing the tender flesh of her back and thighs. Yet, even that physical agony was eclipsed by the gaping ache in her chest.
A hollow, slow-dripping misery whispered that this wasn’t how their night was supposed to end.
But at least... he would survive. He had to.
Her cracked lips parted. "It’s my fault... I deserve this..."
The confession tasted of pure ash. Her manicured fingers curled weakly against the blistering marble. The inferno surged higher, the sheer heat starting to numb her nerve endings.
She gasped faintly, staring up at the crumbling ceiling. At least he’ll be safe... he’ll be safe...
And then—
A massive weight slammed into her bare body. Heavy. Soaking wet. Freezing.
She gasped—a visceral, full-body shock—as something suffocating and drenched covered her from head to toe.
She jolted wildly beneath it.
Her back arched off the floor as ice-cold water seeped into her overheated pores, drawing a sharp, breathless scream from her lungs.
The thick, saturated blanket clung right to her naked curves. It plastered over her thrusting breasts, the icy fabric making her sensitive nipples pebble into hard, shivering peaks. It pressed her flush against the floor, as if trying to drown out the fire in her blood along with the flames.
She blinked through the dripping water and steam.
Her heart stopped.
He was standing right over her.
Not whole. Not human. Not really.
His body was ruined.
The skin of his torso was blackened, peeled back in wet, bleeding strips that exposed raw, blistered muscle.
His dark hair—what was left of it—still smoked, the ends melting and curling into his scalp.
Half of his handsome face was swollen and raw, the cheek torn open by falling debris, his teeth glaring through the exposed meat.
And yet... he was smiling down at her.
A dark, possessing smile that didn’t give a damn about the agony. A smirk that had braved the fire, raided a refrigerator for cold water bottles to soak a blanket, and walked right back into hell just for her.
"You’re mine, Seleyena," he whispered. His voice was a guttural, terrifying rasp—like his vocal cords were lined with hot coals and blood.
She couldn’t move a muscle.
Not from the biting cold of the wet fabric. Not from the surrounding terror.
Just from him.
"Not even death can part us..."
As the chilling vow left his ruined lips, his left hand fell open.
His head tipped back, and his massive frame collapsed forward, hitting the burning floor like a lifeless ragdoll.
Thud.
Seleyena froze. The icy blanket molded to her shivering, naked body as she stared at his unmoving form. She blinked, the horrifying realization crashing down on her like a physical blow.
"CRU-CRUXIUS—!?"
She scrambled out from under the heavy wool. Her bare knees and palms slipped over the soaked stone as she crawled toward him on all fours.
She didn’t care that the blanket slipped away, exposing her flushed, wet breasts and slick thighs to the searing heat. She didn’t care about the pain anymore.
"No—no, no, no—Cruxius!?" she screamed, his name tearing her throat apart halfway through.
Her small hands flattened flush against his ruined chest.
No rise. No fall.
Just an awful, deafening stillness.
Her fingers curled desperately into the charred, sticky remnants of his shirt, hauling his heavy upper body toward her. She begged whatever god was listening to rewind the clock just ten seconds.
"Don’t do this to me—" Her voice shattered into a sob.
She pressed her forehead against his. Her tears flowed freely now, soaking right into the wreckage of his face, uncaring of the steam rising between them, uncaring of the sickening scent of charred skin.
All she wanted was the deep, rumbling vibration of his chest.
One more breath. Just one.
