Chapter 9

CHAPTERNINE

Sweet Dreams was the name of Raina’s establishment. The tall, rambling Queen Anne structure had a first level wraparound porch and several balconies on the second and third levels. The complicated roofline of cross gables and a block tower had a seemingly random design Silas knew helped channel and contain energy flow in the areas that most needed it. He wondered if Ramona had helped with that spell craft. The top tower was where Raina had her private rooms. A weathervane shaped like a witch riding a broom crowned its roof, the broom’s bristles curled like the witch’s long streaming hair.

The house possessed delicate arches, decorative brackets, stained glass windows. The winding drive had been almost a mile long, through thick woods and marsh, and lined with ancient oaks draped with Spanish moss.

Ramona had asked him to portal them to the mid-point, so they could walk from there, and she could tell him about the place, show him the grounds. He didn’t oppose the plan. He liked looking at her, her hand gestures, the way her body moved and eyes flickered, everything going on with her.

She was aware of it, a brightness to her eyes. Every time their bodies brushed or her hand fell on his arm, the erotic awareness between them intensified.

Sweet Dreams was presented as a bed and breakfast, but no guest came seeking a room for the night. Unless they had deep enough pockets and wanted the services they could find here for that length of time. Law enforcement was managed with distraction magic and Raina’s savvy community outreach. Apparently, the way for a bordello to be accepted was by winning over women in the community.

“Raina hosts monthly tea parties,” Ramona informed him. “Grand, lovely things. The succubi and incubi are the waitstaff. I told you about Matilda, the cook? She’s also an excellent baker, and she’s got a couple of apprentices. Li is the leader of the pack, after Raina. He’s interested in cooking. A couple of his clients have a food fetish. They want it prepared, served or eaten on their bodies. Some of them like being the centerpiece at group dinners...”

He’d picked up her hand as she spoke, put his mouth on her fingers to nibble at them. The teasing touch of tongue he added had her trailing off. “They also have a romance book club that meets in the parlor,” she added faintly.

“You seem to know a great deal about the operations.”

“I’m one of the voyeurs. Ruby and I have an open invitation any night we want to watch in the public rooms.”

“You’ve never participated? Or been a client?”

She glanced at him, then away. “No. Not really.”

Being open about sexual matters wasn’t the same as being open about vulnerabilities, past disappointments. He felt the closing of a door which held things she didn’t want to discuss right now. It wasn’t the time to push it, but he filed it away for later. He pressed a kiss to the center of her palm, released her as they mounted the stairs to the front door. It opened as they reached it.

“Gina,” Ramona said warmly, an indirect introduction for Silas to the female standing in the doorway.

The young succubus was not yet in full control of her powerful erotic miasma, but the house’s protections helped neutralize and tone it down. Her red hair framing sparkling dark eyes was even more riotous than Ramona’s blond locks. Drawing Ramona over the threshold, she hugged her. Hands with painted golden nails wandered over Ramona’s back and hips with easy familiarity.

“I’m so glad you decided to come. Ruby’s upstairs with Raina, gathering things to bring down. They have plenty of help, so Raina said to give your guest the house and garden tour, and they’d be down shortly.”

Gina was appraising him with great curiosity, her nostrils flaring, head cocking. Just like any other wild creature, she assessed him first as food. At least with these particular sex demons, that wasn’t a lethal proposition for humans, though without Raina’s spell work, it might be.

When he kept his natural offensive skills close to the surface, making it clear he wasn’t prey, she took a deferential step back, acknowledging it. To fully reinforce the message, he had to meet her gaze and hold it, but he absorbed the impact of what he found there and refocused without a change in expression. A learned trait, developed over centuries.

“You’re welcome here, sir,” she said courteously. “Or is it ‘my lord?’ Can I bring you anything?”

“I’m fine. Sir works. Or Silas. I have all I need right here. Thank you.”

He clasped Ramona’s hand when he said it. Gina shot a look of female appreciation and a secretive smile at Ramona. Then she left them, bounding up the wide main hall staircase like a graceful deer.

“I thought you only wanted me to call you sir.” Though Ramona’s tone was light, he heard the question in it.

“There’s sir, and there’s Sir with a capital letter.”

“Hmm.” She cocked her head. “There’s this really subtle shift in your gaze when you first look at someone. That’s when you know how and when they’ll die, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “You register it, but then you move past it. It’s a road you’ve traveled down so many times you know exactly how to keep the car on the road. But when you looked at Gina, I could feel how you feel it. It’s difficult, every time. Isn’t it?”

Even the souls he Reaped rarely thought of how their mortality impacted him. Which was how it should be, but having someone interested in his well-being as a lover was unexpected. And not unpleasant.

“There are many questions Reapers don’t answer, because it wouldn’t make sense to others,” he said honestly. “When I see a death that will come too soon, or be ugly, it’s like being stabbed by a knife. And yet I will do nothing to change it, which makes me sound like a cold bastard with no compassion.”

“Except for where you said it feels like you’re being stabbed.” She put her hand on his chest, drew a pattern over his heart. While it was an unfocused movement, merely exercising a desire to touch him, she was tracing an infinity symbol. “Did you ever try to stop one?”

“Yes. Once. Every inexperienced Reaper does. It changed things for the worse, for that soul. I was responsible for putting it through that.” He grimaced. “Lyra was my mentor during my first years. She told me to focus on what happens when we bring them to The Gate. How, when they cross that threshold, there will be a respite from whatever suffering they experienced.”

“Do you know that for certain?”

“When The Gate opens for the soul, the energy that is emitted…you know it is a welcome home.”

She mulled that. “The one you interfered with. Was it a male or female soul?”

“Unless it’s their first incarnation, souls come from multiple lives, where their body home has been different genders, races, species. So we simply say ‘the soul,’ unless they are holding onto a particular incarnation and have a preference, or it’s useful for clarification. Like Cal.”

“Body home. I like that. If you turn it around, it becomes homebody. You’re avoiding the question.” A teasing spark entered her gaze. “The one where you tried to interfere. Was the ‘body home’ male or female? Adult or child?”

“Female. Pretty, young, and sad. A suicide.”

“So, testosterone influences Reapers as well.”

“I do not believe I have given you cause to doubt my testosterone.” Smiling at her chuckle, he admitted, “Lyra said as much. Though she wasn’t too harsh. We all have certain souls that affect us. Honora thinks it’s because of lives we don’t remember, before we became Reapers.”

He rubbed at his chest, which was itching. Ramona gestured toward a wide hallway. “Raina said to give you the full tour. We’ll start with the path to the parlor. It’s how Raina displays client options, so it’s pretty distracting.”

“Is there anything in this place that isn’t?”

She twinkled at him. “Absolutely nothing. It’s like concentrated teenage hormones multiplied by a million here. I don’t know how they manage to do anything but think about sex. Matilda acted like a scalded cat the only time I asked her how she deals with it. She says she has nothing to do with the ‘shenanigans’ that go on in this ‘den of sin.’”

Ramona rolled her eyes. “But while she’ll whack them with a spoon when they step out of line, she loves them like a momma badger. The only one she treats anywhere near an equal is Raina, and even that depends on the day and Matilda’s mood. She’s a hundred percent mortal, but Raina has decided it’s an act. She thinks Matilda is an ancient mother goddess slumming as a cook. She could kick all of our asses with sheer disapproval alone.”

The wide hallway had a Persian rug, the colors highlighted by the diamond-drop chandeliers that lit their way. The sensual delights available at Sweet Dreams were foreshadowed by artwork mounted against the floral wallpaper. Each of the gilt-framed original oil paintings, done in classical Romantic style, displayed an erotic act. Scattered among them were whimsical pencil drawings or watercolors that somehow didn’t clash. The mix reminded the viewer of all the things sex could be. Sacred, fun, intense, loving, a treasure of shared emotions and possibilities.

Silas had tucked Ramona’s fingers into the crook of his elbow, but now he slid his arm around her waist, drawing her closer to him. Her eyes rose to meet his as he molded his palm over her buttock, bare under the skirt of the dress she’d worn. He wanted to seek her heat, increase the arousal he could scent.

Fuck it. He wasn’t a human, but he was all male.

He bent his head, met her lips, already parted, and she was leaning into him, her body pressed close as he took two handfuls of very nice female ass. Underneath the dress, he knew her buttocks were smooth and silky to the touch. When he’d teased her between them at her shop, she’d become even more wildly aroused.

While he suspected decorum wasn’t a big priority in a bordello, he also knew the pleasures of anticipation. He moved them to the wall, put her against it but then eased back. “So you like the idea of calling me ‘Sir?’ Being more formal with me, under certain circumstances? Circumstances I control?”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “Yes. The desire is there, Silas. It’s strong.”

He braced a hand by her head, combed a lock of her hair over her breast, offering a deliberate caress. “But?”

She lowered her eyes to watch his hand. “Surrender has a lot of faces. I’ve experienced some of the bad ones. So outside of fantasizing, what I want is new territory, which makes me nervous. I know a lot about the gap between what we wish for and what we can have.” She paused. Lifted her face to his as she spoke carefully. “Would you like it if I called you that? Sir?”

Her breath, thready, was a touch of silk against his mouth. The script on her wrists was glowing with heat.

“Under the right circumstances, I like the idea very much.” His hand slid over the curve of her buttock, bringing her lower body in contact with his, the pressure of his erection reinforcing the answer.

“When she saw the gift you’d left me, Raina said you had a ‘kink flair.’” Her grip on his shirt told him she was rolling over a lot of things about that, needing deeper into his mind on it.

“Being given control of a woman’s passion, her trust in what I’ll do with it…it’s been a skill I’ve developed, plundered and explored for a very long time.”

The pulse in her throat throbbed. “It never gets old?”

“It’s never failed to fascinate and remain unpredictable in the right ways, just as its predictable side is a nectar I’ve never tired of.”

“Unlike the women themselves.”

He’d known he was dipping into perilous waters with that one, things that came close to her past heartbreaks. It was clear she hadn’t had a relationship that hadn’t fallen short of her hopes, which meant males who hadn’t been able to handle who or what she was, let alone fulfill her needs beyond the short term.

“It was a pleasure with a natural beginning and end. Reapers know nothing is permanent until…it is.”

Knowing she wasn’t his soulmate brought that inexplicable tinge of disappointment again. He put it away. It shouldn’t change anything about how strongly he was drawn to her, or her to him.

When he cupped her face, she nipped at his fingers, her eyes full of what she needed and wanted. “This hallway is like being dropped in a vat of pheromones without a life jacket,” she sighed, with a half-smile.

“No fire analogies?”

“Raina would try to turn me into a frog if I burned one of her rugs.”

“Try? But not succeed?”

“Unless we catch one another by surprise, we’re pretty well matched,” she said.

He stepped back, offering her his arm in a way he expected she’d call ‘old world,’ but she’d said she liked that. With her hand in the crook of his elbow again, they resumed their stroll along the montage of paintings. At the end of the hallway, they entered the parlor.

In the early evening, clients were entertained there and matched up with Raina’s stable of beautiful male and female demons. From there they’d go to a room outfitted for their desires. He was shown those rooms, plus the big dining room sometimes used for the food fetishes. She took him past a bank of windows with a view of the extensive gardens, where exhibitionist play could happen. Guest houses were available for those who paid to stay the night.

As the last stop on the tour, Ramona took him into Raina’s impressive library, which included many ancient arcane texts glassed in on the top shelves.

He arched a brow at several of the titles he knew had been reported stolen in the past couple decades, but figured that was Mikhael’s area to handle with his succubus-witch mate.

Sometimes not my job was a term to be thankful for.

“Do any of those she employs ever move on?”

“None so far. They’re family, and act like a pack. It’s not unusual for three or four to share the same bed.” She sobered. “When they’re out in the world, sex demons have to be solitary, hunting and operating alone. It’s not easy for incubi or succubi on their own, because most of them can’t not kill their prey, and that attracts attention. A kill here or there can be covered, as long as they’re smart about it, but they’re very much creatures of impulse. As full-blooded sex demons mature toward thirty, it gets worse, and they lose control. Raina’s concerned about Li, because he’s getting close to that age.”

She gestured around her. “While I freely admit there’s a personal pleasure to watching things unfold between the demons and the guests, their joy toward it has a bittersweet side to it. There’s none of the ugly edge of hunger, and you can see how much that means to every one of them. There’s a huge difference between anticipating what’s for dinner, and wondering if there will be dinner at all. Or if you’ll be hunted when you can’t stop killing, because your hunger has become an addiction you can’t stop.”

She drew a steadying breath. “Here they’re safe. They can be a family.”

“You understand the value of that,” he noted. “Chaos witches must live solitary lives as well. You are fortunate to have your coven sisters.”

“I’m thankful for them every day.” She reached up to touch his jaw, fingers grazing his cheek. “You know what loneliness is, too, but you’ve turned it into simply being alone. There’s a lot of good things waiting once that threshold is crossed. But you never forget what you leave behind. Or stop wishing for it.”

“No,” he said. “You don’t.”

He lifted his head at a stray wisp of energy. The French doors behind them opened, bringing in the scents of the ornamental gardens. He could hear a fountain gurgling, the buzzing of bees and chirping of birds. Ramona’s eyes sparkled. “The house likes to suggest things. Apparently it thinks we could do with a walk in the gardens.”

Many homes were infused with the energy of those who’d lived within its walls, but it was rare that the structure itself took that energy and used it to manifest its own will so directly. But he guessed with a powerful witch in residence and a dozen sex demons, it wasn’t surprising.

“Luke, another incubus, complains that it’s like having a house mother, literally. He calls it Nanny McPhee. If one of them is running late at night, taking too long in the shower, it will turn the water ice cold. Or if Raina needs to be up early, she’ll wake up with her bed moved in front of an east-facing window.”

“Convenient.” Gesturing her courteously ahead of him, he rested his hand on her hip as they stepped outside. She tipped her head back to the sun, hair whispering over his arm. He enjoyed its silken softness before he took her hand, so they could wander the paths together like that. As he studied the arrangement of vegetation, flowers, statuary and benches, she pointed out storage places stocked daily for the anticipated evening needs of the clients.

Snacks, water. Vibrators, harnesses, rope to bind a playmate to a bench, perhaps while they were blindfolded. The sex demon might use a thorny stem or the silken touch of a flower to stimulate, alternating things of the natural world with the more unforgiving touch of a whip.

He noted the flick of her lashes when she explained that, how her hand tightened on his. Reaching out to a flowering bush, he removed a white bloom. “Close your eyes,” he said.

Her eyes widened when he issued the command, taking control. As her lids lowered, he brushed the flower bloom over her eyes, her nose and lips. “I would press this between your legs, decorate you with flowers, draw lines upon your back with the thorns of a rose stem. Then flick all of the blooms off with the touch of a crop, and give those lines an extra sting. I’d save the bloom between your legs for last. When I struck it away, I would put my fingers inside you, with the crop’s handle. Would you like that?”

Her lips were pressed together. She gave a quick nod. He threaded the bloom into her hair behind her ear. “Good. Open your eyes.”

Surprised, she put her hand up to the flower. Her dazed expression said the romantic gesture pleased her. “I’m not sure we’re going to make it through the fashion show,” she said in a throaty voice.

“If I can run the hallway gauntlet without taking you on the parlor sofa, I can handle a cornucopia of role-playing outfits presented by a nubile group of sex demons.”

She laughed, eyes clearing. “I hope so. Because Raina is as rabid about her parlor sofa as she is her carpets. But maybe we should run that gauntlet again, just to test your fortitude. You know, there’s a bathroom along the hallway. Very Raina-approved tile floors.”

“I would not take you on cold tile. But if you keep tempting me…”

She stepped back to the full extent of their arms and then moved forward to duck under his, executing a twirl.

He’d teased her to make her smile, and also to help him pull back. Being around her was like resisting the desire to taste a cake just out of the oven, that tempting aroma begging for it to be consumed with both hands.

But as far as challenges to his self-control went, it was one he could handle and enjoy. Learning how people would meet their end was as he’d described it. He did it every day, but that knife-in-the-gut feeling when he discovered the demise would be ugly or too soon—it never went away. It was why many of his kind preferred not being among people. He’d learned to push past it, see the person as more than their death.

The research he did beforehand on the souls he Reaped? It was to help with their transition, but it also helped him remember what he knew was more important.

How they lived.

* * *

Raina leaned on her balcony railing, outside her tower bedroom. Cathair, her crow familiar, hopped along the rail, traipsed over her hand, giving it a light peck to get a stroke of his feathers, before he fluttered up to the eaves.

She’d watched the erotic tension between Silas and Ramona grow, had sensed with interest Ramona’s energy tangling with his, which contained and channeled the Chaos elements back into whatever they were sharing. Then she saw Silas place the flower behind Ramona’s ear, his hand lingering. Whatever he said made her smile. She stepped back, holding their hands together and then lifting them to do a twirl beneath, close enough her hips and shoulder blades brushed his body. Her golden hair gleamed.

“Have you ever seen her like this with anyone?” she asked Ruby, standing beside her. “In all the years we’ve known her, and ever this fast?”

“There was that surfer, the Marine,” Ruby noted thoughtfully. “He lasted a couple weeks.”

“Yes. Until he mentioned how he’d always wanted to see a whale close up while surfing. He nearly drowned when one came up under him. And broke the surfboard.”

“I think it all thrilled him. It was Ramona who freaked out. She ended it right after. That was the last mortal she ever considered being with.”

“Well, she was on a losing streak.” Raina sighed. “The one before that was the gamer. He woke up inside his first-person shooter game without a weapon.”

“He’d rolled off of her and picked up his phone to resume play, like he’d just finished takeout pizza. We should have left him there long enough to cure him of being an inconsiderate dick.”

Ruby leaned her elbows on the top rail and propped her foot on the bottom. In her faded, ripped jeans and tank T-shirt, she looked like the sexy badass Raina knew she was. Her dark ponytail slid over her tanned shoulder, the wind fluttering it against the sleeve of Raina’s black velvet dress. “She’s had it rough,” Ruby added. “She has the same problem you do, just a different shape.”

Had that increased Ramona’s isolation, knowing Raina no longer had that challenge? Laced liberally in the house’s spellcraft now was a Dark Guardian’s touch. Raina could go to town like a normal person. Visit Ruby at her gun shop and shamelessly flirt to help increase her sales. The unsolicited help annoyed Ruby and guaranteed sensual punishments from her Dark Guardian—two reasons that totally justified doing it, in Raina’s opinion.

“You had your own challenges,” she noted. But not wanting to send Ruby to that dark place, she chose a more lighthearted interpretation. “Your monumental mommy issues, plus Derek’s overbearing ass was in your life practically from birth. Cradle robber.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “He’s centuries old. He doesn’t have much of an age-appropriate dating pool. Plus, he’s my soulmate. We both always knew that.”

Raina elbowed her, but then returned her attention to the two below, strolling through the garden again. Silas was a handsome male, made even more appealing by his obvious attentiveness to their coven sister.

Over the years, Ramona hadn’t risked romance often. The Marine and the hapless gamer had been part of a sparse group. Yet knowing how important love was to the heart and soul, Ramona had turned her capacity for it to her friends, her passion to her shop. But her longing for a romantic bond had never abated. And from the way she concentrated on the BDSM play at Sweet Dreams, sitting still and silent on the sidelines, seeming to forget to breathe as she watched the interplay between Doms and subs, Raina knew her desire for a Master hadn’t abated, either.

Silas seemed cognizant of what Ramona was, on both levels. By now, he’d experienced her Chaos energy first-hand, and given Ramona a real-life submissive sexual experience. He wasn’t running. Ruby had rightly pointed out Ramona might be the bigger obstacle to their relationship, but the male was immortal. Plus, even from up here it looked like you could bounce a cauldron off his ass.

There was such a thing as setting your standards too high.

“Do you think that’s what this is?” Raina asked. “A soul mating?” At one time, she would have scoffed at the idea. Then Mikhael Roman had become her entire universe. Not that she would tell him that. Well, maybe on his birthday, and for very special events. Like the hundred-year anniversary of some kind of comet flying over the Earth.

“I don’t know,” Ruby responded. “But whatever this is, she deserves an actual relationship. Even if it’s not forever, just please Goddess let it not turn into a cosmic train wreck.”

“Well, she’s a Chaos witch interested in a Reaper. What could go wrong cosmically with that?”

Ruby shot Raina a look. “There goes that fluent sarcasm.”

“Derek finds it arousing.”

“Yeah, right.” Ruby snorted. “That’s why he fantasizes about strangling you so often.”

“Breath play is an expensive service. He can’t afford it on his salary. Remind me again how Light Guardians are paid?”

“The universe provides him what he needs.”

“Which means he conjures money when he needs it. If he had celebrity tastes, he’d drive up inflation rates.”

“Says the woman whose male loves bespoke suits and Ferraris.” Ruby smiled fondly. “I think Derek’s last major expense was a new pair of jeans. Only because off the rack doesn’t fit him right.”

“I think all governments everywhere should ensure men have jeans that fit right. Particularly Derek.”

“Keep your eyes off my man, bitch.”

Raina chuckled, then cast her gaze back down to the gardens. “He’s claimed her. Even if I hadn’t seen that spellcraft on her wrists, it’s obvious.”

"Does she know that?" Ruby’s countenance became thoughtful. " There’s a gate to that part of the soul. He has to find the key to unlock it, or be invited in."

"Or he kicks it down, then politely asks if he can come inside." Raina arched a brow at Ruby’s look. "Tell me that isn’t what Derek did. I know Mikhael sure as hell did."

She glanced back down at the subject of their conversation. “That said, if he fucks her over, I’m going to figure out how to annihilate a Reaper. She does deserve some happiness.”

“Yeah. But when it comes to Fate, deserve is a tricky and complicated word.”

Hearing the echoes of pain in Ruby’s voice, Raina brushed her shoulder against hers, a reminder that the past was in the past. “We need to go do a fashion show. And see how my demons have been spoiling that son of yours.”

“You did tell them not to let him chew on the rubber sex toys? Derek had a conniption last time.”

“Which is exactly why I encouraged them to let Jem do it again. Only the new ones right out of the package, of course. Properly sterilized with baby-safe soap.”

“One day, Derek really is going to choke you with that chain you like to yank.”

* * *

When it came to role playing, the sex demons were enthusiastic and creative. A female pirate taking a British captain as her captive, a maid coyly drawing the attention of her female employer. A prince seducing a fire-breathing male dragon into shifting to his human form. A dance of seven veils, done with provocative grace by one of the male demons, for a client who liked men who dressed and behaved as women.

Those were past scenarios for clients with specific fantasies. Raina and the demons had developed the scenes, stocked the session space with everything needed and, Silas suspected, had taken them far beyond their expectations.

After they showed off those costumes and pranced through highlights, they performed and dressed for standard tropes. Cop/traffic stop, boss/secretary, or princess kissed awake. The classics never fell out of favor with the clientele who wanted roleplay.

Ramona sat at the end of the embroidered sofa, and he’d pulled a chair up next to it, his arm behind her. Her hand rested on the sofa arm between them, within reach of Silas’s grasp.

Several of the demons had piled up on the sofa next to her. Li, a slim Asian male wearing an open white linen shirt and belted, faded jeans, sat closest, backside on the sturdy sofa back, Raina-verified clean feet braced on the seat cushion next to Ramona. Two female demons, Ana and Sharone, twined in one another’s arms on the other side of Li, indulging in tongue kisses or stroking Li’s leg, coaxing his fond smiles. They and Raina served as directors, throwing out additional suggestions to the demons acting out their roles with impressive dramatic talents.

During Ramona’s tour of the playrooms, she’d explained how they could be modified with minor changes to become the perfect settings for such fantasies. If, as she’d originally suggested, her intent was to turn his mind to things other than that mark, give him breathing space to work the problem in his subconscious, he gave her props for the brilliance of suggesting this.

But what interested him was her behavior now. As the young demons improvised, laughed, smoldered, caressed and played, showing off toys, restraints and props, she was very quiet, almost unnaturally still. He became intrigued by the way her fingers flexed against the sofa arm, the subtle movements of her lips as particular fantasies came to life.

She was in her head, feeling those scenes, being a part of them. There was often an absentmindedness to her gestures, how she responded to the conversations around her. He suspected she was channeling her stronger reactions. But not suppressing them; she’d made it clear that wasn’t the way her Chaos magic worked.

Testing, he covered her hand with his and stroked her palm, making tiny lines. She became even more still, and the power of that reaction rolled over him.

Watching her behavior alter from scene to scene had confirmed what held the most appeal to her. Any scenario involving a male Dominant and female submissive, where the Dominant fully took over her care and owned her pleasure. She wasn’t much into pain, like the pinching of nipple clamps or higher-level impact play, but spanking definitely grabbed her.

Which made sense. At its deeper levels, spanking was connected to an act of care and protection, a lesson imposed for the sub’s own good. He liked doing it for exactly that reinforcement, as well as the serious pleasure having a sub squirming on his lap gave him. He’d been tempted to do it when she risked herself on the battlefield. It didn’t matter how capably she’d handled herself, because the reaction didn’t have to do with that.

He wasn’t affected by the sex demon energy in the way a mortal was, not fatally caught in its web, but sexual energy worked on him the way it did any male. He might have had centuries to learn how not to let it rule him, but he’d never contended with it around a female who affected him like Ramona did.

So he observed, responded in the right ways, smiled, but eventually he was done waiting. He leaned over, spoke with his lips against her ear, capturing the shell with his mouth, teasing it with a hint of tongue. “Need some air?”

She shivered, fingers twitching in his grasp. She turned those large eyes to him. A strand of her hair was caught on her bottom lip, and he guided it back to its place alongside her soft cheek. “Yes, my lord.” Their faces were so close her mouth grazed his jaw. Her voice dropped lower. “Yes, Sir. Capital S.”

His instincts to take and possess surged forward. She was going to kill him.

He was aware of chuckles and knowing glances as he rose, drawing her up and pulling her out of the room. Raina and Ruby’s measured attention had been on him more than once, and he knew they intended him to recognize Ramona had people looking out for her. He was glad for it, but right now he had no time for anyone’s claim on her but his own.

In the hallway, he opened one of the doors leading to the gardens. He kept his hand on Ramona as he gestured her to precede him out, but then she surged ahead of him, moving along one of the paths swiftly.

He was willing to let her lead, since she knew the grounds better and he wanted to see what level of privacy made her feel the most secure. But the early evening breeze kicked up around her, a warm wind that hit him strongly enough to tell him she was in a tornado of emotion, a whirlwind of response. It almost knocked him off his feet before he countered and steadied it. By that time, she’d cut through the gardens and was headed for the woods behind them.

When he caught up with her, she was physically spinning along one of the forest paths. Dancing. The leaping movements took her into a clearing, and that seemed to be where she wanted to stay, because she started to move in concentric circles. Putting his back against a tree, he watched her, her hair whipping around her, the grasses cutting back and forth, pressing down and then releasing, leaving a moving pattern, like viewing crop circles through a kaleidoscope. She was channeling, letting the Chaos energy choose its expression within a framework she was providing.

She was burning off the more volatile edge of her need, afraid to let it be part of what was between them. She’d told him trusting anyone with responsibility for her magic was difficult for her. He respected that. He’d be patient with it. But ultimately, when it came to this, he wouldn’t tolerate her holding anything back. As a Master, his job was to give her the ability to completely let go. Trust him to care for her. Because she needed that, just as strongly as he needed to take control and provide it for her.

He’d also learned an important lesson. Controlling her magic with his own had a specific sexual framework where it worked. From the heat being generated between them in the parlor, he’d say they were well within that zone.

He left the tree, walking forward through the patterns. The grasses wound around his legs but fell away when he commanded them to release him, to let him pass. When she spun toward him, he felt the energy press against him, mental hands pushing him back. He came through it, took her hands, and let the wind hold him, spin him with her. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he put his mouth on hers, letting her energy carry them off their feet like a kite caught in a whirlwind. He slowed the movement, took them to the center of the vortex.

“Bring us down, witch. Hold fast to me and my command. Use it to bring us down.”

Slowly, slowly, the surplus energy spilled off. When they were together on the ground again, the normal night sounds returned, the rush of wind and grass receding. Her gaze held his, uncertain, but hopeful. Then her attention dropped, and he felt her panic surge. He shifted swiftly, had her hands in an unshakable grasp, opening her balled-up fingers to place her palms against the slashes in his shirt, letting her find his unmarked flesh.

“Even if it had gotten past and marked me, when I hold you in my arms, the pain feels like nothing.”

Ramona’s gaze came back to his face. “There are so many times I thought I could control it, could change its intent. Or it was okay at first, and then… how do I know it won’t be the same?”

“How does anyone know a relationship is going to work out?” The debris of the past was there in her delicate face, compelling him to frame it with his hands, thumbs moving over her skin. “I want to be on this journey with you, not because it’s perfect or not fraught with peril, but because it’s with you. Everything you are. It’s the unpredictability, the unknown ahead, that can add to its joy. Not knowing how long you’ll have it.” He paused. “Ramona, I can’t see your death.”

She stared at him a long moment, then she let out a relieved breath. “Oh, thank goodness. There’s been this part of me itching to ask, like poison ivy you know not to scratch, but you just can’t help it. And I thought, if you do care for me, enough that we’re together and what’s between us grows stronger, that would be a terrible burden for you to carry.”

Her kindness and passion for life matched the strength of her magic. She was also intuitive enough to see more than he’d intended. “That bothers you. Is it because you think the mark is preventing it?”

“No. None of the other Reapers can see it, either. I asked.”

“I’m not surprised. My magic messes with everyone’s.” She kept gazing at him. Waiting.

He’d never contemplated how to present the information, because how did one plan for it? It wasn’t like it appeared on his mental calendar like the souls did.

10:03 Morris Smith, car wreck.

2:21pm Sheila Grissom, stroke.

3:58pm Incorrectly believe you ran into your soulmate.

4:30, Cal Horscht, heart attack.

“If a Reaper can’t see when a soul will give up its present body, it means he’s met his soulmate. So that’s what I thought, at first.”

While he could anticipate certain things from her, he wasn’t sure what was happening in her mind now. He did note the wind had disappeared, but the grass seemed to be vibrating from a force in the soil.

“So you’re telling me this to help me understand why you’ll be moving on soon?”

“No. Hell no.” When she started to draw back, he dropped his hands to her shoulders. “The connection I feel for you is so strong, when I couldn’t see your death, I immediately believed you were my soulmate. I wanted it to be true. Even now, my desire to be with you only seems to be getting stronger. Whatever our bond is, my power and skills seem to mesh with yours, at least when we are intimate. Which is why I stand by what I have said from the beginning.” He eased his grip so he could touch her face, a firmer caress, with a hint of admonishment. “You won’t harm me.”

“You don’t know that,” she said stubbornly. “And…you don’t even know my favorite color. Or if I have any really terrible habits. Though I guess that’s not the kind of thing that would be a dealbreaker to a Reaper. You’re not proposing we set up house together. You can’t really do that anyway, can you? You’re traveling everywhere, here today, gone tomorrow for a year and a half, so why does it matter if I trust you, really. It doesn’t change—”

Her voice rose. The wind abruptly gusted in force around them. Several large branches in the swaying trees snapped. They fell like crooked spears, piercing the earth. Leaves spun down upon them while dirt churned at their feet. The sky above had darkened, clouds scudding.

He didn’t immediately react. He could feel the full amazing breadth of her power, the edges held in her hands like a swirling cloak. Perhaps he’d pushed too hard. But he also might have prompted a scenario where he could prove his point.

She bolted, ran again. This time he followed, stayed with her, and not just physically. He caught her arm, pulled her around to face him.

“Stop. I can’t control…”

“Ramona, in your fantasies, what did you want to call me? Tell me what you called me.”

Her attention snapped to him at the unexpected segue, the one he sensed might knock her off her axis. Her lavender eyes sparkled with white light.

“Sir,” she whispered. “Master.”

He locked down the surge of triumph. “Then obey me in this one moment. Look around you. Really look.”

He threw one hand out, and his scythe appeared in it. He brought it to the ground like a lightning rod, bolts of energy crackling from it. When her gaze traveled from it outward, he saw her finally register what he was trying to tell her.

Despite the power of the maelstrom, he’d woven his power with hers as he’d done in her shop. In the same way their combined desires kept those marks on her wrists, so too, did their yearning for one another keep the energy weaving around them, going nowhere but where they wanted it. Like a dance with a partner who knew how to anticipate your steps, it was a glorious meeting of what was meant to be joined.

Yes, there was dangerous debris spinning through the air, but in a controlled spiraling pattern, like the rise of a vase on a potter’s wheel, grooved with the objects that had been caught in that wind.

“Oh.” She cried out as she saw a pair of raccoons, twisting over and under, but his hand flexed on her upper arm.

“Look.”

He’d modulated it, so the animals were not being harmed, merely tumbled as if wrestling together in meadow grass. The debris spinning with them was contained, causing no harm to the animals. Her energy had a fascinating stitching rhythm to it, the power sliding in and out of the grasp of his. But always coming back to join with it again.

The witch in her became intrigued and fascinated by this new development, wanting to examine it. As that helped her calm down, she took control back from him, bit by bit, as he gave it to her. The magic was hers, the power was hers. He’d merely steadied it, helped the reaction balance before the negative Chaos caused by her fears could take over.

Slowly the winds once more died back, the branches settling to the ground. The raccoons, looking a little dazed and dizzy but otherwise all right, came to a safe landing.

She was leaning against him, his arm tight about her waist, her hand on his beating heart. He disappeared his scythe and met her gaze.

“You are the magic. You feel it in ways no one else might be able to understand. That’s the way I feel this truth, that when you are aroused with me, you will cause no harm. The only obstacle is earning your trust in my judgment. I know you need time for that, but while you seek it, you will not run from me.” He shot her a firm look. “You are cautious, and you care for me and others. I respect that, but I will push on that caution until you know you can truly let go with me. No apologies. If I have to fuck you senseless a hundred times to prove it, I will.”

She moistened her lips. “That may just be the best pick up line a man has ever used to get a woman to have sex with him. And only him.”

“If the truth serves more than one purpose, who am I to argue with it?” Sobering, he touched her face. “Tell me how your magic works, witch. I want to hear you describe it, because I think there’s a truth in there, waiting for both of us.”

Her gaze grew thoughtful at the question, and then she inclined her head. "Chaos isn’t chaotic at all. Not on its face, because there are forces guiding everything, even chaos. Chaos is just the child that the Fates allow to run amok and see where it ends up, with faith that it will end where it’s needed.”

He smiled at that, and she gave him an absentminded one in return. “It’s the grenade that doesn’t detonate after the pin pulls,” she continued. “Luck, stroke of fate, whatever you call it. It’s what doesn’t make sense, but might eventually. It’s the manifestation of what we don’t understand, what’s beyond our understanding, that we have to believe may elude our understanding but is still what’s intended. It took me a long time to get confidence in it, and I made a lot of mistakes along the way. That’s part of Chaos too, but when it’s your magic, harder to accept.”

He saw her make the connection, and her gaze lifted to his, locked. He covered her hand, squeezed it. “So tell me what it is you fear.”

“You.” She drew a breath. “You make me feel wild and uncontrolled, like I did at the beginning, when I wasn’t sure of anything. But I want to feel you inside me, Silas, and all that energy spiraling around us and within us. I want to trust.”

That impish smile returned, a little tremulous on the edges. “And as you said, the only way to get there is lots of practice.”

* * *

“If the truth serves more than one purpose, who am I to argue with it?”

When he’d said that, he’d given her a dangerous smile, one that raised gooseflesh on her arms. No man had ever been possessive with her.

Or taken such care. He brought her to a creek that ran through Raina’s property, a border place that could augment and sharpen energy use, including the erotic kind. Despite the knee-weakening thought, he let the arousal between them simmer. They sat together, him leaning back on his braced hands, her against his side. He was quiet, letting her have her thoughts.

While he’d warned her he wouldn’t let her back away from his challenge to take her over, he was also showing her he’d give her the space within that framework to adjust to the idea. Her whole life, Chaos had taught her to follow its lead. She’d learned to have faith in everything but this, because this had been a hurt that struck at her most vulnerable core.

“You know, it’s like the death thing. It’s better not to know.”

She was resting her cheek against his shoulder, so he put his chin on the crown of her head. “What’s that?”

“The soulmate thing. Giving it the whole, ‘if you can’t see her death, she’s your soulmate’ absolute, puts a lot of pressure on both parties. What if one of them isn’t ready for that? Or if they’re already married?”

His lips tugged in a smile. “Nothing guarantees a Reaper’s soulmate will be ready for that bond the first time or life their paths cross. So it obligates that person to nothing.”

“But the Reaper can tell that’s their soulmate right off, regardless of which lifetime it is? That would suck.”

“It would be difficult.” He feathered his knuckles along her cheek, caressing the hollow of her throat before curling that hand over her thigh, holding her. She was resting on her hip, legs folded to the side. “Tell me which role you most enjoyed watching. I want to see if I am right.”

She was amenable to the subject change. She didn’t want to dwell on what it could mean, that a Reaper was given an eventual soulmate and she wasn’t it. She’d just met him, after all. Talk about getting overly clingy, way too fast.

So she thought about pleasurable things, like the intensity of his regard during the fashion show. It had kept her warm, her body tingling. It made her feel the same way now. “Do I have to choose one?”

“You have more than one favorite?”

“Oh yeah. But Viking pillager and demure nun is at the top of the list. I waffle over fantasies of who’s in charge. I don’t have any Domme to me, but I have an equal opportunity imagination. I see the nun putting the Viking on his knees. She opens her robe, makes him kiss the cross between her breasts. Shows him the benefits of reverence, worshipping at the altar between a woman’s thighs.”

She paused. He was drawing his finger up and down her thigh. Slow, but the line was getting longer, going higher, making wider turns for the return trip. “Tell me another.”

Her heart pounded a little harder. “Naughty bratty girl stopped for speeding by serious Daddy Dom cop.”

His thumb passed over her cheek, tipping her face up to meet his serious green eyes. “These are stories you enjoy playing out in your head. What is your fantasy, Ramona? What do you imagine when your body hungers?”

She rose, moved to the water’s edge. He didn’t follow, instead leaning back to brace himself on his elbows. A Master, watching. Waiting for Scheherazade to tell her story, knowing he held her life in his hands. That he could have her whenever he wished.

She could tell him that, but there was another story, an imagining closer to the truth. She let it grow in her as the wind moved her dress against her. She was thin, but he’d given her a new appreciation for how female her body was. He would see the fabric outlining her hips, her thighs, her hair fluttering over her shoulders.

“I’m in a mist. It has that leafy, post-rain smell. I sense there’s someone coming, for me specifically. Close by my ear, I hear a voice. The heat of his breath ripples over my skin, and I realize I’m naked. Around him…I’m always naked.”

“What does he say?” His deep voice vibrated inside her.

“Run.” She tilted her chin to her shoulder, holding him in her peripheral vision. “I don’t obey right away, because how he says it…I can’t seem to move my feet, take myself away from him.”

She pushed her dress off one shoulder and cupped the bare curve of her shoulder, imagining his hand. Silas’s attention was sharp as his scythe. Her thumb passed over that healing scratch on her throat. She’d been marked by him.

“I ask him, ‘Why do you want me to run?’ The mist gets thicker, and he goes silent. I usually wake up or stop imagining right then, because it’s a question that can only be answered by the right male.”

She pivoted. “Do you know what the answer is?”

Silas rose. She felt like he saw everything that mattered about her. “I do,” he said. “Ask me again.”

“Why do you want me to run?”

“So I can chase you.” That same dangerous smile, holding all the promises she’d ever hoped to be given by a man. With an answering smile, just as dangerous, she was gone. She made sure the mist she left swirling around him was steeped with her scent. The echoes of a laughing, breathless whisper.

“Let the hunt begin, my lord.”

* * *

As she’d already known, the mild-mannered librarian Reaper could be replaced by the relentless hunter-warrior whenever he called it.

Because it was a game, she delighted in what her magic devised. Roots rose up to try to trip him, clouds of leaves plumed to obscure his way and her path. A deer crashed through the woods before him as a distraction. The rain shower that soaked only him wasn’t intended, but by then his tenacity was unsettling her, how little she managed to reduce her lead. As he was closing in, the game became less about play, and more about the reason she’d initiated it.

When her magic knew a pursuer was benign, it didn’t throw hazardous things in his path. So as her edginess started to grow, along with the temptation to test him further, she recognized the warning and changed tactics.

Choosing a live oak with a trunk far wider than herself, she put her back against the solid base and became part of it, its shape changed to accommodate her profile. Trees, their trunks, the reach and curves of their branches, often looked like people.

As he entered the clearing, air currents rippled around him, sending him a confusing mix of odors. She thrillingly suspected he could track her by scent alone and didn’t want to give him that advantage.

He’d stripped the shirt off when it became soaked. His hair was still wet, but he’d raked it with his fingers, sending more drops to his shoulders, adding to the gleam of the brown hair on his chest and arms. She tried not to notice how appealing he looked in only damp jeans, because her magic might respond to her spike of lust by thrusting her from the tree like the prize from a gumball machine.

“A riddle for you, witch. What’s the one thing you can’t deny, refuse or escape?”

Her heartbeat quickened, and his head turned her way. He studied the tree, and then he was prowling toward it.

She could swirl to mist, drift away on the wind again. Become a toad, crouched on the forest floor. Or a rabbit, ready to bound away.

She laid out the options, but her magic would choose. When she became the mist, wisps of fragrant smoke, Silas reached out and wrapped the tendrils around his forearms, countering her magic with his own.

It felt like it did when he pulled her into his arms. His ability to hold her that way in this form startled her enough she materialized in his grasp. She’d left her shoes behind, so one bare foot curled into the forest floor, the other over the top of his shoe.

“You didn’t answer my question.” That penetrating gaze, the rough voice, was equally capable of holding her to him. “What can’t be refused or denied?”

“Death,” she whispered.

She saw the glimmer of his Reaper side, always there behind his more human features. He put her back against the tree, lifted her hands in his. As he did, slender branches dropped from the tree’s leaders, wound around their clasped fingers, their wrists, holding them to one another. He glanced at them, then back down at her. “Does the magic answer to the witch, or does the magic provide the witch with answers?”

“Both.”

When he brought their bound hands down, the vinelike branches extended, giving him the slack to do it. His magic or hers? She didn’t know. It didn’t seem to matter.

He cupped the outside of her thighs, fingertips on the lower curve of her buttocks, as hers rested on top of his wrists. “I’m intrigued by this Viking and nun idea,” he said, dropping to one knee. She wanted to touch his wet hair, stroke it, but the branches didn’t allow her to do that. Which told her she wanted him to restrain her. Keep control. And he wanted that, too.

“He comes in, intending to pillage, to defile her body, and instead finds an altar to worship at, with touch and tongue and cock…” He gathered up her skirt as he spoke, her hand on top of his seeming to help as he used their combined pressure to bring the cloth to her hips. He leaned in, licking at her exposed bare sex, an experimental taste that had her jerking. His grip over her wrists tightened.

“She may have brought him to his knees, but he will have her under him, plowing her folds, feeling her arms and legs clasp around him, needing more, pulling him in deeper.”

“Ah…” She could only manage sounds.

“Tell me you want my mouth on your cunt.”

She found a word she could speak. The only one that mattered. “Please.”

He dipped his head, another slow lick that had her shuddering, her body arching. “Oh…please.”

“More, little nun? What if I want you to worship my cock? Put you on your knees, make you pay homage it?”

She could only manage a whimper for that, because he didn’t wait for her response. He was licking her again, tongue dipping into her folds, exploring. Her noises of need were answered by a growl of appreciation. The wolf again.

Wolf, dragon, Reaper. All things that could come for someone, hunt them down. One of them could safeguard her, guide her. Become her shepherd.

My lord is my shepherd, and with him I will do nothing but want.Yes, please.

Her hands clawed at his, hips lifting and falling back against the rough tree bark, the scratch of it against her flesh a welcome discomfort. Leaves fell around them. It was raining again, only a warm rain, like what was between her legs. Drops rolled down his curved back. She noticed a brand highlighted by the glistening light. A curved shape like his scythe, crossed with a shepherd’s crook. Had it been placed there when he’d become a Reaper?

Her body was rising toward that pinnacle. She did her best to modulate it, let the energy spill into channeled directions, but her desire to believe him, to trust that he had her, had increased even since the time he’d had her body last. It scared her.

Silas rose, shedding his clothes and tossing them aside. His mouth brought her scent to her lips. The branches binding them fell away with a flicker of hot male energy, telling her he’d done it. “Don’t pull back,” he demanded, and his hand was on her upper thigh, the other around her waist as he lifted her.

When he lowered her down upon him, fitting his cock to the mouth of her sex, it was with a controlled strength that broke another tether on her resolve. He brought them together, executing the downward move and shoving her against the tree in one forceful impact. The impalement felt as deeply rooted as the tree’s anchor point. She’d wondered why one of Raina’s sex demons liked to call the male sex organ a “root.” Now she knew.

“Don’t box it in, sweet witch,” Silas muttered. “Let it loose. Let me see that glorious power.”

He was learning too much about her and her magic, enough to know how to plant a suggestion it could seize and run away with. The tree pressed into her back and then was gone as the mist swirled around them, took them up, twenty feet over the forest floor.

She grabbed his shoulders and waist, afraid he would fall, but her magic had him, and he had her, securely in his hands, driving into her body, her legs clamped around his waist as they spiraled. A shower of acorns from the tree pelted their flesh like hail, but all he did was cover her with a shift of his arm around her skull, bending his head over her face to protect it.

The shock still brought her back to earth, but while she was the one who put their feet on the ground, he took them down upon it, her on her back, him still buried between her legs, a slow thrust and retreat.

Retreat seemed the wrong word, for nothing in his expression suggested it. Nor his words.

“So the Viking ends up just where he intended to be.” He moved his mouth to her throat. “Due to her willing surrender, not the forced coupling that would have fractured his soul and shattered hers. I love the taste of your cunt. Every cry that comes from you when my tongue is inside it.”

She held onto him, gasping with every thrust. Tears rolled down her face. She worried what he would think of that, but he only kissed them and kept moving.

Happiness was complicated for a Chaos witch. He understood that. Happiness was probably pretty complicated for a Reaper, too. Perhaps that was part of the draw between them, the overlap. Death had an inescapable element of Chaos, too. During the battle Reaping, it had reached out, recognizing her. Light and dark were inseparable. Joy and despair, danger and exultation, horror and wonder, were the most macabre but enduring of friends.

Or lovers.

She was whispering the words, putting them in rhymes, singing them, holding him. His arms tightened around her.

“You think and explore, imagine and theorize, to keep your mind from coming completely untethered,” he said in a husky voice. “When I make you mindless, I’ll bind you with something you can rely upon, just as strongly. But for now…”

He bit her throat as he curved a hand over her buttock to tilt her up, take more of his substantial thickness, increase the friction against her clit. Her nerve endings sparked with electrical response.

Keeping control over her own self-pleasuring was a far different thing from keeping control with a lover with this kind of skill and raw determination. He intended to possess her every reaction—and command them. Maybe she hadn’t completely let go, but he had her considering what it would be like, to release one rope to strain for the one he offered.

Rain came as the climax crashed over her. Her nails dragged over that brand as she screamed, arched against the earth. Her hands dropped, scrabbled at his hips, digging into his buttocks to pull him deeper. It hurt a little, but she didn’t care. Without his clothes it was all Silas under her calves, his hips pressing against the tender skin of her inner thighs, shoving them wider. The ribbons of sensation spiraled over her limbs from her wrists, waking up all her nerve endings.

He released, his shoulders flexing above her, his face intent on hers until the very last possible moment, when his eyes fell shut, making the sharp planes of his face, the determined jaw, more pronounced.

It was a long, pleasurable ride. As it eventually slowed and came to a halt, the energy soaked into the earth like the rain that had left everything damp in its wake, rolling drops over quivering flesh.

A few flakes of snow feathered in his hair, too. To help them cool off. She raised a trembling hand to touch one, and he clasped her marked wrist, kissing it.

The letters were pulsing a deep red, like blood. As time evolved, people became new things, additional things. The change suggested she was becoming not just a Chaos witch, but perhaps also his Chaos witch. A Chaos witch willingly bound to a Grim Reaper.

She assumed the “grim” came from human attitudes toward death, because it didn’t fit him. Determined and just, but not grim. She shared that, her hands wandering over his chest and shoulders. “People might have viewed you differently if you were called the Gay Reaper. Original usage. Perky. Cheerful.”

“You and your lovely mind.” Lips curved, he kissed her throat some more, giving her lazy touches with his tongue. She liked feeling him on her, surrounding her like this, his body still locked with hers, her flesh pulsing around him. Her fingers slipped over the brand.

“You said you don’t really remember the lives you had before you were a Reaper. Does that bother you, not remembering your parents, or where you came from?”

Before answering, he lifted his head, followed the tracks of her tears with his mouth. She closed her eyes, trembling at the tenderness. He brushed his nose against hers.

“There is a tale about the origins of Reapers. It is said the Lord and Lady cut their palms, clasp hands, and the drops that fall become our kind. A reminder that even the gods bleed. And we all have endings and beginnings.”

He paused. “But to answer your question, no. Whatever I was, where I came from, those questions feel as if they were answered to my satisfaction before I became this. I do not know if that’s the same for all Reapers, though. But for me, the Lord and Lady are my father and mother. The other Reapers are my siblings. And where I came from was a starting point for the rest of the journey. Like a birth.”

He adjusted, making her bite her lip to absorb the pleasurable aftershock. “Which today has led me here.”

She moved her hand to his chest, and when he laid his hand on it, something in his face made her bring up the one thing she’d rather not. “Does the possession mark change in any way when we do this?”

“I feel it even less. That may simply be the strength of the distraction,” he gave her an appraising look, “or its hold may lessen during our joining. All the more reason to do this as often as possible. Though I typically do not wish for anything attached to me to fall off during sex, this is the exception.”

She smiled. “Raina claims a man can’t fuck his dick off. I’m sure she’s tested the theory.”

“Good. My worry over that was keeping me up at night. No entendre intended.” He seated himself more deeply, braced himself on his elbows to put his mouth to her neck. “Let’s start all over again.”

She quivered through her smile, because she knew he was serious. But who was she to complain?

Then he lifted his head, eyes sharpening. “What is it?” she asked.

“Mikhael is here. And Honora.”