Malachi wasn’t wrong—his little angel hybrid was ridiculous.

But in the best way possible.

In the way that made his love more ardent. Sharper. More acute. Like he could feel it in his bones. You know why. Severus tasted the words in her kiss, each one a delectable morsel sliding across his tongue, trickling down his throat, pooling in his core. He didn’t, in fact, know why she had kissed him, but he would take it all the same.

You know why.

You know why.

You know why.

He growled, both in frustration and desire, then yanked her against him, her supple body molding to him. A lapful of moaning Moira—it was the sweetest torture. For Severus wanted to be sensitive to her injury, the silly thing. He wanted to be sensitive to the fact that this was her first time in Hell, that Malachi had been a fucking bastard, that he no longer looked like a fetching man, but a demon…

Yet as she ground against him, her hands cupping his ashen-grey face, her tongue sliding between his dangerously sharp teeth, he also didn’t want to be sensitive. Severus wanted to take her as she ought to be taken—brutally, the body Hell had granted her withstanding even the harshest storms of his lust.

Sucking at her bold tongue, relishing the little squeak she made when one of his canines grazed the side, Severus ran his hands over her figure. Her fuller, softer figure, no longer all hard edges and sharp points. No longer bony and angular. She had seemed happier this way, dressing in better outfits, showing off her shape more readily—no longer suffering through clothes that were too big, too baggy, too much. Severus could appreciate the fashion upgrade, sure, but he liked her best in nothing at all. And it had been fucking weeks without a glimpse of more than her legs, her arms, the tips of her collarbones under some well-fitted T-shirt.

So, rather unceremoniously, he grasped the neckline of her black sweater dress, the wool scratchy under his fingers—and ripped it all the way down. She dragged herself away with a gasp, a scolding look in those grey eyes. Severus merely grinned back, peeling the fabric off her shoulders, resisting the urge to toss the damn thing in the fire.

Moira got him back, of course—and the punishment certainly didn’t fit the crime. As he dragged her thin sleeping shirt over her head, admiring the way the slouchy fabric was nearly see-through with the firelight, Moira wriggled against him. Purposefully. She swirled her hips. Bucked them back and forth. Teased his cock, hard and straining to meet her, and she wore a grin of her own as he tossed her shirt aside and smoothed her staticky white hair down around her face.

“Don’t start what you can’t finish.”

“Is that a challenge?” she purred back, rocking against him again as he trailed a lone finger along her jaw, up to her bottom lip, full and ravaged by his kiss. He plucked at it once, twice, not missing the way her breath hitched.

“A plea,” he finally whispered. She swallowed hard as his finger ghosted down the column of her throat. He felt her gulp, rode it out with his thick black claw, sharp enough to peel the flesh from her bones. Not that he ever would. In fact, Severus was very mindful of all the new sharp and pointy edges he had gained since crossing over the hell-gate, knowing Diriel’d had some semblance of them topside. Still, he couldn’t resist prodding just a little into the hollow of her throat, admiring the poppy-red blush that bloomed across her cheeks in response. He cocked his head to the side, watching, admiring the rise and fall of her breasts, trailing that claw between each full mound.

His gaze snapped up to hers, only to find her heavy-lidded, her lips parted just enough to make him groan. That caught her attention, her sultry stare jumping to his, and he claimed her mouth again with the brutality she deserved.

Her hand buried itself in his hair, tactfully avoiding his horns at the back of his head, but Severus didn’t mind. Too lost in the way she gave in, her mouth opening desperately, her lotus-bloom scent drowning him as she arched up. He plucked at one pebbled nipple, his cock practically screaming to plunge deep inside her when she snapped at his lower lip, catching it between her own set of sharp, Hell-brand teeth. She held firm, slowly circling her hips, and Severus pinched the other nipple, harder this time, his eyes flicking open to find her watching him.

He could taste her smile—just as he could soon taste the metallic tang of his own blood. Severus gave her nipple one last tug, enjoying the way she squirmed against him in protest, then snatched her good forearm. The bandaged hand in his hair tightened, but she released his lip with a gasp.

He went for her throat next, grasping it firmly, feeling her steadily thrumming pulse against his fingers, and captured her lips. She moaned, and he swallowed every delectable decibel of it, wanting to burn it to his insides—to carry it with him forever.

Slowly, he let himself tip backward, until he was flush with the hideous shag carpet someone had seen fit to add to his once tastefully, albeit sparsely, decorated bedroom. Moira toppled down with him, exhaling sharply on impact, and he released her with a smirk. She immediately propped herself up, her hands planted on his chest, which rose and fell in time with hers.

The fire beside them hissed and spit, as if annoyed that the show had ceased, no matter how momentarily. Severus twitched as one of the sparks settled on his bare arm, but nothing could divert his gaze from her—from this goddess, this exquisite creature whom he was desperate to keep all to himself.

She pushed her hair back with one hand, the bandaged one resting limply on his taut stomach, but no amount of fussing could rid her of the white halo surrounding her flushed face. In the glow of the hearth, he noted that her grey pupils had darkened, from flint to iron, a heady intensity about them that made the hardness of his cock almost painful, restrained by his silken sleeping pants and pinned by the weight of her body, by her heat.

Slowly, she stopped fixing her hair, that hand drifting to her lips instead, to his black demon blood dribbling down them. Ah yes, his ethereal goddess, tainted by darkness. She was primal, an old-world creature with no place among today’s living. His breath caught, snagged in his throat, as she ran her finger the length of her lower lip, then licked it clean. Not ostentatiously. She didn’t do it for his benefit, to put on a show for her tortured lover. Moira seemed to do it to satisfy her own interests, her own dark curiosities, and he swallowed hard when her tongue swept along that swollen bottom lip, collecting the rest of the blood along the way.

Save for the thin stream that ran from her lip to her chin. Severus wiped that away with his thumb, and she caught him before he could retreat, both hands wrapped around his wrist. He held his breath, heart pounding, as she dragged her tongue the full length of his thumb, cleaning it, her eyes never once leaving his.

“Tease,” he hissed, bucking against her—hard, hard so she could feel exactly what she did to him. Moira grinned, engulfing his thumb in her hot mouth, scraping her teeth along it. This was for show. Ostentatious. Brazen. Cruel. Severus loved every second of it, almost as much as he loved her.

When she released him from her clutches, Severus pillowed his head on both hands, the curled ends of his horns pressing into the underside of each wrist. Her hands had fallen back to his chest, studying him just as he watched her, serenaded by the crackle of the fire and the drumbeat of thunder outside. Every so often, lightning illuminated the room, casting a shadow over Moira, her back to the window, and in that moment she was his dark queen—yet still he watched her. He tracked the bright blue veins under her nearly translucent skin, so much paler in Hell. At first, he’d thought she might try to hide it, but Moira bared herself to him, seeming more curious about his changes than hers.

Slate-grey eyes wandered his chest, his neck, the hard cut of his jaw. Soon her fingers followed, whispering over his lips, his nose, the delicate flesh around his eyes. Up and up she went, rubbing his hair between her thumb and finger—no doubt finding it coarser, more savage. And then his horns.

Her exploration stopped there, as she leaned over him, breasts dangling above his face, the most enticing, succulent fruit he had ever seen. The fruit of temptation. His lips parted, ready to arch up and close around her nipple, but he stilled when she touched one of his horns. Black like his claws, thick, with rings slicing across them. He had heard a rumor once as a child: if you cut off a demon’s horns, you could count the rings inside, much like a tree, and discover their true age.

Severus had never seen the theory put to a test, nor did he feel much of anything when Moira touched his horns. He had been most worried about them, the two gaping demonic identifiers thrust out from the tip of his forehead, unsightly. Only to her, they didn’t appear that way. To Moira, they appeared—curious. She followed one horn’s curve along his skull, tracing it to the very tip, then gasped at the razor-sharp point. He braced himself, expecting the fear to come flooding back, waiting for her to climb off him and bring her knees to her chest, all of this just too damn much.

As she had done many times before, Moira proved his fears unfounded. She examined the second horn with equal interest, not pricking her finger on the end this time, and her nipples, soft pink pearls, brushed his cheeks with her deep breath. Severus finally risked a glance up, searching out her face, and his lips twitched to a lustful snarl at the ghost of a smile splayed across her features.

She wasn’t frightened.

She was openly inquisitive.

Fuck, he loved her.

He snatched her wrists tight, no longer minding the bandages, a little voice inside reminding him that the salve would have healed all her wounds by now anyway. A surprised cry slipped out of her, quickly silenced as he claimed her mouth again. She fell into him, kissed him back with such fervor that he almost came right then and there, like an inexperienced boy who had never touched a woman before.

And in a way, he hadn’t. Not as a demon. He had been with lesser creatures before he fled Hell—dark fae, mostly visitors from the Unseelie Court, along with the occasional vampire here and there. They were the only ones who’d touch him. The only ones lower than lust demons in the grand scheme, and none of them had felt like Moira. None of them had felt this sturdy, this eager.

None of them had been his match. His equal.

His claws descended on her sleep shorts at the thought, shredding them to nothing, scraps of fabric, until she was bare as sin on top of him. The last semblance of her humanity gone. She was as he saw her—pure divinity, straddling him, commanding him, controlling him. And Severus was her most willing acolyte, with no other purpose in this life than to shower her with pleasure.

Tongue between her lips, hand between her thighs, Severus found her wet and wanting, drinking down her whimpers as he stroked her. She grasped at his face, holding him, caging him, her hips bucking against his fingers, and he yanked down his black silk trousers as best he could. The fabric tore. He didn’t give a fuck. All that mattered was her—and burying himself deep inside her.

Moira broke their kiss as soon as his cock’s glistening tip nudged at her entrance, her eyes closed and lips parted in a voiceless cry. Grasping her hip with one hand, steering his cock with the other, he eased into her. She moaned the whole way down, engulfing him with her heat, taking him, her body clenching slickly around him until they collided. Her eyes fluttered open then, the grey verging on black, and he encouraged her to move, to buck her hips—to ride him screaming into the morning.

She felt so fucking good. Tight and hot. A perfect fit, the pair of them, and it took everything he had not to lose himself in her. To take the reins. To fuck her into oblivion. But she was on top—she had never been on top before—and he wanted to watch her soar on her own. Hand still resting on her hip, he waited, swallowing thickly, as she adjusted to the intrusion, as she ground against him. Unable to resist the swollen bud at the helm of her cunt, he trailed his hand lower, moving until his thumb found it, until he worked it. Her little squeak of surprise had him smiling, and he rubbed her clit in slow, lazy circles.

Their eyes met and held. Locked. He could lose himself in her eyes just as readily as he could in her body, and he hated that when she finally lifted herself, his traitorous eyes fluttered closed. At least his thumb managed to do its job, massaging her little bud, careful not to get his claw anywhere near it, as she dragged herself up, then let herself fall. Up and down, she stroked him just as he did her. Slow. Torturously slow.

He realized then that this wasn’t fucking.

Not even close.

This was how a couple in love danced—surely.

So, he forced himself to open his eyes, to not get lost in the fall, and watched her breasts bounce, her stomach clench, her eyelashes flutter. He drank in the spiderweb pattern of blue veins, the darkening hue of her eyes, the pure white halo around her head.

On Earth, his mind was so fucking loud when they were together, always awash with what he wanted to do to her, for her, with her. Wondering what she might do to him. Imagining, daydreaming, lusting.

In Hell, his mind was quiet. It had found its peace—and that peace was her. Her and him. Moira and Severus.

There was no need to imagine the what ifs, to plan ahead. He didn’t need to give himself over to the beast within; Severus was the beast, and the beast adored her. The beast longed to be in the moment, enjoying every fucking second of it.

“Severus…” Moira fell forward, bracing her hands on the shag rug, and he took that as his cue to take charge. He set the pace now, an arm wrapped tightly around her waist, dragging her to him as his hips bucked against hers, hard and fast. As he fucked her.

As he loved her.

Moira came with a hoarse cry, mouth right next to his ear and cunt rippling with pleasure all around him. He choked back a cry of his own, the sensation more overwhelming here than it was above. As she clung to him, her arms managing to thread their way around his neck, her face buried against him, he didn’t slow—not even a breath. He kept time, pounding into her as she mewled and whimpered and tightened around him, milking her climax of every last ounce of delirious pleasure—until she went limp on top of him, panting beside his ear. Panting and moaning and murmuring incoherently.

With a response like that, it was difficult not to have an ego.

As she stilled on top of him, taking a moment to catch her scattered breath, Severus brushed her hair over her shoulder, finding her skin coated in a thin sheen of sweat. He nuzzled up the curve of her neck, smiling again when she giggled, his nose tickling at her ear.

“How is your hand?” he rumbled. He might have been positively bursting inside, desperate to pick up where they’d left off, but he had no qualms in taking the time to tend to her. If she was finished, then they were finished.

Please don’t be finished.

“Doesn’t even hurt anymore,” she murmured back, shaking her head a little and smiling that sweet sort of sleepy smile he wished he saw more of.

“You aren’t done with me yet, are you?” He tucked her hair behind her ear now, their heads resting together on the carpet, face-to-face, his cock pulsing inside her. Her smile grew.

“No.”

“Good.”

His gaze drifted down her face, soon followed by his mouth, touching everywhere his eyes did; her nose, her cheek, her lips. Severus lost himself in her again, in their kiss, in the way she gasped when he sat up—then pushed onto his feet. Her legs snapped around him, ankles locking, but Severus held her there in the kiss, his hand on the back of her head, his tongue teasing hers. She was light as air; someone he would never let fall.

His trousers slipped down the moment he stood upright, and Severus kicked the lush fabric off with his first few steps. Eyes closed, Moira clung to him, and he carried her swiftly across the sprawling, empty bedroom, straight to the balcony door.

She broke the kiss at the sound of the handle, her forehead pressed to his. Surrender still played across her features—surrender to the moment, to the pleasure of her climax. However, as soon as he stepped outside, their naked bodies assaulted by Hell’s frigid night, all that hazy, lazy sweetness sharpened, and she gripped him tighter, eyes wide and wild as she took in her surroundings.

The storm was moving east, billowing across the grey wastes, the dead forests, the marshes of molten red. Moira had referred to the downpour as glass, and in a way, she was right; it was glass-like, with all its jagged edges, able to slice through thick demon hide like a knife through butter. Hell knew its inhabitants, and it responded accordingly, pummeling the landscape with debilitating storms to keep the demons in check. After all, nighttime was when they were most brutal. Darkness. Shadows. Even with all of Lucifer’s rules in place, there needed to be a little something extra to keep everyone in line.

“Severus, what are we…?” Moira looked over her shoulder, her breath quickening, suddenly panicked. “No, I don’t want… Take me back inside.”

“Hush now, darling,” he cooed, peppering her with kisses—until he had her seated on the edge of the balcony. The storm was no longer within reach, but they could still see it tearing across the landscape—still hear the melody of the downpour. Satisfied that she was safe, relatively speaking, Severus then eased out of her, his body physically aching at the loss of hers. As she tried to protest again, he spun her, easily bending her over the thick railing, her naked torso pressed to the smooth marble, and then thrust back into her.

She moaned and quivered in his grasp, hands reaching back—to push him away, to drag him closer, he wasn’t sure. Her long fingers merely wrapped themselves around his wrists, and his body hummed with need, eager to move again, to fuck her into sweet oblivion.

Out here. Beneath the storm. Here, where he had so often hidden as a child, fearing the disdain of his family. Here, where he could prove that he wasn’t the same demon today—and that she needn’t fear any of it either. That she was stronger than this, than the howling winds and the biting rain, that Malachi couldn’t get under her skin. Moira was strong. They both were.

“No, no, don’t look away,” he murmured, freeing one wrist from her vise-grip and wrapping it around her throat. Severus forced her upright, her cunt tightening around him at the shift in positions, her back arched and her gaze leery. Mouth hovering next to her ear, he steeled himself, forcing his body not to shake, beating back the mind-numbing lust threatening to take over. No. He had better control here. The beast was stronger than that. “Moira, look at it.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. “I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s beautiful,” he whispered, brushing her hair back, his lips caressing the shell of her ear. “It’s…exquisite. You needn’t be frightened of it. Things here can hurt you, scare you, but when you stop and really look, you see…” He shook his head, running his lips down her neck and back up again, slowly starting to pump in and out of her. “You see their beauty.”

Hesitantly, she lifted her gaze back to the retreating storm, then flinched at the latest boom of thunder—followed swiftly by a dozen lightning bolts cracking across the red and purple sky, slicing through the oppressive cloud cover. Moira watched the squall roll out, then looked to her bandaged hand—and back to the storm. Severus felt her swallow hard, his hand still wrapped around her delicate throat, and he couldn’t stop himself from kissing her again, this time nibbling at the crook of her neck.

“You’ve been my hellstorm from the moment I saw you on the other side of my hotel room door,” he admitted gruffly, first against her skin, then into her ear, murmuring it as faintly as he dared. Moira leaned into him, her legs widening as his pace quickened. His breath hitched, but he forced it all out, every fucking word, his skin prickling when she reached back and cupped his cheek. “If I can overcome the fear of what you’ll do to me, the ruin you’ll reap upon me, then you can too. Don’t be frightened of the storm. Don’t be frightened of any of it. You’re stronger than some fucking glass and my brother’s taunting words. You’re stronger than Diriel, than the threats of your father. You’re stronger than all of this. Look at it. Look at its beauty, its power, and embrace it.”

As I’ve embraced you. Every part of her. Just as she was. Moira could leave him utterly destroyed—and she still might one day—but in the meantime, he was all in. He’d ride out this storm, her, to the bitter end, and love every second of it.

Growling, he released her throat and settled for her hips instead, gripping them hard with each savage thrust. As he buried his face in the nape of her neck, he felt her wandering hands drift upward, heard her crying out each time their bodies pounded together.

Suddenly she grasped his horn, tightly, firmly, dragging him closer. Something inside of him burst, her touch, the raw acceptance of it all, drowning him, and he soon had them both bent over the railing, a hand between her thighs as he took her. She came once more, soundlessly this time, her body tightening around him. One hand around his horn, the other buried in his hair. In her pleasure, there was pain; she twisted his hair as she shuddered, as her legs tried to clamp down, to still his torturous hand while he dragged every last bit of that climax from her, fingers on her clit, teeth at her throat.

Only when she slumped forward, her hands falling away, did Severus straighten, clutching her to him, and allow himself release. Pleasure bloomed throughout his body, blurring his vision as he spilled himself into her heat. He snarled against her neck, but pressed his lips to her palm when her trembling hand reached up for him, and they rode out the spasming of his body together, breathing, moving, acting as one.

Moira yelped when a booming, bone-rattling bout of thunder bellowed above his home, followed swiftly by a near-blinding lightning display that splintered around them; a stray bolt even singed the creeping vine along the outer wall. Her heart hammered, pulse racing—until she laughed. It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard, eliciting a tired smile across his lips, and Severus joined in on her giggles with a few satisfied, spent chuckles of his own.

“Should we consider that a round of applause, a roaring ovation demanding of an encore?” he rasped, mouth drifting listlessly against her palm. She glanced at him over her shoulder, cheeks flushed and gaze fearless.

“I think the performance was worthy of something like that,” she murmured, and he only then noticed her teeth chattering. Nights in Hell were positively frigid, but the heat of their bodies, their desire—swelling, swelling, swelling to a crescendo—had sustained them. Until now. So, Severus eased out of her, relishing the flutter of emotion across her features, and then unceremoniously threw her over his shoulder and carried her off for a piping-hot bath.

And maybe, just maybe, a much-needed encore.