“Wait a second.” Lily gaped at the black velvet walls, which were drenched in atmospheric red lighting, while Alek closed the door to the stairway leading up from the tunnel. “Is this Nine Circles?”

“Yep.”

“And it has its own connection to the underground grid?”

“Yep.”

“That is so cool.”

Alek grinned over his shoulder at her, the jarring flickers in his aura belying his nonchalant facade. That male had a dressing down coming, thinking he could pretend he wasn’t hurt in front of her.

Approaching a demon waitress, Alek said something to her, and she nodded to her right. He steered Lily toward one of the more secluded corner booths, his hand on her lower back sending pleasant shivers to her core. The background music twined around her senses, the beat low, its rhythm seductive.

Pulling aside the heavy, blood-red curtain which shielded the booth from view, he led her inside. When the curtain fell back into place behind them, it was as if they were enclosed in a luscious cocoon of privacy. A low, ornately carved table made of darkest wood stood in front of a couch, its fabric a luxurious shade of gleaming dark red brocade. The throb of the music’s rhythm filtered in through the curtains, hummed over her skin.

As soon as they sat on the couch, the curtain lifted to the side and the demon waitress entered the secluded booth. She placed a towel and a bowl of water on the table and left again.

“For your wounds?” Lily asked, eying the mass of red matting Alek’s hair on one side, the bloody bruise on his cheek.

He nodded, then winced and grimaced.

When he reached out to the bowl, she slapped his hand away and dunked the towel in the hot water. “Let me.” Scooting closer, her thigh pressing against his, she carefully dabbed at the wound on his face. “Aren’t you worried about appearing injured in a bar full of demons?”

Dark blond lashes lowered down to his cheeks, and when he opened his eyes again, the silver in his irises was radiant. “Ava would never tolerate an attack on one of Arawn’s people in here.”

“Ava? The waitress?”

He shook his head, then apparently remembered that wasn’t such a good idea, his jaw clenched in a hard line. “Ava’s the succubus who owns Nine Circles.”

“Succubus, huh?” Chest twisting with a hot, dark feeling that aggravated her in its irrationality, she wrung the washcloth hard over the bowl.

When she turned back to Alek, it was to see him with a decidedly pleased smile tugging at his mouth, his eyes glittering in the low light. “My dealings with Ava have always been business in nature.” He curved his hand over her thigh, making her feel her heartbeat in low, low places. “Never pleasure.”

The possessive satisfaction that filled her at that was even more irrational than her jealousy. Like she had a right to him.

But maybe I want to. The thought whispered through her mind, took root inside the cracks spreading through the wall around her heart, widening them.

Maybe…just maybe this wouldn’t have to end. What if…she kept him after she turned back into a witch? He’d made it clear he wanted more—perhaps he was open to continuing their relationship, see where it took them. It didn’t have to be the real deal right away, didn’t mean they had to get married. If she didn’t have the pressure of a deeper commitment looming over her, she could try to give this a chance.

“You shouldn’t have lied to me about being injured,” she said to him, using the washcloth to remove as much blood as possible from his hair. The wound now visible on his scalp turned out to be small, which didn’t mean much. Head injuries bled like hell.

“Look who’s talking, Ms. Shredded Soles.”

She paused, slanted a glance at his face. “Touché.”

He still had his hand on her thigh, was now drawing small, delicious circles with his fingers.

Turning to the table, she wrung out the washcloth, placed it next to the bowl. “How’s your back?”

“Not hurting anymore.” When she raised a skeptical eyebrow, he added, “Truth. Whatever spell it was, it didn’t leave any lasting damage.”

“Hm.” Deciding to believe him, she straddled his lap and leaned in, her hands on his chest.

He grasped her hips, squeezed. “Is this your way of nursing my wounds?” His breath was hot on her lips. “I like it.”

Her unbound hair fell around their faces like a veil of midnight, locking them into sultry intimacy. He opened his mouth to her at the first brush of her lips on his, his tongue stroking hers, pleasure rippling through her at the wet, hot touch.

Her focus turned inside, and she found the glowing center of her life force inside her chest. Cradling the radiant energy, she pulled part of it up, pushed it out through her mouth and into his.

His grip on her hips tightened as he broke the kiss, jerked back. “Whoa. What’s this?”

“Funny I should have to explain prana to you.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why are you trying to give me breath?”

“To speed up your healing. Doesn’t a boost in your energy kick up your ability to self-repair?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “But—”

“I don’t like seeing you with these.” She gingerly touched the bruise on his cheek, grazed her fingers around the small wound on his head. Catching his eye, she made sure he saw she meant it when she said, “I want to take care of you.”

She felt a flicker of some deep, entwining emotion in his aura as he apparently understood her reference to what he told her while he cleaned her injured feet. “I’ll just need a little,” he said a moment later, his voice having dropped to a timbre that brought up memories of her body tangled with his, skin-on-skin, hot and sweaty.

Breasts growing heavy and primed for touch, she leaned in again, took his mouth in a meeting of lips far beyond what was necessary for prana exchange. By now she’d realized that when he gave her breath, he’d done so with sneaky sensuality, and what should be considered an inappropriate overstepping of boundaries.

But somehow she couldn’t scrounge up an ounce of indignation about it.

Flicking her tongue against his, using her teeth to nip at his lower lip, she deepened the kiss—and pushed her prana up and into him. The radiant force of life, its energy palpable heat in her throat and mouth, flowed into him as he accepted her gift.

He drew on her prana, and she felt the pull all the way down to her toes, leaving a crystalline path of prickling excitement in its wake. Her nerve endings fired up with pleasure, white-hot and consuming. Acting on the surging impulse that short-circuited her higher functions, she rolled her hips, pressed her aching core against the growing hardness in his jeans.

His arms locked around her. His aura pulsed and whirled while his energy twined with hers. She moaned into his mouth, rubbing herself harder against him. One of his hands cupped her breast, and she pushed against him, eager for more touch. He pulled up her shirt and the shelf bra of her camisole until the heat of his palm was on her breast, soothing some of the ache. His index finger and thumb tweaked her nipple.

She cried out against his lips, the pressure that was half-pleasure growing, growing, growing.

Breaking the kiss and the flow of prana, he drew back until he met her gaze with eyes of red and black. “I’ve had enough.”

“I haven’t,” she shot back, her breathing ragged. “Not of you.”

An approving growl rose from his throat, and he flicked his thumb over her nipple, kneaded her breast. “Good. Because I’m not done with you, either.”

Desire and need for him coiled under her skin. But— “How are your wounds?”

“What wounds?” He leaned forward, closed his mouth over her nipple, and sucked.

Her thoughts scattered like dandelion fluff, a flash of pleasure arcing through her. She gripped his shoulders, her claws slicing out of her fingertips. When she regained a semblance of coherent thought, she pushed until he let go of her breast and kissed a trail up to her neck instead.

“I don’t,” she said on a panting breath, “want to—” Her sentence ended on a moan when he reached the spot behind her ear, his lips tickling skin that was surprisingly erogenous. “…when you’re still injured,” she finished after he’d lightly bitten her jaw.

“I’m healed enough for this.” A kiss driven by passion and demand. “Believe me, stopping right now would hurt me far more.”

She smiled at his sneaky verbal manipulation. But she’d take him at his word. Skimming her hands up under his T-shirt, she roamed the expanse of his chest with her palms, gave the flexing muscles of his abdomen that thorough exploration she’d been planning. She tugged at his belt buckle, her fingers making short work of it while she met his kisses with equal fervor. His belt undone, the button and zipper went next.

And before he could stop her, she’d slipped off his lap and between his legs, pulled down his boxers, her lips closing around his cock.

* * *

Alek’s eyes rolled back in his head at the intense pleasure of feeling Lily’s hot mouth swallow his dick.

“Hot damn, woman,” he rasped out, his fingers tangling in her hair.

In response, she fluttered the tip of her tongue against the sensitive underside of his cock’s head, then sucked on his shaft with vigor.

His breath stalled in his throat, heart pumping exquisite pleasure through his veins until he was all but consumed by it. Holy hell. That mouth of hers… His balls grew heavy, aching with need.

As much as he was on board with everything she was doing to him with her wickedly talented tongue, he had to redirect the action now. Tugging up her head with a gentle pull on her hair, he flipped her around to face away from him before she could voice her sure-to-come protest at being interrupted—again.

“I love your mouth on my cock,” he muttered in her ear, placing her on the couch with her arms braced on the backrest, her knees on the cushion, “but I love the feel of your pussy clenching around me even more.”

A violent tremor of lust set off fireworks in her aura, and if he’d had any doubts about whether she liked dirty talk, her response laid them to rest. He reached around her, opened her jeans, and shoved them down to her knees along with her panties. The scent of her arousal—which had already curled around him before, tantalizing and eroding his ability to think—now hit him full-on, a feast for his senses.

He yanked her pants and panties from her knees to her ankles so he could spread her wider for him. The next second he had his mouth on the glistening wet, flushed center of her, lapping up the delicious evidence of her need for him. Lily uttered a throaty moan, her aura a wild tapestry of pleasure and passion. He gripped her hips to hold her in place, and ate her like a starved man would devour a sumptuous buffet.

“Oh gods, Alek—” The distinctive sound of claws ripping into fabric.

When she came, her orgasm lit up her energy pattern in an explosion of rapture.

He’d never seen, never felt, anything more beautiful.

And he never, ever wanted to let her go. He wanted her as his with a primal possessiveness that was raw, uncivilized, and unrelenting. The thought of watching her walk out of his life, of her seeking—finding—this kind of pleasure with another male, would drive him mad if he dwelled on it. So he didn’t.

Instead, he focused all his attention, all his power, on drowning her in sexual ecstasy, on fulfilling her sensual needs until she glowed with satisfaction, on showing her, in the only way she allowed him right now, the depth of his determination to take care of her.

He finally stopped his uncompromising sensual assault after he lost count of her orgasms. Having shredded the backrest with her claws—Ava would shred him for that—Lily hung her head between her outstretched arms, breathing in quick, heavy pants, her legs trembling under his steady grip. He half-expected her to collapse any second, but then she threw a glance over her shoulder that was so unabashedly lascivious, it had his already aching cock harden impossibly further.

“Are you going to fuck me now, or what?”

Lust pulsed in his groin. “You really do enjoy talking dirty, don’t you?” Not just hearing it, she had no compunction to shoot back some saucy words as well. Just one more thing he adored about her.

“Only when it’s paired with action.” She wiggled her hips suggestively.

And how could he pass on an invitation like that?

Renewing his grasp on her hips, he thrust into her. Ah, the feel of her, it all but shattered his mind. None of his previous lovers had this effect on him. He’d enjoyed them, but he’d been able to leave each and every female afterward without a second thought, their sexual encounters brief and singular as agreed upon, no strings attached, no follow-up. None of them had kept a hold on him—no one but Lily.

And that was what deepened every sensation, highlighted every touch, turned every caress into a permanent, cherished mark on his soul. It elevated the basic, pleasurable feeling of having a welcoming female underneath him into something that went far beyond the physical, an experience that left him bare in a way he’d never been. With anyone.

More than ever, he craved the culmination of that experience yet out of his reach, trembled with the need for it. The unyielding belief that he’d soon get to share it with Lily—only ever her—was the one thing that soothed the voracious yearning.

He’d waited all this time. He could be patient a little while longer.

The bouquet of her feminine excitement thick in the air, he thrust into her heat, increased speed and force when she begged him for it until he pounded into her. A husky moan escaped her throat, and then her inner muscles clenched around him, squeezed his cock in a rhythm that had his mind blanking.

Still on the precipice—always one fucking step away from what he could sense would be devastating pleasure—he kept up his pace, shoving into her with the kind of power that made her aura scintillate and ripple until she climaxed again. Judging by the way she all but melted onto the couch, she was ready for him to finish.

It was probably too much to hope that he’d be able to fuck her into unconscious bliss a second time, so she’d miss the fact that he wouldn’t finish—again.

He had to hold her up during her final orgasm, helping her ride out the pleasure and realizing she definitely couldn’t go another round, so he gave her a few hard thrusts and withdrew. She collapsed in his arms, wheezing into the cushion.

Having stuffed his aching cock into his jeans—damn, that hurt—he sank onto the couch next to her, stroking her back, her hair, petting her down.

It was a solid five minutes later when she stirred. She sat up with the languidness of a well-pleasured female, her lids still heavy over eyes once again a deep indigo, and stood to pull up her jeans.

Would she notice?

A frown gathered on her forehead like a thunderhead. She studied the rock-hard erection easily discernible under his fly. “Did you not get off?”

Yep, she’d noticed.

He shook his head, so not looking forward to the impending conversation. In hindsight, he should have used condoms to disguise that little tidbit, but—the allure of feeling her in the most immediate, intimate way, without barriers, had kicked that idea out the window.

Lily blinked at him, her aura a still life of perplexity. “Why?”

Here we go. “Male pranagrahas can’t come until they’re mated.”

* * *

Lily’s mind scrambled to make sense of what Alek just said. “What the what?”

He let out a long exhale. “Our ability to climax is tied to mating status. The process of bonding to a female pranagraha unlocks that ability.”

Dumbfounded, she looked back and forth between his face and the still-prominent bulge in his jeans. “But—you’re obviously able to be aroused and…functional.”

A flicker of mischief in his eyes. “Want me to show you again how functional?”

“Alek.” She shoved her fingers through her hair, paced away from him, turned back. “But you’ve had sex before, right? How—?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’ve been with females, yes. Most male pranagrahas gather some experience pre-mating, part of wanting to increase their eligibility as mates.” One side of his mouth tipped up in a half-smile that had her stomach flutter. “Pranagraha females tend to favor males who know what they’re doing in bed.”

She kept on pacing, her hand on her forehead, her emotions a maelstrom of confusion. “So, you’re twenty-eight, and you’ve had sex, but you’ve never had an orgasm?”

He simply raised a brow.

She stopped pacing. “But—but—” Her hands flailed wildly. “How have you survived until now?”

“Well,” he drawled, “you know how they say you can’t miss something you’ve never had?”

She nodded.

“It’s bullshit.” He gave her wry smile.

Processing that for a minute, she swallowed hard. “Aren’t you…in pain a lot?”

“Nothing I can’t deal with.” He shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, we don’t suffer from blue balls as much as others until after we’re mated.”

She shook her head, unable to believe what she was hearing. “This is so fucked up. How did you explain your inability to orgasm to the females you’ve been with?”

“Some were demons who knew and were okay with it.” He leaned back. “With humans I used condoms and they didn’t notice.”

Pressing her lips together at the surge of irrational jealousy about any ex-lover he ever had, she started pacing again. Stupid. How could she be jealous of something that happened before her time?

“You wanted to know.” Alek’s voice was gentle, his eyes hard.

She paused and faced him fully, something dark boiling up inside her. “So that’s why you’re so eager to mate? So you can get off?”

“What?” He sat up with a start, his aura flashing with anger. “Hell, no. Is that what you think of me? Have I given you the impression I only care about sex?”

Crossing her arms, she returned his hard stare, some anger of her own sizzling over her skin. “All I know is you haven’t exactly been honest with me.”

“I didn’t lie to you.”

“Maybe not, but you conveniently left out some vital information. Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “It never came up.”

“Right,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Unbidden, her eyes darted to his groin, and her unruly mind brought up tantalizing images of what had come up. Several times. Mouthwateringly so.

“Lilichka.” Alek stood, walked over to her. “I want to mate because I want a family. I want a home, a female to call my own, kids, the whole thing. And you’re the only one I want to have that with.”

He cupped her face with both hands, his palms cradling her cheeks with heat and care. “You’re the one for me. The first time I saw you—when you were still a witch—I forgot to breathe for a moment. I’ve never believed in love at first sight, but you…”

The look in his eyes blasted open the cracked wall around her heart, tore into her in a way that stole her breath.

“You just hit me,” he rasped, his raw voice stroking along her senses, sinking into her. “Like a freight train. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, craving you. You were the one bright spot during endless nights of watch duty. And now that I’ve felt you, now I know what it’s like to be with you—” He shook his head. “I don’t ever want to let you go. I know I said I wouldn’t push you, but—”

“Don’t,” she croaked, her throat raw, the heat of tears threatening at the back of her eyes. “Don’t ask me again.” Raising her hand, palm out, she took a step back, broke the gentle hold he had on her face. “Don’t make me give you an answer that’ll hurt us both.”

“Lily.” He reached for her, his eyes so forlorn, it broke her inside.

Shaking her head, she whispered, “I need some time to think. Away from you.”

He stilled. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t stay with you anymore.”

Mind racing, heart a confused mess, she rubbed her temples. His revelation about male pranagrahas not being able to climax seemed like such a small, inconsequential piece of information, when in reality it had sucker-punched her in the guts. Up until now a fledgling hope had grown inside her, ready to unfurl its wings. The idea that maybe, maybe she could keep Alek without mating with him—that she could turn back into a witch and still hold on to this male who challenged so many of her beliefs—it had become stronger, made her dream and yearn.

Knowing he couldn’t orgasm until mated blew that idea to smithereens. Because how could she keep him, continue any kind of romantic relationship with him when he’d never be able to have a fulfilled sex life with her? The impossibility of that scenario was a slap in her face.

Which meant the only way she could keep him was to stay demon and commit to a bond that would tie her to him for better or worse, in life and death. A decision she couldn’t just make with a snap of her fingers, no matter how tempting, not when so much more than her heart would be affected by it.

She was the heir to the Murray family, next in line to become Elder witch, meant to carry on the blood and magic of her ancestors. Staying demon would break that line. Since Basil was a male without powers, there was no way of knowing if his future children would inherit the family’s magic.

Time. She needed time to think and get her head—and heart—on straight, figure out how to deal with this.

“I don’t think it’s safe to go home yet,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. “Or to Merle’s. But maybe Rhun can ask Bahram—”

“The incubus?” Alek’s energy darkened like an approaching storm cloud. “Fuck that.” He whipped out his phone, started dialing. “Like I’m going to watch you move in with a fucking sex demon.” The growl in his voice curled her toes, sent a pleasant shiver over her skin.

Her heart ached for having to forbid herself from reaching out to him. “Who are you calling?”

“Dima.” His look slammed into her, red embers glowing in obsidian. “You’ll stay with him.”