It wasn’t until noon the next day that Arawn came to see Maeve again.

Her heart light in a way it hadn’t been for a while, the warmth of seeing Merle the night before still lingering, she sat on a moss-covered boulder under the arching canopy of the forest, the bobcat she met the other day curled up next to her.

Perplexingly, the feline had sought her out this morning, followed her on her walk through the woods, first with some distance, then closer, until it brushed up against her legs when she paused on the path. She could still make out the areas on its body that had been burned, the fur there a bit shorter, if otherwise shiny and healthy.

And she still had no idea what the hell had happened to cause the cat to heal from such grievous wounds so quickly.

Maybe it had something to do with her blood? Her own injuries—the cut in her wrist from the first day, the scratches and bruises from her fall—had healed practically overnight. A gift from the bond with Arawn, perhaps? If so, maybe some of her blood had mixed with the bobcat’s when the animal clawed at her, transferring her healing ability to the feline.

It would explain why the animal now seemed bonded to her. As aggressive as the cat was when she found it yesterday, it now purred next to her, even allowing Maeve to pet it. She’d have to ask Arawn.

As if on cue, the dark caress of his energy brushed her strengthening magical senses right before the undergrowth rustled as he stepped out from between the shadows of the forest—in his wolf form.

Twice the size of the standard version of canis lupus, his fur an inky black that seemed to swallow the light the same way Arawn’s hair did in his human shape, the sight of him robbed her of breath for a good few seconds. He was magnificent. Primal, predatory perfection, wild dominance in his every move, the feral focus of a creature that was as much an expert killer as it was capable of binding loyalty to its own.

The bobcat looked up and and merely blinked at the canine, no doubt recognizing the enigmatic being within the animal shape, because it didn’t panic and run. Instead it stretched lazily, arching its back and flexing its legs, before it hopped off the boulder, sauntered over to the wolf, and rubbed its cheek against him. With a chirp, the feline strolled away into the forest.

“I figured out what you are,” Maeve said.

Arawn’s focus grew laser-sharp, his powers vibrating around him.

“You’re Tarzan reincarnate.”

He huffed, sent her a positively insulted look out of those yellow wolf eyes.

“It would explain your preference for prancing around shirtless.”

A very wolfish grin.

Amusement curled inside her, buzzed through her veins. When the corners of her mouth twitched, she glanced away, biting her lip.

Velvet stroking over her senses, a touch of his power against her mind. Her pulse suddenly thumped in the spot between her thighs, her body reacting to this slightest of mental caresses like a dry wood to a spark.

When she turned to him, he stood right in front of her, still in wolf form…close enough to touch.

So she did.

Tentatively, she raised her hand, ran her fingers through the fur at his neck. Silky soft, with a coarse topcoat, it was a sensual pleasure to stroke. He moved closer to her, pressed his flank against her legs, the boulder’s height such that her knees were almost level with his back. A rumble came from his massive body, a distinctly contented canine sound.

More dark power poured off him, twined around her hand in prickling shadows as she massaged his head, caressed his wolf ears. That compelling, tenebrous magic of his that coiled around her arm seemed to caress her in turn, and she inhaled sharply at the sensation. Not in fear, but in welcome.

As her body went molten with longing for more of that touch, she withdrew her hand, clenched in her lap.

A tug on that bond inside her had her tumbling forward, off the boulder, until she fell on the wolf, had to grab his fur with both hands to steady herself.

“You jerk,” she hissed and raised her hand to slap at him.

He danced out of her reach on agile wolf legs, his tail swinging high, his mouth open in a grin, eyes sparkling with challenge. Was he—? Yes, he was playing with her. Not as in toying, not the kind of predatory amusement of a cat batting around its prey, but a real, honest enticement to have fun.

The Demon Lord invited her to play.

The corners of her mouth wanted to twitch upward again, a fuzzy sort of warmth spreading in her chest. Dropping her raised hand, she feigned sudden interest in retying her shoes, saw him move out of the corner of her eye.

She jumped up just as he lunged with his head aimed to thump against her back. She was quick—but he was quicker. He still half caught her with a head bump on her side, making her stagger as she darted out of his way.

Not missing a beat, he dashed after her.

With a muffled shriek, she zig-zagged around trees, her heart pounding up into her throat, adrenaline pumping through her veins. The good kind of adrenaline, the one that left you gasping for breath with a wide grin in your heart.

If only she had control of her powers, she’d send a rocket of sparks shooting after him to singe his tail. But as it was, she could only run, had nothing in her arsenal to turn the tables on him—except… The idea was as devious as it was thrilling, making her pulse hammer even faster.

As she darted around yet another tree, Arawn hot on her heels—he was clearly holding back, could have tackled her a thousand times already—she brought up a memory, let the details flood her mind.

And then, with what little skill she’d scrounged together after years of training with her grandmother, she lowered those fragile shields around her thoughts and sent the images out.

Skin on skin, coarse hair tickling her face, her lips closing around…

A crash behind her, a growling yelp. She turned, swinging with one arm around a tree, to see the wolf scrambling to his feet after what looked like a nasty tumble.

“Missed a step?” she asked with a grin.

He stilled, his expression sharpening into hunger tempered with…awe? A low tremor took hold of her at the intensity of his attention.

The air shimmered around him, misting in shadows and light. The being prowling over to her the next second might have been human in shape, but every inch the same feral hunter as the wolf she petted minutes ago.

Petted.

Heat shot up into her neck, her face, sweat coating her skin. As her eyes tracked down the expanse of impressive muscles and pure, unfettered strength crammed into the mouthwatering form of a man who could be the dictionary definition of “beefcake,” the realization that she’d basically caressed him—albeit in wolf form—dispelled her thoughts for a moment. Fur or not, for him that touch must have been…

“…invigorating,” he murmured.

She startled, and wrenched her gaze from the part of his anatomy that clearly had received most of that invigoration.

“I have been called many names,” he said, leaning close, “but ‘beefcake’ is a new one.”

She’d left her mind open to him. “Oh, gods.”

“Just me,” he corrected with a smirk.

He leaned closer still, his heat rolling up and over her like waves to the shore, and she froze, her heart thumping as he…grabbed a pair of pants from somewhere behind her, stepped back and pulled them on.

She whipped her head around, caught a glimpse of a dryad vanishing back into her tree. Facing him again, she asked, “Do all of the tree nymphs just hang around waiting for you with a pair of pants?”

“They are a patient and undemanding lot.”

“I feel watched.”

“We could always go to your cabin and close the curtains.”

The flood of effervescent warmth inside her would surely bubble over at any moment. Clearing her throat, she inched away from him, from the sensual promise in his regard. “So, will you study the spell again?”

“If you let me.”

She gave a jerky nod. She wanted those powers, not just to chase him with sparks in play, but to—finally—be able to defend herself, dammit. All her life she’d been dependent on others for protection. Always the liability, never the asset.

I don’t want to be weak anymore.

“The beast inside me,” she said softly, “it’s strong, right?”

His eyes seemed to bore into her. “Every Old One was as powerful as an entire witch community.”

Holy crap. That kind of force… “I want that.” A whisper. A pledge.

His eyes gleamed. “As is your birthright.”

Swallowing, she took a seat on a fallen log. “Go ahead.”

She inhaled a startled breath as his presence entered her mind. Rough silk over her senses, a gentle caress from those powers that were humming with brute strength, yet ever careful not to touch what she didn’t offer. Entirely different from the violence of her only other experience of having someone else in her head…

His finger under her chin. “Eyes on me, Wildfire.”

With a shuddering breath, she looked up at him, at that face of raw male beauty, held his gaze with a thundering heart. And the horrors wanting to claw at her fell away, eclipsed by her fascination with every harsh line of his features, the depth of swirling shadows in his eyes.

That awareness inside her stretched on a sigh, pressed against her core. Wings flaring in the dark, whispers of smoke, and an age-old ferocity that gentled at Arawn’s nearness.

Come get me.

* * *

Arawn could almost make out what lurked at the bottom of Maeve’s soul, that ancient creature so at home in the flicker of flames, the blistering heat of a mighty blaze. And yet its form was hidden in shadows still, the fog of its confinement so thick it wouldn’t fully reveal the beast.

Again he examined the intricacies of the spell, probed the layers and the locks with the same kind of cautious consideration a bomb disposal expert might show an armed explosive device. If he could not be sure where to start the dismantling, he’d rather leave it alone for a while longer, lest he trigger a blast that might erase the spirit of the redhead who’d entered his lair a subdued, withdrawn thing, only to blossom into a female who eagerly met the Demon Lord’s dare to play.

She’d grinned at him.

Grinned.

It had taken every ounce of his finely-honed self-control not to kiss the curve of her lips in that moment, push her up against that tree and devour her. Whatever tenuous trust he’d built with her would have crumbled to dust at that move, shattering something between them that no power in the universe would be able to mend.

So, he waited, hungered, contented himself with an ever-growing list of things he wanted to do to her once she was warm and willing in his bed. Or on a boulder. Or the mossy ground. Or… He created a new list just for all the locations where he planned to pleasure her.

This time, he stopped the session before her energy levels were so low she was in danger of toppling over when she stood. Withdrawing from her mind with a subtle sensual caress that made her part her lips on a soft sound—his body hardening in reaction—he grounded her back in the physical world by twirling a lock of her fiery hair around his fingers, tugging gently.

“Hungry?”

Her eyes skittered to his mouth in response, and she clenched her thighs together in a move she probably wasn’t even aware of. Her breath a tad faster, she licked her lips—and he remembered with torturous clarity the memory she’d sent him earlier. Yet again, his thoughts stuttered to a halt at the erotic allure of her dream, of sensing her imagined pleasure as her mouth closed around his cock.

“Just tell me when,” he murmured, his fingers still tangled in her hair, “you would like to put me on the menu.”

Copper lashes fluttered over eyes gone liquid fire kissed with smoke, her cheeks painted with a lovely blush.

A brush across his outer awareness, which was cast wide so he could monitor the area, the mental approach coming from Barnabas, the fox shifter he sent out last night. Equivalent to a polite knock, the male let him know from a distance that he was on his way to Arawn, the shifter’s tact one of the reasons Arawn appreciated him so.

“Wait here,” he said to the witch who was well and truly enthralling him, and headed out to meet Barnabas.

The log on which he left Maeve now several rows of trees away, he nodded at the fox, his attention darting to the box in the male’s hands.

“I assume you found it.”

Barnabas bowed. “Of course, my lord.”

Arawn accepted a square package the size of a shoe box, thanked the shifter and sent him off again. Opening the lid, he examined the content, ran his finger over the object’s edge. Satisfied with the quality of the workmanship, he closed the box, returned to the spot where Maeve waited.

Her delicate ginger brows drew together as she noticed the package. “What’s that?”

“A gift.”

Frown deepening, she took the box from his hand, opened it. A soft sound of surprise. Carefully, she lifted the bowl from its cushion, turned it to study it from all sides, her features slack with open astonishment. Lacquered in hues of dark red, the ceramic dish was interveined by gold threads.

“Kintsugi,” he said in answer to the question written on her face. “It is a Japanese craft of mending fractured objects by gluing the broken pieces together using a golden lacquer. In this philosophy, breakage and repair are part of the history of an object, and instead of disguising the fracture points, they are highlighted and embraced as a form of beauty. If something breaks, it does not lose its value or appeal.”

Her breath hitched, her lashes fluttering yet again, over eyes shimmering wet.

“When our bodies break,” he added gently, “we heal, and we often realize we are stronger at the mended points.”

She inhaled on a shudder, the hands holding the bowl trembling. An echo of her emotions pinged along the bond between them, so piercing, so consuming, he couldn’t quite name it. The moisture in her eyes spilled over, silent tears tracking down her cheeks.

He shifted his weight, curled his fingers into his palm. Had he miscalculated? Had what was meant as a thoughtful gift hurt her in a way he hadn’t intended? Was he beyond arrogance to have relied on thousands of years’ experience learning to read people to correctly guess their desires and fears? Perhaps he should have—

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He held his breath.

She swallowed, wiped the tears away with the heel of one hand, the other cradling the bowl. “Thank you for this.”

“You are not broken,” he said, his voice pitched low. “But if you feel you are, if you cannot help seeing yourself that way, then regard yourself as kintsugi.”

He turned, wanting to leave her to settle her thoughts and feelings.

A touch on his hand. The warmth of her fingers on his.

“Arawn.”