Arawn had experienced various forms of pleasure over his long life, from light and fleeting to razor-edged and mixed with pain, but the way Maeve made him feel was new. It was a feat bordering on the impossible, but he’d resigned himself to the fact that she defied expectations.

And he’d never known pleasure to be infused with as much amusement as it was with her. The thoughts she continued to toss at him…they made him want to laugh in a way that seemed almost foreign to him, loosened parts in him that had become too rigid, too jagged.

So when she drew the sheet down off his hips with narrowed eyes and dared to teach a god a lesson—because she was fearless when it came to him, and he wouldn’t want to have it any other way, would hurt if she ever treated him with cowering awe—he grinned, free and open, with a kind of fun he hadn’t experienced in far too long.

White-hot lust washed over that sizzling amusement the instant she closed her hand around his cock. He nearly bucked in her grip, the need to feel her creating friction around his most sensitive body part a driving, maddening force.

Her eyes flicked to his face, burning amber and swirling smoke, holding him mesmerized as she lowered her head…and licked at the tip.

His power blotted out the magic-made night sky above.

At her soft gasp, he brought it right back, and stroked tendrils of his energy around her in apology. In addition to not wanting to frighten her, he made sure the pitch black didn’t return, because he wanted enough light on her while she sucked him. He could see in the unrelenting darkness, but to have her creamy skin caressed by the glow of the moon and stars while she gave him such pleasure was a beauty in and of itself.

“So,” she asked in her sensually husky voice, her breath cooling the wetness that had gathered at the head of his cock, “is this like a light switch, then?”

His laugh broke from him on a flash of surprise and delight only she brought out in him. Her features softened in that way they did when she saw him laugh, her eyes glinting with sexual intent the next instant.

She licked him again, and this time he directed the excess push of his power in response to her touch to enhance the magic of the star-studded midnight above. Wide-eyed, she stared at the pulse of lights, looked back at him.

“It is a light switch,” she whispered, her expression a perfect pretense of serious awe.

He knew, at that moment, that he would fight a sky full of gods to keep Maeve his, to keep her wanting to tease him like this, unguarded and lovely and disarming with her charm.

“Keep flipping it, then,” he said, all sensual dare and unvarnished demand.

Her answering grin was a fleeting thing, giving way to renewed sexual focus as she gripped him harder, brushed her lips over the head, her tongue along the especially sensitive underside. She sucked at the vein there, and he felt that suction throughout his entire body, groaned low at the hint of teeth when she closed her mouth completely over his cock.

Bursts of starlight above them.

Down she went, and up again, keeping her eyes on his face, equal parts to remind her of his identity and to watch his pleasure—which he knew from the thoughts she didn’t quite throw at him, but nevertheless let him see.

And he didn’t hide his pleasure, allowed her to see what she did to him, and was rewarded with a lush boost of the most exquisite fragrance he’d ever smelled. He inhaled the heavy scent of her arousal, vowed to taste the source of it soon.

He tightened his grip on her hair, incrementally, carefully, a question in the tug he gave her.

Hair-pulling, she thought at him, is safe. He never did that. Heavy-lidded amber eyes held his. Don’t stop. I like it.

And that was all the answer he needed. He grasped the strands more firmly, began to direct her movements—having picked from her thoughts, from the way she chose this type of intimacy first, that it was another thing untainted by her experience. With all the acts of violence that demon had committed against her, forcing her to take him in her mouth hadn’t been among them.

The part of him that hungered for control less vicious now he could guide her, he drank in the erotic sight of her lips around his cock, her head bobbing as she sucked him. Pressure building in his balls, he directed her to go faster, and she complied with a spark in her eye that did him in.

Lightning bolts of pleasure shot down his spine, through his groin, made him buck against her. His head fell back on the mattress as he came, the night sky above a tapestry of silver bursts and shooting stars, his power rolling out to fill every corner of the room.

Maeve kept sucking him until he was spent, and let go of his cock with a wet kiss and a lingering caress. He watched, riveted, as she crawled up his body, her breasts swinging with the movement.

His fingers closed around one of her nipples before she stopped above him, and he circled the tight nub, tweaked it just a little. She inhaled sharply, and he paused to check her expression.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”

“Good.” Even to his own ears, his voice was drenched in pleasure, a sated rumble. “Because I have plans for these.” He cupped both of her breasts, an erotic weight in his palms.

She arched into his touch, no sign of shyness or shame about the scars visible on her skin—which were symbols of strength, of survival—and a deep sense of pride flowed through him. She was conquering her demons, one by one.

With one of her nipples lightly pinched between his fingers, he tugged at her to move forward, until her chest was level with his face. She braced her arms on either side of his head, her breath coming fast as he ran his hands over her breasts, massaged and caressed in alternating strokes of feather lightness and increasing, targeted pressure.

“No biting.” Her voice was but a rasp, echoes of pain behind her words.

And his mind short-circuited at the thought of how much she had been mistreated to fear something that should be an exquisite pleasure between lovers.

“In that case,” he said on an intimate murmur, “I will have to lick you twice as thoroughly to feast on you.”

She shuddered in his hold, the amber of her eyes molten with lust. That was when he rose up, sucked a nipple into his mouth and swirled his tongue around it.

Her hips rocked against his abdomen, a choked sound of pleasure tumbling from her throat. He worked her left breast with his lips and tongue while flicking the hardened nipple of the other one with his thumb. She undulated above him, her breathing turning ragged.

“Still with me, Wildfire?”

Her response was to tunnel her fingers through his hair, caress him with light, affectionate strokes.

He played his fill with the supple curves of her breasts, making sure she was writhing with excitement, her scent a consuming perfume in the air, before he moved his hands down her sides, to her waist.

“Come here.” He applied enough pressure on her hips to make her scoot forward. “I want to taste you.” He ran a careful finger over her thigh toward the red triangle that glistened wet with her desire. Watched her expression with utmost attention as he grazed that finger over her curls, over skin swollen with need. “Here.”

She jolted, her breath unsteady, her muscles visibly tightening.

“Safe or not?” His finger lingered.

Voice shaky, she said, “He…did that.”

He waited, taking his cue from the fact she hadn’t pulled away.

“But,” she went on, “I want to overwrite that memory. With you.”

Nodding, he slid his finger in lazy circles around the center of her pleasure. “Courage should be rewarded.”

Her skin was slick with her arousal, and he used her wetness to glide over her intimate flesh, make her quiver with need. Her thigh muscles trembled with the effort it obviously took for her to keep hovering over him, too much tension in her small, lithe body.

That wouldn’t do.

“Place your hands behind you, on my chest,” he ordered.

She complied without hesitation, and he grabbed her tight with both hands on her ass, brought her directly over his face. He held most of her weight like this, his strength such that he didn’t even feel strained. Her hands on his chest merely served for extra balance—and the angle of this position meant she was opened even more for his pleasure.

“Relax your thighs.”

After a moment she did, and most of the tension drained out of her body with that small surrender. Better. Though not enough to satisfy his own need to see her drown in sexual bliss. He would make her go boneless yet.

She jerked at the first touch of his mouth to her slick folds, and he deliberately tugged at the bond, to remind her, to ground her.

I’m okay, she thought at him.

He rewarded her with a leisurely lick up to her clit, though not touching it directly. Instead, he used his lips and the flat of his tongue to apply wide pressure to the mound above it in a slow rhythm designed to make desire fire up her nerves and pool in her intimate flesh.

Her fingers digging into his chest and her breathing turning choppy were the sweetest praise of his effort.

When she was shaking with lust, he finally licked down, gave her deep, thorough kisses on her wet folds, teasing her entrance with touches of his tongue, though careful not to push in.

“You taste like fire,” he murmured against her hot, wet skin. “Power wrapped in flames.”

Her response was a strangled moan.

“I want to see you come apart again.” He touched his mouth to her clit. “Burn for me.”

He sucked, and her back bowed, her hips jerking against him as she shattered with a husky moan. Her scent, her taste, her power, filled his senses, the ghost of flames bursting forth from her, caressing him in turn.

He wasn’t done yet.

Relentlessly, he kept going, drove her over the edge again and again. She gasped for air, her arms shaking as she tried to keep herself propped up, her head thrown back in ecstasy. He dared lightly licking into her slick opening, a teasing hint of erotic intrusion—and it pushed her to another shuddering climax.

She collapsed completely, her arms giving in, and he let go of her with a kiss to her swollen folds, watched her virtually flow off him to lie in a molten tangle on the mattress beside him.

“Now this,” he said, stroking her with his power, “is how I want to render you limp.”