I have no idea what convinced him and I don’t care and I throw my head back and half laugh, half roar as I take Ryodan Killian St. James inside me and clench every muscle in my lower body that I’m so bloody grateful to have and I don’t have to be careful with him because I can never break this man in any way, and I can vibrate—

“Bloody hell, woman, don’t do that yet!”

But he’s on his back beneath me and I’m riding him and I’m in control, and I’m vibrating and goddamn, yes, he’s losing control and this is the only way I ever want to see this man lose his hold on reality.

“Paybacks are hell,” he snarls as he explodes inside me.

And all I can think is, I hope so. I hope he pays me back over and over again, my entire immortal life.

Then he’s shuddering and his head is back and he’s laughing up at me as he comes and I cup his face, that beautiful, sexy, familiar, challenging, stubborn, human skin poured over a beast face I will never tire of looking at and I catch his joy in my hands and it blazes inside my heart.

* * *

π

Later, I thumb up “Magic Man” on my cellphone and crank up the volume.

Later, I dance naked for him in the firelight and I tell him that I know it’s not a spell—but it’s truth that this woman-child-dragon has been waiting for him all her life.

Exaltation blazes in his eyes as he takes me down to the floor and he gets the top this time, the bastard, and he tells me something I file away but don’t ask about just then because my mouth is busy and I like it being busy in precisely that way.

He tells me he’s been waiting for me much longer than a lifetime. I have no idea what he means. I don’t care. He’s inside me and I’m inside him and the future is as vast and enormous as the starry skies that are half the time my home now.

* * *

π

Much later, I demand to know what happened at the abbey, and he tells me that Kat and the Shedon survived but we lost one hundred and forty-two sidhe-seers that day. I’d indeed killed Balor with my final blast and after I’d vanished, Ryodan scratched a long-chafing itch: Papa Roach was dead, slain at last by that lethal black blade Ryodan had been threatening him with for so long. AOZ was in the battle, too, but escaped and lived to torment us another day. Still, I was back, I was powerful, and one day that cooing little leprechaun would be mine.

Roisin had joined the women at the abbey, although she had no sidhe-seer gifts and was working with Enyo, recruiting other displaced, disenfranchised humans, molding them into an army, giving them purpose, a cause to fight for, a raison d’être. God knows we can all use one in times like these.

Mac and Barrons were still gone. No sign of the Fae in our city for months.

Yet I knew, although neither of us said it—

“Fuck that,” Ryodan says tightly. “I’ll say it. And we’ll print it in the Dublin Daily because the world needs to know and prepare. Our greatest battle is yet to come. It’ll be the Fae, not the old gods. Those bastards are going to turn our world into a war zone, and soon. There’s a scarce-contained violence in the earth, I feel it rumbling beneath my boots, a darkness on the wind, I can scent blood on the breeze. They’re planning, conspiring to seize this planet for their own. War’s coming, and if Mac doesn’t gain control of her power, it’s one we’ll lose.”

“Then we need to make sure Mac has enough time.”

He growls assent.

“Any news of Christian?”

“Same. Kat’s been spending time at Draoidheacht Keep, working on Sean. Still no progress there. He destroys every living thing he touches.”

“People?” I gasp. I know the horror of that.

“No. As Famine, it’s only living plants and crops. People and animals are exempt. Those are Christian’s specialty.”

“Any trouble from other gods?”

“Not yet. But I suspect we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg there. Humans and gods will have to unite to have a chance against the Fae.”

Somehow, I vow silently, we’ll make that happen. “Bright side, we now have a Hunter on our side. And who knows, maybe I can rustle up reinforcements.”

He laughs. “If anyone can persuade the unpersuadable entities, it’s you.”

Then he’s on me again and we’re battling for dominance because we always will, that’s the way we’re wired and I lose myself in passion and think no longer of this world or anything in it.

He’s my ground zero, my mecca, beast to my dragon. Always.

* * *

π

When I was fourteen years old, I watched Ryodan having sex on level four at Chester’s; the subclub devoted to providing the carnal excess necessary to keep the Nine’s beasts under control.

I smile faintly. I’m Ryodan’s carnal excess now.

That day, so long ago, I marked him as mine.

There it is. The truth.

Crucify me for it, if you want. I don’t care.

I was never a normal fourteen-year-old.

I’ve never been a normal anything.

At fourteen, I’d vowed, one day, I’d be the woman making him laugh, making joy blaze from his face, so tangible it seemed I might catch it in my hands. I would trace the imperious, regal, stubble-shadowed planes of his face, close my hand around his cock and take him inside me. I’d be the one responsible for the firestorm of lust in his heavy-lidded gaze, for the savage rumble deep in his chest, the guttural, raw sounds he made when he came, half roar, half laughing, erotic purr.

Not with my fourteen-year-old body. I wasn’t ready for sex then.

But one day.

With a woman’s body.

The man was mine.

It wasn’t just lust I’d felt the afternoon I’d watched him fuck. And yes, I’d been capable of lust at that age—for life, for the sex I would one day have, for chocolate, for being alive. I’m made of lust. We all are. Savor it. Burn with it. Never apologize for it.

It’s what makes life worth living.

I know a truth: We fuck like we live. Timid people fuck timidly. Uninhibited people fuck uninhibitedly.

He’d fucked with one thousand percent focus, with savage devotion and lust. Staggeringly alive, elated to be.

It’s the way I’ve always lived. Fully engaged, all senses ablaze.

I recognized, that day, that he and I were the same kind of people. I hadn’t thought to ever find someone else in the world like me.

I’d been wandering the city, on my own, for six years by then. I’d seen and done far more than any child should. (When I think of Rae, I know how wrong my life was and I’ll do everything in my power to keep her childhood pure, not that Kat needs my help, but I’ll be there. Watching over her. Always.) I’d paid prices few adults ever have to pay. I’d carried sins that cut me to the core of that soul I used to pretend I didn’t have. Sins that had forced me to find creative ways of rearranging myself so I wouldn’t self-destruct.

Ancient eyes had stared out of my fourteen-year-old face at Ryodan, and I’d thought: This man will understand me. This man can withstand me.

That’s something for a woman of my complicated ilk.

He’s a pain in the ass. Stubborn, controlled, controlling. So am I.

He’s done unspeakable things. So have I. And I suspect we’ll easily speak about them with each other.

He’s fascinating, brilliant, hungry for more life all the time.

So am I.

He’s life and death, joy and grief, mercy and ruthlessness. So. Am. I.

It was hard for me to move through those years between us.

I resisted what I knew I wasn’t ready for. I resented every woman he took to his bed in a dark, possessive corner of my mind, including Jo. Even though I understood.

Then life unexpectedly gave me a man I was ready for.

And Ryodan had understood.

But…always, endlessly, I’d been pointed at this man like a beast-seeking missile, waiting for the day I was—not merely locked and loaded—but fully ready to take him on, woman to man.

That’s what Dancer had always sensed in me.

And loved me anyway.

I think both my loves are better men than I. I can’t share. I can’t be second best. I don’t know how to play that role.

“You’ll never have to,” Ryodan assures me, as he closes his arms around me from behind and grinds, hard and hungry against my ass.

“You should know I’m possessive.”

His arms tighten around me. “As am I. You and me. No one else. If you’re not okay with that, get the fuck out of my bed,” he says, as he begins pushing slowly inside me.

I gasp and thrust my hips back, needing to feel him cramming me full, like earlier when he’d been part beast, so deep it nearly hurt in the best possible way. I’m not a woman to compare. We all bring unique assets to the table. But Ryodan’s assets fit me stupendously well and the fact that they were…adjustable…well, that was a plus a woman had no reason to expect and every reason to thank her lucky stars for.

He laughs softly against my ear as he slides infinitesimally deeper, raking my nerves with a savage need he’s creating…and refusing to fill, driving me mad. “I suspect the stars will always be lucky for you, Dani.”

Growling, I push back, hard but his hands are locked on my hips and he won’t let me gain a bloody quarter of an inch.

“Let me play, Stardust. Learn what turns you on. I want to drive you wild. I want to find your breaking points. All of them.”