I slip into her mind at the same time I thrust into her.
She gasps, eyes drifting back, as a deep, animal groan rolls through me. For several perfect moments, we’re both frozen, lost in the sensation of each other. She’s everywhere, wrapped so completely around my body and my consciousness, it’s hard to tell when I end and she begins. The tight, exquisite pressure of it surrounds me, so intense I feel I might break apartfor a moment, and I have to breathe slowly to ensure I don’t totally unravel too soon.
Her eyes meet mine again, her gaze sharpening as I stroke a thumb across her freckles.
“Is this what you want?”I murmur the question into her mind, knowing the answer, but needing to hear it all the same, needing to remind myself it’s safe to let go and lose myself.
“Yes,”she says, reaching for my face in a way that moves our bodies together and sends a sharp shiver of pleasure through us both.“Whatever you have to give me, I want it.”
So I give her all of it, sinking deeper into her, falling into her mind until I’m fully submerged. I start to roll my hips, building a relentless rhythm as I thrust forward. Soon I’m drowning in her, wondering if I’ll ever want to come up for air. And the whole time, she clings tight to me, lifting her hips each time I drive into her, taking me with a desperate hunger. It only pushes me harder. I haul my consciousness across her sparking nerves at the same time as my cock drags against her tight muscles, coaxing her to the edge.
She looks so beautiful lying beneath me, red hair splayed out across the sheets like a flare of flame, and I’m suddenly struck by how much I want to protect Leah—to shield her from everything life wants to throw at her. I’ll keep her safe from fate itself if I have to—and I will have to. It’s only a matter of time.
Until then, we have this. We have each other.
Then her hands are tightening across my shoulders, fingers digging into me as she tells me she’s close. And when we come together again, blissfully in sync, so tangled up in each other that it’s like we’re one being, I know without a doubt who this demon’s heart belongs to.
Leah
I rise before Syrus, enjoying watching him sleep for a few moments until I realize I’m starving. Not surprising, really, considering how completely he undid me last night. I shake my head a little at the memory of it as I rise from bed. Every muscle feels relaxed and languid, my body still riding the high of us climaxing together, bound and linked and totally consumed by each other. It’s difficult now to remember what it was like before I was tied to him. I was just one half of a much bigger whole, and the idea makes me feel oddly hollow.
But there’s another sensation buzzing in the background of my body.
My power.
As I wander down the corridor to the dining room, I study my palms, marveling at the memory of them bringing forth a storm of lightning yesterday. Tentatively, I try to search out that feeling again, letting the buzz of the magic move to the front of my focus.
It’s surprisingly simple, and I watch in awe as sparks crackle between my fingertips, dancing in quivering lines of white-hot energy. After a moment, I shove the buzzing away again and watch the sparks disappear, practicing it a few times to make sure I can call on it at will and turn it off again.
It’s only a little amount right now. It’s all I feel safe doing considering I’m just starting to use my magic. But a thrill runs through me as I consider trying out more in time—discovering just how powerful I might be.
When I get to the dining room, there’s no one else there, but I don’t mind. I load up my plate and get to work, shoveling in eggs and thick slices of hot buttered toast. Viz doesn’t join me until I’m practically halfway through a loaf.
“Are you ready for the meeting?” I ask, watching him flick through an even larger stack of papers than usual.
“Yes,” he says, glancing over at a carriage clock on the windowsill. “Although his lordship should be getting up soon, or we’ll be late.”
“Let him sleep a bit longer,” I say. “He had a very tiring day yesterday.”
“I don’t supposeyouhad anything to do with tiring him out, did you?” Viz asks pointedly.
I nearly choke on my fruit juice. “No comment,” I say, setting my glass down. Looking at it plants a thought in my head. “Hey, I don’t suppose you know if drinking the ephilium blood could’ve pushed my powers to the surface? Does it work like that?”
As usual, Viz can’t tear his eyes away from the parchment he’s studying, but he answers.
“It could have triggered it,” he says. “But considering we haven’t been putting the blood in your juice for a while, they’ve continued to develop remarkably well on their own without it.”
My brow furrows. “What do you mean? Why would you have stopped giving me the blood? I thought it was protecting me from being hurt by the possession?”
Viz shrugs, scribbling something down. “We thought it was, but then when we realized you were probably nephilim, we figured you wouldn’t need it—all the books say they’re not prone to possession-host deterioration like full humans.”
My brain is trying to do three sets of sums at once. I know there’s something wrong about what Viz just said, but I’m not quite sure what.
“Excuse me?” I ask.
Viz looks up, only now seeming to realize he might’ve said something surprising. “Oh, don’t worry. It was just a test. If you’d started to show any signs of decline, I would’ve put you straight back on it.”
“But you didn’t know I was nephilim…” I start to say, suddenly unsure. I mean, I knew Syrus had his suspicions, but they were still vague, weren’t they? I didn’t think either of us fully put it together until we spoke to Hathwell.
