Page 284 of Sorrow & Strangers

Mira groans and rocks her hips against me, grinding the soft heat of her core against my thigh.

“Talk to me,” I whisper brokenly. “Keep me grounded.”

Don’t let the demon take control.

“Did you think about me? After All Souls?” she asks, her body warming as she presses against my side.

My hand tightens on hers, my claws digging into her hand, breaking the skin. “Every night,” I pant, beating the demon back into the cage I’d built in my head for it. “I thought about ways to please you.”

She arches, sliding her thigh over mine. “I thought about that too, ways to make you moan.” More fire flickers between our joined hands. The second it sparks, the flames turn black but don’t extinguish. Hellfire. Is this how it is made? “I still think about it. All the time.”

Possess. Claim, the demon whispers. The demon kept whispering those words the entire time we were in Paradis. I am pretty sure Uncle Lu was lying about demon mates. Maybe only Fallen have them?

“So do I,” I say, my fangs receding. When my vision changes, I know the blackness that flooded my eyes is clearing.

The Hellfire extinguishes, but I don’t release her hand, not for a second.

“I don’t know how to resist you,” she admits.

“Then don’t,” I answer, my heart racing.

“Rafe.” She tries to pull her hand from mine, but I don’t release her.

“Let me be yours,” I say, leaning closer, hovering my lips over hers.

Mira’s eyes flicker, and she seals her lips to mine. We lose ourselves in each other, in the way she burns me, and I writhe in her heat. Hours later, we are both slicked with sweat and ash.

“Mira?” I whisper softly, curling her hair around my fingers, the strands still half flame. She glances up at me, her freckles glowing on her skin like cinders from a fire. “Will you come with us?” Her brows furrow. “To Drãculea? When it’s time?” I need her with me. She can help me manage the demon, and I just want her by my side.

She nods, her secrets casting shadows over her sparking eyes.

“Thank you,” I whisper, kissing her softly.

“Goodnight, Rafe,” she says with a smile, cuddling against me.

She drifts off almost immediately, and I whisper back to her sleeping form the words she wasn’t quite ready to hear, “Goodnight, my love.”

Chapter One Hundred Seventeen

Summer

Alice spent most of last night inconsolable. Rafe and I stayed up with her, but she finally cried herself to sleep about two hours ago, so I sent Rafe off to get some rest too. Alice’s grief is complicated ­because she isn’t grieving her father. She is grieving what he could have been. I stroke her hair back from her face and kiss the top of her head as she sleeps beside me.

Rafe and I will need to make a plan before Alice wakes up. The rites are going to be hard enough, but the coronation is going to be its own special torture. It is happening on the heels of her father’s funeral, and there is no doubt that there is going to be trouble. Alice has never fit into the Drãculean mold they constantly tried to squeeze her into.

I shift carefully out of bed and set up the baby monitor on her bedside table before picking up the receiver. Yawning, I pad into my room to shower and change, but stop short when I find the stranger stretched out on my bed, waiting for me.

“Hi.” I smile, my shoulders sagging in relief.

“What’s happened?” he asks, sitting up.

I exhale. “Alice’s father is dead, and along with everything being complicated,” I say, which feels extremely reductive, “she is mourning someone she hated, which is even messier.”

“She is mourning what they could have been,” he says with a nod.

I lean back against the door, exhaustion tugging at me. “Something feels off, though.” I frown. “I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Would you like me to investigate Drãculea?” he asks, all his focus on me.