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“Aisling.”
His voice rolled through me—around me—like thunder rolling slowly over a mountainside. Although his presence was now separate from mine, his voice seemed as though it were all around me. Holding me the way his crimson gaze did, pinning me in place with desire and pleading.
Mrak lifted a clawed hand when I said nothing. “Aisling?” He sounded worried, but that sentiment was lost as a shiver coursed through me at the sound of my name once more at his lips. Hisreallips. Full and black. I remembered the way his ethereal lips had felt on my skin. The way I could feel him without Mrak physically being present.
How would those lips feel now?
I found myself rocking onto the tops of my toes as I considered the question, my body already unconsciously reaching up to meet him. “I’m here.”
Mrak chuckled a little. The soft sound jarred me coming from someone so large. “You seem thousands of miles away.”
“I was.” From home, at least. I blinked. No, not from home. “Home” hadn’t existed for over a decade.Thiswas home: Kithonia. Anywhere with Mrak. I pulled in a shuddering breath with the realization, and this time, it finally seemed to stick in my head. “I’m not anymore.” I met Mrak’s eyes. “Hi.”
A smile curled across Mrak’s face and he opened his arms to me. “I’m so glad to see you’re awake, Aisling. My love.”
In the space between heartbeats, I was in his arms, wrapped in the full form of him. Mrak easily dwarfed me in size now, so hugging him was a bit strange. My head came to his chest, and he held me close before bending a little so we might be more easily matched in height. I busied my mind with memorizing every inch of Mrak’s new body. His scent. His size. The way his body seemed to fit to mine perfectly despite the clear size difference. The way he was every bit a shadow demon, but this monster wasmine.
Mrak inhaled sharply against my hair, as if he too were trying to memorize every contour of this moment.
But then everything that had led to this moment came screaming back to me.
Blood. Violence. Death.
I pulled sharply away from Mrak. He could have easily kept me there with his size and strength, but he let me go.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I met his crimson gaze once more. “All those people. The innocents. Theydied, didn’t they?”
Concern wrinkled his dark and monstrous—beautiful—features. Maybe even regret. “It was necessary.”
I scoffed loudly as Leif’s numerous warnings came back to me. Leif, the demon hunter who’d commissioned me to make a sword Mrak told me not to make. He’d tried to help me so many times, and all I’d done in return was nearly kill him.Twice.
“You used me.” I’d said the words aloud before thinking better of accusing the demon who’d saved my life. Ofcoursehe’d used me. That had been his original plan in making a deal with a desperate young woman. Why else help her?
“I needed to return home,” Mrak said matter-of-factly. “And I needed you with me.” He lifted his clawed hand again, with its long, black talons. I shivered as memories of him drawing them sensually across my skin churned in my mind. Those had felt real but hadn’t been, not fully. Now… Now I wondered if their sharpness would break skin.
Despite the excited shiver that zipped through me at the thought, I took a step back from Mrak. “People died.Innocentpeople. You knew I wouldn’t want Cassius’s victims to die.” I knew how helpless they must have felt, since I’d been one of them, after all. Years ago now, I’d been a special “pet” of Cassius’s former coven leader. Watching days pass while being fed on by vampires every few hours. Doing everything they said and more, no questions asked. Questions meant calling attention to yourself, and that only ended in death or being fed upon.
Something brushed the inside of my left elbow. I glanced down to find it was my own fingers subconsciously rubbing bite scars made long ago.
Mrak raised one taloned finger to my face and ran it along my cheek. Every bit of anger I felt raging though my veins fizzled out in that moment. “They did perish, yes. But I brought them back. They needed to fuel the portal so I could gain power and truly free them all. From Cassius. From their traumas. I healed their bodies as well as their minds, Aisling.”
Surprise parted my lips. “You can do that? How is that possible?”
Mrak smiled, his expression softening, which was strange, given the number of eyes his monstrous form had. “My kind have immense power when we are not limited. I did it for you.” His slipped his talon under my chin, lifting it just a little. “My love.”
I didn’t need to see those people alive and well again to know Mrak was telling the truth. I felt it in my soul. Our relationship hadn’t always been the most truthful or easy, but after a certain point, we’d decided to not lie to each other. And due to him opening the portal to Kithonia, bringing me here, even healing me before in his limited form, IknewMrak was powerful.
I wrapped a hand around his black-skinned wrist, holding his hand to my face. I turned into his hold. His fingers easily held my entire chin and one cheek. Everything about Mrak in this form was massive—larger than even I’d seen when we’d last had sex.
Oh.
My core clenched of its own accord when the thought of how bigpartsof him might be in this form crossed my mind. A shiver of excitement coursed through me, tempered only by the shock of being here, with him in person, in Kithonia.
“Aisling,” Mrak murmured. “Tell me what you’re thinking. I can’t read you right now.” I supposed it was a bit harder to understand someone when you weren’t inside their mind and body all the time.
I smiled up at him and rocked forward onto the tips of my toes. There was still enough space between us in height that Mrak had to lean down until our foreheads touched. The size difference between us now was incredible, but Mrak had always felt a bit larger than life, even without a physical form.
