Except if Kalia heard, I thought, cringing. I prayed to all the deities in the universe that she’d stayed at the village.

When I felt something twitch beneath me, I exclaimed a surprised, “Oh!”

I was lying on one of his wings.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, suddenly feeling shy, which was ridiculous considering everything we’d done to one another throughout the course of the day.

But this was new, wasn’t it?

This kind of intimacy.

The quiet between sleep. The study of my slumbering husband’s darkly handsome features. The unspoken choreography of wings and horns and limbs as we lay beside one another in his bed.

This made me shy. I almost preferred that he was seated deep inside my body because then I could lose myself in that pleasure and not feel uncertain about it.

Now that his rage seemed to have passed—his body returning to its normal state and the urgency of his feedings receding—I worried that he’d turn me away from his bed. I worried that he’d turn cold again.

After today, I didn’t know if I could withstand that. Now I knew how hot he ran. How passionate he could be, determined and driven. I knew the dark curl of his smile when I challenged him. I knew the blissed-out expression on his face when I squeezed his pulsing knot—which he called his seal—in my palm. Now I knew that he liked to hold my hand when we were recovering in between sex, running his calloused fingertips over my knuckles as if trying to soothe me.

I couldn’t bear it if he took that male away from me. I wanted more of him. I didn’t know if I’d ever get enough.

In the end, I didn’t need to worry at all. Azur leaned up on one elbow when I released his pinned wing, his eyes scanning over my bared flesh. I was covered in his bites, twin fang marks lining my neck, my breasts, my arms, between my thighs. Even with the baanye, I was still feeling sleepy and weakened.

But he was healed at the very least. The large gash down his chest was gone, revealing smooth skin once we’d finally bathed. Gone like magic. A faint, lightened mark—raw, healing flesh was the only evidence it had ever been.

I’d done that. My blood.

“I was too rough with you,” he grunted, his voice tinged in regret and apology.

I smiled, and Azur stilled when he saw it. “I wouldn’t change anything.”

Some of the tension in his shoulders released. His fingers brushed my swollen lips, and I felt some of his silver come leak out from between my thighs. He’d filled me up over and over again. I wondered how long it would be before nothing of him remained inside me.

Even though I felt like my body had just been through a battle, I felt infinitely relaxed. Like I’d been massaged a thousand times over or I’d just had a jug of Drovos wine. I felt like I was floating.

Then he was skimming his finger over one of his fangs—which hadn’t yet retracted fully. A pinprick of his blood mingled with the clear fluid I now knew he called his venom. Painstakingly, he dabbed his fingers across the bite marks, gentle and light. Ludayn had done that but only with her venom. With blood, however, I felt a tingling warmth.

When he dabbed at a mark on my arm, I watched as the bite healed itself entirely. When I smeared away his blood, I saw nothing remained. It wasn’t tender to the touch either. It was simply gone.

It wasn’t that the bites had hurt. But I realized he was trying to ease my pain, my soreness, however he could, no matter how small.

Azur worked methodically. Slowly. Deliberately. His touch turned into something else entirely when he finished between my thighs. His fingers traced up the sticky mess between my labia, and my breath hitched, a familiar curl of desire making me reach for his hand.

Azur grunted but pulled away.

“Let me draw you a bath,” he murmured.

“You don’t have to do that,” I told him. “It’s after midnight.”

“I’m not tired,” he responded. He was already rising. Azur’s bed was large and incredibly comfortable. It had a dark canopy over the top, held up by four, large columns, on all corners of the bed. “I’ll have a keeper bring some binding root in tea too. For the pain.”

“Let them sleep. I don’t want to disturb them at this hour,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.”

“Do you have an aversion to letting others take care of you?” Azur asked me softly, eyeing me as he rounded to my side of the bed. Still incredibly, incredibly naked. My eyes strayed to his thick, curved cock. Still hard.

I blinked, my brow furrowing. “What?”

His claws tilted my chin up so that I was looking at him and not distracted by the tantalizing length of him.

“Do you have an aversion to letting others take care of you?” he repeated. Firmly. Intentionally.

I swallowed.

“The keepers are only too happy to do their Kylaira’s bidding. There is a reason we have a few who stay on during the night. And if my wife is in pain, I will see her well. I don’t give a damn about anything else or if I’m disturbing any of my keepers’ sleeping patterns.”

His words made my heart skip.

“You’re incorrigible,” I said with zero malice. “Very well. Wake the entire keep, then. I’d like food, too, while you’re at it. I’m starving.”

Hearing Azur’s soft laugh was a reward in itself.

“Yes, Kylaira,” he rasped. “I will make sure you are well fed.”

“And if you intend to feed anymore, you better make sure some baanye is brought up too,” I added quietly.

Want flared in his eyes, but then I watched him rein it back in.

“I’ve taken too much from you,” Azur told me. “No more feedings until your strength is returned.”

A flicker of disappointment sank in my belly.

We’ll see, I thought silently.

“I mean it,” Azur said firmly, eyeing me like he could hear my thoughts.

“I didn’t say anything.”

He mumbled something under his breath and then swept me into his arms, making me exclaim my surprise and grapple for his shoulders. He walked us over to his washroom. Kylorr bathing rooms, I’d discovered, were nearly identical to human ones. Though much, much larger to account for wings.

Azur’s washroom, however, had a large sunken in bathing pool. Deep enough to stand in. One he unveiled with a swipe over an invisible sensor, and I watched the floor slide silently away. One of the higher-tech items I’d seen in this entire keep.

“Do I have one?” I asked, gaping at it. I’d never considered that one might be hiding under my floor.

“No,” he grunted. “Not in that room.”

When we’d bathed off Azur’s blood earlier, we’d done it in the shower pod. But I was all too happy to soak my tenderness away.

“Though, these rooms are where you’re likely to stay,” came that husky voice. I didn’t dare breathe when I glanced up at him, though he was focused on filling the bathing pool, the water coming out steaming from the silver tap. “Don’t you think?”

I hadn’t given much thought to our sleeping arrangements. I couldn’t deny that his words filled me with pleasure. Now that I knew what sex was like with him, I wanted to take full advantage whenever I could.

“Yes,” I said softly. “I believe so.”

There were stairs that led into the pool. Azur stepped down them as the water lapped higher and higher. He placed me on a ledge seat lining the wall.

“I’ll be back,” he told me once he made sure I was situated. “My Kylaira demanded food, I believe.”

My lips twitched as I watched him leave, the heavy bulk of his black wings disappearing into the moonlit bedroom. He wasn’t gone long. He returned with food for me and a steaming kettle of tea, displayed on an intricate tray, a mere moment later. As if the keepers had been waiting with one at the ready outside the door.

Azur lowered the tray so it was perched on the edge of the pool. He made sure to turn off the taps when the water came to the tops of my shoulders, though the water level wasn’t nearly enough for him, and then he waded in.