I roll his hand back and forth across my lap, drawing his attention back to me. "Tell me what happened," I say, waiting as he gathers his thoughts.

"There was discussion among the Council of reaping Rosaria. She had consolidated significant power and had a network of connections deep into werewolf ancestral packs. They felt she was becoming too political, too much of a threat to the balance of the smaller clans."

"You have a Council?" I ask, and Ashen smiles. "I thought you all just, I dunno, made shit up as you went along."

"No, that's the Council's job," Ashen says and I laugh. "They were moving to make a decision. I fabricated evidence against one of the other packs to protect her. As much as she was powerful, she kept a balance that had been hard for werewolves to maintain. She played an important role, and I felt that power did not equate to crime."

I take in a heavy lungful of air and watch Ashen for a moment. I squeeze his hand. "Did you love her?"

Ashen's eyes seem to hold onto my words as he looks to the light that reflects on the fibers of the sheets. "No. We were lovers for a while. I cared for her, but I wasn't in love with her. It ran its course. We went our separate ways a few years ago."

I watch as he loses his thoughts to memories I will never know. There's something greater buried under this loss. I can feel it, deep beneath the strata of time. I wonder if he'll ever let me in enough to see it, or if it's simply a pain he cannot bear. But I know about unbearable pain, unspeakable loss. I know better than to pry into anyone's past.

"I'm sorry that you lost someone you cared about," I say, and Ashen's eyes meet mine. He looks as though I've said something unexpected that he didn't know he needed to hear. He pulls my hand and I follow the motion, laying the weight of my body against his chest.

"Thank you," he whispers. His fingertips trace every ridge of my spine. Down and up. Down and up. "I need to find the brickworks where the last hybrid was kept and figure out what else it is Semyon is looking for. He must be stopped before he regroups and gets to Valentina or Cassian."

"Or me," I say. Ashen's hands press on my shoulders and he lifts me away so he can look into my eyes. That same fierce expression from the first time in the cauldrons is embedded in his gaze, the one that says he will tear the world apart.

"No. I will not let him get close to you," he says.

"You might not have a choice, Ashen. It’s not like you can do this without me. It's the spell that I cast."

"I'll leave you here. Imani will look after you."

"You can't. My arm will itch so badly I'll chew it off and throw it into the fire," I say with a smile, hoping to lighten the mood. It doesn't work. The light in Ashen's eyes intensifies from flame to lava. I place my palm to his cheek and lean closer. "Who knows what will happen if we're separated by realms. Besides, I would rather face Semyon with you than be left to the Shadow Realm with your sister and a slew of enemies I can't distinguish from friends. If I'm there in the Living Realm, it will draw him out, sooner or later."

Ashen's eyes watch mine for a long moment. I can feel them locked there, even when my gaze travels the curves of his face. "I don't like it. But you're probably right."

"Get used to it. Vampires usually are."

Ashen smiles and pulls me back down to his chest, wrapping his arms across my back in a worried embrace. The steady drum of his heart pounds its song to me. I trace the face of the jackal above it, imagining how many lifetimes it has been beating in its cage of bone. Every touch still feels stolen. So, I'll be the greatest thief of all time. I will take every last one that I have a chance to steal.

Ashen’s embrace fades and I feel his palms glide across my back. I hear his heart hammer a heavier beat. I press my lips to the black lines that flow through his skin and I wonder how they came to be. Who made them, how long ago. Why. Questions I wish I could ask, but I don’t think I can, and I’m afraid he wouldn’t answer if I did.

I push myself up so I can look in his eyes, their flame sparking to life. He sweeps the hair from my shoulder and a crease appears between his brows.

“What is it?”

I look at him for a long moment as his palm glides across my shoulder and down my arm. His touch is like a falling feather that leaves gooseflesh in its wake.

“I feel so much buried in you. So much that you keep hidden deep,” I finally say, my voice little more than a whisper. “I wish I could know it all. I’m afraid of what I can’t see. I’m afraid of what could reach out from beneath the layers of you to grab me and crush my heart.”

Ashen’s eyes are the warm light of sorrow and longing as he reaches up to trace the line of my cheek. His lips part as he watches his fingertips on my skin, but he says nothing.

“I can’t stop myself from wanting you, Ashen. Even though it could kill me. I’ve tried and I can’t.”

I press my chest to his, my lips to his. I lay my hands on Ashen’s face, tracing all his features as though they might live forever in my fingerprints. I feel the hard length of him against my thigh and I reach between us, centering his erection to my core. He moans into my mouth as I slowly sink down onto him, his hands coasting up my back.

“I will not deny you anything that you ask,” Ashen whispers as he pulls away to search my face. He presses a warm, lingering kiss to my cheek, another just beneath my lashes. Each kiss is held so I remember it in my skin long after his lips have moved to the next patch of flesh.

I look in his eyes, drilling my gaze into him, hunting for the molten core of the man beneath the Reaper. “I won’t ask you your secrets, Ashen. I’m an immortal. I know better than that.” I glide to the edge of his erection, my movement fluid and slow. I hover above Ashen’s body as I run one of my hands down his neck and across the dense network of ink that traverses his skin.

“But?..”

“But maybe I’m not the only one that needs to learn to trust.” I watch Ashen’s face as I push down on him once more, taking him deeply. His gaze never wavers from mine. I’m not sure what I see there. Maybe a little surprise, a little awe. A spark of hope. He folds his arms across my back and rolls us over to look down at me.

“My elemental vampire, taking out more of my defenses,” he says as I wrap my legs across his back and lock my ankles.

“Defense destruction is my specialty. I do drive a tank, after all.”

“Not a submarine though.”

“Shut up and make love to me, Reaper.”

Ashen smiles and the rhythm between us builds. I try to let go of the heat that warms my chest as his words replay in my mind. My elemental vampire.

It’s just an endearment. My is such a little word. But it’s funny how much two letters can mean to you. And I kiss him like they mean everything to me. Deep and urgent and full of fire. I want to tell him how they make me feel after being alone for so long. But I can’t tell him. I can only show him.

I grip my legs tighter across Ashen’s body and flip him to his back so that I’m straddling him once more. I push upright and roll my hips, pressing my palms to his chest. My fingers trace the black, geometric lines, the slope of muscle on his shoulders.

Ashen’s hands slide from my hips and he hooks his hands behind my back to pull me in close until his mouth is on the peak of my breast. He swirls his tongue around my nipple and then clasps it in a gentle bite. I hiss, not a sweet, breathy, human hiss but a distinctly vampiric hiss of desire.

“My vicious, elemental vampire,” he says when he releases me, and with a wicked smile he dives for my flesh again, torturing me with delicious little bites. I increase the rhythm of my hips until I feel my climax burning through my core and firing through my limbs like lightning. It’s an orgasm that keeps coming in waves to drown me. Ashen moans into my flesh as he comes, sucked under by the same consuming storm of desire.