His lips slowly curled, just as his fingers did, inching ever-slightly higher—deeper.

“Your armor’s too thick.”

What was it about him that made me so bold? I kissed him, then slid my hand down, over his chest, his abdomen, down over his length. Mother, he was big. Even through the layers of his clothing, he responded to my touch as easily as I responded to his. It was the most incredible, powerful thing, feeling him twitch under my hands. Listening to that little shudder in his breath.

“Yours too,” I whispered against his lips.

It should have been frightening to me, to know that he wanted me this fucking much.

It wasn’t. Instead, it made my own desire maddening.

He drew me closer, his hand tightening in my hair, and claimed my mouth in a kiss so sudden and passionate that everything but him withered away. He lowered himself, released my hair in favor of cupping my backside with both hands, and lifted me. I kissed his mouth, his jaw, his throat, as he carried me into his room, and the two of us fell onto the bed. His broad form crawled over mine. I freed my hands so I could work at his jacket. It was a complicated thing, all buttons and straps, and especially difficult to navigate when I was feeling around blindly. After a few seconds, he laughed against my lips.

“Having trouble?”

He pulled away enough to look at me—and Goddess, I mourned his mouth already—but before I could complain, the beauty of him stopped me short. It was now morning, and though the curtains were drawn, the barest hint of sunshine slipped through the fabric and outlined his silhouette in a faint kiss of gold. I’d never realized before just how much red was in his hair, or in his wings, which were still out. I touched them without thinking, prompting a sharp inhale from Raihn. They were softer than I imagined they might be.

He gently pulled my hand away. “We’ll save that for another time.”

“Does it… tickle?”

He chuckled. “In a way.”

If he expected this answer to dissuade me, it very much did not. But disappointedly, with a puff of smoke, his wings were gone. And he leaned down as if to kiss me again, then paused, drinking me in the way I just had him.

His hands went to the button of my armor. “May I?”

I swallowed.

I wanted this—Mother, I wanted it, the slick ache between my legs promised that. Yet something about this made me strangely nervous, my heart fluttering against the inside of my ribs like a captured bird. I didn’t want to feel that way. But the memory of the one and only time I had done this still seized me, a map carved into my body that I couldn’t erase.

“You first,” I whispered.

Raihn sat up. And slowly, button by button, his armor fell open, sheets of battle-worn leather parting to reveal the most stunning body I had ever seen. As he shifted the coat from his shoulders, I watched the light play over the surface of his flesh, and I was fucking jealous of it—jealous of the way it got to pool in the crevices and dips, the way it kissed the raised texture of his scars, the way it shuddered over dark hair at his chest and below his navel, disappearing beneath the low-slung waistband of his trousers.

I had stopped breathing. He caught my eye and smirked in an infuriating way that told me he knew exactly what I was thinking.

Oh, fuck him.

I rolled off the bed and rose.

“And where, exactly, are you going?” he asked.

“Nowhere.”

I stood with my back to him and worked at the buttons of my jacket. Then the laces of my pants. I let my jacket fall to the ground first, then peeled off my trousers.

Raihn had shut up.

I turned around.

He had gone so still. It was rare that he embodied that stillness—vampire stillness, the kind that made the world go silent. He drank me in, starting at my face and moving down. I could feel that stare as if it was his touch—caressing the scars on my throat, the curve of my clavicle. I could feel it pause at my breasts, peaked with my arousal, covered by the tips of my black hair. It slid down my stomach, traced the angry-pink slashes from the trial. Landed at the apex of my thighs. His nostrils flared and eyes went hard, and I wondered if he could sense it, smell it—how much I needed him.

When his eyes came back to mine, he looked like a man undone. “Come here,” he whispered. Pleaded.

I returned to the bed. And I couldn’t help it—the moment he was in reach, my hands were all over him. I touched him like the light had, tracing every line of muscle, every scar, every trail of hair. His mouth was on mine immediately, his hands on my waist, my breasts, making me gasp with every new expanse of skin.

“Beautiful isn’t enough,” he rasped as he pulled away from my mouth. “Fuck, Oraya, you’re—I—”

He gave up on words. Instead, he lay me down and his lips moved to my throat, soft over my flesh. He lingered at the scar where he had drank from me—and the one beneath it.

Then, slowly, he moved down. His fingers circled my breast, thumb rolling over my nipple. When he lowered his head to me and brushed his tongue over that sensitive peak, my eyes rolled back.

I didn’t know it was possible to feel this much. Want this much. It hadn’t been like this last time. But then again, we’d both been barely more than children. And it had been…

Different.

I didn’t mean for my thoughts to wander to that night. Just as I didn’t mean for my fingertips to brush my throat, and the older scar there.

Raihn raised his head, a wrinkle of concern between his brows.

“Don’t stop,” I breathed.

But he just looked at me, lips thin, as if a thought had just occurred to him.

“I can’t believe I didn’t—Oraya, is this… is this your first time?”

He didn’t ask it with any judgment, only genuine concern. His hand fell over mine, his thumb rubbing my palm.

“No,” I said.

The truth, even though in some ways it felt like a lie.

Raihn’s stare slipped to my throat—to that scar, the same one he had kissed in that cave.

He knew. He understood.

His breath was warm over that mark.

“Is that when you got this?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and was rewarded with a vivid image of a different night, a different man, a different breath on my throat.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“No big story. He… he just couldn’t control himself.”

Raihn didn’t believe my forced indifference for a second. His lips kissed one silvery-white jagged line, then the other. He withdrew, looking into my eyes hard, like he wanted to watch to make sure I understood what he was about to say.

“You’re safe, Oraya. I need you to know that.”

You’re safe.

“I know.” And I meant it. Because from the first time he told me those words, I believed him.

“I want you to enjoy this.” His lips curled, and he shook his head, immediately correcting himself. “No. More than that. I want you to—fuck, there are no words for what I want.”

“I’m not some naive virgin.”

Sure, my last sexual experience had ended… poorly. But a girl could do a remarkable amount of experimentation on herself. Still, looking at Raihn’s body—looking at the way his trousers strained—I had to admit this seemed like it would be very different.

“Oh, I know. No one could call you a shrinking violet.”

He kissed me, long and slow.

“I just want you to know,” he murmured, against my mouth, “that you are in control. And we can take all the time we need to make sure you’re ready.”

His fingertips brushed the curve of my inner knee. My thighs opened, and that touch wandered higher, my breath growing shallower with every inch.

“Time?” I barely managed to speak. “We have one night, Raihn. And then we die. So you’d better be a fucking amazing lay.”

“Oh, don’t you worry.” He ventured farther up my thigh—still not as high as I wanted it. My heartbeat quickened as his lips moved slowly over mine. When his fingertips brushed the wetness of my folds, he shuddered too, in a way that I found very satisfying. “I’ve… done a lot of thinking about this.”