“So you do deceive.” She put her palm where his heart ought to be. Must be there, because she felt it beating. Was that part of the illusion? Or was there really a heart there? She pushed against his chest, gently. “Do you tell your partners what else you are?”

  “Hell no,” he said in his whiskey and smoke voice. “If I did that, I might never get laid.”

  “That scary?”

  “How many people have you told about your thing?” He tapped a finger to her head. “Besides, where’s the lie? This is exactly what I look like in my human form.”

  She shifted her legs, and he looked over her body again. One of his hands settled on her upper thigh. Out of habit, she closed herself off from the shiver of arousal.

  “Hey,” he said in a low voice. “I told you. That’s not necessary.” He fingered the next button of her blouse, a motion that forced her to drop her hand from his chest. “You know it’s true. Stop fighting it. You know we’ll be good together.” He reached around her and unfastened her hair clip, then ran his fingers through it. “There,” he said softly. “You’re not the ice queen anymore. Not that I don’t like that, but you’re even hotter like this.”

  His hand curved over her thigh, and she looked down. His fingers were long with blunt but perfect nails. They weren’t manicured, but his nails were strong and even, without a single blemish. His hand was not soft or gentle-looking. Her breath got short when he moved his hand to her bare skin underneath her skirt. She sucked in air as he searched higher.

  He looked human, but he wasn’t. Not at all.

  He reached the top of her thigh, and she spread her legs enough for him to cup her. No one, no one ever had touched her there without her being emotionally shut down. Such a casual touch, a gentle pressure and then his finger sliding along her there, pressing against her underwear, and she was nearly out of her mind with the tension.

  She blocked it out. All of it. The surge of desire. The tension. Everything receded into frost.

  “Don’t do that.” He curled his other hand around her head and pulled her toward him. “I want to make you come so hard you scream my name.”

  She met his gaze, with the swirling colors drifting through the black. “I don’t know how.”

  “We’ll practice. Until you get it perfect.”

  He kissed her. His mouth touched hers and there was no pain streaking through her head, no loss of connection with the physical world, no taste of bitter metal. She couldn’t remember what it was like to kiss a man like this. There was tongue involved again, and she was melting.

  He pulled back, but his hands stayed where they were, one on her thigh, the other at the back of her head. “That was nice,” he said. “Really nice. More?”

  “How do you do that? Keep me from reacting to you?”

  He set himself to unbuttoning her blouse. “This form looks human. I’ve been passing for years. But I’m not human.” He grinned at her, so cocky. He touched the middle of his forehead. “We can fuck like bunnies and nothing happens except one of us gets tired. And it won’t be me.”

  She laughed at the absurd image. Her fingers gripped his arm, and his smile was slow and wicked.

  “I need your permission for this.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to run afoul of the warlord who controls this territory. There’s rules about how things have to happen when a human knows what we are. If I wanted to, I could take control of your mind. I won’t do that. But the risk is there.”

  “Possession, you mean?”

  “No. But I could do that, too. If you gave permission. But that isn’t what I want from you.” He leaned in and licked the side of her throat. She held back a groan. “What I want from you is hot sex. You and me naked and maybe”—he drew back and tapped the side of his head—“a little of this going on. If you say it’s okay.”

  She nodded. “Informed consent.”

  “Say the words.”

  “It’s okay.” She breathed in and lowered her defenses.

  “Relax.” He pressed his finger to her forehead.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.” His eyes changed color. Not black but bronze and gold. “Anything you want.” He curled his hand around hers and brought her fingers to just beneath his lower lip. She picked out her reactions, examining each one. The heat that transferred from his hand to her fingers, the anticipation of his muscled body and what his bare skin would feel like. The way her body quivered with want. He whispered, like smoke and whiskey. “Any way you want it.”

  The tension in her weighed down her eyelids so that she could only open them slowly. When she did, he was staring at her chest with eyes that were worlds away from normal. In the dimness of the room, she spread her fingers over his shoulders. Muscles flexed and bunched under her fingers.

  The color of his eyes shifted again. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

  “I thought you wanted me to be bad.”

  “Can you do that for me?”

  She nodded.

  Khūnbish unfastened a few more buttons of her shirt, and a shiver spread from her breasts to her belly. She let it happen.

  _______________________________________________________

  CHAPTER 7

  Lys’s hands fell to her sides because she didn’t how to process her body’s reactions. Khūnbish was so close, her left hand landed on his thigh, well above his knee. The curve of his muscled thigh set off a whole new set of reactions in her, and she froze up. After so many years living with the guilt of what happened when she lost control, she couldn’t let go anymore. Not the way he wanted.

  Khūnbish sat back, but kept a finger hooked in her blouse. “Are you okay?”

  She was momentarily lost in the features of his face, the black hair, the planes and angles of his cheeks. The shape of his eyes and mouth. She tried to let go of her blocks again, and even half-assed success let her feel enough of her arousal to be astonished. Was that sexual hunger really hers? Jesus, she’d let Khūnbish do anything he wanted as long as he could make her feel like this. As long as he’d be safe.

  “Fensic?”

  The rasp of his voice curled inside her, and she imagined what it would be like to hear him whisper her name during that first push when she was accepting him inside her, and her body was wound even tighter than this. He shifted beside her, and his thigh bunched and released under her hand. She tightened her fingers, and more colors flecked his eyes. “I’m okay.”

  “Good to know.” He went back to unbuttoning her blouse. Every now and then one of his fingers brushed the bare skin of her stomach, lower each time. With more effort than she liked, she relaxed her mind and took stock of her physical state. Her breasts felt amazingly heavy. Each breath made her long for him to cup her, hold her, make her nipples peak. She flashed on an image of him taking her in his mouth and that just about did her in again. She sank deeper into sensations she’d only ever felt at a remove.

  He drew a finger over the exposed upper curve of her breast, above her bra, and her skin leapt with tiny quivers that followed the contact and made her wish for more. Much more. His eyes swirled with trails of color again, orange amid the bronze and gold. “Have I told you how hot you are? Because you are. Really hot.”

  She loved his voice, the way that smokey edge wound around her. So different from the way he sounded when they were just business and trial prep. She pressed her hands flat to his chest while he reached under her skirt again, both hands this time, up high. He hooked his fingers into the top of her underwear. All the breath in her body stopped while she fought to stay present.

  He tugged, and she lifted her hips to let him drag her panties down her thighs. She was actually letting this happen. She was slick. Aroused. Heavy between her legs, and it was the most amazing thing for her to feel the immediacy of her sexual arousal. He watched her from under half-lidded eyes as he moved so he could slide her underwear all the way off her. She sucked in a breath. Her body thrummed with arousal, a deep, sensual ache that lived inside her. When his fingers brushed up her legs, she panicked and without warning her icy remove snapped on.

  The emotion of her failure tangled up in her throat. She was going to fall apart if this kept up. Part of her was perversely relieved because her closed-off state was familiar, but the loss of her connection to her body was excruciating.

  She sucked in a shaky breath when Khūnbish pressed his palm to the side of her head. He didn’t look angry or annoyed, but then she didn’t really know what he was like. Aside from her few disastrous encounters when she was still a teen, her only sexual experiences had been with Michael. Sterile. Emotionless for her. Not a fair comparison for anyone.

  “Hey, my smoking hot little street witch. Come back.” The fingers of his other hand trailed upward from her stomach, over her bra to her upper chest. She swallowed hard and managed to release some of that automatic hold over herself. The sizzle came back, beckoning at the same time it set off alarms. He leaned in. “It’s been a bad couple of days for you, I know.” His eyes flicked down to her cleavage. “I can help you with that. The trouble you’re having.”

  “How?”

  “Let me make a connection.” With one finger, he tapped her temple. “Here.”

  She froze again. “You mean take over.”

  “No.” He hesitated. “I could. But I don’t mean that. I mean you let me in here.” He tapped her temple again, but she was distracted by his thigh pressing against hers and the fact that her underwear was somewhere on the floor. “If it doesn’t help, I’ll stop, okay? I promise.”

  In Michael’s view of the world, Khūnbish was lying in order to get control of her will because that’s what demons did. The question was, did she buy into the paranoia, or did she trust the man who’d damn near lost his freedom in order to help her? She moved away from all that ice. “Okay.”

  “This will be fucking amazing.”

  She felt a presence in her head. A pressure. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant. It didn’t hurt, and it didn’t do anything to whatever was wrong inside her head. Khūnbish, however, loomed large, not just physically now, but also in his impact on her senses. Incredible. She touched a hand to his cheek and this time the panic stayed in the distance.

  He let his eyes fall closed and then breathed in. When he opened them again, there was nothing but gold-tinted bronze. He touched her, and she stayed present. Such warm fingers along her skin. Every caress sent a shiver of arousal through her to settle between her legs. He slipped off her pumps, one then the other. When he came back, he stood and pulled her to her feet, bringing her close. His hands cupped her ass and kept her tight against him, her curves against his muscled body. No question he felt like an aroused human male. She didn’t get as much as a mental peep from him. She couldn’t see even a glimpse of his future, and it was such a relief. Such a blessed relief.

  Telos put his mouth by her ear and pressed a kiss there, then a flick of his tongue at the side of her throat. She let her head fall back, and he kissed her harder. Hard enough that maybe tomorrow she’d have a hickey like some high school girl with her first boyfriend. She melted against him.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “I have wanted this for a long time, Fensic.”

  She was going to go up in flames and feel every minute of it. His hands skimmed the backs of her thighs, very high up. She slid her hands underneath his T-shirt. His skin was smooth. Alive beneath her fingers. He felt good.

  He let go of her to grab the bottom of his shirt and yank it over his head. His torso was just as cut as she’d guessed. He kicked off his shoes and while she watched, he braided his hair into a partial queue he left hanging down his back. He didn’t have much body hair. Just smooth, brown skin over a lot of muscle. Skin without a single blemish. No moles, no scars, no scratches or birthmarks. His physical perfection was eerie.

  His jeans went next, underwear in the same motion. If it hadn’t been for that sense of him in her head she might have panicked again. He took a step back and stood with his hands at his sides.

  He was naked. Telos Khūnbish was standing in front of her completely naked, and he was gorgeous and looking at her in a way that brought on another set of butterflies in her belly. This was happening. She was going to have sex without having to insulate herself from all sensation.

  She made a turning motion with one hand and, with a wicked smile, he turned for her. He took his time. He was more elegantly made than she’d imagined. There was length to his limbs, despite the well-developed musculature. On his back were two vertical rows of symbols inked in black. Most of the symbols she didn’t know but she recognized some as Hebrew. He finished his turn.

  She moved to one side of him and touched the markings on his back. Still present. Still feeling. “What’s the tat?”

  “Angel script.”

  “On a demon?”

  He flashed a grin. His penis was erect and a damned impressive sight. “Good joke, if you ask me.”

  “Hilarious.” It was freeing not to have to concentrate on blocking out what her body was feeling. It felt wicked and new and dangerous. Unreal.

  He went to work on her blouse again. He got to the last button and dipped his head to kiss her. His mouth opened over hers and demanded that she feel pleasure. And she did. She accepted her reaction without worrying about sliding into insanity.

  The tenderness of his kiss made her weak-kneed with lust. He separated the halves of her blouse, and she put her arms behind her to undo the buttons at her cuffs. By then he’d pushed her blouse off her shoulders. She let the silk fall to the floor. Her skin flushed hot as he stared at her.

  “Beautiful.” He slipped his fingers under the straps of her bra. Attention on her torso, he ran his fingers several times from the front to the tops of her shoulders before he reached around and unhooked her bra. He drew it from her, and then he touched her.

  She closed her eyes, concentrating on the way he touched her. The way her breasts tightened, the hardening of her nipples and the rippling shiver of arousal that shot straight to her underwear-free zone. In her head, she saw him over her, felt him inside her, felt his skin hot over hers, and there was only her anticipation.

  He went for the waistband of her skirt next. Since her skirt was lined, she wasn’t wearing a slip. After it hit the floor, she kicked it aside. His gaze lingered at her breasts, hands following from there to her waist and then along her hips. The heat in his eyes shook her, the newness of him, of Telos Khūnbish touching her like this. She never wanted to forget this.

  It occurred to her that she could touch him, too. She put a hand on his chest, following the midline of his body, and ended up with her hand around his penis. “Condom,” she said. “Tell me you have a condom somewhere in this house.”

  His lips were parted, his pelvis tipped toward her hand. He drew a finger downward from the top of her throat along the midline of her torso, right to the top of her sex. “I don’t have diseases the way you humans do. We don’t transmit them to you, you don’t transmit them to us.”

  “There’s other reasons to use condoms. I’m not on any birth control.”

  “If I were human, that would be a problem.” His eyes remained fully bronze, but flecks of gold moved in them. “But I’m not. When I’m in this form, I’m not fertile.” He backed up to the couch, bringing her with him until she ended up on her back. She wanted this. Him. His penetration. He joined her. “I’ll wear one if that’s what you want, but I’m not trying to pass for human with you, and that means I don’t have to pretend a condom matters. You’re not going to get any diseases, and you can’t get knocked up.” He stretched over her. “As long as I’m in this form we can do this bareback.”

  She buried her fingers in his hair. His hair slid over her skin, thick and heavy. “And if you’re not in this form?”

  “Are you trying to drive me crazy? I would love to do you like that.” He set his mouth to the top of her throat, near her ear, and kissed her there. “If I change”—he dropped a kiss on her collarbone—“if that were to happen tonight, you need to understand a few other things. Just in case.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’m fertile in my other forms.” He slid a hand around the back of her neck and came in for a kiss. His teeth nipped. “We procreate with humans. That’s how it works for us. Doesn’t matter if you’re on birth control. And a condom isn’t likely to work. It’s good when I’m like that, better than anything.” He practically growled as he pushed up enough to look into her face. He was dead serious. “If you want to go there, I’ll take you. I’d change back in time, but there’s never any guarantee with that. So understand this: we take care of our children. If we went that far and you ended up pregnant, you aren’t going to end up alone with a kid.”

  Words bubbled up from deep inside her, regret-tinged words, words that brought back a sorrow she thought she’d buried long ago. “I’ve always wanted children. Always.”

  “Do not say that. Hell, Fensic. Don’t. Not unless you mean it.” While he spoke, he touched her, deliberate touches that made her wonder how anyone survived this kind of pleasure.

  “Doesn’t matter.” The words ended on a gasp because his first two fingers brushed the peak of her nipple. She felt that everywhere, it seemed, but she stayed in the right now. Right here, nothing but greedy lust for more. “Whatever is wrong with me affects me physically, too. I can’t have children.”

  “Famous fucking last words.”

  She put her hands on his shoulders and marveled at the smoothness of his skin. “Eight years with Michael. No protection. No kids.”

  “It’s totally different with us.” His eyes flickered when he adjusted his pelvis. “I can’t wait to prove it to you.” Their naked skin touched, his sex hard against her belly. Sparks flew between them; she was sure he felt them, too. The tension was going to break her into pieces. He rocked against her.

  “Touch me, Khūnbish. Please.”