A grin spread slowly across his face. “Where? Where should I touch you?”

  She bowed against him, and he let his weight settle onto her. “Your favorite part, damn you.”

  “Well.” His gaze traveled downward. “I love your tits.” He shifted his weight partially onto one arm and with the other cupped the side of her breast, his thumb curved around the inner curve. He took her nipple between his lips. His tongue slid around her, upward. She arched against him, following the pull of his mouth. Panic lapped at her, but then her sense of Khūnbish got bigger and that pushed away the anxiety.

  She concentrated on all the places where his body made contact with hers, the ways in which her body experienced pleasure. She writhed underneath him, shifting her hips because she was ready for him to be inside her. His teeth closed on her nipple and that about sent her over the edge. He lifted his head enough to make eye contact. His tongue came out and slicked over her nipple. Still looking at her, he took her nipple between his teeth and gently bit.

  She gasped. Underneath her palms, his muscles flexed, and she didn’t have to pretend it wasn’t happening. More colors raced through his pupils. His hips shifted and one of his knees slid between her thighs. Butterflies filled her belly, dipping and swooping. Anticipating his entry, she lifted her hips toward him and felt every shiver of her arousal, the glide of his palm along her side and the way his skin slipped along hers, the shift of his thumb over the curve of her breast, his breath, the dry, sandy scent of him. She put her hands on the back of his shoulders, and he buried his fingers in her hair and nipped the side of her throat, the top of her shoulder. While he did that, his hips flexed forward, and his penis was at her entrance.

  He lifted his head and their eyes met, and oh, God, the slide of him into her made everything vanish except physical sensation. He paused while she adjusted to him, because, damn, he was bigger than Michael and all of this was new to her, feeling with such intensity what was happening to her. Not an atom of her existence wasn’t focused on him inside her, the way her body took him in. She lived every single moment. He let out low groan, and their gazes locked.

  “Fuck, yes.” He dipped his head and kissed her while he drew slowly back. His queue fell over his shoulder and onto hers. She ran her hands down his back to his ass, round and taut with muscle. His hips flexed forward, pressing his cock deep inside her. Every nerve she possessed was centered on their joining, on her arousal. She couldn’t possibly last long.

  His eyes flashed through shades of bronze and gold, flecked with orange. The colors weren’t any more normal than the rapid change from swirling color to normal black. From human to not human. His hips drew back, and her hands tightened on him. Wanting him became unbearable. “Please.”

  He pushed forward, and she met the motion, felt the slide of him into her and the pressure, how she was wet for him. He kept moving until he was as far in her as possible, and while he did that, his mental presence increased, too, and she accepted that. She welcomed it, even, because it meant she could rock against him, seek the friction of his body against and inside hers. She was alive. Alive in her body, experiencing the zing of her aroused state.

  Wordless now, they moved with each other. The heft of him inside her kept her on the edge of an orgasm that threatened to overwhelm her. Too much and at the same time not enough. At one point he dropped his head to her shoulder. He fit his mouth over the curve of her there, up near her throat.

  He withdrew from her.

  “No.” She grabbed him. “Please.”

  “Wait.” He slid down her body, his mouth over her, pausing at each breast, and then between her legs, and it was shameful how fast she reached her breaking point. He laughed when she called him an awful name, and it was a joyous sound that echoed back through her.

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled them both to the floor so that she was on her knees, her forearms on the couch and him behind her, parting the folds of her body, entering her again. Hard. Moving as hard as she needed.

  Her sense of him increased, his groan vibrated in her ears, in her chest, the sounds of their bodies, their breath, the hard expiration of breath at each thrust. His barely human growl vibrated in her ears and slid down her spine and wrapped around her heart. The hot, hard spiral of climax began, and he continued to thrust into her, and she adjusted herself so he’d hit all the most sensitive places. He got what she was doing, too, because he hit all those places on his own, higher, better, faster, holding her hips.

  Then he did something, or her body just reached a point where there was nothing but the clench of completion. He was slamming into her now, and she let go. She let all of this happen. The only thing she wanted right now was to fall off the cliff, to get to the end of the peak she was rushing toward. He put a hand between her legs and pressed, and she rocked into that and came apart.

  When it was over, when she was back to earth, he leaned over her, a hand cupping her breast, and said, “I’m not done with you yet.”

  _______________________________________________________

  CHAPTER 8

  Telos was in a state of physical and psychic bliss. He could stay like this forever. He was inside Lys Fensic’s warm, slick passage, so soft and snug around his cock. He held her close against his chest, that incredible ass of hers right up against his pelvis. They both smelled like sex.

  Eventually his perceptions broadened. For example, he was aware he could definitely do this again. For another, he was feeling her humanness and really feeling his lack of same, and that was good. Add in that he didn’t have to bother with passing for human, and his life was great. Fucking amazing, actually.

  He brushed her hair off her nape and, with his fingers threaded in all that gorgeous blonde, he nipped the tender skin at the base of her skull. He pushed into her again and got another tingle from his fading orgasm. He didn’t want to let go. The knife-edge of his desire wove through his impressions about what he was and what she was. In the back of his head was her curiosity about his other forms. Now that cranked him something fierce.

  His dick was still hard, but he pulled out of her and turned her to face him. They did a little dance as they rearranged themselves. She sank onto the floor, a hand on his shoulder, breathing hard and still a bit lost in her post-orgasmic state. He was far enough into her head, and she was distracted enough that if he wanted to, he could go after her thoughts and find out exactly how curious she was about him. He didn’t.

  She blinked several times, and he allowed her reactions to flow into him. Savored them. A shudder rolled through him as his impulse to change forms surged. He braced his hands on the edge of the couch on either side of her, bracketing her with his bent legs, too. “Good?”

  Her eyelids flicked up, and he connected with her gaze, pretty dark blue eyes. She was naked. After all this time thinking about her, he had her naked. Beautiful, long legs, a neat trim at her pubes, and breasts that got him thinking bad thoughts again.

  “Yeah.” Her fingers tightened on the top of his shoulder. “Really good.”

  She stretched, and hell if that didn’t send his mind rocketing along in fascinating directions. With her hair down and her lips swollen from kissing him and all that naked skin, he wanted to do the whole thing over, only faster and harder, and maybe sweeter, too. She gave him a wicked dirty smile and curled a hand around his dick. Because he was in her head and not currently distracted by his own carnal needs, he felt her reaction to her contact with his dick, and it turned him on.

  He pushed upward. “You want more, I’m ready.”

  “Is it always like that?”

  Jesus. She was a grown woman, yet she’d been so fucked over by the mage that she really didn’t know what sex was like. Thinking about all the ways the mage had been screwing her over made him mad all over again. He considered lying and didn’t. “No. It’s not.” He pressed a fingertip to her forehead. “This makes it even better.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Right now our connection is one way, from me into you.” The hell with being careful and circumspect about the goddamned rules. “If it was two-way, you’d blow my mind. I think it would do the same for you.” God, he loved the way her eyes searched his face, and he loved the way she felt mentally. The burn of her magic was yet another turn on for him. “I can show you what that’s like.”

  She had some trouble focusing, and not because she was having control issues. “How?”

  He was crossing a line with her, he knew it, and it was a rush just thinking about it. “I’d take a little of your blood. Just a nick someplace.” Or a bite, he thought. “You say a couple of words, take some of my blood, and we make a psychic connection that lets you in my head.” Thinking about doing her with a two-way link was potent stuff. All this time, he realized, he’d been rocking his pelvis, fucking her hand. He looked down, and she tightened her fingers around him the perfect amount. “New feelings—oh, hell, Fensic, you’re good at that—new sensations. And besides, you didn’t scream my name loud enough that time.” He pushed up again. “I think I need to make that happen.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Come on,” he said in a low voice. Life just didn’t get better than this. He had a naked woman in his house, and she had her hand around his dick, hair all tousled and falling around her shoulders and a body that just didn’t quit. And he was in her head, about to find out what it was like to cross lines while he got laid. “Let’s get wild. What do you say, Counselor?”

  She brought her hand down, gave some wicked-evil twist of her thumb and gripped him hard on her upward motion. “I agree. You do need to try a little harder.”

  “I will. I promise I will.”

  “All right then, Khūnbish. Let’s see what you can do.”

  He cupped the back of her neck and kissed her hard, mouth open, lots of tongue.

  Maybe it was a mistake to let himself transform even a little, but it was only enough to get a sharp edge on a fingernail. Besides, it felt good. Really, really good. Even that small change was enough to thin the barrier between his human and non-human forms, and it was great, fantastic, mind-blowing, to know it didn’t matter because he didn’t need to pass for her. He grabbed her hand, the one that wasn’t around his dick, and nicked the crook of her elbow. She sucked in a breath, and he wrapped his other hand around the one on his cock and kept her going.

  He pulled his magic through him and the way that resonated with hers was better than good. He tightened his fingers around her arm, and his anticipation thinned the barrier even more. The taste of her was sweeter than he expected, sweeter than he remembered from past experience. But then he’d never done this while he was getting a hand job, either. She did that thing with her thumb again, and her fingers swept down to slide over his sac. It was like she was pulling an orgasm out of his balls.

  He lifted his mouth from her arm, and already he was deeper in her head, closer to that twisted up magic she had. “Dirty and hard, Fensic. That’s how I like it.”

  The smile she gave him came with a big dose of her emotional state. She was turned on almost as much as he was. Still holding her arm, he grabbed the back of her head and hardly had to bear down at all because she got that he wanted her mouth. She blew his mind, too. Didn’t take her but two minutes to make him come, and while he did, he got deeper into her.

  He kept his fingers tangled in her hair when she sat up. “I want you in my head. Now.” He captured her chin in his hand and swept his thumb across her lips. “For that we need the blood bond I told you about. That takes some magic. You ready?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes were big and nearly all pupil.

  He told her the words she needed to say. She said them, and he opened a cut at the side of his throat, just above his collar bone. “Hell yeah,” he whispered when she put her mouth there. The pull went directly to his cock.

  As soon his blood hit her tongue, the two-way connection jumped to life. He wished she’d bite a little harder. She went still when she realized she was getting his thoughts and feelings. He waited for her to adjust to how they were now. She bit him again. Harder. The way he wanted her to.

  Desire flashed hot. Sexual desire, sure, but more than that. His species had evolved to reproduce with humans, and that instinct flooded him, drove him. Practically drowned him. He let her see and feel what he wanted them to do to each other. She lifted her head.

  “Jesus, Telos,” she whispered.

  “You have to say yes.” He was frantic for a yes. She wanted to know. He wanted her to know. “You have to say you’re okay with me doing you in my other form or it can’t happen.”

  “Yes. I am okay with that.”

  “It might get rough. And since I’m here”—her sense of him in her head increased—“that means I could make you do things you don’t want to.”

  “Could or will?”

  “Could.” He rubbed his chin. “Could. Not will.”

  She sat up enough to kiss him on the mouth. A quick pressure.

  “You sure? You have to answer yes or no, or I can’t.” He could, of course. That was the crux of the troubles between demons, humans, and the magekind. A demon could always take a human against her will. It’s why, centuries ago, the magekind had started killing demons. It’s why the warlord was enforcing the rules against that. While he hadn’t formally aligned himself with Nikodemus, he wasn’t keen on running afoul of him. Word was he had assassins to make sure everyone played fair.

  “Yes.”

  He stood, bringing her with him. “I want a bed for this.”

  He almost didn’t turn on lights in his bedroom since he was halfway to a transformation that made his vision preternaturally acute, but he clicked on the lamp by the bed and turned it to face the wall. He fell back on his mattress. She came with him, and he set his hands around her waist and lifted her up. She was so gorgeously naked, and he was going to do things with her he hadn’t done with anyone in years. Decades.

  She knew what he was going for. She bent down and braced herself on his shoulders while he pushed inside her, and the friction felt so good, she was so soft inside that he vibrated with the need for more. He let her take in what it was he wanted them to do.

  Her hair fell around her face as she bent closer. “Show me.”

  He withdrew from her body before he let the transformation happen. His senses became sharper, his body bigger. The texture of his skin changed to something more like soft hide. His body turned color; bronze, gold and black. He took on more mass, larger torso, longer limbs, and his skin, his hide, burned hotter. He was the monster he’d promised her.

  Quiet covered them. Deep and wide and while she kept the silence, Telos didn’t move but for the expansion of his chest as he breathed. They remained touching, hide to skin. In the quiet, her mind stayed unrestrained. It would be so easy to take control of her. Make her his so he could do whatever he wanted to.

  Slowly, she raised a knee, let it fall to one side while she arched toward him.

  A low growl came from his throat. He got them missionary, and he fucked her hard, and she answered the need in him. Sex like this was better than he remembered. All that twisted-around and convoluted magic of hers aroused him beyond belief. Her humanness intensified all his reactions. He went harder, giving into his need, and once he understood she was okay with him getting rough, he used his size and weight, too.

  His mind went out ahead of where he was at this moment, and it was like catching a wave, there was no stopping the momentum. He’d spent so long passing for human, so much time in his human form, that he hit peaks he’d forgotten existed. He reached for that core of magic in her, and he could touch it. Bathe in it. He pried open his eyes, and she was looking at him, cupping a hand to a face that couldn’t possibly look right to her, and her eyes were a well, deep and intimate. Her belly pressed against him, her breasts were soft and there just wasn’t much about her that wasn’t exactly what he craved.

  And the magic. How the hell had she managed to survive with any part of her sanity intact? She ought to have died coming into that kind of power with no one to help her learn how to control it. He worked one hand underneath her shoulder, careful not to hurt her with a talon, and her magic was there for him. Right here, and even if he wanted to he might not be able to take it all in. She knew what he wanted, and turned her head, exposing her throat to him. He fit his mouth there and bit down hard enough for his teeth to draw blood and give him a deeper taste of her.

  Her sharp intake of breath was sweet in his ears. She fell deeper into his head as the tang of her blood spread over his tongue, and, for a moment, he couldn’t see a thing. Then there was this weird moment when he thought about how he could bind her to him permanently, and, in his head, in their shared mental space, he could see it happening like he was watching a movie, except he was immersed in it. Living it. She was his, and he was fucking her in this form, coming in her.

  And then he was back in the present, the now, and he was hard inside her, thrusting with his emotions closer to the edge because, for him, this was starting to be mostly about the imperative to procreate. He withdrew because he was too close, and she turned onto her side, breathing hard. She ran her palm over him, over his face, his back, his torso, and then she gave him head, which he already knew she was really good at. He wanted his dick inside her so bad, he didn’t let her go for long.

  With the blood-enhanced link they had going, they couldn’t tell whether words or thoughts were uttered or merely accessible through their connection. Didn’t care much, either. He sat her on the edge of the mattress, slid to the floor on his knees, between her legs, and he used his mouth on her, sliding, sucking, touching until she was shaking. His ice-queen was hot. Unbelievably hot. He was enveloped by her reactions, and it was natural for him to ramp it up for them both. The sex turned raw and his magic hooked deeper into her because his very nature when he was like this was to kickstart her reproductive physiology.

  What he needed was to be pounding into her, making her scream while he had a mind-blowing climax. He wouldn’t be remotely human when it happened, either. He forced himself to push away from her and wait for the edge to fade. He was jumpy with the need to nail her.