Demon Marked

claw.

Her eyes began to glow. “Hello, Nicholas. You look well.”

He hadn’t been well. Not until this moment. “You look beautiful.”

Fangs glinted in her smile, and his heart tightened, a painfully sweet ache. God, how he’d missed her.

“I thought I’d try to scare you,” she said. “The birds gave me away. It makes me wish that I liked to eat chicken.”

“You probably scared them.”

“But not you.” She rose and stepped off the roof. Her wings caught the air, and she glided to Nicholas, landing easily just in front of him. The glowing crimson faded to human blue. Scales slid back into tattoos and a tan; her horns vanished. Jeans and her hoodie formed over naked skin. “I’ve missed you. But is it too early yet?”

He knew exactly what she meant, but still didn’t know how to answer it. So he gave her what he had to give. “I missed you, too. So damn much.”

The joy in her smile slipped into him, through him. “It took me two years just to remember part of my name, Nicholas. If you need me to go, I can—”

“No.” He’d missed her, he’d wanted her in his arms and to see her smile, but he hadn’t known how much he needed to see her. And now that she was here—“I need you to stay.”

Holding his gaze, she lifted her hands to cup his face, to slide her fingers through his hair. “You feel the same. And so familiar. I’ve touched you more in my imaginings than I ever have for real. I’d begun to fear that I’d forgotten, or that I remembered wrong.”

“And you are just as . . . just as . . . everything.” It hit him like a punch to the chest. “Everything.”

“So.” She grinned. “Even you can’t manage eloquence when you’ve just spent six weeks living like a hermit.”

“No.” He shook his head, and her smile faded. “Don’t you see? It’s—”

Too much to say. Too big.

So he kissed her.

This wasn’t familiar. The urge to cry and to laugh, and the painful effort to hold it in, to keep her emotions from overwhelming him. She rarely took such care. Only once had she fought so hard to contain them, but that was when she’d been full of desperation and fear, but trying to prevent Madelyn from using those emotions in any way, trying to keep from giving herself away with every lie, every evasion.

And now, his mouth on hers, she felt the same thing from Nicholas—an explosion of emotion, somehow contained, but that couldn’t be any longer. Oh, God. She lifted to him, welcomed the possessive surge of his tongue, touching his shoulders, his arms, the broad sweep of his back and the delicious tautness of his ass, claiming all of him for her own.

He lifted his head, breathing raggedly. “Everything, Ash. This is what I want to be. I thought you needed to be separate from what mattered, but it’s not. You’re the reason for it all. You’re the reason I can feel that anything else matters at all.”

“Nicholas.” Smiling, she trailed her fingers from his temple to his jaw. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I feel the same way. How is that, do you think?”

He grinned. “I have no idea. Hold on. And vanish your wings.”

She did, then laughed aloud as he bent and swept her up against his chest. Her arms circled his neck. “They are a pain in the ass through doorways. Are you taking me to have sex? Because if your answer is no, I want you to put me down—so that I can pick you up, and take you to have sex.”

“You’ll have to come up with a better plot than that.”

She could, easily. “Oh, Nicholas! My clothes just fell off.”

The fabric between them vanished. With a single glance, his eyes flared with pale blue light. Ash caught her breath.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Oh. You are . . .”

His arms tensed. “Different?”

“Beautiful, I think.” Her chest filled with it. “It is sometimes hard to decide whether something is known or felt. I have always known how handsome you are. But you have never been so beautiful to me as you are now, naked like this.”

“I’m not naked yet.”

“You wear clothes, Nicholas. But I see you. Better than I have ever seen you before, with some of you that is new to see. Not just the glowing eyes; it was not just a transformation. You are a Guardian now.”

His throat worked, and his answer was rough. “Yes.”

“Just as I’m a demon—though I am, of course, the best kind. The only kind of demon worth being. So we’re perfect together, I think.”

She paused as he angled his body to carry her through the door. His face had hardened, as if containing some emotion again. Not hiding, as he often had before—just holding it in. A shudder ran though him when she leaned in to lick his neck.

At least he did not hold that in anymore.

“Take me to the bed. We’ll talk more when your penis is inside me.” She tightened her arms around his shoulders. “And you’ll tell me why, when you have such purpose burning inside, you are still here . . . waiting.”

“I didn’t know why until today. I was waiting for you.”

The bed creaked when he laid her on it, and again when he climbed in after her, bracing his knees on either side of her thighs. He leaned over, his hands flat beside her shoulders. His lips grazed her cheek in a soft caress.

That was not enough. Not enough after months.

“Feel me, Nicholas. Use your fingers to feel me. I’m wet. Already so wet. I only had two thoughts as I flew here: Wondering whether you were all right, and how much of your almost-monstrous penis I can take.”

Eyes on hers, he slipped his hand down. Ash lifted to his touch, panting in anticipation. He didn’t stop at the first sign of heat and moisture, but delved between her drenched folds, then pushed deep. She cried out, thighs clenching, squeezing his wrist. His groan filled the small room.

“Ah! Yes.” Her fingers curled into the bedsheet. “Do you remember the bathtub? Do you remember how I tortured you there?”

A thrust of his fingers answered her. His head bent, his tongue flicking her nipple into turgid arousal.

“Like that, yes. Except I teased you with water instead of my tongue. And in my mind, I’ve tortured you a hundred times in the same way. But never to finish. Each time, I climb in and fill myself with you, and ride until we are both dying of it. I want to die now.”

He breathed her name against her skin, rose to take her mouth. Hot and wet, each slow kiss killed her a little more. His hand worked at his belt, his button, his zipper. Ash used her toes to push his jeans down before running her feet up the backs of his heavily muscled thighs.

She pulled at his hair until he lifted his head. Cool blue light spilled across his cheekbones, glinted in his dark lashes.

“Why did you know today? What changed?”

“You came.” His gaze held hers. “And I knew that you are not useful to me, Ash. Not anymore. Except as a reason to get up in the morning—”

“You don’t sleep anymore,” she reminded him, smiling.

“Except as a reason to keep breathing—”

“You don’t need air.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m still new at this Guardian thing. So just shut up, and let me tell you that I love you.”

All happiness. Her laugh erupted, and she pulled him down for another kiss, but he lowered his body and shoved forward instead, his thick length filling her all at once. Agonizing pleasure lashed her nerves, whipped her muscles tight. Ash cried out, arching her back as her inner muscles clamped around his invading shaft, as deep as