The pulse in her throat now had a matching needy beat between her legs. Even with the breeze coming in from outside, she was getting warmer. Cathair made a warbling noise, then subsided. Recognizing the raven as her familiar, Mikhael gave him a neutral nod; then his gaze shifted back to the solitary charcoal portrait that had caught his attention.

It was a headshot of a woman, drawn from the back. She was visible to her bare shoulder blades. Her long hair was pulled up, her slim hand holding it there. She wore a silver collar, locked. Her other hand rested on it, as if she was wondering at the way wearing it made her feel.

“This has significance to you.”

In so many ways. She’d never thought she’d have a picture like that, but she’d found it when she was adding to the bordello gallery. It had caught her, haunted her. She put it off awhile, but when she received notification another bidder had put in an offer, she doubled it and bought it out from under him before the auction closed.

“It conveys the beauty and elegance of willing submission,” Mikhael mused. “Not someone brutalized into servitude. I expect you have clients who come here for both, to a certain point.”

“Yes. It’s a common craving, for those willing to acknowledge it.”

“For some it’s a game. For others, it’s like the need for food or air.” His gaze shifted from everything in the room to the hub of it all. Her. “It’s a road you’ve closed to yourself.”

“When the craving is twisted, exploited, forced, it’s different.” Then it became something ugly. Staring at him, she understood what he meant about his ability to read the minds of others. It wasn’t telepathy, not entirely. Like her, he was in the business of exceptional intuition. But it wasn’t an invitation to crawl into her soul. Or her bed.

“You can embrace everything you want to be, Raina. You don’t have to trust me as a male, or a Dark Guardian. But you can trust me with that part of you, as a lover.”

He said it with a serious sincerity she wanted to doubt but couldn’t, because she could read the truth of it from him. He meant it, no sarcasm, no hidden agenda. No strings, right? Sex didn’t matter; sex was just sex, even when it turned your soul inside out. That was what made it one of the most devastating of all magics, capable of crippling.

He didn’t blink, didn’t look away. He waited on her. If she told him to go, he would. But in this solitary room, the top of her personal castle, so many sleeping souls below depending upon her, she could tell he understood what it was to be lonely. To want. To crave. Goddess.

She picked up her tea, sipped it. To appear casual, in control. As she set it aside, she rose, aware of the give of her mattress beneath her weight. It made her wonder how it would react to both their weights, her pressed beneath him.

She walked across the room.

4

HE STRAIGHTENED, CLASPING THE BALUSTERS. HE HAD one foot on an upper step, his body canted at an angle that suggested his readiness to move, to act. The candlelight loved all that power and heated skin. He was an unconditional sexual offering. She could feel that energy expanding, filling the space of her private room, preparing to take it—and her—over.

When she reached the railing, she sank to her knees in front of it, her velvet dress pooling around her. She hadn’t changed, so she could still smell the faint charred scent of the hem. His gaze dipped to the expanse of cleavage exposed by the low cut of the fabric, the way it held her breasts, the velvet molded over the nipples. As she’d come up to her bedroom, she’d taken off her bra, sliding it out through the sleeves and tucking the scrap of lace away in her lingerie chest. His attention moved up her neck, back to her face. In this position, she was eye level with him. She curled one set of fingers around the railings, below his, and then his grip shifted, overlapping hers, holding her there.

Reaching through the bars with his other hand, he slid his fingers to her nape, applying firm pressure. Bringing her in. She put her hand through the bars, settling it on his chest. Hard muscle, no give to it, but the silken hair there coaxed a stroking touch. Her nails curled in, digging into his skin, a mute desire to pull him closer, but that feeling quickly became too overwhelming.

Her palm flattened, her arm straightening to hold him at bay. Too intimate, too much.

He eased the pressure on her nape, but tightened his fingers on hers gripping the railing. “Just pleasure,” he said. “I’m behind these bars, Raina. Trust yourself. Push your dress to your waist.”

Sex felt good. Like candy. She told herself that, even as tremors swept her limbs and desire filled the empty space in her abdomen. When she drew her hand back, he let her other one go, waiting. Pushing the sleeves off her shoulders, she drew the soft brushed fabric down over her bosom. She knew she had great breasts, high and proud, but heavy and eye-catching, and they captured his gaze now.

He slid his arm all the way through to circle her waist, hand slipping to the small of her back. She was on her knees, but he brought her forward with simple flexing strength. That power wasn’t otherworldly Dark Guardian stuff. He was plain that strong, making her woman’s heart trip a little faster as her knees slid a few inches through two of the baluster openings, holding her open.

“There you go,” he said, low, as if he were keeping a wild animal calm. Though she was nonplussed to be experiencing such behavior from the likes of him, the comparison wasn’t entirely wrong. “Put your hands through this opening and this one. All the way to the elbow. Good girl. Now fold them over, holding your forearms at the elbow. Hold them tight.”

A front boxed position that brought her chest up to the rails. She drew in a breath as his long, capable fingers stroked her breasts, adjusted her so that they were pushed through openings between the balusters as well, her arms locked beneath them.

“Beautiful,” he said.

Her nipples were pierced, displaying silver rings strung with amethyst and diamonds that brushed the undersides of her breasts. He pinched one, tugged on it. Her fingers tightened on her forearms.

“Hold still.” Reaching into his jeans pocket, he withdrew a length of silver chain. Two of them, in fact. As she watched, her breath shortening, he hooked one end to one nipple ring, then ran the chain in and out of the railings between and hooked the other, tethering her there by that chain. Holding her gaze, he ran the other chain around the back of her neck, double looping it around her throat before fastening it to the baluster directly before her. They were thin chains, just a symbol of restraint. It was all right; she could break them. She told her thundering heart that. She wasn’t going to panic, to act like an inexperienced child with a Dark Guardian. She was tougher than that.

The problem was, something about him made her want to let go, to show the vulnerability she was feeling deep inside. To trust him with her fear. And that was an insane thought. This was a mistake. He was too good at this.

“Caught,” he said. His touch moved to her back, dipping under the dress bunched at her waist to caress the shallow valley there, then lower, to tease her buttocks.

There was a mirror on the wall behind him. Despite her protections, she also liked seeing the reflection of someone coming up her steps, even if it was someone as innocuous as Catalina bringing her the evening’s receipts or Marisa with her tea. Now he shifted, wanting her to see herself. Kneeling in front of the banister rail, tethered by the neck, her breasts pushed through the spacing of the bars, embellished by that delicate silver chain. As she watched, he used his smallest finger, threaded it through one of the nipple rings, slowly pulled on it, increasing the pressure and sending pleasure spearing out from that point into her lower belly.

She bit her lip, saw her eyes go a deeper green-gold as her blood responded. She still had that gateway locked down, but the succubus energy was pushing against it. The scent was starting to perfume the air around her. Undetectable to the human brain but registered by their olfactory system, it ensnared her prey, their arousal only fueling her lust for that energy, to drink it all until the body had no life left.

“Mikhael…”

“I have you. No worries, Raina. No fear.”

The Russian accent became more pronounced when he was aroused. He dropped to one knee, replacing his touch on her nipple with his mouth. Holy Goddess.

She pushed herself hard against his moist heat, a needy sound breaking from her throat, the power unfurling. His energy would be rich, potent. Overwhelming and dark, and she liked the dark juices, the dark chocolates, the darkest of things.

He cupped her breasts, squeezing them while he suckled and pulled. When he caught the chain in his teeth, he gave it a sharp tug that made her jerk, cry out.

It was only the beginning. Over the next few minutes, she rasped out pleas to several different versions of the Goddess. When she shifted, her arousal was slick against her calves.

He moved to the other nipple then. She released her elbows and arched involuntarily, her body snapping back. But his hand was already on her back, biceps flexing to hold her close to the rail so she didn’t hurt her nipples. He did it all without a break in rhythm, suckling her.

She wanted to touch. She put her fingers in his hair, the smooth, thick strands. It was like a horse’s mane, and she thought of kelpies, magical, deadly creatures.

He lifted his head as her fingertips slid over his temples. The steady gaze that met hers was serious. “Did I give you permission to touch me?”

“No. But I want to.”

“Then ask, Raina.”

Her throat ached. Though the reassuring warmth of salty tears, of one’s humanity—so to speak—was more vital than one realized, at the moment she was glad she was a tearless witch.

“I don’t know how to ask.”

“Yes, you do.” He produced two more lengths of silver chain. He had to be conjuring them, because no male carried pretty jewelry in his pockets unless he had a plan to impress a woman. She didn’t think Mikhael expended much effort on impressing women, since he managed to do that well enough without trying, damn the bastard.

He folded her hands back on her forearms, obviously intending to bind her wrists to them. He had his head bent over his task, but when she made a noise he lifted it. Gazing into those dark eyes, so close, she realized it was as intimate and familiar as she’d been with a man in a very long time. Perhaps ever, because this instance was weighted with a lot of different things, the most important one being trust. It only increased the ache, because it was as he said; none of it was about more than this moment. Just the pleasure they could give each other.