“Finally.” The word is soft. The man is not.

“I need a shower.”

His eyes glitter, his teeth flash in the darkness. “A little blood never bothers me.” He glides toward me, in that way that barely displaces air. A velvet shadow in the darkness. He is the night. He always has been. I used to be a sunshine girl.

He circles me, looking me up and down.

I watch him, holding my breath. Jericho Barrons is walking naked circles around me, looking at me like he’s going to eat me alive—in a good way, not like his son. As I watch him, emotion staggers me and I realize that I never completely thawed from what I’d done to myself back there on the cliff, when I’d believed he was dead. I’d stripped away so much of me in order to survive. When I’d realized he was alive, there were so many other things going on and I was angry because he hadn’t told me, and I’d shoved the messy tangle away, refused to look at it. I’d walked through the past few months refusing to let any of what was happening really touch me. Refusing to accept the woman I’d become, denying that I’d even become it.

Now I thaw. Now I stand and look at him and realize why I never turned it all back on.

I would have destroyed the world for him.

And I couldn’t face that. Couldn’t stand what it said about me.

I want to slow this moment down. Once before, I ended up in bed with him inside me, but I was Pri-ya—it happened so quickly and without conscious choice that it was over before it began. I want this to happen in slow motion. I want to live every second like it’s my last. I’ve chosen this. It feels incredible. “Wait.”

His demeanor changes instantly, his eyes haze with crimson. “I haven’t waited long enough?” His chest rattles. His hands are at his sides, curling, flexing. He breathes hard and fast.

In the flickering light, his skin begins to darken.

I stare at him. Just like that, lust to fury. I think he might launch himself on me, take me down, shredding my clothes as we go, and shove inside me before we even hit the floor.

“I’d never take it.” His eyes narrow. Crimson stains the white, bleeds into them with tiny rivers. Suddenly his eyes are black on red, no whites at all. “But I won’t tell you I haven’t thought about it.”

I inhale deeply.

“You’re here. In my bedroom. You have no fucking idea what that does to me. If a woman comes to this place, she dies. If I don’t kill her, my men do.”

“Has a woman ever come to this place?”

“Once.”

“Did she find her own way in? Or did you bring her?”

“I brought her.”

“And?”

“I made love to her.”

I jerk, turning with him, staring into his eyes. That he says those words about another woman makes me feel like launching myself at him, tearing off my clothes, and slamming him home insideme before we reach the floor. Erasing her. He wants to fuck me. He made love to her.

He’s watching me closely. He seems to like what he sees.

“And?”

“When I was done I killed her.”

He says it without emotion, but I see more in his eyes. He hated himself for killing her. He believed he had no choice. He succumbed to a moment of wanting someone in his bed, in his home, in his world. He wanted to feel … normal for a night. And she paid for it with her life.

“I’m not the hero, Mac. Never have been. Never will be. Let us be perfectly clear: I’m not the antihero, either, so quit waiting to discover my hidden potential. There’s nothing to redeem me.”

I want him anyway.

It’s what he wanted to know.

I exhale impatiently and shove hair from my face. “Are you going to talk me to death or fuck me, Jericho Barrons?”

“Say it again. The last part.”

I do.

“They’ll try to kill you.”

“Good thing I’m hard to kill.” Only one thing concerned me. “Will you?”

“Never. I’m the one who will always watch over you. Always be there to fuck you back to your senses when you need it, the one who will never let you die.”

I pull my shirt over my head and kick off my shoes. “What more could a woman ask?” I skinny out of my jeans but get a foot tangled up trying to get out of my underwear. I stumble.

He’s on me before I hit the floor.

Since the moment I laid eyes on Jericho Barrons, I wanted him. I wanted him to do things to me that pink and clueless MacKayla Lane was shocked and appalled and … okay, yeah, well, utterly fascinated to find herself thinking about.

I admitted none of it to myself. How could a peacock lust for a lion?

I’d been as fancy as one of the proud males, in my useless plumage. I’d strutted around, stealing glances at the king of the jungle, denying what I felt. I’d assessed my tail and his killing claws and understood that if the lion were ever to lay down with the peacock—it would only be on a nest of bloody feathers.

It hadn’t stopped me from wanting him.

It made me grow claws.

As I fall to the floor beneath him, I think, here I am now: a featherless peacock with claws. My lovely tail lost, in one ordeal or the other. I look in the mirror and have no idea what I am. Don’t care. Perhaps I’ll grow a mane.

Relief floods me when his body slams into mine. Barrons moves like a sudden dark wind. He’s not only on me but pushing in me before we hit the floor.

Oh, God, yes, finally! My head slams back into wood but I barely feel it. My neck and back arch, my legs spread. My ankles are on his shoulders and I suffer no conflicts. There is only need and the answer to it all shoving inside me—sleek, hard, animal dressed up in the skin of a man.