He shifted to one side, lying on his hip beside her, his heavy erection resting on the curve of one of her hip bones. She shivered as his long-fingered hand played down her torso, stroking, drawing circles, pinching gently at her nipple, tugging the slender gold curve of her navel ring before moving down to tease the plump, hypersensitive flesh between her legs. He found the fluted opening of her labia and stroked. Her breath started coming in light pants as the most intense pulse of need she had ever felt careened through her body and jettisoned caution out the window. She gripped his forearm. “I don’t care. Come inside.”

He looked at her with a quick frown. “I care,” he murmured. “We’re going to make you ready. Ease your leg up, faerie.”

She obeyed, bending her leg and propping it against the back of the couch as her gaze clung to him. He bent down to stroke her mouth with his as he eased a finger inside.

They both hissed at the sensation. Her stomach muscles trembled, and she whined high at the back of her throat at the sharp stab of pleasure.

Tiago started to sweat as that needy sound broke against his lips. He swallowed it down with greed. She was so sumptuously juicy and tight, her inner muscles clung to his finger. His c**k jerked. Keep it slow and easy, stud. This is the most important thing you will ever do in your life. When her hand came down on his c**k and she petted him, he thought he might explode.

He clenched his teeth. “Stop it.”

She froze, looking at him with uncertainty.

He managed to give her a tight smile. “Let me make this about you,” he gritted.

“It’s about us,” she whispered. She took her hand away from his c**k and laid it against his cheek, and she lifted her head to kiss him.

His eyes closed, and he blissed out, kissing that ravishing sex kitten mouth as he f**ked her so tenderly with his finger. Her hips moved with the rhythm of his hand, her liquid silk drenching his hand. He found the stiff little bud of her clitoris with his thumb and rubbed it as he suddenly drove his tongue hard and rough into her, and she gave a surprised muffled squeal and climaxed.

Shaken, he growled low and husky in her mouth. He licked at her lips and eased a second finger inside her dainty, tight sheath, and she arched her torso in response, stretching her body as she rotated her hips. “You’re going to kill me,” he breathed. “And I’m going to die so goddamn happy.”

She gave a sexy whisper of a giggle, the long heavy lids of her eyes shuttered. His keen predator’s eyes picked up every detail about her in the shadowed room, how her pale skin flushed dusky with arousal, all the way from her cheeks to her br**sts. Her glossy lips were parted. He watched as her small white teeth dug into her plump lower lip as he began to rub her clitoris again.

When those fabulous eyes of hers flared open and she met his gaze, he felt a profound shock of connection. He took a step closer to that necessary place.

“I want to come with you inside me,” she whispered. “Please.”

He muttered something, he didn’t know what, and rose over her.

She opened wide to him as he settled between her legs, looking down his torso as he carefully positioned his penis at her entrance. He braced his weight on his forearms, pushed the wide, warm head in and held rigid, panting.

It burned just like she knew it would. He felt so much better than she had imagined, like velvet-wrapped steel, and he was being so freaking careful it was driving her insane. She braced her feet on the couch and drove her hips upward, impaling herself on him as she raked her nails down his back and growled, “Come on.”

She totally unzipped him. His beast came roaring out as he slammed into her. He pulled almost all the way out, looking down at her in incredulity, and then he slammed back in, and it was such a tight, liquid slide back, and he felt such a sweet tiny trail of fire along the skin of his back where she had scored him with her nails, just as he had fantasized for what seemed like forever, and she let her head fall back and, good f**king hell, she bared her throat to him in submission—how did she know to do that—and he went hurtling headlong into a climax.

He shuddered, gushing into her, taking her along with him as he ground his hips against her pelvis. She clamped her thighs against his hips as her climax rippled through her, deeper and richer than the first one. He slid a hand under her ass to hold her tighter to him as he rocked in her, his face buried in the slender stalk of her neck.

She stroked the edge of his ear, kissing his temple. I love you. Was it all right to say it now?

His head came up. He looked severe, desperate. He shook all over. “I’m not done,” he gasped. “I’m not—I need—”

Oh gods, she had heard of this, what a Wyr was like in a mating frenzy. She grabbed him by the chin and made him look at her. Her eyes blazed with their own fallen light. “I need everything you have and everything you are. Don’t stop.”

He growled, withdrew, and flipped her over so fast her head spun. He yanked her body into place so that she was kneeling on the floor, bent over the couch. Then he knocked her knees as wide apart as they would go and shoved into her from behind. She shrieked into the couch cushion at the invasion. At this angle he felt bigger than ever, and when he drove in, he went in deeper.

He froze, bent over her, his heavy thighs pressing against the back of hers, his chest pressing against her back. She could feel how his heart hammered in his chest. His voice shook. “Are you all right, faerie?”

She turned her head to nuzzle at him. “I couldn’t be better. I’m small and noisy; I’m not breakable.”

He slid one arm underneath hers to spread his hand at the base of her throat. His fingers spanned the width of her collarbone as he ran his lips along the line of her jaw. “You could have fooled me,” he muttered. He couldn’t hold still any longer and started to move again. “You are so mine, young lady.”

She caught her breath at the gorgeous sensation. “Yes, I am, aren’t I?”

He closed his eyes, and his face tightened as he picked up the pace. She was a fever in his blood. “Mine,” he growled.

“Yours,” she told him.

He covered and surrounded her. Soon he drove into her with long hard powerful thrusts. She flung out her hands to brace herself. “Mine,” he whispered into her ear.

She whimpered, “Yes.”

He gripped her by the chin and turned her to look at him. His eyes blazed white-hot as he slammed her into the couch. He bared his teeth at her.

There you are. Her lips formed the words but she had no breath. He was so deadly, so beautiful, so sexy, so everything.

“Mine,” the monster hissed.

Oh my God, yes.

A look of wonder came over his face. The climax blasted up the base of his spine. It was like riding the lightning, channeling the storm. His Power roared over her as he convulsed and spent himself. She screamed as it catapulted her into a climax with him. She clenched on him with everything she had and shook so hard she thought she might shatter into pieces, and for a few moments she thought she knew what it must be like to be him, for she felt like she was flying.

He wrapped both arms tight around her and crushed her back against his chest.

Here was the necessary place. Now that he had reached it, he said, “Of course. Now I understand.” For the first time in his very long existence, Tiago knew what it meant to come home.

THIRTEEN

After several moments, his tight clench eased, and he carefully shifted his weight off of her. She collapsed forward, shaking. He rubbed her back. “I took you at your word, faerie,” he said, breathing hard. “Now you tell me you’re all right.”

All right? All right was an ice cream cone on a warm afternoon, a press conference in which nothing disastrous happened, or hell, just a day that passed without her uncle succeeding in killing her. She was far too complicated for just all right. She was deliriously happy, outrageously scared and completely immobilized.

“I’m fine,” she said into the cushion. “But all my muscles have turned to Jell-O. I could use some help.”

He kissed her shoulder. “Of course. Just a sec.”

She could hear a pleased smile in his voice, and it sounded very male, which in turn made her smile.

He cleaned her with a cloth, his touch light and gentle. “That better not be your shirt, you lunatic, because thanks to you I’ve got nothing else to wear,” she murmured. She yawned. So many things seemed impossible. Walking. Getting from here to, well, anywhere. Making a decision. Facing other people.

She grimaced at that thought. Ew, actually.

He told her, “I’m using the inside of your dress.”

“Okay.” When he finished, she managed to push off the couch. She wasn’t kidding about having muscles made of Jell-O. Everything trembled.

He handed her his shirt. She turned the wadded material over in her hands, as her exhausted mind tried to deal with locating the neck and armholes. By the time she had it figured out and had pulled the shirt over her head, Tiago already had his pants zipped and was buckling his belt. The indirect light shining from the hall limned the wide arc of his back and shoulders, and one high cheekbone and lean cheek. He armed himself again with the two guns and the knife in its thigh sheath. He looked completely comfortable with the arm holsters strapped across his bare chest. He rotated his shoulders to settle them into place.

She took a deep breath at the sight of him, even as she swayed. He angled his head at her and lifted an eyebrow in inquiry.

“I can’t, oh God, I can’t,” she told him. “But I want to.”

A white smile slashed across his features and lit up his face. He looked energized, alert. He strode over to her, tilted up her chin and gave her a quick kiss. “You look gorgeous and edible, and I want to too,” he said.

She snorted as she looked down at herself. “I look like a train wreck.”

He ran a finger down the side of her neck as he surveyed her. Her silken black hair was tangled, and he had kissed all the makeup off her face. Her bare lips looked bitten, swollen and blushed with dusky color, and her eyes were smudged with exhaustion even as they held a wry smile. His black T-shirt came down to her narrow knees and gaped at her neck and arms. Her fingers and toes were painted pink. She looked like a woman who had been thoroughly made love to, and his groin tightened as he thought of all of the places he had not yet explored on her delectable body.

“You’re my train wreck,” he told her. “And you’re more beautiful than ever.”

She glowed up at him. Then she looked toward the hall. Her glow faded, replaced with tension and shadows. She sighed. He could see her visibly picking up the burden of her journey. It was a self-contained, lonely expression. She had accepted him, but she hadn’t yet assimilated his presence. He knew that would take time.

She bent to pick up her shoes and started for the doorway.

He put a hand on her arm. “What are you doing?”

She blinked at him, puzzled. “We’re leaving, right?”

He nodded his head toward her shoes and raised his eyebrows.

She looked at them too. Oh no. Her thigh muscles were much too overused for her to feel like she could balance on anything higher than the ground and even that was in question. “I can’t.”

“You’re not walking around barefoot. Not in a bar and certainly not in the parking lot. There’s bound to be broken glass around.” Taking care to keep the material of the T-shirt pinned against the back of her legs, he picked her up in his arms.

“Whatever.” She made a point to sound irritable, even as she nestled close, rested her head on his shoulder and let her aching body go lax.

He paused. “Faerie.”

She opened her eyes and discovered him frowning down at her. “What?”

“We walk out of here a partnership. Don’t let anyone try to persuade you otherwise. I am not letting you go.”

She gave him a hesitant nod.

He looked severe, like he wanted to say more. Instead he gave her a swift hard kiss. Then he strode out with her in his arms.

Just as she had suspected, the only people in the bar were Aryal and Rune. They had evacuated everybody else, including Duncan and Cameron. The place looked abandoned and had a forlorn air. Half-empty glasses, and bowls of peanuts and popcorn still littered the tables. Aryal stood behind the bar, a bottle of tequila in front of her along with a shot glass that she spun in circles. Rune stood throwing darts in quick sharp movements at a board across the room. As they appeared, Aryal reached behind her and switched the music off, and silence crashed down over them all.

Niniane met Aryal’s gaze. The harpy looked grim. Was that censure in her face? Niniane shrank back against Tiago’s chest and went a little numb. She couldn’t recall ever seeing Aryal look at her that way before. Was what they had done so awful?

Tiago took her to a barstool near Aryal and eased her onto it. He kissed her temple. Stay right here.

She set her shoes on the bar and swiveled to face him. His expression gave no clue about what he was thinking. She asked, Why?

I have something I need to do.

Then Tiago pivoted on one heel and launched at Rune, who had just thrown his last dart and was in the process of turning around. Tiago tackled the other sentinel. They slammed into a table, close to five hundred pounds of solid Wyr muscle, and the table collapsed. Rune heaved, trying to dislodge Tiago, but Tiago was heavier and had him pinned in a headlock. Tiago’s teeth were bared, his face feral with rage.

Oh shit. Niniane made a sound and rocked forward. Aryal grabbed her by the shoulder and held her in place. She struggled to shift the hold that pinned her, but the harpy’s long-fingered hand felt like steel. “Let me go!” she said.

“Don’t be stupid,” Aryal said. The harpy’s voice was as hard as her hand. “You know better.”