Eighth Grave After Dark

“Not yet,” he warned, giving my wrist a firm squeeze.

Then he did the strangest thing. He pulled back my hair, sweeping it into one hand so he could caress my face with the other. He watched me in the mirror, and while I got the feeling he wanted me to see what he saw, all I could look at was him. His eyes shimmering beneath his long lashes. His mouth full and parted ever so slightly. His jaw strong.

He dropped my hair and moved to my shoulders. Ran his fingertips over them until he came from behind and cupped Danger and Will. Massaged as he nibbled on my neck. Skimmed his fingertips over their peaks, causing a spasm of pleasure to shoot to my core.

But everywhere he touched, he left a scalding heat, and I realized he was doing it on purpose. He could control his heat, at least to some degree.

I needed to see. I needed to watch him from the other side. From the supernatural side. And while I had yet to master the leap from one plane to the other, I released the breath from my lungs, relaxed my body, and concentrated until I saw the flames that forever engulfed him. I’d seen them a couple of times before, but never like this. While normally he had blue flames licking along his skin as though he himself were an accelerant, this time he glowed with a bright orange fire. And everywhere he touched, every part of me he stroked, he left a trail of flames in his wake.

I watched mesmerized as the prince of the underworld set me ablaze. Literally.

His hands brushed over my belly, infusing his warmth deep inside me, and my legs started to give beneath my weight. I lay my head back against his shoulder as he found the cusp between my thighs again. Holding me to him with one arm, he breached the folds, brushing softly, stroking until the tinder he’d ignited in my abdomen blazed to life. I clawed at his arm, wanting more, but once again he placed my hand back on the wall.

Then he was gone.

I opened my eyes and he was on his knees in front of me. My nails dug into the plaster when he opened me further and branded me with a fiery kiss. I gasped. Pleasure pulsed through me as his tongue caused stinging tendrils to swirl inside me like a dust devil struggling to become a tornado. I sought that peak, but I didn’t have to look hard. He grazed his teeth along the sensitive apex, then feathered his tongue in sweet, short sweeps, stoking the embers, coaxing me closer and closer until a riptide of raw lust engulfed me. The orgasm rocketed through me, sending out pulsating swells of unimaginable pleasure to every nerve in my body. I plunged my fingers into his hair and held him to me as the tidal wave rose to exquisite peaks, then ebbed slowly, the sharp contractions tapering off.

With the release of all that energy, I almost fell against the mirror, but Reyes was behind me at once, his quest only just beginning when he pushed his pants over his hips and entered me from behind in one long thrust. A twinge of delight leapt inside me as the orgasm that had yet to ebb entirely reignited.

He captured my gaze in the mirror, daring me to watch, his eyes sparkling with unspent passion.

And how could I not? He was magnificent. His muscles strained against the T-shirt he wore as he buried himself again and again.

He pulled me back against him, locking me there as he whispered into my ear. “Come with me again,” he said in the same Gaelic brogue, the fires around him fueled by the friction our bodies created. “See what you do to me, my ghraih.” My love.

I focused on him as his powerful strokes fanned the flames around him. His brows furrowed, his expression one of almost agony as his own climax neared. He braced one hand on the wall, clenched his jaw. His breathing grew labored as a biting pleasure brushed over my skin, nipping and scratching in rapturous delight. He thrust harder, an exquisite hunger swelling inside me, as though he could siphon the pleasure from the very marrow of my bones.

I felt it the moment he erupted inside me. He groaned as his orgasm crested, as it surged from him and into me, and then I saw it. I saw him. He exploded into a sea of flames. They consumed him and engulfed me in a torrent so savage, so volatile, I wondered if I would survive.

The air left the room, and my lungs seized. My eyes rolled back as wave after wave of scalding fire crashed into me. The desire was overwhelming and earth shattering and wonderful.

* * *

I tumbled to earth slowly and blinked back to this plane. Disentangling myself, I turned to him and focused on his impossibly handsome face.

He still had a hand braced on the wall, struggling to catch his breath as one final spasm shuddered through him. Then he stepped closer until he had me pressed into the cool mirror. He placed his forehead on the hand braced against the wall and wrapped an arm around me.

“You saw?” he asked, and I felt the tiniest ripple of insecurity radiate out of him.

“I saw. It was amazing.”

He wasn’t so sure. Doubt settled deep in his core. I stroked his back to assure him that everything I saw, everything he showed me was incredible, but I realized his shirt was wet. Very wet. Too wet.

I lifted my hand and gasped. It was covered in blood.

Pushing him off me, I stepped away to see what had happened, but he quickly turned until he was facing me again.

“Reyes, you’re bleeding,” I said, trying to turn his body.

He steeled himself, his jaw working, his gaze hard as he stared down at me. He hadn’t expected me to notice anything amiss.

“That’s why you’re wearing a shirt.” It suddenly made sense. That little niggling in the back of my mind as he’d made love to me half dressed. That just didn’t happen often. “Take it off.”

“I’m fine,” he said, jerking the pajama pants into place and tying them.