“Please…” It came out so soft. “Please…I need you inside me.”

“No place I’d rather be.” As he heard the sounds of him stripping in front of her, she imagined seeing the weight and beauty of his cock in front of her. Her tissues contracted, weeping for him. She was so hot, so close.

“You don’t go over until I say so. Tell me.” He caught her chin.

“I understand.”

His lips twisted. “Understanding and obeying are two different things. I want to hear you say, I’ll obey.”

There were a lot of different things behind that word as well, such that she had a harder time with it, but he waited with the patience of a damn rock while her body shuddered with desire.

“I’ll obey.” After all, if she changed her mind and didn’t obey, there were darker, more delicious punishments he could dish out in this room. She wanted to find out what those were, let him take her to more firsts than she’d ever thought possible.

She heard him snort as if he divined her thoughts. When he guided his cock into that heated gate, though, she felt him fighting his own reaction.

“Fuck, you’re wet. And sucking on me like a vise.”

Her muscles clenched around him as he pushed in to the hilt. She groaned, head jerking up against the tether, reminding her of his bindings.

“That’s it. Fight me if you want, but you won’t get away from this, from where I’m going to take you. You’re mine, Raina. No male can own your soul the way I can.”

Her response was lost as he began to thrust, driving her hips against the bench, slapping his pelvis against her reddened buttocks. She cried out on every stroke, those lovely female animal noises that said she was being pleasured beyond rational thought. His cock was impossibly thick, and she imagined his balls boiling with the seed he wanted to jet deep inside of her, mark her so there was no doubt.

“Mikhael…I can’t…I’m coming.”

“Come for me, then. Come now.”

She exploded, no other word for it. The scream that tore from her throat was the most intense she’d ever experienced, her slickness clenching over his cock in that tight fist that dragged him right over the edge with her. He was braced over her, hands on the bench, chest pressed to her back, mouth on her shoulder, their bodies moving in tandem much like hers and Jorge’s had, except Mikhael was hilt deep inside her.

“Jorge’s not going to get this close. No male is,” he muttered in her ear.

No male ever had. She didn’t say that, but right now she believed him, belonged to him utterly, because she wanted to do so.

IT DIDN’T END THERE. SHE’D PROMISED HIM EVERYTHING and he took it. A couple times she blacked out, and when she roused, she was always in his arms, with him cosseting her. He never took off the blindfold, made her dependent on him throughout, her senses straining to respond to his every command and touch.

He tested out all the equipment in the room, brought her to climax three times before she started to lose track. Every time she fed on his energy, she just came back stronger. She couldn’t have held back her need to drink if she tried, so she became sated with it and savage, reduced to a primal creature who only wanted more.

Which made her eventual exhaustion all the more remarkable. She’d never given out before a lover. When she was limp and sated, Mikhael carried her out of the room and to the second level, to his bed. They’d given him the royal master suite and it suited him, looking like a king’s chambers. Putting her on her back, himself between her legs, he took her one last time. She made a feminine note of distress as he parted abraded tissues, adding just enough force to remind her she was his, but not enough to be unbearable, holding her on that knife-edge of pleasure, pain and service.

Before he released inside of her, he made her come one more time with his skill and her overwhelming desire to please him.

She might have called him Master a couple times. It was a hazy, disturbing memory, mainly because she’d meant it with every ounce of passion she gave him.

At last, she lay in the curve of his body, limp and unresisting as he stroked her breast. His other hand traced small circles over her clit, because he’d told her to keep her legs parted for him. Occasionally he leaned over her, suckled her nipple gently, his toy to play with as he wished. It caused a slow, liquid river of arousal through her body.

When the night deepened, he folded his arms around her, holding her close to his chest, and they fell into a postcoital coma together.

IT WAS PAST THREE A.M. NO DISTURBANCES IN THE house, some sessions still happening, but it was winding down. Her brain cells were still sluggish, but with her cheek pressed to his chest, listening to his breathing, she knew he was awake. He probably knew she was awake, but he said nothing, so she started thinking.

When he made love, had sex or fucked her, it was always in line with her feelings of the moment. An exceptional sexual Dominant figured that out. He anticipated the need of whomever he was with. Some small part of her was bothered by that, because maybe he exercised that trait on anyone. He’d done it to Ruby, after all.

She thought back to their trip into town, the way he’d protected her there, even when she didn’t need it. Dark Guardian. Light Guardian. It didn’t matter. Maybe because she was a creature of darkness herself, she was beginning to believe Mikhael, that the cause they served might just be the same.

He arrives in the nick of time…He gets strength from the happiness of others…Love versus duty…

He acted as though he were uniquely charged with her protection. Unless Lucifer had mandated that, it was something Mikhael had mandated himself, for his own reasons and desires. She didn’t question the sanity of the thought the way she might have a few days before. Instead, she moved closer to him. His arm tightened, all that hard muscle against her back.

She’d spent six years of her life in hell. She’d learned her Craft, continued to learn, such that no one was taking her down without a fight. But being able to take care of herself didn’t mean she felt safe. Once being that kind of victim, a person never felt safe, no matter how they tried.

With him, she did. Life was a funny thing.

Succubus or incubus, there was a killer instinct to her kind, in the blood she carried. It made the sadistic side of Mikhael’s personality a soothing balm, a tonic on that homicidal urge. It was something she likely couldn’t explain to Ruby or Ramona, but he got it. He couldn’t be harmed by it, either. He could take it, and that meant something.

Running a hand over her buttock, he pinched her gently, but enough that she felt the soreness from his spankings. It gave her a shiver. “What?” he asked.

“With Ruby, you were brutal, merciless, unkind even.”

“She told you that?”

“I could tell. But that was what she needed, wasn’t it?”

“With what she was playing with at that time, yes.”

“So you did it to help her.”

“Don’t set me up for sainthood on that one.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t enjoy it.” Raina scraped his chest with her fangs, pricked him. “But it was tempered by your heart, by what she needed from you. Which makes me wonder what you need.”

“I don’t think about that.”

“Everyone thinks about what they need and want.”

“I’m bound in service to the Underworld for all eternity. That’s what I do.”

“You’re here with me, in this bed. Lucifer didn’t dictate that. So I’m something you want, at least at the moment.”

“You are definitely that. In fact, I want you right now.”

“You couldn’t possibly.”

In answer, he pressed her to her back. She couldn’t help a sliver of trepidation, because she really was sore, a unique experience for her, but he held her gaze and her legs parted for him. When he slid into the slickness left from their climaxes, he went slow, easy. He would never ask, never allow her to refuse, and that just made her more willing. She lifted a hand, stroked his cheek.

“You’re not a kind man, but I do think you’re a good man. A man with integrity.”

“I can accept that. If it gets me laid.”

Seeing the gleam in his eye, she punched him in the side, none too gently. “You ass.”

He thrust deeper, and she let out a gasp at the sensation. When he gripped her wrists, she tensed, but he nuzzled her throat until her hands opened up in his grip, and she gave herself to the way he felt pressed up between her legs, her heels resting high on his thighs.

“I can feel your magic like the blood coursing through your veins,” he murmured against her throat. “I can feel you wrapped around me. I like it. I like being here with you.”

Gentle intimacy. Unexpected from him. She’d always been guarded about her feelings, not in a bad way, but because she weighed everything for the proper response for clients, for her incubi and succubi. Sometimes she shared her thoughts with Cathair, sometimes Ruby and Ramona, but with them it was mostly maudlin moments that didn’t really mean much.

“Just say what you feel, Raina. It’s all right.”

“You’re heavy.”

He chuckled, nipping her throat. “I won’t move until you tell me what you feel.”

“I like having you here, too. For now. Until you irritate me.”

He continued that nibbling on her neck, easing his way down to the rise of her breast, making her heart squeeze in on itself as he stayed so tender, treating her with reverence. But not an arm’s-length Goddess reverence. The type of reverence that came with the seeds of love.

Okay, that thought stiffened her like a board. “I need to get some sleep. I need to go to my own bed.”

“When I’m here, this is your bed, Raina. It’s a much better fit for my size.” He caught her chin. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “Old demons,” she said. “Leave it, please?”

Mikhael studied her a long moment. “Can you sleep in my arms, Raina? Just sleep and not worry about anything for a little while?”