“Daisy.” Stefan turned me around to face him, putting his hands on my shoulders. “I’m here for you. As the leader of the Outcast. As your friend. As your lover, if you’ll allow it. Let me help.”

“How?” I whispered.

His eyes were filled with reflected fireworks. “Whatever battle is coming, it lies in the future. For tonight, just one night, let me take your fear and anger away.”

I hesitated, then nodded. “Do it.”

Stefan drew on the connection between us. I felt the unnerving intimacy of my jagged emotions spilling out of me, spilling into him—into the cool, still place of discipline within him, into the endless yearning and hunger that lay beneath it. I felt the terrible pleasure that he took in it, how it sated and stoked his hunger at the same time. For the Outcast, this desire was one that could never be truly slaked.

It worked for me, though.

I felt cleansed—purged of anger, of fear, of worry. All that was left was a tug of powerful attraction and a sense of reckless abandon.

And of course, Stefan knew it.

He smiled at me, and it was a predator’s smile. “Happy New Year, Daisy.”

Reaching out, I grabbed his belt buckle and yanked him closer. “Happy New Year to you.”

Wrapping one arm around my waist, Stefan pulled me tight against him. His other hand rose to cup the back of my head and hold me in place as he kissed me, his tongue exploring my mouth with six hundred years’ worth of accumulated skill as a final barrage of fireworks burst in the sky behind us.

Yep, I was definitely in free fall now.

“Inside.” Stefan’s voice was rough with desire as he reached behind us to wrench the sliding door open, propelling me through it.

“Bedroom?” I asked breathlessly, shrugging out of my coat and tossing it on the nearest piece of furniture.

“Yes.” Placing a hand between my shoulder blades, Stefan shoved me in the right direction. It should have been off-putting, but it wasn’t. The master bedroom was up a flight of stairs. Halfway up, Stefan pinned me against the wall and kissed me some more. I kissed him back, biting his lower lip until he made an inarticulate sound, pried himself off me, and pulled me up the stairs after him.

There were white Christmas lights strung in the bedroom, too; just enough to illuminate it. There were unlit candles. And there was a bed, a big one, with a pewter-gray duvet cover that had a faint satin sheen.

“Daisy.” Stefan whispered my name like a prayer. Positioning himself behind me, he kissed the nape of my neck before undoing the hook-and-eye fastener at the top of my dress, his breath warm against my skin. “Enough haste. I want to take this slowly. Very slowly.”

This time I shivered in a good way, a tingle of pleasure running the length of my spine, making my tail wriggle.

Oh, crap.

I swallowed. “Stefan? There’s, um, one minor detail I don’t think I mentioned to you.”

His fingers toyed with my zipper. “You bear a mark?”

“A mark?”

“Of your infernal heritage.” He unzipped a few inches, tracing the course with his lips. “Somewhere on your person.”

“Um . . . yeah.” I whipped my tail between my legs out of reflex. “It’s kind of more than a mark.”

The zipper descended another six inches, the dress hanging loose on my frame, baring my upper back. “Well, it’s not vestigial wings.”

Momentarily distracted, I craned my head around. “You’ve seen a hell-spawn with vestigial wings?”

“Yes. Horns, too. Fleshy little nubbins.” The zipper continued its descent and stopped. Stefan’s hand kept going, sliding over the curve of my buttocks, reaching beneath the hem of my dress and between my thighs. I felt him stiffen slightly at the shock of finding a firm, well-tucked appendage instead of yielding flesh with nothing but a pair of silk panties between us. “Oh.”

Turned on and mortified at the same time, I closed my eyes. “I should have told you.”

Instead of withdrawing, Stefan bent his head to kiss a sensitive spot on my throat beneath my earlobe. “A warning would not have gone amiss. But I was prepared to find . . . something.” He took his hand away and turned me around to face him again, easing the dress from my shoulders to fall in a puddle of midnight blue shantung around my feet. “You are who you are, Daisy,” he said softly. His dilated pupils eclipsed his irises like black moons. “You are what you are. And I find that to be beautiful. All of it.”

I felt naked beneath his gaze. Well, I was naked. But I felt extra-naked, vulnerable, and exposed.

And really, really turned on.

All of which Stefan knew, which only made me feel more naked and more turned on. Without asking permission, he tasted my desire, drawing on it. Just a little. Just a taste.

And I let him.

Stefan shuddered with pleasure. “You don’t make it easy for one of the Outcast to maintain control, Daisy Johanssen. Even one such as me.”

“Am I supposed to?” I asked in a small voice. “Because I could raise a shield . . .”

“No.” Eyes glittering, he stripped off his dinner jacket and unfastened his cuff links with deliberate slowness. “Don’t.”

Making love with Stefan Ludovic wasn’t like skydiving; it was like walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. Well, if walking a tightrope included having mind-blowing sex at the same time. Six hundred years’ worth of practice included acquiring six hundred years’ worth of patience and self-restraint. After taking off his shirt, Stefan scooped me up in his arms and laid me on his bed, straddled my body and proceeded to spend the next hour or so thoroughly undoing me with his hands and mouth, until I was babbling with mindless ecstasy.