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“Oh,” I say lightly. “Scenic overlooks have a bit of a different connotation in the human realm.”

There’s just enough teasing in the remark to pique his interest. “Oh? And what connotation would that be?”

“Well, a scenic lookout in the human realm is where people sometimes go to hook up.”

“Hook up?” he asks, like the term is unfamiliar to him.

“Make out?” I try. “Fool around?”

“You go to scenic spots to have sex?”

“Well, that’s putting it a little bluntly, but yes, sometimes,” I say, shrugging casually. “It must not be the same in the demon realm.”

“Bold of you to assume that it isn’t.”

Eren has stopped walking, and when I turn back around to face him, he’s got his arms crossed over his chest and a strange, studying sort of look on his face.

Now I’m getting somewhere.

“So,” I ask, crossing my own arms to mimic his pose. “You’ve never taken a demon honey of yours up to this lookout to do some fooling around?”

“I may have,” he allows, matching my mock-serious tone. “In my younger, wilder days.”

I can almost see it, the younger demon he would have been. Just as handsome, but maybe a little more devilish, certainly with fewer pressures and concerns weighing him down. It makes me ache, for just a moment, to wonder if he’ll ever know that kind of carefree exuberance again.

Not ready to let the magick of this morning die, and with a growing flame of hunger burning beneath my skin, I decide to push my demon a little more.

“And how would that wild, younger Eren have reacted to learning he was being forced to wed a witch?”

His eyes darken dangerously, my only warning before he steps quickly toward me and presses his lips against my neck, fangs searching out his mark. His hands grab onto my hips and pull me into him.

“No matter if I were twenty or eighty or two hundred, there still would never have been a question in my mind that you were mine, Allison Ashblood.”

That name again. Each time he says it, it seems to burrow its way a little deeper under my skin and into my bones.

I let my head fall back, bearing my throat to him—his to mark, claim, take.

Eren responds immediately. A growl rises in his throat and his arms tighten possessively around me. From where our bodies are pressed together, I can feel the hardening of his cock against my belly. I press even closer, and the contact makes us both groan.

A moment later, though, he’s pulling away.

“Allie,” he says, voice a little unsteady and unmistakably wary.

The frustration I’d been trying to push down earlier comes back full force. It bubbles up in a little groan of needy protest that has his hands tightening where they’re still gripping my hips.

He’s being so careful with me.

Ordinarily, I might not mind it so much. After all, when’s the last time someone’scaredenough to be careful with me?

Today, though, it bothers me.

It shouldn’t. Especially after we’ve shared so much, been so vulnerable, I should appreciate this tenderness. Some part of me does—the scared, vulnerable piece of my heart that still feels like the little girl told she wasn’t as powerful as all the other witches—but that part of me has gone curiously quiet. It’s still there, but soothed for now, less alone.

But the other part? The other part wants to say the hell with it all. The other part wants the wildness of my demon back. That part wants to be claimed and fucked, wants to know the powerful, delicious, earthy magick of being taken by this male.

Even as that need burns through me, another thought pushes to the forefront of my mind, putting a lead weight into my stomach.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m sure sex is the last thing on your mind, being in this place, and after sharing everything you did with me. I shouldn’t have—”