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“So?” Samuel said, brushing a thumb across her cheek. “We all do what we must to survive.”

“And you’re a damned fool,” she snarled, reaching up and pulling him into a kiss.

It wasn’t anything like he expected a kiss to be—it was rough and vicious, more teeth and biting than anything else. He tasted blood—his or hers, he couldn’t tell—and she moaned against him. But with her mouth on his, any logic—any reason he was holding onto—to keep her away, vanished. There was only this moment.

And it felt right.

He pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her as she tangled her hands in his hair, holding him captive in her embrace. It was a battle and a promise and everything he had never known, and he wanted to kiss her until the world came crashing down around them.

Shan pressed her mouth against his jaw, his neck, biting and nipping her way across his flesh as he lifted her up. She was so light in his arms, and he slammed her down on the table, the bottles rolling and sliding as he crawled over her, sliding himself into the waiting gap between her legs, her skirts rucked up around her hips. He pinned her down with his weight, and she didn’t resist him, only rose her hips up to meet his, as her hands wound in his hair, pulling him where she wanted him. Shan bared her neck to him in an open invitation, and Samuel pressed his mouth against her skin.

It was so easy to bite into the soft dip of her throat, flesh catching between his teeth as he sucked hard. Shan gasped, pressing even closer to him, and that familiar darkness rose within, crawling up his throat as a single word tore past his lips—guttural and harsh and not at all him. “Mine.”

Shan locked up in his arms, her dark eyes wide and afraid, and he saw a second too late what had happened. The power he had tried so hard to deny had crept up when he wasn’t looking, when his control had slipped, and Shan slumped against the table, her eyes wide and vacant as she lay there, unresisting, unresponsive, unknowing.

For him to take a warm body with no soul, to find pleasure that was only his.

“No,” he gasped out as reality crashed back in, his lust fading against the horror of what he had done. “I didn’t mean it!” He grabbed every bit of his power, bending it to his will, and threw it at her. A command to counteract a command, fighting his own magic. “Shan, don’t!”

She shuddered again, her body and mind struggling between the contradicting commands, then went slack all at once. Silence filled the room, broken only by the harsh sound of their breathing. Eventually, she pushed herself up on her elbows, and he couldn’t bear to face her.

But she was fine. It was over.

Sliding himself off the table, Samuel turned away as tremors ran through him. He was such a fool, a damned fool for not seeing this coming. He thought it was bad before, he thought he understood the depths to which he could fall.

A stolen kiss seemed childish in comparison to this.

“We can’t do this,” he whispered, barely audible.

“Oh, Samuel,” she began. “It was an accident.”

But he just spun around, silencing her with a soft, gentle kiss to the forehead. “I cannot risk, I cannot… becoming him,” he explained, and her mask cracked. He didn’t even need to say his father’s name, to utter the crime that had led to his own creation.

He would have her when he knew she was entirely willing, entirely of her own choice, or not at all.

“All right.” Her hand came up to cup his cheek, and he leaned into the softness of her touch. “If that is what you want, I’ll respect it. But we will figure this out, one way or another.”

“Thank you.”

She nodded, then slipped off the table, putting a deliberate amount of space between them. “I still have much to study.”

“That you do.”

“You’d better put your shirt back on,” Shan said, heading towards a bookshelf and grabbing a thick tome. Her tone was brisk, professional, though her cheeks were still flushed and her hair askew.

Samuel was sure he looked no better, but he grabbed his clothes from the chair where he had left them, determined to act as normal as she was. “And can I help?”

“Naturally.” Shan’s smile was quick, there and gone, and Samuel breathed out hard.

She was going to be the death of him.

“Lord Aberforth,” Jacobs said, bowing as Samuel entered his townhouse. “You have a visitor.”

“I… do?” Samuel rubbed his temples. He was tired and confused and energy still thrummed relentlessly through his veins, aching for something he could never have. He wanted nothing more than a cold bath to kill the fire in his blood, then his soft bed, but he was a Lord now. And appearances must be kept. “Who is it?”

Jacobs looked uncertain, only the slightest hesitation in his words. “Antonin LeClaire the Second.”

“Anton?” Samuel blinked in confusion. Why would he be here? Samuel had just been at the LeClaires; wouldn’t it have been easier to meet there?