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Ember allowed her eyelids to flutter down when she’d collected enough courage.

In the darkness behind her lids, she felt the caress of Severath’s lips that much more sharply and discovered it wasn’t enough.

Pushing up onto her toes, she fully pressed their mouths together, and more delicious hearth-like warmth crackled over her skin.

He filled the small part she made with her lips, the lingering taste of sugar and campfire smoke invading her tongue.

She breathed the cinders of him in, and then a sound of satisfaction she could no longer hold back escaped from between their lips.

Another hand was on her hip, the first slipping around to the back of her neck, but then his mouth broke away from hers. “I would pluck out my good eye if that is what it took to convince you to remain here with me,” he rumbled up against her cheek.

“What?” Ember gasped but then remembered she’d asked a warrior to prove his intentions. “No, no, don’t do that.”

He breathed in heavily, nose tickling her ear as he nuzzled against her. “Sacrifice my remaining horn and my tail.”

Ember shook her head and sputtered out a laugh. “Your balance would be so much worse.”

“My hands?—”

She took his face and pulled him into another kiss, not without the tenderness he’d given, but with a force she could no longer hold back.

When his lips parted under her coaxing, she slipped the tip of her tongue into his mouth, and he teased at it with his own.

Ember barely noticed his grip tightening, arms slipping around her, the gentle brush lighting up her skin with his warmth.

But then she was dragged right against him, and Severath’s next kiss had her gasping for air and her hands shoving at his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he growled as he tore himself away, the words desperate as he held his clawed hands up, empty but clenching as if searching for her.

She swallowed back a sound, not sure if it would be steeped in pleasure or fear.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, and she really thought it was true—everything with Severath felt right —it was only her own reactions she couldn’t control.

She placed her hands back on his chest, gripping his tunic so he couldn’t move away. “I know you can be…good.”

He inhaled heavily, black eye glassy. “I’m not sure I can.”

Ember closed the space he’d made between them and inched up onto her toes again. He leaned into the kiss she tried to give him, but just brushing his lips against hers elicited another growl that had her sucking in a shocked breath.

“I do want this,” she said, needing to assure herself as much as him.

They stood still in the entry, both afraid to move. “I have an idea.”

Ember waited, listened to the silence of the house, swallowed. “Will you share it with me?”

He took a step back, breaking the hold she’d had on his tunic.

She clenched her fists, missing the soft linen and the warmth beneath, but was immediately intrigued by the magic he cast on the crate against the entry wall.

A few swipes with an extended claw and a glowing red light around its lock allowed him to lift the lid.

There was a flash of metal inside and stacked weapons, but Severath shifted those to the side and pulled out something else.

The demon stood before her, clawed hands flexing around a length of rope, head dipped. “Would it…” He cleared his throat. “Would it make you more comfortable if I couldn’t touch you?”

Ember’s mouth fell open. “You would let me tie you up?”

He nodded.

“But you would be helpless.”

The demon lifted his black gaze just enough to meet hers. “Not entirely.”

She reached for the rope, and he was quick to release it. The cord was rough against her palms, but it was clean and sturdy. Her own wrists had been bound with something similar in the slaver’s cart, and she would never want him to feel the terror she had felt then. “You really trust me this much?”

“I do, but I’m more concerned with you trusting me.”

Ember let her gaze drift down his body, muscular, rigid, huge. “Go upstairs.”

Severath turned as if he’d been commanded by a captain, and power swelled in Ember’s chest followed quickly by passion. He ascended the stairs, and she continued to take him in, the tightness of his clothes and how his body moved beneath them. How willing he had been to surrender all that to her…

“Stop.”

The demon froze, glancing back over his shoulder.

“Your tunic,” she said with a flicker of hesitation. “How will I get it off after I…”

Severath tugged at the lace that kept the neckline closed and then effortlessly pulled the shirt off over his head and horn. The muscles of his bare back flexed as he abandoned the tunic on the railing and continued upward just as she’d told him.

Ember squeezed the rope, the rough bite into her palms quelling the feral desire to pounce and tether him right to the banister.

She chewed her lip and watched the solid form of Severath’s body instead, the thick length of his tail flicking the width of the staircase as he took step by slow step toward her bedchamber door. And then she hurried after.