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“ Y ou could leave me.” I gulped down my anxiety. “Return to your home.”

“I cannot.” Jae shuffled forward, pushing into the V of my spread thighs. “Your world has given you no cause to trust.”

I smothered a shaky laugh. “I wasn’t ambushed and driven to another dimension just to stay alive.”

“Life is seldom kind.” He smiled. “This we share, the cruelties and betrayals we’ve endured. Is that enough?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. Because I did know. He could be gone tomorrow. I could be dead, a heap of cinders at the end of a dragon’s fire. My father’s family might find us. Or Teddy’s murderers.

What Jae said was truer than anything I’d ever experienced, though. Life wasn’t gentle. Survival cost everyone, if only the sacrifice of the air we breathed and the food we consumed. The most generous and giving soul still exacted a price to stay alive, and I was no tender spirit rife with nobility. I was a liar—I’d spun a fabric of mundane fantasy my whole life to conceal the powers within me, was still hiding what I could do. Because I expected betrayal everywhere, paranoia and distrust laced my blood. Every beat of my heart braced against more pain from a world that had taught me little else.

But were we so different?

Why shouldn’t I grab at whatever fleeting happiness I might discover?

“You just want to fuck me to strengthen the ties binding us,” I said, desperate for a reason—any reason—to not give in to the want in his stare.

“Issa,” he said, then cocked his head to the side. “Ne.”

I chuckled, my heart pounding. “No?”

Shaking his head, he pulled me forward. Closer. “I want to mate you.” He leaned forward, his bare chest brushing against my shirt, and I couldn’t stop my tremble, didn’t even try. “Our legends speak of this.”

“Humans ones don’t.,” I said, though my belly flipped because, technically, our oldest myths did. Alongside creation stories from bygone civilizations, the ancients had spun wild tales of sex and romantic love between humans and beings of all kinds. Fae. Dragons. And yes, demons, too. I vaguely recalled stele etched in fading hieroglyphics extolling the strength and wisdom of a pair of long-dead kings, one magical and the other fitting the description of a demon not so different from my Jae. Dark skin, red eyes, horns curling at the sides of that ancient’s head. That image popped into my memory, as clear to me as my demon pulling me into his arms. The lone disparities were Jae’s barbed tail was longer, and the span of my demon’s wings in flight stretched wider. A detail of that remembered portrait of the two kings stuck in my head, made me tremble—the two rulers had held hands, the affection they held for each other palpable. I shuddered, how fiercely I wanted that closeness rocking me to my core. “If the lore mentions relationships between humans and beings, they serve as warnings.”

“In daemonica , as well.” Jae bent his head to snuffle at the crook of my neck, the hot puff of his breath on my bare skin delicious in all the right ways. “But our oldest First Blood songs, the forbidden ones, tell of my kind twining with yours with more than magic alone. The ancients composed poetry about victorious lovers who defeated loneliness, of demons who gladly surrendered our longevity to join with breakable, shorter-lived partners and never counted the cost.” When he glanced up, Jae’s red eyes sparkled with heat. “They gave up survival. For you.”

Quivering, desire intense and surging inside me, I almost asked my demon if he’d surrendered his own quest to stay alive to bind with me, but I knew. He already had. I gulped. “You chose me because I was near the nexus and I’m young. If you stay here, you’ll live longer.”

“You weren’t as close as the oracle’s kin and they are powerful, each of them as young or younger than you.” Jae chuckled, skating his mouth up the column of my neck. “I fought my way toward you instead because you are shiny, David Mace. Only you.” The brush of his lips dizzied me, the sly dart of his tongue tasting me a wonder. “You bewitched me from the start.”

I lifted my hands to grasp his bare shoulders, the softness of his skin over his dense muscle enervating and alluring. How intensely I wanted to succumb to him and his pretty words telling me everything I’d ever wanted to hear staggered me, almost as dearly as the sensuous feel of him under my shaky fingertips. “You’ve made no promises, given me no oath to complete the binding,” I said, my voice low and husky despite my denial. “Demons lie.”

“Not about this,” he said and settled his mouth on mine.

Our kiss at the viaduct had been an awakening, a preamble. What exploded between us now? A storm. Arousal burned through me at the press of his lips, a wildfire consuming me and, at the same time, lighting me up. My body tingled. Every sense in me exploded. I curled my fingers into him, as both my anchor and the wind blowing me into a vortex of chaotic desires. I wanted to feel his stolid weight, so yanked him forward, pasting myself to Jae with an exhilarated gasp.

My demon took advantage of my parted lips to stab his tongue into me and I melted, the sinuous stroke of him inside my mouth an exquisite bliss. Our panted breaths. The scent of our mingling sweat. The salty, coppery taste of his tongue gliding with mine. Even the rumbling growl vibrating his chest pressed against mine stirred cravings for more of his caress, more of his devouring kisses. Just more.

My greed for my demon consumed me and as I clutched him to me, mine became the mouth marauding his. Desperate in my want, I explored his mouth, the tip of my tongue testing the pointed tips of his teeth. We both shuddered after I scraped a minor cut, shedding just a drop of my blood for him to feast upon. Lust zinged, him to me or me to him. Who could say? Did that even matter? No. Nothing signified except the press of our skin, the salty flavor of our kiss, the musky scent of our desire dragging us to madness.

Shivering, I froze at the scrape of his claw digging into the collar of my borrowed T-shirt. “Last clean one,” I said on a moan, fighting to hang onto some small semblance of sanity, of caution.

“We’ll find another,” he said and, scraping a shallow scratch down my chest that made me tremble anew, he tugged his extended claw down to rend the fabric.

The slow scritch of ripping cotton resounded as a symphony in my ears. Giddy and dazzled, I ate at his mouth and pushed into his claws, so near my tender belly. With a flick of his wrist, he could gut me, spill my entrails to the dirt, and that trill of danger married with the mayhem of my arousal. I wanted more than his lips ravaging me and the hot weight of him against my skin. I needed him to slide the tip of that claw into the waist of my shorts, to yank and tear them to free my aching cock.

Groaning, he instead dipped his hand lower to cup my hard dick through the thin fabric.

He tightened his grip to give my cock an ungentle squeeze and everything inside me exploded in fiery want. I yanked at his shoulders, scooting my butt forward in the chair to arch into his touch. Maybe for the first time in my life, I felt free. Wild as the gusting wind rushing through the leaves of an oak and as open as the tender bloom dripping nectar for the seeking honeybee. I cried out, into his kiss, and he swallowed me whole, his grasp on my needy dick nigh painful but so intoxicating.

I whined when he tore his panting mouth from mine, but he only said, “Lift up.”

When I braced my weight against him to lift my hips from the chair, he yanked my shorts down and my hard, desperate cock bobbed free. My senses spun in gleeful abandon at the heat of his fingers at my groin and the wet trail of his tongue parting my destroyed T-shirt. He licked a fiery path down my sternum to my abs and I arched like a cat greeting wherever he touched. With a feral growl, Jae paused at the start of the springy brown hair marking my treasure trail and burying his nose in the curls. He sucked in a deep breath. He shook, the intimate smell of my lust in his nostrils while his fingers, claws retracted, wrapped around my jutting dick.

The base already tingled, my orgasm gathering at the root of my spine.

Sweat slicked me, glued our writhing bodies together as he gave me one languid pump.

Moaning, my pulse roaring in my head, I stared as he slid down. His mouth poised above the tip of my glistening cock and the heat of his stuttering pants shattered me anew. “Suck me,” I said, voice low and raspy.

He smiled, then darted out his tongue to lap at the bead of precum gathering at the head of my dick and my sanity waved a giddy farewell at only the glancing brush of him on me. I dug my fingers into his hair, guiding him down, and his laugh washed over my cock as he gulped me down.

Arousal jolted through me. I cried out again, his searing mouth sucking me in felt that good. That right. I flexed my hips, stabbing my eager dick into him, but my demon didn’t resist the yanking of my hands or my frantic thrusts. He met my desperation with hungers of his own, hollowing his cheeks to suckle me. His tongue sliding over my length almost undid me. “Soon,” I managed, not remotely embarrassed that I’d shoot so fast, and his happy grunt around my cock showed Jae was as eager for my spill as I was to feed it to him. His sensuous attention on my cock redoubled.

My heart beat hard and fast. I wondered I didn’t pass out from the pleasure of the tight seals of his lips or the lust in his crimson stare as he gobbled me down. He bobbed on my groin, working me deliciously. Drunk on sensation, swamped by the thrill of him sucking me, I trembled and groaned. His grasp on my dick vised as he pumped his hand to mirror the quickening up and down of his hot mouth on the length. Melty tingles buzzed through me in waves, my belly tightening as the tsunami built. And built.

He shifted his other hand to scrape a claw over my balls, and that was it. Game over.

I bowed my spine, ecstasy slamming my eyes shut though I’d wanted to watch him, stare as he sampled and swallowed my jizz. My pleasure was just too overwhelming. He destroyed me, sucking and slurping my semen with that wicked mouth. My senses flashed, overloaded, resplendent in my satisfaction as I spilled and spurted. My toes curled. My shout of completion echoed, husky and warbling around us.

The intoxicating bliss still swamped me when Jae’s mouth lifted off my spent dick with a crude pop. Dazed, body leaden, I didn’t resist when he grabbed my hips. He flipped me in the chair, settling my knees into the dirt by the campfire, though the tangle of my lowered shorts at my thighs defeated him in spreading my legs much. He splayed a hand at the small of my back, tipping my ass high. “You are young. You’ll harden again,” he said on a growl.

I moaned at the wet slide of his tongue on my ass cheek. I scrabbled my fingers, searching for something—anything—to hold on to, finally vising them over the wooden slats edging the Adirondack. My senses whirled, my chest rising and falling in harsh pants as the scent of smoke and sex filled my nostrils.

When he skated his mouth along the curve of my ass, licking at the crease where my cheeks met my thighs, I moaned in helpless wonder. Would he—Jae answered my silent question when he scraped his teeth to my crack and I shuddered. But I also stilled, tipping up my hips to greet his wicked intentions.

I didn’t allow this often, had never enjoyed the feeling that rimming stirred inside me. Losing control. The intimacy of a lover’s mouth on me there, where I was most vulnerable, but as my demon palmed my cheeks to spread me and lapped at my hole, I groaned out my feral delight. I loved the heat of him pressing into my ass, the soft bump of his nose, the warm huff of his breath on my sweat-dampened skin. My spent lust spun in a chaotic maelstrom with the first sparks of rejuvenating desire I could not resist him. Though the shorts trapped at my thighs denied me, I struggled to spread wider. I wanted those lips on my hole, craved the versatile stroke of his tongue, and yes, also the slippery tap of his fingers. I knew where this was going, what he wanted. I needed it, too. So I fought to relax my singing muscles to let him in.

How my demon could prick one ass cheek with his claws to anchor me in place while the non-clawed tip of fingers on his other hand probed and stretched my ass to take his dick was a mystery to me, but I never once feared his touch, outside my body or within me. The sting of the shallow punctures he made in my muscles only added to the mounting thrill of his caressing mouth. Anticipation trilled through me. My cock, still wet and sticky from Jae sucking me, twitched and answered his stubborn demands for me to want, and want, and want.

“Please,” I gasped, though I wasn’t sure what I begged for. His tongue? His fat dick splitting me wide? The press of his weight at my spine as he fucked me? I couldn’t guess, didn’t care, as long as I could have more of him enervating every piece of me, body and soul. While his hard pants and moans shattered the quiet, he could do whatever he wanted to and with me, my subjugation to his mastery complete.

A wanton cry slipped from my lips when my demon shoved a second finger into my hole, my muscles resisting him, but only for a moment. I shook, my mind scrambling in giddy triumph, as he shoved those fingers deep. The tips brushed over my prostate and I jerked at the zap of pleasure that jolted from my ass and through me, to my toes curling into the dirt, to the sweat gathering at the ends of my hair. He pumped his fingers and my desire screamed to renewed life.

I didn’t just want him. I needed his cock inside me, filling me up, stuffing my ass as I’d never craved anything—anyone—else.

“Ne,” he said on a rasping moan, jamming a third finger into my greedy hole. “Not yet. Relax or I’ll hurt you.”

I thrust my hips, my lengthening cock mashing into the unforgiving wood of the chair as he worked my hole. “I don’t care.”

“I do.” I whined as his claws withdrew from my ass cheek and instead, he swiped a soothing palm down the bumps of my spine. “Let me in.”

Blowing out a protracted breath, I fought to unclench my muscles squeezing his fingers. I focused instead on the fiery tingle of him rubbing my prostrate. How good he felt. The mind-bending rightness of Jae inside me. God, how I wanted more. I needed everything, all of it, whatever dizzy pleasure we could wring from each other. His cock dancing in my ass, the taste of him on my tongue, my dick spearing into him.

The ties binding us spilled my craving for him into Jae and fed his arousal into me, an intensifying loop of shared lust. I need never worry that my demon didn’t want me. I felt his desire. Shared it..

“Take me,” I whined, though speech wasn’t necessary, not when Jae’s link to me and mine to him melted any doubt or reservation either of us might’ve once suffered. “Fuck me,” I said, because we both loved the sound of my demands.

“Relax,” he said again, voice gone low and feral, as wild as the madness sweeping over and through my demon and me both. He slid his fingers free of my hole and I couldn’t contain my whimper. Didn’t even try. Because he liked that, too. Enjoyed my greed for him. Only him.

The wide head of his cock pushed against my ring and I angled my hips to receive him.

“Be still,” he said, freezing in place until I complied.

Then he thrust.

Hard.

Deep.

My shout of wonder tore from my throat as the power of him shoving his dick into me pushed me forward into the unrelenting wood of the chair. My face mashing into the slats didn’t matter, though, because my ass came alive in a symphony of wonder and welcome. My euphoria sapped away the sting of my overstretched muscles. Stuffed full, I knew only him. Wanted only him. I needed him to fuck me in earnest, to move, pound my prostate until my orgasm spilled from my hardening cock, until he flooded my ass with his semen.

But he just petted and soothed me, his caress on me now soft. “Easy,” Jae said, then dipped one hand low to fondle my dick. “You must not spurt. Do you understand?” Despite his rumbling words, he taunted me, toying with my cock. “I want you to fuck me after. Do you desire it?”

I groaned, body trembling. “You know I do,” I said with a moan.

He pumped me and I gritted my teeth against my orgasm pulling my balls up tight and close to my body. “Then you will not shoot. If you wish to mate with me, you must not come. Wait.”

Then he pulled back his hips and reamed my ass as I’d never been reamed before. I jolted with his every thrust, animal noises flying from me at the crushing pleasure and the torment of his grasp on me playing with my dick. I shouted. Begged him to fuck me harder, faster. He rode me long and dirty, every sense in me rejoicing as his hips pumped. The wet droplets of his sweat seared my skin. His triumphant grunts when he pushed into me were arias in my ears. The world evaporated, and I knew only Jae, his fingers digging into my hips as he rode me, the smell of our sex, the noises he made and his cock stretching me.

His hips stuttered, the rapidity of his jarring thrusts faltering as he groaned. Then, his semen shot inside me, lava hot. Fiery. My sensitive hole clenched around his girth at the mind-blowing heat of his cum flooding my ass. His orgasm scorched me inside and out. Overwhelmed, I felt like I couldn’t take anymore, that I’d just fly apart, a detonation of pure ecstasy. As though my beleaguered and bewildered senses could not cope with one more pleasure without defying his demands of me not to empty my balls into the dirt as well.

But I was wrong.

Because when he bent, his breath searing my neck, I bowed my spine, begging for what I didn’t know. Whatever instinct compelled me to offer myself to him, my demon greedily accepted. He sank his sharp teeth into the meat at my nape. I screamed, the pain atrocious and bewitching all at once. My blood spilled as he spurted into my ass, hot wet semen slipping from the tight seal at my asshole to marry in my mind with the blood trickling from his teeth in my skin. Blood and spunk spattered the wood of the chair he’d fucked me within an inch of my life upon. Lost, I whimpered, my senses overloaded. I hung onto the orgasm screaming inside me, demanding to be loosed.

I shuddered at the slick lapping of his tongue on my nape and the stab of his dick jetting into my ass, but I held on. Barely. And moaned at the loss when his mouth lifted, razor teeth releasing his bite as his iron hard length pulled free of my sorely used hole. I mumbled his name, dazed, when he flipped me in the chair. Reeling, my world spinning and yet oddly focused on my demon, I panted as he arranged me in the Adirondack to his liking and then climbed atop me. He spread his fingers over my sternum to hold me in place. “Don’t move,” he said on a warm purr and poised his ass over my dick stabbing desperately up.

“No,” I said, gathering whatever brains I had left to object. “No lube. I’ll hurt you.”

My demon chuckled, hot and filthy. “Demons are not humans. Be still.”

Before I could muster the wherewithal to argue, he sank down on my cock.

I didn’t recognize the noises pushing from my throat, my frantic pleas and fierce cries of pleasure as his ass gulped me down. My dick felt like it was on fire, the consuming heat of his ass swallowing me whole. My every muscle clenched. The orgasm I’d refused zinged through me, greedy and desperate, but somehow, I rode the wave. I tamped down my body’s urgent clamor to climax because I had to fuck him. Needed it more than my next gasping breath.

“Good. So good.” His praises lit me up, the cloying heat of his ass squeezing me deliciously. His heavy balls rested in my pubic hair, his cock still seeping jizz onto my groin as he settled onto my dick. His hands, claws extended, reached for my shoulders and I groaned again when several of them pierced my deltoids to anchor him. “You are a wonder, my David.”

He arched his hips, sliding up my cock, and then shoved his ass down.

And I was lost.

My world became him, only my demon. My lover. Just Jae. How could there be anyone or anything else? What could matter except the wet slap of our bodies writhing together, the sharp pain of his claws sinking into me for purchase as he bounced on my dick? The fiery rub of his hole clutching my length? My head whirled as his ass milked my dick and the dirty words he murmured into my ear as he bent over resounded within me like cannon fire. “Your cock, like iron.” He nipped the shell of my ear. “Come inside me. Deeper.”

Helpless to do anything else, I bunched my glutes and thrust.

I’d lose my mind. Fucking Jae was that consuming and mind-bendingly sweet. My every nerve ending sizzled, the giddy clap of our joining bodies dazzling me. Lust burned me up, the conflagration more intense than even the cloying heat of my demon’s ass massaging my pumping dick. “I need—”

“I know what you need.” He bit me again, bastard, his husky laugh whispering into my ear as the jolting pain of his teeth married with the intense orgasm gathering at the base of my cock. “Mate with me. Fill me.”

Though his husky words were no order, I obeyed anyway. My spine bowed, my muscles taut. My eyes snapped shut and my mouth gaped in a wild scream as my climax tore free. Pleasure splintered the world around me. Bliss exploded. From my dick, my mind, my senses. I roared as I spurted, wet and thick, into his bowels. The sweaty press of his skin on mine, the sting of his bite sharpening my satisfaction as I shot. I emptied my balls into him and still, I shuddered and shook.

“Here, my love,” Jae said once his teeth slipped from mauling my earlobe.

His palm cradled my head, drawing me to his neck.

“Drink,” he said, his ass squeezing—strangling—my dick and salty copper filled my mouth.

Blood. His blood.

Dizzy, horrified, even with my orgasm yet stunning me, I would’ve reared back. Away. Jae was a demon, an entirely disparate species than humans. Violent. Aggressive. They thought, felt, and looked at the world differently. Maybe sex between them varied too, included bites and cuts and bruises. I didn’t know. I doubted anyone did, but demon though my lover may be, I remained human. No vampire, not so much as a whiff of shifter DNA in my genetic makeup. Blood sport when I fucked had never lured me. If his stubborn palm cradling my scalp would’ve allowed me, I would have yanked away from the feast of blood he must have opened from the cut on his neck under my lips.

I drank, anyway.

With horror at first. I didn’t want this, had never desired it. Wasn’t demon blood a drug? A poison if administered properly? Dazzled, I couldn’t think, could only feel, but some small scrap of my brain offered the juicy fact nugget learned from the goddess knew where that the blood of a demon was a sedative that could be hallucinogenic if concentrated. Perhaps lethal.

Never for you. His voice purred like a cat inside my addled mind, his grip on me holding my mouth to his wound gentling, almost affectionate. “Mates cannot suffer at the hand of his other half.”

I did not know what this mating bullshit was, not a single clue, but the flavor of his blood on my tongue…I sighed, confused. Where initially he’d tasted salty and metallic, the splash of his blood now sang in my mouth as both savory and sweet. How could that be? With the power of my orgasm swamping me with completion, my muscles gluey and leaden, my exhausted thoughts couldn’t parse what I felt. What I sensed and knew to be real. Truth had narrowed to my softening dick in Jae’s hot ass and his blood against my tongue, the gentle affection of his arms holding me close.

Jae chuckled. “Not too much.” With a stubborn finger at my chin, he guided my mouth from the streaming wound and my gaze to greet his. He shifted my body up to slide his other hand between us to swipe at the pooling wet of his semen at my groin. He lifted a glistening finger to offer it to me. “I am not so young as you, my lover. I require time to recover before you may suck me. In the meantime…” He tapped at my lips.

Dumbass that I was, I opened them and my belly flipped as he shoved the moist tip into my mouth. Fed me his cum.

“With the spill of our semen and blood, by taking each into our bodies.” He smiled at me, red eyes sparkling. “It is done.”

My chest still heaving from my labored pants, I tried to paste sense into my head. “What’s done?” I asked around his finger. Which I sucked, as though the sticky digit was his cock.

Jae growled his satisfaction. And reawakening hunger?

My sore, slutty asshole clenched.

“We are mated.” He bent to brush a kiss on my forehead, dopy and gratified.

I released his finger with a loud pop. “But not bound?”

“Not yet. My oath remains unoffered, unfulfilled.” He blew out an exhausted chuckle. “You are no less mine.” When I glared at him, he snickered. “What? I belong to you as well. Stupid human.”

When I shoved at his hip, he climbed off my groin and my tingling cock slid from his messy ass. “You are such a dick.”

He stretched out his hand to help me up, steadying me when I wobbled on my feet. “But I am your dick now, forever and always.”

I harrumphed, staggering hand in hand with my demon to the cabin door.

Forever and always?

That’s what I wanted, desperately…and was equally terrified of.