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“May I undress you, Rowan?” The words lacked the heat that she expected, considering the subject.

This was nothing more than him repaying her for saving the dragons. He had made it clear there was nothing else allowed to flourish between them. So then, why was he being so unbearably tender?

In response, she gave a solemn nod.

With each piece of clothing, more and more heat knotted in the depth of Rowan’s belly. As his fingers hooked around her panties, she felt her uncontrollable lust overcome her utter embarrassment and she was slick with need.

She noted the tension on his shoulders as he slid them past her thighs, the increased grips on their sides as they passed her knees, and the smell of honey in the air as they finally cleared her body.

He was just as turned on as she was.

The realization pushed back her exhaustion. He still wanted her. He had just plucked her out of a pile of her own vomit, and here he was, full of desire.

Her inner succubus wanted out.

Her wings made an involuntary movement, pushing her away from the wall and right into his lap, the fabric of his pants hardly a barrier to his erection.

They both let out a small strangled sound as she scrambled to get off, her legs once again giving out before she could stand.

Alessandro slid his arms around her and pulled her into his chest.

Rowan could feel the tension he had carried was slowly evaporating the longer he held her.

She buried her face into his neck and wrapped her own arms around him, allowing every dark feeling she had from the shame of losing the battle with Antoni, to the anger at not being better after a week and the sadness of never really having a chance at standing beside the man she currently held wash away.

She could take what she could get from him. It was better than nothing, wasn’t it?

“Just a little longer.” His voice was full of emotion that confused and terrified her.

But she gave this to him and, if she was being honest, to herself.

This simple physical touch was more nourishing than what she had tried to gather for herself in her feeding frenzy. She was so fucked.

She wanted more. To fill herself up on him.

But she wouldn’t be the one to ask.

She was Rowan Dahl, and she didn’t beg.

“The smell is getting to me.” She whispered when she reached her limit.

“Me too.” He said, but instead of moving, he hugged her tighter.

She couldn’t help it. She laughed and pushed at his chest. “Are you going to help me or not?”

He helped her to sit on the edge of the tub as it filled with near boiling water, just how she liked it.

He made to clean the worst of the vomit off with a warm soapy towel, but Rowan insisted she be the one to do that.

Once she handed it back, she had expected to be given a new washcloth and left to her own devices, but as soon as he began shedding his clothes, she knew she was going to have company.

A mixture of panic and thrill made her forget how to breathe when he grabbed the edge of his sweatshirt and pulled it off in one smooth movement.

His curls bounced back into place before he summoned a pin to pull it all back.

She preferred it down, and wild, but with it pulled up, the definition of his jawline and the bulging of his upper traps more than made up for it.

She didn’t know whether it was a disappointment or a relief when he moved to grab a container of bath salt to pour it into the stream from the tap.

She sank into the water, realizing just how large the tub was as it covered everything up to her shoulders. Relief from the salts washed over her and she watched sleepily as he reached up to remove the shower head from its holder.

It was an insane mixture of intimacy and a lesson in humility as he washed her hair. His fingertips left behind the sense of thousands of butterflies resting along her scalp.

“You’re good at this.” She sighed as he worked.

His hands paused.

“Keep going.” She pleaded, and his thumbs rubbed the back of her ears.

Instant desire rushed through her at the simple touch. She felt her nipples harden so much they throbbed. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. Her breathing shallowed out as his touch lowered to lather her neck, then shoulders.

She needed to get her head out of the gutter immediately. In her mind, she began reciting company policies Kin had once forced her to write out again as punishment for taking over 45 IOUs in one month during their first year working together.

But then Alessandro’s hands were on her back and she was so stunned by the amount of pleasure wrought on at the base of her wings that a moan ripped out of her.

His movements completely stopped, and she tried to calm herself down in the small eternity of silence.

“Your wings are like ours.” He whispered. “I should’ve known it would be an erogenous zone.”

Her mind was racing with only one thought.

Take. Take. Take.

It was a voice she didn’t recognize, yet had known her whole life lurked within her.

Her succubus was awake. Yet, her body was in no state to take care of the feverish need building to heights she’d never reached before.

The contradictory nature of her situation made her feel as if she was being pulled apart in two different directions. Her vision blurred for a heartbeat before it was suddenly a mixture of reds and purples accompanied by the most delectable scent of heated honey from behind her.

She tilted her head back and licked her lips when she found the source. At the base of Alessandro’s neck, a bright blade of white light called her name.

Against her tongue, she found her canines were suddenly sharp and growing. Her heartbeat raced as she turned to face him. If she just bit there, she knew it would bring him the greatest pleasure and give her some semblance of peace.

She entwined her fingers into his curls, pulled back with a slight tug to expose the entirety of his neck.

“Rowan. Stop.” His hand was on hers, attempting to halt her. But his voice was full of husky desperation.

“This is what you want.” She heard herself speak. But it wasn’t her as much as the demonic part of her that only had one purpose; eat, by any means necessary.

Her marking him was what he wanted most. Even with his refusal to come to terms with it, she knew that his fulfilled desire would satiate her for a small eternity.

His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, which in her vision only lightened and darkened in hues of purples and reds rather than their lovely rainbow swirls. His fingers brushed against her forehead, which reminded her of the first night they met.

And then her world was once again black.

XOXOXOXO

Rage ripped through Alessandro as he finished bathing the unconscious woman.

His dragon was beyond furious at what had just transpired.

He could feel his self control hanging on by the slightest thread, his scales fighting to overtake his sanity and wake the elf back up to demand she finish what she started, but anytime his fingers got near her forehead to undo the spell he summoned a knife to plunge into his thigh to keep a grip on his control. It made keeping her clean difficult.

“My king?”

Alessandro whipped his gaze to the man standing in the doorway to the bathroom.

“OUT!” He roared, shifting his body so Stone would not see Rowan’s naked form.

“Ale-“

Alessandro sent a flurry of ice to force the dragon out of the room, too out of control to diminish his attack to warning.

A wall of stone erected to protect his protégé. Alessandro found he had never been so grateful for the woman who stepped forth once the wall crumbled with the hits of the shards.

“Help her.” He demanded of Terra, who shoved Stone out of Alessandro’s line of sight.

Terra didn’t skip a beat. She had the woman in her arms only seconds before he felt the dragon was breaking past a threshold of his tight control.

Trusting no one above his Earth General, Alessandro phased to the one place he could pull his beast back from madness.

Gold twinkled and cold air washed over him as the world reassembled.

The immediate feeling of calm he had come searching for was absent. He hadn’t expected the level of fury that his dragon reached, but Rowan was not in the right headspace to make such a decision.

He had prepped the cave for an occasion like this. For a sojourn into the old days, where he was more beast than man.

He wouldn’t be able to leave until either he was back in control or until his dragon could work out the counter spell, which would almost certainly bring sanity with it.

Until such a time arrived, his beast was more than welcome to wreck their hoard. Anything to keep the world safe from him.

Chapter 26

Shattering glass and yells sliced through the air.

The sounds ripped Rowan from sleep in a rush of adrenaline.

Her eye snapped open.

Axel and Miasma were her only visitors, they were looking out of a window that offered a view of a darkened sky.

Pain she prepared herself for never came. Even the unbearable hunger that had haunted her was gone.

The only abnormal thing the elven-succubi felt was her limited access to magic. She despised it.

Pushing her discomfort down, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, getting the attention of both women.

“Princess!” Miasma gasped, already heading to check on her.

Rowan waved her down. “What’s going on?” She approached the window and before either woman could respond, a torrent of wind shattered glass into the room.

Rowan raised a hand to erect a barrier out of habit. When no magic came, she glared at the useless appendage as her sister pushed her to safety while notably handling the good doctor with much softer hands.

She watched as the two women dusted fine shards off Axel’s green tunic after standing back up. Oh-ho. There was something brewing there, wasn’t there? Rowan itched to ask inappropriate, personal questions, but there was something more pressing happening at the moment than her sister’s love life.