I look up at him and he’s part beast. His face is mahogany, his fangs are out. His eyes are Barrons. The look in them isn’t. It makes me wild. I can be whatever I want to be with him. No inhibitions. I feel him growing harder, longer inside me.

“You can do that?” I gasp. The beast was bigger than the man.

He laughs, and it is definitely not a human sound.

I moan, I whimper, I writhe. It’s incredible. He’s filling me up, gliding deep and deliciously inside me where I’ve never felt a man before. Oh, God! I come. I explode. I hear someone roaring.

It’s me. I laugh and keep coming. I think I scream. I use my claws and he bucks in me, sudden and rapid. He makes that sound in the back of his throat I’m so crazy about. I love that sound.

I’d walk through hell and back, smiling, as long as he was beside me. As long as I could glance over at him and our eyes would meet and we’d share one of those wordless looks.

“You haven’t lost your feathers.” His words are strange, guttural, forced out around fangs.

I’d snort, but then his tongue is in my mouth, my jaws are wide, and I can’t breathe, and he’s right. One day you do meet a man who kisses you and you can’t breathe around it and you realize you don’t need air. Oxygen is trivial. Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.

“Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,” he agrees. He knows what I’m thinking. Always. We’re connected. The atoms between us ferry messages back and forth.

“Harder. Deeper. Come on, Barrons. More.” I feel violent. I am unbreakable. I am elastic around him. Insatiable. His hand is on the side of my neck, around my throat, half cupping my face. His eyes bore into mine. He watches every nuance, every detail of every expression, as if his existence depends on it. He fucks with the single-minded devotion of a dying man hunting God.

As he fills me, I wonder if—in the same way that sex makes its own unique perfume—we don’t really “make” love. As in create, manufacture, evoke an independent element in the air around us, and if enough of us did it really well, for real, not just for the hell of it, we could change the world. Because when he’s in me, I feel the space around us changing, charging, and it seems to set off some kind of feedback loop, where the more he touches me, the more I need him to. Having sex with Barrons sates my need. Then feeds it. Sates, then feeds. It’s a never-ending cycle. I get out of bed with him, frantic to be back in it again. And I—

“—hated you for it,” he says gently.

That was my line.

“I never get enough, Mac. Drives me bug-fuck. I should kill you for what you make me feel.”

I understand perfectly. He is my vulnerability. I would become Shiva, the world-eater, for him.

He withdraws and I nearly scream from the emptiness.

Then he’s lifting me into his arms and I’m on the bed, and he’s spreading me over the mound of pillows, nudging my legs wide, and when he pushes into me from behind, I sob with relief. I’m whole, I’m alive, I’m—

I close my eyes and ride the mindless bliss. It’s all I can do. Be. Feel. Live.

I’m Pri-ya again.

I always will be with this man.

Much later, I look up at him. He’s on top of me, barely inside me. I’m swollen, hot, and fiercely alive. My hands are over my head. He likes to tease, an inch, maybe two, until I’m crazy with need, then drive it home hard. It undoes me every time.

I know part of what turns me on so hard, makes me so violent with lust, is that he’s dangerous. I fell for the bad guy. I’m crazy about the one who’s trouble. The alpha that doesn’t play well with others and doesn’t take orders from anyone.

What else would I expect? It’s possible I’m part of the ancient creator of the Unseelie race.

He’s kissing me. V’lane’s name is long gone from my tongue. There’s only him, and he’s right: No other man would fit.

“Maybe there’s nothing wrong with you at all, Mac,” he says. “Maybe you’re exactly what you’re supposed to be, and the only reason you feel so conflicted about it is that you keep trying to bat for the wrong team.” He thrusts deep, rocks his hips forward with a muscle I’d be willing to bet no human man had.

I arch my back. “Are you saying you think I’m evil?”

“Evil isn’t a state of being. It’s a choice.”

“I don’t think—”