Demon Forged

pieces. He could go back to her now with this frustration pounding at him, this hurt, and they would fuck on her worktable or the floor and he would lose himself in her. He knew it. Passion rode that edge with them, and never allowed for hesitation.
    But why was it so damned impossible to make love to her without anger between them?
    He stopped at the hearth and slipped his hand into the shallow bowl of fire. Pain licked at his fingers before he drew on his Gift and pulled the heat from his skin. With a soft nudge of power, the dying flames roared upward.
    This, he could control.
    But where was Irena’s fire? She responded to him, yes. But she had always burned hot on her own. Where was that now?
    Without warning, she grabbed his arm from behind and wrenched it back, out of the flames.
    “You stupid ox,” Irena hissed. “If you must burn yourself . . . to .. .”
    Her voice faltered as he spread his fingers. She stared at the unmarked skin. He watched her fists clench, and the hard fury come into her eyes.
    “You didn’t tell me you can do that,” she said with a carefully neutral tone that might have terrified a novice.
    She wanted to hit him, Alejandro realized, and suddenly he felt like laughing. “In four centuries, there is much I haven’t told you,” he pointed out. In a single movement, he caught her waist and swung her up onto the stone ringing the hearth. Before she could flinch away from the flames, his Gift surrounded her. “Such as discovering that I only burn when I must create my own heat.”
    Her brow creased. “You aren’t hurt by any other fire?”
    “No. And this close, I can also protect you.”
    Her gaze held his. Deliberately, she leaned back, suspending herself over the dancing orange and yellow tongues. Only his hands at her hips prevented her from toppling over into the bed of coals.
    He didn’t need to ask if she trusted him. Earlier, she had given him control—even though that wasn’t her nature, any more than it was his nature to control her.
    Perhaps that was where they had stumbled.
    He pushed aside a charred piece of wood, sending up a shower of sparks. When there was an even bed of embers with no sharp edges, he lowered her into the hearth. She lay before him like a pagan sacrifice, her upper body surrounded by fire. The air shimmered around her; her eyes glowed as fiercely as the coals.
    “Tell me, Irena.” He slid his fingers beneath her loosened apron. “Tell me to keep my promise . . . and to keep you safe.”
    Irena vanished the apron. Her nipples were the delicate pink of an oyster’s shell, brushed with coral by the orange light of the fire. It took everything in him not to bend his head and suck at her wildly.
    A smile curved her mouth. “Keep your promise, Olek.”
    She didn’t say the rest, he knew, because she thought it was both obvious and stupid. Of course he would keep her safe.
    Still, he didn’t move. “Tell me how.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “Put your mouth on me before I kill you.”
    Better, but not enough. “If you kill me, you will burn.”
    With a snarl of frustration, Irena reared up and grabbed his hair. She dragged him down into the flames with her, shoved his lips to her breast.
    At the first lick, her snarl softened into a moan. Pleasure skimmed over her psychic scent, then plunged as he drew her deep into his mouth, circling his tongue around her hardened nipple.
    She pulled at his hair. “More.”
    Both the demand and gentle pain rippled through him, sweet and hot. Yes. This was what he’d needed, too. For Irena to make demands, so that he could fulfill them. He licked and teased his way across her chest. He rocked against her, his heated shaft grinding against her core. Sparks shot into the air around them.
    “More,” she said, and this time the word was both a demand and a plea.
    His fingers tore at the laces of her leggings before he remembered. He stopped.
    “Tell me, Irena.”
    She looked at him down the length of her body, past her heaving breasts, the tips reddened from the heat of his mouth. “Keep your promise.”
    He tugged a lace free. “How?”
    “Push my legs apart and taste me.” Her hands fisted around burning charcoal. “And do not stop, even if I scream.”
    He wouldn’t. She’d scream his name, hers, and every one of her gods before he finished. But that was not what his promise had been.
    “Even if you beg ,” he corrected.
    Her laugh dared him to try. “We will see who begs.”
    His fingertips met,