Demon Marked

you.” When her mouth fell open, he shook his head, swept his thumb over her lips as if to seal them closed. “You can’t say anything. I’ve hurt you, Ash. I can’t take that back. And you might have forgiven me, or you might say that the grenade made up for it—”
    “I did. I would.”
    “But it’s not yours to give. Not this one. It has to be me, doing my damn best to be the man I think might deserve you—not just some bastard who got lucky enough. As it is, it’s almost impossible, but I’ll spend forever trying.”
    Well, Ash thought that was totally unnecessary , but it obviously made a difference to him, so much that during his explanation, the determination filling his words seemed to fill his physical form, too, shifting and changing his—
    “Oh,” she gasped at the same time his eyes closed, a tortured moan rising from his chest. The feather fell from her suddenly nerveless fingers. “Nicholas, you—I think you shape-shifted. Not much, you just became . . . more.”
    Monstrous.
    Stretching. Almost painful . . . but not. She sat up and cried out as his cock pushed deeper. Her nails dug into his chest.
    His eyes were already shining. His hands moved to her hips, tried to lift her off. “I’m hurting you.”
    “You’re not hurting—” She broke off as he managed to slide her up over his length. Ecstasy shot through her veins, sparking new fires. Her inner muscles clamped around him. Her head swam with the unexpected, overwhelming pleasure of it. “Oh, my God. Stop. ”
    He froze. Already needing more, she pushed down, and his entire body clenched, a groan ripping from him. Trembling, she waited for him to recover.
    He looked up at her. She leaned forward, braced her hands, and gave him her wickedest grin.
    “So, Guardian. Let’s see just how long you can hold on.”

CHAPTER 19

    Nicholas could hold on for a long time, as it turned out. He’d adapted well to his heightened senses, though his glowing eyes and abruptly appearing wings showed the same lack of control that Ash once had.
    She’d never experienced Enthrallment, though, and had only sensed it once, when a novice became fixated on the fragrance of baking bread wafting from a sandwich shop near the warehouse. That Guardian’s psychic scent had gone into a long, slow spin—as if he were dizzy, and the bread formed his only remaining anchor.
    When it happened to Nicholas, that anchor was the taste of her, as if his world had narrowed down to her flavor against his tongue. Ash held onto him through each searching lick, crying out again and again, and though her body remained strong, inexhaustible, by the time he came back to himself she was wrung out with the ecstasy of it.
    Then he lifted his body over hers, pushed deep inside, and wrung her out again.
    When they finally emerged from the bedroom, night had long since fallen and the fire had died down, leaving the cabin stone cold. From her rocking chair, Ash watched him lay the kindling in the stove, the lamplight playing over the muscles of his back.
    He had gotten bigger. Not in any one direction, but overall taller and wider, and proportioned in exactly the same way. Without anyone standing next to him as comparison, the difference was hard to immediately see. The only evidence of it was in the tighter fit of his pajama pants, the higher hem.
    “Unless you figure out how to shape-shift back or make your own clothes in the next few weeks, you’re going to have to buy a new wardrobe.”
    “I’ll hire someone.” He reached for the lighter. “So you already have a penthouse in San Francisco?”
    “It’s awkward masturbating to my fantasies of you in a warehouse full of Guardians with superhearing,” she said. “So I split my time between training and the penthouse, where I’ve been setting up these accounts that Lilith wants, and taking over your company.”
    The icy challenge in the glance he shot her sent a thrill through her blood. “You can try, demon.”
    She would. “You’ll be training, too, but I’d love it if you’d work with me on these investments. I could use another eye and another brain, especially at this stage.”
    “Is sex included?”
    “Yes.”
    “That easy? No negotiation?”
    “I’ll throw in a lot of sex.”
    “Then I’m in.”
    Perfect. “It’s almost like training, anyway. Investing and trying to negotiate with a demon both mean a lot of waiting for the right opportunity, making the right queries to discover what they’re not