Araña closed her eyes and did nothing but feel. His heart beat steadily against her breast, sending subtle vibrations through her nipple and straight to her cunt. The taut muscles in his arms as he restrained her made her feel safe rather than confined.

Warm water lapped against her, caressing her folds as sunlight slid over her back and shoulders. His heat seeped into her.

Birds sang and leaves rustled. The stream rippled over rocks. All of it the music of the living.

A shiver of need went through her. A primal craving that came with surviving, that fed on Tir’s touch and the hardened length of his cock trapped between them.

Carnal hunger knotted in her belly, urging her to press her lips to his neck and leave a trail of kisses on her way to his mouth. To coax him into opening for her, to twining his tongue to hers in wet heat and shared lust.

He’d healed her. She tried to remember something of it, but couldn’t. Perhaps that was why the spider allowed his touch. But it didn’t guarantee the spider would allow more—or ever allow it again once the contact was broken.

His arms loosened enough for her to ease away from him. The instant her gaze met his, spider vision and reality melded in the deep water blue of his eyes, submerging her in the memory of the soul thread unlike any she’d seen before, the sigil-inscribed collar glowing icy blue when she followed the strand to him.

Levi had said Tir smelled completely human, but held in Tir’s arms, Araña thought the Were was wrong. Fear and worry, hard-learned habit, made her try again to warn Tir. “The spider—”

Tir stopped her with another laugh, with fingers tracing her collarbone—the feel of it something out of fantasy, so exquisite she never wanted it to end.

She’d hungered for touch all her life.

A moan escaped. It was followed by a gasp when his palm covered the demon mark.

“If it was possible for me to die at the hands of a human, it would already be done,” he said, the words nearly lost when his palm glided downward over her hardened nipple.

Araña shuddered. She fought to think, to question, to choose—though deep inside she knew she wouldn’t turn away from the lust she read in his eyes, from the needs of her own body to know a man, to have, for a little while, what others could have for a lifetime—a lover.

He wasn’t human. His words confirmed her suspicions.

He wasn’t Were. That much Levi had right.

She didn’t think he was vampire.

“What are you?” Araña asked, her voice barely audible.

His eyes became instantly hooded. “Does it matter?”

He shifted their positions abruptly, rolling so she lay underneath him, caged in the shallow pool, her upper body held out of the water by her elbows.

“Does it matter?” he asked again, his cock rubbing against her swollen folds and stiffened clit, making her tremble with need and the desire to cant her hips and have him pierce her.

Did it matter?

A small voice said yes. She might hunger for touch, but her soul longed for true intimacy— the joining of spirit and flesh as Matthew and Erik had.

A more insistent voice said no. Tir could touch her where others couldn’t. And at least for a little while, she wanted to lose herself in passion, to forget what she’d lost.

“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, putting more weight on one elbow in order to free an arm. She mimicked his earlier touch, tracing his collarbone, though her touch was more tentative than his had been. “I was dying and you healed me.”

He brought his face closer to hers, the movement causing the long, silky strands of his hair to become a curtain enclosing them in a private world. “It was a fair trade. You freed me.”

Araña gave a small nod of acknowledgment, reading in to his words that they were even now—a debt had been incurred and paid. There was no longer any obligation between them.

She ducked her head, feeling suddenly shy with the stranger who lay so intimately on top of her. She wanted this. She wanted him. But her normal confidence seemed to have deserted her.

Another shiver of need went through her, accompanied by a small sound of longing. Her fingers tangled in the black silk of Tir’s hair as her hips lifted, pressing the unprotected head of her clit against the hot steel of his erection.

“Please,” she whispered, a small word holding so many different meanings for her.

Raw need twisted in Tir’s gut, urging him to possess her even as it was tempered by an unfamiliar, inexplicable desire to protect her. She was beguiling him, drawing him into a web with her at its center.

He didn’t understand her, couldn’t guess at what motivated her. Her emotions were quicksilver he couldn’t grasp, her thoughts hidden in dark eyes.

Only her body was easy for him to read. And it sang to his, a siren’s song of temptation he had no will to resist.

“You’re beautiful,” Tir said, brushing his lips against her cheek, the touch gentle despite the savage ache in his cock as she ground her bare mound and clit against it.

Her soft laugh made him smile. “You’re the beautiful one,” she said, and he caught the words with the press of his mouth to hers.

Deep inside him, in the hidden recesses of lost memory, a warning sounded against sharing breath with her—but it came too late. He moaned against the satin of her lips, the sweet yielding of feminine to masculine as she opened for him, welcomed his tongue with hers in a slow, sensual slide.

He was sorry now he’d brought her to the water. The first taste made him hungry for more.

Later, he promised himself. Later he would kiss down her body and press his mouth to her swollen cunt lips. He’d lap the honeyed arousal he found there.

He shouldn’t care that no other man had ever touched her this way. But a savage, primal satisfaction surged through him at the thought of having her as only he could.

Liquid hunger poured into his bloodstream as one kiss melded into another, then another. He settled more heavily on her, changed their position, his arms sliding underneath her shoulders and his hands cupping the back of her head, his elbows supporting them both in the shallow pool.

His strength made it easy. His reward was the feel of her arms wrapped around him, her fingers tangling in his hair, holding him to her as if she were afraid he’d leave.

Soft, desperate sounds spilled from her mouth to his, enflaming him further. The head of his cock found her opening, sending a jolt of unparalleled ecstasy through him.

He rubbed back and forth, tormenting them both, swallowing her gasps and soft cries. She retaliated by lightly raking her fingernails down his back, by grabbing his hips and trying to hold him steady so she could impale herself on him.

Tir resisted with a husky laugh, with the rub of his chest over the tight points of her nipples. Fiery need arrowed straight to his cock each time his nipples struck hers.

He wanted to lift up, to press his nipple to her mouth and feel the lash of her tongue, the grasp of teeth and pull of lips as she laved and bit and sucked. He wanted to kiss downward to her breasts and do the same to her.

Later, he promised himself. Later he would explore more of her, conquer every inch of her.

A shock of pleasure made him gasp. Lost in his fantasies, he’d forgotten about resisting, about drawing out the moment when his length would be held deep in her body.

She’d captured his cock head in the hungry mouth of her opening. And it wept, cried in ecstasy, his arousal joining hers in a heated wash as she clenched him.

Twin urges assailed him. The desire to swallow her virgin cries warred with the desire to watch her face as he forged inside her for the first time.

The latter won, though his lips clung to hers and his tongue was loath to leave the wet heaven of her mouth. When he was finally able to draw away, her sound of protest added to his pleasure.