Never again.

A shiver went through her as she remembered the heat in Tir’s eyes when he’d lifted his face from between her thighs. Arousal slid from her opening at the memory of what he’d done with his tongue and mouth.

She wanted him to touch her that way again. She wanted to give him the same pleasure.

Her hand slid over the smooth flesh of her cunt, fingers seeking and finding the wet evidence of desire. She stroked and probed, gathered the silky moisture on her fingertips, and caressed her stiffened clit.

A moan escaped, loud in the confines of the lair, and her face heated as she imagined Tir hearing it and knowing she was touching herself as she thought about him. Her nipples hardened, ached for his touch. Spikes of need shot up her spine with each pass over the tiny, naked head of her clit.

Araña closed her eyes and tilted her head back, imagining Tir hovering over her, watching, commanding that she give him her release.

Heat suffused her body. Orgasm shimmered through her, a pale imitation of what she’d experienced with him.

Worry rose in its wake, about the pain sure to come later when he was gone, leaving her bereft of touch and heartbroken. She didn’t think she could keep the needs of the body and the needs of the soul separate.

The demon mark lay on her hand. She touched it, wishing she could draw answers from it.

She was meant to find and free Tir. That much she believed beyond any doubt. The vision leading her to him was too different from the ones she’d had before for it to be otherwise.

But she was mortal, a human damned to Hell by the mark, and he was something else, something so much more. He was hundreds of years old, perhaps thousands, perhaps truly immortal.

Araña hugged herself, suddenly afraid of how much she already craved his touch, how much more she’d come to need it the longer she experienced it. Part of her recognized it was already too late to free herself from the web of destiny. It had been too late the moment she touched the thread of Tir’s soul.

Taking one of the blankets with her, she crawled to the lair entrance, wanting to escape thoughts of the future. Life had taught her such thoughts did little good. In the end, as long as she wore the demon mark, it defined her future—a fiery hell and a demon master.

The metal hatch hiding the entrance to the lair was heavy, but she managed to open it and escape into morning light. She detoured at nature’s call, then wrapped the blanket around her like a sarong before joining Tir by a fire pit far enough from the lair not to draw attention to it.

He was naked, crouched near the fire, black hair fanning over his shoulders and cascading in waves to his hips. His skin was marbled perfection, bone and muscle sculpted into a form that would inspire poetry and song and magnificent paintings.

Once again she was reminded of the angels in Erik’s art history books, divine beings captured in oil by masters dead centuries upon centuries before The Last War. She didn’t believe in angels, at least not on earth. None had been sighted since the early days, when some of the texts making up the Bible had been written. And if there once was a God—the creator of mankind—then she thought he’d long since lost interest in this world. Otherwise, why would angels not have made themselves known along with all of the other supernaturals?

It was a blasphemous thought, one that would have earned her a beating had she ever expressed it in the settlement where she’d spent the first twelve years of her life.

Araña turned her attention to the food. Her stomach growled and her mouth watered.

“Quail?” she asked, looking at the spitted birds, their roasted bodies cooling to the side of the fire.

“Yes.”

When she would have reached for one of them, Tir’s fingers shackled her wrist. Her eyes went to his and her breath caught at what she read in his expression.

“Mine,” Tir said, not knowing where the word or the impulse had come from, but denying neither. He dropped her wrist and snagged his fingers in the blanket stretched across her breasts.

A sharp tug, accompanied by Araña’s small cry of surprised protest, and the material no longer hid her from him.

The sight of her flushed cunt lips was nearly his undoing. Only a grumbled reminder from her stomach kept him from pushing her onto her back and feasting on her.

Tir picked up one of the first roasting spits he’d set aside. A quick check told him the meat was hot, but not too hot. He tore a piece from it with his fingers and carried it to Araña’s lips in silent offering.

Mine, he thought again, the word rippling through him, bringing uneasiness with it, but not enough to make him stop feeding her by his own hand.

Pitch black eyes widened and the scent of her arousal intensified, as if their bodies communicated on some primitive level. As if some animal instinct had taken over in the aftermath of their spending the night in the Were’s lair. Whatever the reason, he found a savage satisfaction in tearing pieces of meat from the bird he’d hunted and prepared for them.

His cock throbbed each time her lips touched his skin when she took what he offered. His breathing became more labored as she grew bolder, capturing his fingers and sucking them into her mouth, licking away the juices with her tongue.

Heat leapt from her to him, a liquid fire starting where they touched and burning through his veins, eradicating all thought of eating. Primitive emotions held him in their grip, uncaring of any rational arguments he might offer to explain the raw possessiveness and molten need Araña stirred to life inside him.

He was free and with a woman for the first time in memory. For the moment it was reason enough to take what he wanted.

Araña’s eyelids lowered, hiding her expression beneath heavy black lashes as her belly filled and she became sated. But she couldn’t hide the rise of a different hunger.

Her lust beat against him like the wings of an exotic captive. Her scent intoxicated him.

A fantasy raged through him, of lying sprawled on cushions as she fed him by hand—a submissive seeing to the needs of her master. Vague images shimmered to life in his darkened memory, of men and women prostrate before him. But he could spare only a thought to the unanswered question of his true nature, could give only fleeting consideration to the possibility his race had once walked the earth as gods.

Araña’s hands settled on his chest, her palms against his nipples, sending hot sensation to his cock. She closed the distance between them, shy innocent and sultry seductress, a primitive female intent on having her needs met.

Tir let her push him backward onto his elbows. She straddled him and a groan escaped as her smooth, hot cunt rubbed against his penis, leaving it wet with her desire.

Need raged through Araña, making her shiver. The only thing that mattered was joining with Tir.

Blue eyes glittered, adding to the savageness of his features and stirring a primitive fear inside her. He wasn’t human. He wasn’t safe, even for his lover.

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching down and taking his cock in her hand, from guiding it to her entrance.

“Tir,” she whispered, impaling herself on him, nearly sobbing with the pleasure of having him inside her.

He didn’t help her, didn’t rise onto his knees and use his strength to lift her up and down on his shaft. He watched as she fucked herself on him.

It made her feel powerful at first. But then the emotional distance became unbearable.

It wasn’t only the feel of skin against skin she craved. It was the sharing of breath and body heat, the feeling of being truly intimate with another hum—

But he wasn’t. And she knew their being together was temporary.

I don’t care, she told herself. In all likelihood she would die in Oakland as Erik and Matthew had, or die trying to get back home.