I watched mesmerized as the prince of the underworld set me ablaze. Literally.

His hands brushed over my belly, infusing his warmth deep inside me, and my legs started to give beneath my weight. I lay my head back against his shoulder as he found the cusp between my thighs again. Holding me to him with one arm, he breached the folds, brushing softly, stroking until the tinder he’d ignited in my abdomen blazed to life. I clawed at his arm, wanting more, but once again he placed my hand back on the wall.

Then he was gone.

I opened my eyes and he was on his knees in front of me. My nails dug into the plaster when he opened me further and branded me with a fiery kiss. I gasped. Pleasure pulsed through me as his tongue caused stinging tendrils to swirl inside me like a dust devil struggling to become a tornado. I sought that peak, but I didn’t have to look hard. He grazed his teeth along the sensitive apex, then feathered his tongue in sweet, short sweeps, stoking the embers, coaxing me closer and closer until a riptide of raw lust engulfed me. The orgasm rocketed through me, sending out pulsating swells of unimaginable pleasure to every nerve in my body. I plunged my fingers into his hair and held him to me as the tidal wave rose to exquisite peaks, then ebbed slowly, the sharp contractions tapering off.

With the release of all that energy, I almost fell against the mirror, but Reyes was behind me at once, his quest only just beginning when he pushed his pants over his hips and entered me from behind in one long thrust. A twinge of delight leapt inside me as the orgasm that had yet to ebb entirely reignited.

He captured my gaze in the mirror, daring me to watch, his eyes sparkling with unspent passion.

And how could I not? He was magnificent. His muscles strained against the T-shirt he wore as he buried himself again and again.

He pulled me back against him, locking me there as he whispered into my ear. “Come with me again,” he said in the same Gaelic brogue, the fires around him fueled by the friction our bodies created. “See what you do to me, my ghraih.” My love.

I focused on him as his powerful strokes fanned the flames around him. His brows furrowed, his expression one of almost agony as his own climax neared. He braced one hand on the wall, clenched his jaw. His breathing grew labored as a biting pleasure brushed over my skin, nipping and scratching in rapturous delight. He thrust harder, an exquisite hunger swelling inside me, as though he could siphon the pleasure from the very marrow of my bones.

I felt it the moment he erupted inside me. He groaned as his orgasm crested, as it surged from him and into me, and then I saw it. I saw him. He exploded into a sea of flames. They consumed him and engulfed me in a torrent so savage, so volatile, I wondered if I would survive.

The air left the room, and my lungs seized. My eyes rolled back as wave after wave of scalding fire crashed into me. The desire was overwhelming and earth shattering and wonderful.

*   *   *

I tumbled to earth slowly and blinked back to this plane. Disentangling myself, I turned to him and focused on his impossibly handsome face.

He still had a hand braced on the wall, struggling to catch his breath as one final spasm shuddered through him. Then he stepped closer until he had me pressed into the cool mirror. He placed his forehead on the hand braced against the wall and wrapped an arm around me.

“You saw?” he asked, and I felt the tiniest ripple of insecurity radiate out of him.

“I saw. It was amazing.”

He wasn’t so sure. Doubt settled deep in his core. I stroked his back to assure him that everything I saw, everything he showed me was incredible, but I realized his shirt was wet. Very wet. Too wet.

I lifted my hand and gasped. It was covered in blood.

Pushing him off me, I stepped away to see what had happened, but he quickly turned until he was facing me again.

“Reyes, you’re bleeding,” I said, trying to turn his body.

He steeled himself, his jaw working, his gaze hard as he stared down at me. He hadn’t expected me to notice anything amiss.

“That’s why you’re wearing a shirt.” It suddenly made sense. That little niggling in the back of my mind as he’d made love to me half dressed. That just didn’t happen often. “Take it off.”

“I’m fine,” he said, jerking the pajama pants into place and tying them.

I did the same. I picked up my nightgown and slipped it over my head. “Wonderful. Then show me.”

“Dutch,” he said as though in warning, turning to face me when I tried to come around again.

But I saw the long streaks of blood in the mirror. Slashes that started at one shoulder, cut across his back, and ended under his rib cage. Claw slashes that only a bear or a hellhound could inflict.

I erupted in anger. “Take off your shirt or I’ll take it off for you.”

He knew I could. He knew I could completely incapacitate him with one word. But instead of the explosion I’d expected, he stilled. His lids narrowed, but not out of anger. An emotion more like pride spilled out of him. One corner of his sensual mouth tilted up, but he shook his head nonetheless. “No. You’ve seen enough over the past few months. I won’t have you exposed to the depths of my stupidity.”

The anger inside me dissipated immediately. “Mr. Farrow,” I said, twirling my finger, instructing him to turn around, “the depths of your stupidity are the least of my concerns.”

With a resigned sigh, he lifted the shirt over his head, his muscles bunching as he did so, and turned to face the mirror. And that was when I decided to take up gardening as I planted my face in the floor behind him.

*   *   *

“It’s hormones,” I said when Osh brought me a glass of water.

He had apparently been headed to the bathroom for a shower when he heard a thunderous crack and the ground shook beneath his feet—his words. Surely my fall wasn’t that thunderous.

“I just got light-headed.”

He winked at me, his signature top hat back in place, since the wedding festivities were over. Reyes held a cold rag to my temple, his expression severe. I’d scared him. I’d scared me too, but not for my own sake.

“I fell on Beep.” I poked my belly, hoping she’d respond. “Do you think she’s okay?”

“Better than you, loca.” Angel had dropped in, too, because I needed to be insulted as well as disoriented and humiliated.

“Angel Garza,” I said, pointing at him threateningly. “I can do things now. Scary things.”

He raised his hands, the boyish grin he wore perforating my heart.

“Duct tape?” I asked Osh.

He raised it, then tore off a strip to tape up Reyes’s back. He’d been wearing duct tape under the dark gray T-shirt he had on earlier. I knew I’d seen odd lines across his back. But, thinking he’d healed for the most part, he peeled it off when he took a shower. He was wrong. His back bore two long slashes across it with four gashes each. One set extended from his shoulder to just under his rib cage. The other across the small of his back. The hellhounds’ claws were like razor blades and the cuts were bone deep. Which would explain my sudden but blessedly short departure from reality.

“I think if I were you,” Angel said to Reyes, “I’d stop trying to cuddle with hellhounds.”

Reyes shot him a glare that didn’t even faze him. Normally, Angel was scared to death of my husband. Clearly, they’d grown close enough in the last few months to give Angel’s mouth free rein.

“If this happened yesterday,” I said as Reyes bit down, steeling himself against the pain of Osh’s administrations, “why are you not healing faster?”

Osh answered for him. “Because he’s not sleeping. He hasn’t been in stasis for months.”

“Reyes,” I said, drawing his gaze, “you have to sleep. Why aren’t you sleeping? Eight months? How is that even possible?”