Somehow, I’d convinced myself, that made it better.
Did that make sense?
No.
Since I had my hands all over him once he touched me first.
But, I don’t know, it was just a trick I’d started using to make myself feel mildly less shameful, that made me not feel like I was betraying everyone in my community by meeting up with him.
I sucked in a slow, deep breath, trying to calm the chaos wreaking its way through my system as Minos’s arm raised, grabbing the top of the frame, making his chest stretch even wider than usual as he looked at me.
An average, you know, person wouldn’t have been able to see much in the dark. But Minos wasn’t a person at all.
I’d known since the early days at the Academy that demons had different senses than humans. Meaning all of them were heightened.
So while I could only see the outline of him because the moon was behind him, I knew he was standing there drinking me in.
Which was why I shrugged out of my jacket, dropping it down near my feet, then reaching up to let my long hair down, shaking it out as I did so because I knew he could smell the traces of my shampoo and conditioner on me even from across the room.
That, it seemed, was his breaking point.
On a low growl I didn’t even pretend didn’t make a shiver move through me, he released the top of the doorjamb and stalked toward me.
Slow.
Very, dare I say it, primal.
I’d been trained to always be the hunter, to never be the prey.
But my training had never told me that sometimes I wanted to be devoured.
At least, I did by this one beast.
Moving in front of me, his hands went out, reaching for my face. I swear he always reached for my face, holding my jaw in firm, yet gentle hands, like I was something precious. Dare I even think it—fragile.
I shouldn’t have liked that.
I existed to be hard and strong and damn near unbreakable.
But maybe there was a part of me that was still that teenage girl who wanted so badly to be seen as small and sweet and needing protection.
Minos said nothing.
Somehow, we both knew that talking would only ruin it.
He just held my jaw, his thumbs sliding across my cheeks for a second before he lowered down, sealing his lips to mine.
Soft.
Sweet.
God, how I sank into those sensations.
Until I remembered soft and sweet was not what we did. We couldn’t. It could get confusing. The only reason this worked was because it was hard and fast and dirty. Because there was nothing afterward to feel but contentment and a small heaping of shame.
So my hands moved up, slipping into his silky hair, curling, and yanking hard until his lips broke from mine.
He did so with a resigned sigh.
Because, even if it made no sense, even if it didn’t fit with everything I knew about a demon’s nature, he clearly wanted the soft and sweet too.
I couldn’t let myself think about what he wanted.
I had to keep that guard up between us.
This was sex, nothing more.
And with sex, I got mine, and he would get his.
That was it.
Case closed.
My hand twisted harder in his hair, waiting for that hiss that let me know the beast was coming out. I couldn’t see the Change, but I knew it was happening. It always did when I got rough with him.
The beast in him, that I knew what to do with.
The more human-looking and human-seeming Minos?
No. He was too confusing. And the last thing this situation needed to be—on top of forbidden and fucked up—was confusing.
A low growl moved through him as I turned, shoving my hands into his chest, and slamming him back against the brick wall.
It would have killed a human.
It was just a half-force movement for me, but it would be enough to cause major structural damage to a typical man.
Minos, though, just let out another of those sexy grumbles as his hand reached for me, grabbing me at the wrists, yanking them up over my head, and slamming me against the wall so my back was to him.
His one hand pinned my wrists over my head as his other yanked impatiently at my pants and panties, dragging them down over my ass, down my calves, and then waiting for me to step out of them as his teeth nipped at my neck, as I felt that deliciously filthy forked tongue of his sliding over my sensitive skin.
His hand released me as he dropped down behind me, sliding his tongue up my slick cleft from behind.
It never got old.
The way his foreign tongue moved over me, how it ignited a flame inside me that burned so hot that I swear my skin felt singed and overly sensitive.
Minos’s hands cupped my ass as his tongue found my clit, the edges of his split tongue massaging both sides of it, but refused to make direct contact, leaving me writhing and whimpering as the pressure built and built inside.