We both froze.
My heart tangled and tore, quadruple beating with rapidly encroaching death.
The new arrival wasn’t just a monster. He was a beast so much scarier than all the predators currently stalking. A beast standing on two legs with fangs like a vampire, eyes like a snake, and scales like a dragon.
Shaped like a man but taller than any I’d ever seen, he had no hair, no softness, no vulnerabilities. He had goat horns and bat wings and talons stolen straight from a devil.
Drake gulped as the nightmare stepped toward us. No, not stepped. Flew. An effortless swoop of membrane wings and snap of power.
Drake was lifted in one hand.
Thrown with one toss.
Eradicated with a single thought.
He cried out as he landed on the other side of the fire.
And the demon fell to one knee beside me. He held out his scaly hand, his glowing reptile eyes raking over me, and I knew.
My heart knew.
My soul knew.
My body instantly wanted him.
It wanted this monster because it knew who puppeteered such a thing.
It wasn’t biologically possible. He wasn’t my species anymore.
But he was male.
He was mine.
He’s…Sully.
With tears pouring, I placed my tiny breakable hand into his claw-frosted paw.
Electricity crackled. Chemistry ignited. That all-knowing, all-consuming, all-binding bond between a god and a goddess who no longer played in the human world but had strayed directly into myth ignited.
It gushed between us.
It branded us, burned us, broke us into pieces that belonged entirely to the other.
This was what Sully was.
He wasn’t just a man.
He wasn’t just a monster.
He was everything.
He was every creature and element.
He was fury and faith and utterly blinding loyalty.
Elixir refused to be thwarted any longer.
I’d found the man I loved and lusted.
He was here.
I could be given redemption and releases.
I could feel him beneath the fantasy. Not wearing fingerprint sensors meant I touched his skin beneath the scales.
I burned.
Scooting to my knees, I crawled into him. “You’re alive. You came for me.”
I twined myself over his scaly skin, my body with its oil sensed the otherworldly armour he wore but my fingers stroked the contours of human muscles. I kissed the ice-cold angles of his cheekbones.
I wanted him.
I needed him.
Now!
A savage growl echoed in his throat. The wolves surrounding us answered back, a symphony of snarls and yips.
Goosebumps prickled me, activating my lust a thousandfold. My thirst for him was maddening, terrifying. “Sully.”
Holding me in his massive paws, cords of power etching his reptilian skin, his features remained vicious but a soft glow appeared in the snake-slit eyes. “I found you.”
My stomach clenched as he brought my hand to his icy lips.
“I love you, Eleanor. I’m sorry I’m late. I’m sorry for what you’ve endured. But this is the last time you’ll ever be hurt this way. I give you my word.”
His voice wasn’t just a voice. It wasn’t a bear’s growl or wolf’s howl, it was a blend of all of them. A thick thunder of gravel and hurricanes.
Another orgasm threatened to split me in two.
I was turned on by his sheer potency. The fact that he could kill me with a single misplaced touch. He was so dangerous in this new form. It made every feminine, female part of me spread her legs and beg.
I wanted to be ridden and claimed.
I wanted him to take me for his own, and if he killed me while doing so, I would gladly give him my life forever.
“Sully…” More tears fell. “Thank God, you survived.”
“I did.”
“You came after me.”
“I’ll always come after you.” He nuzzled my nose with his. “You’re mine and I’m yours and I have so much to atone for.”
My heart smashed against my ribs, triple beating, failing. “I need you.”
He pulled away, his slitted eyes flashing with regret. “I can’t fuck you, Eleanor. Not like last time.” His voice rumbled, stroking me with fiery licks.
His denial hurt me worse than anything. “Please…it hurts. My heart…I need. Please, don’t refuse me.”
“I can’t feel you almost die in my arms again.” His talon-tipped thumb stroked my knuckles, his massive paw skating higher up my arm. “I can’t be the reason you suffer.”
My limb looked like a twig in his grasp. A silly little twig that he could snap at any moment. I gasped as my heart fisted and suffocated, making me breathless. “But I won’t be able to—”
“I’ll help you, Jinx…” With his strange eyes locked on mine, he hurt me. “I’m sorry.” His claw punctured my skin, driving the sharp tip into my vein, poisoning me with whatever venom he carried. “I love you, Eleanor. Please…please forgive me.”
“Forgive you…?” My eyelashes fluttered.
My heart heaved a final lurch.
Tiredness.
Heaviness.
Nothingness.
Chapter Eight
I MIGHT WEAR THE FLESH of a beast, but my heart was still that of a man. A heart that stuttered and howled as Eleanor turned limp and lifeless in my hold.