She spotted him in the most obvious place—the far corner of the bedroom, well outside the reach of the daylight, sitting with his back to the wall and a cloud of shadows around him. The darkness was thick enough that she could barely see the stars on his skin. Only his eyes were clear.
Smiling, Ember braced her hands on the bed and leaned forward. “Why don’t you come back to bed?”
Nyte’s eyes shifted to her. There was a coldness in them, icier than anything she’d seen since the night she’d summoned him. “No.”
His rejection hurt, but she didn’t let it deter her. Whatever had set him off and put him in this broody mood, she would help him overcome it.
She lifted her hand, and using the same finger she’d touchedherself with—which was now sparkling with his cum—she brushed her bottom lip. His scent filled her nose. In a playful tone, she said, “If you come here, I’ll suck you off.”
On a whim, she slipped her finger into her mouth. His flavor spread on her tongue as she slowly pulled her finger free. It was like tasting the sweetest rain.
Nyte’s eyes flared and brightened briefly, and the shadows around him seemed to darken afterward. But he remained otherwise still, offering no reply.
Ember frowned. What had changed between last night and this morning?
Rising from the bed, she padded across the room. The air was cool on her naked skin as she neared her demon.
“Nyte?” She reached out to touch his bent knee, but before her fingers made contact, he disappeared, the shadows that had surrounded him blinking out of existence.
She whirled to find him standing in the center of the room with his arms folded across his chest, his shoulders squared, and his chin raised.
“Enough, witch.”
“Nyte, what the hell is going on? Everything last night was…was perfect. Why are you putting this distance between us like what we did didn’t mean anything?”
“Because it didn’t.”
Ember flinched, stricken by his words. “What?”
His jaw ticked. “It cannot happen again. Will not.”
Feeling suddenly vulnerable in her nakedness, she wrapped her arms around herself. It was like her chest was caving in, constricting her insides, making it hard to breathe. They’d given themselves to one another. He’d called her his. “Why are you saying these things? Why are you doing this?”
Nostrils flaring, he turned his face away. His alreadystiff posture tensed further, and she saw his claws biting into his biceps, saw his wings draw tight against his back, saw his tail lash down toward the floor.
The silence in the bedroom was stifling, a suffocating miasma dominating the air, making it only more difficult for Ember to fill her lungs. Her eyes burned with the threat of tears. This was it? After all the time they’d spent together, after one of the best nights of her life, he was just going to leave her with all this hurt and not a single answer, not a glimmer of insight?
Not a single reason?
She couldn’t be in here with him like this, couldn’t stand it. The pain was too raw, the silence too loud, and if she was going to break down and cry, she didn’t want him to witness it.
As she stepped toward the bathroom to leave, Nyte spoke. His voice was thick and low, as though he were fighting to force out words that had no desire to be uttered. “I was involved with another female, long ago. A succubus named Sarnessa.”
Ember froze. Confused waves, at once hot and cold, coursed over her skin, making it crawl. A succubus? She turned her eyes back toward him, frowning.
Nyte lowered his chin, fixing his gaze on the floor. “Though I had observed humanity for millennia before I encountered her, I remained naïve regarding many things. I’d seen so much, but I had experienced so little. I’d witnessed love and lust but had never felt it, had watched sex but had never partaken. I’d had no such emotions, no such desires. I was intimate with human fear, but…not with intimacy itself.
“I first saw her while she was fucking a hapless mortal. She exhibited such unbridled passion, such…life. I was entranced. Of course, she was feeding from him. Drained him nearly to death. And as she stepped away from her victim, smiling, satisfied, and glowing, she noticed me. And her smile grew.” The faintest tremor ran through his wings. “I was taken by her immediately. She exuded what I’d only observed before then…desire, lust, and raw, confident sexuality. And for the first time, I felt it. Felt those stirrings. Having never dealt with her kind before, I foolishly thought both those feelings and her interest were genuine.
“My world had been cold and dark for as long as I had existed. Night was a time of fear, isolation, and stifling quiet. But she showed me it could be a time for passion, for heat, for closeness. That quickly, my world expanded infinitely. She showed me new pleasures, and I must admit, I grew fond of her. Doted upon her. Allowed myself to be vulnerable in ways I otherwise never would have. I gave her my trust, my attention, my time…and in so doing, gave her power over me without realizing it. I was her prey. As an immortal, I was a bottomless well of sustenance for her.
“But I did not understand that at the time. Didn’t recognize the signs that surely had been there all along. I knew only that I’d been somehow…kindled. Ignited from within. Made brighter. And at the peak of that feeling, she…” Nyte’s shoulders rose as he drew in a deep breath, and his lips twitched to reveal his fangs when he exhaled harshly. “She tore out my heart, just as she’d planned all along.”
Ember gasped softly, her eyes flaring. Surely he didn’t mean… “She…tore out your heart?”
He held out a hand, palm toward the ceiling, and curled his fingers as though clutching something within them. “Right from my chest. And devoured it before my very eyes.”
“Why?”
