After she awoke in the morning, this dream would fade, and he’d be gone.
There was a tight knot in her chest at that knowledge as her lashes fluttered shut and she drifted to sleep.
Chapter Four
“By all the hells, it is too fucking bright in here!”
That deep voice and the lurching of her mattress as someone climbed onto it wrenched Ember from sleep and forced a gasp from her throat. The bed frame squeaked and rocked.
She quickly sat up, nearly getting hit in the face by a swinging tail, and scooted back to stare in shock at the demon standing on her bed, who spread his arms to grasp the curtains.
In the sunlight, he appeared a touch wispy and insubstantial, his stars dimmed to teeny specks. But from this angle, she had an incredible view of his ass. His rounded, toned ass.
Ember bit the inside of her lip as her gaze traced over his backside and up to the tail at the base of his spine. How could a tail make an ass infinitely sexier?
Nyte yanked the curtains closed. The stars upon his flesh immediately brightened in the ensuing gloom, and his form again seemed solid but for those shadowy wings.
Am I…still dreaming?
To be sure, she pinched her arm. Pain shot through her. Ember’s eyes widened.
Nope, not a dream. That meant…last night had been real. That Nyte was real.
Holy shit, she had a demon in her bedroom. In her bed.
“You’re…not able to go out in the day?” she asked as he stepped down from her bed, landing as lightly and silently as a cat despite his size.
Nyte turned to face her with a scowl. “Of course I can go out in the daylight. I’m a nocturnus, not a vampire.”
God, he was as wickedly beautiful now as he had been last night. Her gaze trekked over his naked body, over every contour of muscle, down to the defined V on his pelvis, which guided her eyes lower still… Except there was nothing else there. No cock, no shadowy tentacle. Nothing but a smooth mound.
Then his words registered, and Ember gaped at him. “Vampires exist too?”
With a dramatically exasperated sigh, he brought a hand to his forehead. “You are severely uneducated for a witch.”
She narrowed her eyes. “For one, I didn’t even know I was a witch. And two”—she grabbed one of her pillows and chucked it at him—“just because I didn’t know something exists doesn’t make me uneducated.”
Nyte’s hand shot up, catching the pillow with a dullthumpbefore it could hit him in the face, and he tossed it back onto the bed with a nonchalant flick of his wrist. He studied her, jaw muscles ticking. “You have been bold in your dealings with me, mortal. Unafraid. Has the human world grown so ignorant in my absence that your kind no longer fears the things that should make your souls icy with terror?”
“Well, I’m not really the religious sort, sooo… I don’t really believe in the whole concept of heaven and hell. That also doesn’t make me ignorant. Demons, vampires, faeries, monsters under the bed, and all the things that go bump in the night only exist in stories. Or at least they’re supposed to. Because obviously you’re standing here, very, very real.”
Mimicking his pose from the night before, he spread his wings and arms to the sides, and his features darkened, making his violet-blue eyes seem brighter in contrast. “And shouldn’t your beliefs be shaken to their core now? Shouldn’t my presence, my existence, strike fear into you? Seeing what you thought unreal and impossible, basking in my presence?”
Her lips stretched into a slow smile. He was quite adorable when he acted all grand and powerful. She leaned forward, propped her elbows on her knees, and rested her chin atop her palms. “Actually, I just want to lick you all over.”
His arms and wings dropped, and he shook his head, a crease forming between his brows. “What is wrong with you?”
Ember pointed a finger at him. “Hey! There is nothing wrong with me finding a demon, especially one with sparklies all over his skin, sexy.”
Nyte stepped toward her, raising his hands with fingers curled to display the black claws at their tips. “I could rend the flesh from your bones and make you feel every agonizing instant of it, little witch. I could overwhelm you with such pain that you would forget who you were and offer to pay any price, even your soul itself, just to make it stop. I could feast upon your entrails as you watched.”
Ember arched a brow. “Will you?”
Those sinful lips pressed together, and her heart pounded as he stared at her, his gaze intense, smoldering, otherworldly. Straightening, he folded his arms across his chest and turned his face away, chin lifted haughtily. He hesitated before murmuring, “No.”
She chuckled as she flipped the covers aside andslid off the bed to stand. “Then I have nothing to fear from my pretty sparkly demon.”
He raked his hands down his face with a grumble. “I am neither pretty nor sparkly, damn it.”
