What he told me this morning about wanting privacy, about beingloud, has been echoing in my head all day, heating my blood every time I think about it.
I want to hear him loud.
I want to see what he looks like when he falls apart, when I’m the one tomakehim fall apart.
At the window, Callum looks down on the city lights below. Handsome, even in his glamoured form, but I suddenly ache to see what he’d look like illuminated as himself.
I cross the room in a few long strides and grab his hand.
I really, really can’t wait to be out of this realm so he doesn’t have to wear the glamour anymore.
There’s just something so disconcerting about looking over expecting to see my demon and finding amanthere. I miss his wings, his horns, the flash of his fangs when he smiles. I especially miss that damned tail and the way he can’t seem to stop using it to tug me closer to him.
When I slide the ring off, the change is instantaneous. Between one blink and the next, he’s back, rolling his shoulders, stretching his wings, crimson eyes gleaming like he can see how much I enjoy having him back in his true form.
His human clothes lay in a heap on the floor. It leaves him in just the same set of undershorts he had on for bed last night—what he must have been wearing when he put the glamour on—and damn, this view is even better than the one out the window.
Magnificent black wings and the long whip of his tail. Acres and acres of taut masculine skin and muscle, dotted here and there with scars I have the sudden urge to ask him all about, to know what stories they tell about his life. The curve of his horns, the gleam of his crimson eyes, the hint of a fang and a very, very noticeable ridge beneath the thin covering of his shorts.
All of it makes me feel crazed, ravenous, pulsing with magick and aching to touch him.
Callum stiffens briefly, glancing back toward the window. “This is… alright? No one will see me here?”
“We’ll keep the lights turned off,” I murmur, reaching around him, fingers drifting up the broad planes of his back to find the powerful roots of his wings. “Or the shades drawn. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
I mean it.
It really, really doesn’t matter.
The whole damn world could see. The local news could fly a helicopter right outside this window to capture the impossibility of a demon in the human realm, and I don’t think I’d care. I don’t think it would stop me.
“Star,” Callum gasps when I find what I’m looking for.
His wings are incredible. I want to know how they work, how they feel, how sensitive they are as my fingers map their curves up and up, tracing the lines of black, leathery skin.
“That,” he gasps again, “is considered a very intimate touch by demonkind.”
“Is it?” I’m barely aware of what I’m saying as my hands jump from his wings to his hair, to the arch of his horns.
When I grip him there, tip his head back, his hands land on my hips and squeeze hard.
“What do you want, Seren?” he asks, like it’s a matter of utmost urgency. “Tonight, in this room, what do you want?”
It’s not a matter ofwant.
It’sneedcoursing through me.
No. Stronger than that.
It’s as if every instinct I possess has been turned up until the dials broke. All those seeking tendrils pouring from me. Unstoppable. Unrestrained.
Callum sucks in a sharp breath.
Can he feel it, too?
Or maybe it’s been like this for him all along.
Maybe this is what he felt that first night in the Middle, when I was so damned determined to run away from him. Maybe he’s always known and has just been waiting for me to catch up.
