“Every day?”
“At minimum.” His expression turned serious. “Ava, I need you to know—this isn’t just physical for me. I haven’t felt like this in four centuries. Maybe never. The thought of goingback to how things were before, of pretending this is just an arrangement?—”
She pulled him down into a kiss, pouring everything she felt into it. When they broke apart, she cupped his face in her hands.
“It was never just an arrangement. Not for me.”
His eyes searched hers. “When did you know?”
“Conference Room Seven. When you told me about your garden.”
“Ava.” Her name sounded different in his mouth. Heavier. Like it meant more than two syllables had any right to.
She reached between them, wrapping her hand around his cock through his pants. “Now are you going to keep talking, or are you going to fuck me?”
He laughed, the sound rough and wanting. “Counselor, your oral advocacy skills are impeccable.”
“Less talking, Castellanos.”
“As you wish.”
What followed was messy and intense and not at all coordinated—his elbow catching the headboard, her knee finding his hip at the wrong angle, both of them laughing and adjusting and trying again. Clothes finally shed completely, kicked off the bed to join the pillow graveyard on the floor. His hands and mouth everywhere, the ocean breeze cooling the sweat on her skin between kisses.
When he finally pushed inside her, she felt the stretch and the heat and the rightness of it settle into her bones. He murmured her name in language after language, each one lower than the last, and the marks blazed bright enough to light the room in shifting blue and silver. She could see their shadows thrown huge and tangled across the ceiling.
They found a rhythm that didn’t need thinking about. The marks blazed brighter with every beat—not contract magic, not obligation. Just them choosing this. His forehead droppedagainst hers and she could feel his breath coming apart, could feel the six-thousand-year-old composure dissolving in real time, and the most devastating part was that he let it. Let her see him without the armor. Without the polish. Just Victor, undone.
Afterward, they lay tangled together, both breathing hard. Ava pressed her cheek to his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow. The marks still pulsed faintly—call and response, blue and silver, a quiet conversation in light.
The ocean rolledagainst the shore in slow, rhythmic waves.
Ava lay against Victor’s chest, her cheek pressed to skin still warm from what they’d done. His heartbeat was steady beneath her ear, slower than a human’s, she realized. Deeper. Like everything about him, it operated on a different timescale.
The breeze through the balcony door cooled the sweat on her skin, raising goosebumps along her arms. Victor pulled the sheet higher without being asked, tucking it around her shoulders.
His fingers traced patterns on her back. Absent. Possessive. Like he was mapping territory he intended to claim permanently.
“So,” she said against his collarbone. “That happened.”
His chest rumbled with laughter. “Your gift for understatement remains intact.”
“I try.” She propped herself up on an elbow to look at him. In the aftermath, he looked younger somehow. Less guarded. The sharp edges of the demon lawyer had softened.
She traced the sigil on his chest, watching it shimmer faintly beneath her touch. The marks had blazed so bright during… she felt heat rise to her cheeks at the memory.
“Still thinking about the glowing?” He caught her hand, pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
“Hard not to.” She watched blue light ripple under his skin where their hands touched. “You said it appeared three weeks ago. The day we signed.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t think to mention it?”
“I thought it was just contract magic.” His thumb traced circles on her palm. “Standard binding notation. I’ve had marks appear before for significant agreements.”
“But this isn’t standard.”
“No.” His voice softened. “This is something else entirely.”
