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The water runs over me, and the steam thickens until the walls disappear behind a white haze. I press both palms flat against the wall and drop my head forward, trying to breathe through the burn. The ache beneath my ribs from last night has faded, but the emptiness it left behind has not. It’s a hollow space that can be filled by only one thing in this world, and she is sitting on the other side of that door pretending everything is fine.

The bathroom door opens.

The sound cuts through the water and the noise in my head, and I turn just enough to see her standing in the doorway. She’s still wearing the thin nightdress she slipped into after her shower last night, and her bare feet leave prints on the wet stone as she steps inside and closes the door behind her.

My body reacts before my mind processes what is happening. Every muscle tightens as her scent fills the steamy room. The hunger surges forward with a violence that makes my fangs press against my lower lip. I can feel the veins beneath my skin rise to the surface.

“That is not a good idea, little mortal.” My voice comes out low and rough and stripped of every pretense of civility. “My hunger is out of control right now.”

She doesn’t retreat. “But you fed yesterday,” she says simply.

“Yes,” I answer, unable to conjure civility when her scent has seeped into every inch of space. She opens the shower screen and steps under the water, fully clothed, the nightdress molding to her body as the water soaks through it. The sight of her standing there, looking at me with an expression that holds no fear, does something to the remaining threads of my self-control, and I feel them snap one by one.

Her hand rises, and her fingers find the hard ridges of my abs. The sensation sends a current through my nervous system that burns hotter than the water.

I search her face for an explanation. This is the woman who has refused me since meeting Xavian, who has resisted every attempt at closeness. Now she is standing in my shower tracing my body with her fingers.

“What are you doing?” I ask, but the question is about more than the shower and her hand on my skin.

Her fingers press flat against my chest. “Sorry,” she says quickly, like she doesn’t understand why she stepped into the shower with me. She turns to step out when I grip her arm.

“That wasn’t an answer, little mortal.”

She goes very still, like she just realized what she’s done. I watch her chest rise and fall, see the pulse quicken in her throat. “I . . . I don’t know.” The words spill out in a whisper, shaky and desperate. “I just needed to . . . I don’t even know why.”

I step closer, letting her feel the heat radiating off me, the hunger that’s always beneath my skin. “It’s the bond,” I murmur, voice rough. “You’re feeling what I feel. My hunger. It’s always there, clawing at me. Maybe you’re picking up on it through the bond.”

She shakes her head, cheeks flushing. Her eyes meet mine, dark and searching. “It doesn’t feel like hunger. Not exactly.” Her voice drops. “It feels like . . . something else.”

A slow smile tugs at my lips as her scent deepens. “What does it feel like?” I ask, voice pitched low.

Her blush spreads, her breath feathering across my chest. I don’t need her words; the bond tells me everything. Her need. Her confusion. Her desire. All bleeding into the air, tangling with my own bloodlust.

“Bloodlust and desire. They’re not so different, not for me. The bond is making you into my perfect prey. You want to touch me because you can feel how badly I want to touch you. How badly I want to taste you.”

She shivers despite the warm water running over her. The dangerous truth is, she doesn’t want to run, and she can’t explain why my hunger no longer scares her.

The word hangs between us in the steam, warm and weighted, with a longing for something I can’t name. The bond in my chest flares with a heat that could be hers or mine, or it could be both of ours tangled together beyond separation.

I cup her jaw, tracing my thumb across her cheekbone where the water runs in thin rivers down her skin, and I lean down to press my mouth to hers.

She doesn’t pull away.

The absence of resistance hits me harder than her magic ever could. My entire body stills for one disbelieving second, waiting for the shove, the turn of her head, the sharp words that would remind me I am a monster she tolerates rather than a man she wants.

None of it comes.

Instead, her lips move against mine, and her hands find my chest, fingers spreading over my heart. The contact sends a jolt through me that reaches every corner of my body simultaneously.

She deepens the kiss, her body leaning into mine as she tries to get closer, but she’s on her toes, fighting against my height to reach me. My hands find her waist and pull her closer, the soaked fabric of her nightdress doing nothing to disguise the curves of her body beneath it. Her back meets the stone wall as I drag her closer, and her legs slip around my waist as if we’ve done this a thousand times.

My fangs dig into my lower lip hard enough to draw blood. The taste is wrong because the only blood I want is pulsing beneath the skin of the woman pinned between me and the wall. The predator in me has risen fully now. Her heartbeat accelerates beneath my hand, but she doesn’t flinch or try to escape.

She tilts her head, and through the bond it feels as if she needs my bite just as much as I want to bite her.

The movement is small and deliberate, her chin lifting, her neck stretching to the side. I can see her pulse beneath the wet skin, rapid and alive, the blood rushing just beneath the surface in rivers that call to me with a voice louder than any siren’s song.

I press my forehead against her temple and breathe, and the air I take in is saturated with her scent. With the warm copper undertone of her blood and the golden thread of her magic that is woven so deeply into my senses that I don’t know where she ends and the hunger begins.