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I squeeze, and watch his eyes go dark.

He rolls us over. He comes down over me, braced on his forearms, and his size blots out the window and the firs and the whole night. His horns curve above us. His tail drapes across my legs, heavy and warm, and the tip curls around my ankle and stays there.

“Your tail’s on my ankle,” I tell him.

“Is that all right?”

“Yeah.” I wiggle my foot. “It’s nice.”

“Look at me,” he says. “Not the ceiling. I want to see your face.”

He’s slow. Slow enough that I feel every inch of him, and he watches my face the whole time. When I wince, he waits. When I breathe out and say “okay,” he moves. When I say “more,” he laughs low in his throat and says, “Greedy,” and gives me more.

“Tell me how it feels,” I say.

“Tight.” His voice is wrecked. “Hot. Which is a lot, coming from me.” He moves, and I make a sound, and he stops. “That. That little noise. Do that again.”

I do. I can’t help it.

“That’s going on the menu,” he says. “Top of the list. Every night.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m a professional.” He rolls his hips, slow and deep, and my eyes close. “Uh-uh. Eyes open, Trouble. Tonight you’re thinking about me. Nothing else. Me.”

“Bossy.”

“Demon,” he says, and does it again.

Then he reaches up and finds the end of my braid on the pillow, and wraps it once around his fist. He doesn’t pull. He just holds it.

“Okay?” he says.

“Oh my God,” I say. “Yes.”

He tugs it, gently, and tips my head back, and kisses my throat, and moves.

I get my hands on his shoulders and hold on. His tail tightens on my ankle every time he moves, and the headboard knocks the wall, and I’m laughing and gasping at the same time, and he’s grinning down at me with his lines going brighter and brighter across his chest.

“Turn it up,” I tell him.

He stops, right above me. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Show me.”

He does. The heat comes up slowly, from everywhere he’s touching me, his hands and his chest and deep inside me, climbing and climbing until I’m sweating and shaking and right at the edge.

He holds it right there, and doesn’t stop moving, and the second time is so much bigger than the first that I bite his shoulder to keep from screaming the house down.

“Ow,” he says, delighted. “Do that again.”

I do. That’s what finishes him. He buries his face in my neck with my braid still wrapped around his fist, and the sound he makes is rough and broken, and for a second the heat coming off him spikes so high that the window glass across the room fogs over completely.

He goes slack on top of me, catching his weight at the last second on one arm, and lies there breathing hard into my hair.

“Trouble,” he says, muffled.

“Mm.”