Irdu stared back at her. Dark emotions shadowed his gaze. “I led the rebellion. I got them all killed.”
“Would they have rather lived as slaves?”
Slowly, the bleakness eased from his eyes, and he looked back at her with a thoughtful expression. Satisfied, Autumn leaned against him, wrapping her arms around his torso and tucking her head beneath his chin. Irdu rumbled in his chest and relaxed against her. One strong arm encircled her, pulling her more tightly against him.
“I survived the ziggurat’s collapse,” he said, speaking above her head. She tightened her arms around him. “My legs were shattered, my ribs crushed. I was coughing blood with every breath. I would have died on my own within hours. But they captured me, made an example of me. I was sacrificed to the god whose tower I’d desecrated. They cut my throat and when I opened my eyes again, I was in the Underworld, and I looked like this.” He held out one arm, blue and tattooed, tipped with curling black claws.
Autumn glanced at the thick scar across his throat, then took his hand and brought it to her mouth, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “I’m so sorry that happened to you,” she said fervently. “But I’m glad you came to me. I’m glad you have been in my life.”
She felt a gentle touch on the top of her head—his lips. “I am grateful for every moment that brought me to this one, with you.”
“Irdu.” She buried her face in his chest. She’d never felt so strongly, so quickly, about somebody. It had taken months of knowing Dylan before she’d even been comfortable going on a tame movie date with him. Before Dylan, she’d only had two other relationships—a boyfriend in high school who’d been a platonic friend for three years before their brief senior-year romance, and a short-lived relationship just before she’d met Dylan, with a coworker she’d known for a year before he’d surprised her with a kiss.
“Now you must tell me something about yourself.” Autumn felt the rumble of Irdu’s voice through his chest.
“Like what? I can hardly follow up ‘Ancient Rebel Slave Who Died in the Name of Freedom.’”
Irdu chuckled, then sobered. “Tell me why a woman like you is lonely.”
“A woman like me?”
“Kind. Funny. Beautiful.”
Autumn blushed, which was a bit much, considering all the things they’d already done to each other. She looked down so that her hair hid her flushed cheeks. “I was with Dylan for a long time. I thought I would marry him. But he cheated on me. And… that was it, really.”
“Are you still in love with him?” Irdu asked, sounding tense.
She laughed bitterly. “No. I came back early from a trip to visit my mother. He was in bed with her—in our bed. It was like everything I’d ever felt for him immediately turned to ash. All I felt was anger.” She sighed. “But leaving him completely upended my life. I lost my job, my home, and my friends all in one fell swoop. Now I’m stuck in a shitty job, and this shitty apartment. I still have a couple good friends, but they’re busy with their own lives…” She shrugged. “I’ve been alone ever since then.”
“You don’t have family?”
She shrugged again. Suddenly, she understood Irdu’s reticence to talk about himself. It wasn’t that she felt shame about her circumstances. It was just that they were so miserable, who would want to hear about them? “My dad died when I was thirteen. A car accident. My mom remarried when I was nineteen and moved to Florida with her new husband. I see her every couple years. Enough to keep up the pretense of a functional relationship.”
Irdu looked askance at her.
“After Dad died, she kind of… detached from me. At first I think it was just normal grief. But when she started to get back to normal with everyone else, she didn’t ever really come back to me. I think I reminded her too much of Dad. I’m the only physical remnant of his existence. Plus, I take after him—I’ve got his hair, his eyes, his nose.”
“That’s not an excuse for—”
“I know. I’m not saying it makes sense, or even that I forgive her—in fact, I don’t. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being angry about it.” Autumn had never said that out loud before, not even to Dylan. To her horror, she felt tears welling. “Shit,” she breathed, wiping at her eyes.
Irdu looked down, made a distressed sound. Very gently so that his claws didn’t touch her skin, he wiped tears from beneath her eyes.
“Sorry,” she said, mortified. She tried to turn her face away, but he caught her chin and held her still so that he could swipe more tears from her cheeks.
“Don’t apologize.”
“You were enslaved and murdered, and you’re not crying about it.”
“It was a very long time ago. And I wasn’t betrayed by my own mother.”
That only made Autumn cry harder. Irdu pulled her into his arms, holding her tight. She clung to him, silent, as tears coasted down her face and soaked his chest. They stayed like that for long minutes. The tight clasp of Irdu’s arms anchored Autumn, the warmth of his body and the steady rise and fall of his chest comforted her. Her tears began to dry up, leaving her face feeling puffy and tight.
“Anyways,” she said on a shaky breath. “I eventually made a new family for myself. Dylan’s parents took me in for the holidays—Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, all that. After we broke up, I obviously couldn’t show up at his family events—even though I still can’t help but think of them as my family. His parents were—are—really sweet people.” Autumn sighed. “And on top of that, we always threw a big Christmas party with our friends. After the breakup, everyone took Dylan’s side. I was no longer on the Christmas guest list. Not last year, and not this year. So it’ll be my second Christmas in a row spent by myself. I could go spend Christmas in Florida with my mom. Since she remarried, she’s been warmer to me. But I still... I don’t want to be around her when I already feel lonely.”
Irdu squeezed her tightly, crushing the air from her lungs. “You deserve so much better than what you’ve been handed.”
She looked up at him, tracing a gentle finger across the scar on his throat. “Not any more than you do,” she said sadly.
He caught her hand, bringing it to his mouth for a brief kiss. “I can’t regret anything that’s brought me to this moment.”
Autumn stared at him, wondering. Without the perfect storm of her mother’s emotional abandonment, Dylan’s betrayal, and the collapse of her social network, she never would’ve met Irdu. He’d been coming to her for less than a month—and she’d been cognizant of him for slightly less than that. And yet, if some other supernatural creature appeared in front of her, promising to wipe away all the sorrow of the last eighteen months in exchange for forgetting Irdu, Autumn knew, without a doubt, that she would decline the offer.
She didn’t want Dylan back. She didn’t want her mother back. She just wanted somebody she could trust, depend on, and love.
Love.
A pulse of alarm fluttered in her chest. She continued to stare at Irdu, struck dumb by awareness. The excitement she felt for him, the trust, the affection, the attraction… it was all headed in a very dangerous direction.
“Autumn?” Irdu touched her cheek, concern writ in the furrow of his cobalt brows.
“Sorry, I was just… thinking about something.”
Irdu narrowed his eyes, clearly aware that she was evading. “What were you thinking about?”
Autumn hesitated. She didn’t want to lie to him. And he had revealed so much of himself that he hadn’t wanted to. “I… I think I’m… developing feelings for you.” She looked away. “Serious ones.”
Irdu stared at her, saying nothing.
Of course. Of course this was going to happen. The millennia-old sex demon who brought companionship to lonely women had to be used to his charity cases falling in love with him. Not directly, of course, but definitely with the dream lover who came to them every night in their time of need. And if Irdu hadn’t yet fallen in love in return, that wasn’t likely to change just because Autumn knew he was
real.
“I don’t know what to say,” Irdu whispered.
“Don’t say anything. I shouldn’t have told you that.” She shifted to put some space between them.
“No, please don’t pull away. Listen.” He tightened his grip, pinning her awkwardly against him. “I don’t deserve…” his voice caught in his throat, becoming a deeper growl. “I have nothing to give you—any promise I make is meaningless… I—I’m—”
“It’s okay,” Autumn said, pushing against him, trying to get free. “You don’t have to. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Irdu spun her around suddenly and pushed her onto her back, pinning her in place with the weight of his body. “Listen,” he said urgently. His eyes were inches from hers, burning with emotion. “If I had even the faintest hope of being with you, I would take it without question, damn whatever consequences there might be.” He cupped her face with one hand. His fierceness faded, and his expression became bleak. “But I don’t belong to myself. Someday, your hurts will heal, and I will be called away from you. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“I know,” Autumn whispered hoarsely.
“I have never—never—enjoyed my nights on earth as much as I’ve enjoyed them with you. I’ve never been seen, known, or wanted before you. Your kindness, your humor, your openness are the sweetest joys I’ve experienced in millennia. Autumn, you are…” his voice caught, a growl reverberating in his chest. “You are precious to me. Don’t ever think otherwise. It is the greatest shame of my existence that I can’t truly offer myself to you.”
The feeling of rejection fell away to something powerfully bittersweet—the joy of knowing that he felt the same way about her, combined with the agony of knowing that their days together were numbered.
“Then promise me something?” she asked, her throat tight.
“Anything in my power to do, I will do for you.”
“No holding back anything. I want every piece of you I can have. And I will give you every piece of me. I’ll tell you anything, give you anything, do anything. Just, let me have as much as you can give.”
Irdu dropped his forehead to hers. “Yes.”
Autumn swallowed away the sob that was squeezing her throat. She pushed away the sadness, tried to forget about the looming but unknowable end of their time together. He could disappear from her life at any moment, and she wouldn’t know for sure until the sun rose the next day. But if she couldn’t let that anxiety go, she wouldn’t be able to enjoy what little time she did have with him.
Autumn tilted her head up, catching Irdu’s mouth in a gentle kiss. A pleasured sound rumbled in his chest as he lowered his weight onto her. She wrapped her arms around his neck as the kiss deepened, lips parting, tongues twining. She needed to show him that he was more than sex, that the physical pleasure they shared was borne of an emotional connection she couldn’t explain. And she sensed that Irdu was trying to tell her the same—she wasn’t just survival, not just a means of living to the next night.
Autumn pushed Irdu up, disconcerting him at first. But when she peeled her sweater off and crawled into his lap, straddling and kissing him, he quickly set to work helping her. Working together, breaking apart only when necessary, they stripped Autumn’s clothes away until she was as bare as Irdu. Hot skin pressed to hot skin.
The stark differences between them no longer seemed alien to Autumn. She loved every unusual feature that made Irdu so specifically himself. She loved the feel of his fangs and his claws digging into her skin, leaving marks behind. She loved the playful coil of his tail, wrapping around her legs, teasing her skin with gentle strokes of the tufted tip. His pale blue skin contrasted beautifully against the mellow hue of her own. His eyes—whether feline, demon black, or dancing with auroral blue—pierced her with an intensity unlike anybody else’s. His horns…had delightful uses.
She laughed softly even as the memory sent a pulse of warm arousal straight to her belly. Irdu nipped her lip, trailed claws across one of her nipples, turning her laughter into a breathy sigh.
They held each other, moving slowly. Autumn traced her fingers up and down the flexing muscles of Irdu’s back. Irdu cupped her jaw with one hand, his thumb and claw stroking over her fluttering pulse point. Tender, lingering kisses turned deeper, longer. Claw-tipped fingers traced along Autumn’s body, making her shiver and flush. She threaded her fingers through Irdu’s hair, scraping her fingernails over his scalp and down the back of his neck. He went still, claws pressed into her flanks, groaning as he leaned into the pressure of her fingertips.
He pulled back just enough to look her in the eyes. His had turned to unrelieved black, but the intensity of his gaze was unmistakable. A mixture of tenderness and ferocity reverberated between them as they held each other. And then Irdu leaned in, taking her mouth again in a long, deep, desirous kiss.
Autumn slid closer to Irdu, until they were pelvis to pelvis, and locked her ankles together behind his back. His hips rocked, sliding the hard length of his cock through her slick folds, making her wetter, more sensitive. Autumn sighed her pleasure, squeezing her thighs around his hips and rocking back against him.
“Inside me,” she whispered against his ear before biting it.
“Yes,” he breathed. He slid his big hands beneath her ass and lifted her as easily as if she were a cat. He aligned the head of his cock with her entrance, teasing her as he nudged slowly inside.
“More, Irdu! Please!” She writhed in his hold, and he relented, sinking her down on his cock with one powerful stroke, filling her completely. “Oh!”
The sudden stretch was a pleasurable pain. Irdu held still, and Autumn clung to him, trembling. The immediate and total connection of their bodies crashed through her like a tidal wave. Unwrapping her legs from his waist, she shifted to kneels on either side of his thighs. Raising herself up on her knees, she slid slowly up the length of his cock, then sank back down. The electric sensation of his cock stretching her out, the feeling of his arms around her, of his big strong body trembling against hers, all overwhelmed her with physical pleasure—but also, an emotional closeness that seemed only to be able to find expression through physical connection.
Autumn wound her fingers through Irdu’s hair again, and pulled his harsh, lovely face down to hers. “Mine,” she growled against his lips.
“Yes,” he panted, opening to her desperate kiss.
They held tightly to each other, Irdu’s hands easing Autumn’s weight as she rode him. They devoured each other, hungry kisses turning sloppy and desperate as the rhythm of their hips thrust faster and harder. Soon, they were simply pressed together, mouths open, breathing raggedly, as they rode closer and closer to climax.
“You’re mine,” Autumn told him again, her voice a desperate keen. “Forever. Mine.”
“Always,” he growled in return, breath hitching on a grunt as he bucked into her, harder and harder. “Yours, love, always yours.”
He called me love, she thought. And then the precipice yawned open before them, and together they tumbled from the edge into oblivion. Blue exploded across her vision, a swirling, sparking miasma that enveloped her and carried her through the fall. His eyes, Autumn thought distantly, I’m inside his eyes—inside him. She felt him there with her, and embrace that enclosed her from every possible direction, the pressure both thrilling and safe, ecstatic and comforting.
Through the hazy glimmer of pleasure, Autumn sensed the void that surrounded them. It was and endless darkness that felt somehow cruel. The icy emptiness pressed in on them, a feeling like hundreds of cold, grasping hands. And in the darkness, gray, empty-eyed faces loomed. But their touch, their hollowness, could not penetrate the veil of electric blue light that surrounded them.
Slowly, the darkness faded, giving way to the mundane reality of Autumn’s apartment. The flickering blue light swirled around them like a gentle tornado, disturbing nothing and imparting only warmth, and then it, too, faded away.
At last, there was onl
y Autumn and Irdu, still tangled in a desperate embrace. Autumn released her grip on Irdu’s hair, gently stroking the back of his neck while the blue haze danced and faded from his eyes. The black receded last, revealing indigo irises and narrow pupils. Irdu slumped against her with a shuddering sigh, his arms easing their crushing grip, his claws loosing from her skin. He pressed his face into the crook of her neck, his mouth moving softly over the tender skin there.
“It’s never been like this,” he said hoarsely against her neck. His claws traced a gentle trail up her spine. “You do something to me. Something different. Something…powerful.” His tongue pressed to her skin, tasting the sheen of sweat.
“I feel it too,” Autumn said faintly. The intensity of the pleasure he gave her was beyond anything she’d ever experienced before. But more than that, he seemed to… take her somewhere. She remembered the press of the darkness, the grasping hands, the vacant eyes in staring faces. She shivered.
“Are you okay?” Irdu pulled back so that he could see her face.
“More than okay.” She pressed a kiss to his frowning mouth. She had a suspicion that she was seeing a glimpse of what awaited Irdu when the sun rose. But she didn’t want to distress him, and she needed to think about it a little more. So she cupped his face and pressed one more kiss to his lips. “I’m starving,” she said, easing off of his cock. “Do you eat food?”
Irdu watched as she slid off the bed and walked to the bathroom, the faint furrow between his eyebrows telling her that she hadn’t convinced him of her alrightness. “No,” he said. “I don’t eat.”
“Do you shower?” she asked, pausing at the bathroom door with a suggestive smile.
“I can start,” Irdu said, surging from the bed and chasing her into the bathroom.
They showered together, kissing and clinging beneath the fall of water. They took turns soaping and massaging each other. Irdu gave her another orgasm, teasing her first by letting her ride his thigh as he kissed her, then driving her over the edge with his fingers. She came apart in his arms, slipping back into blue-veiled ecstasy. This time, she didn’t feel the press of darkness around her. When she came back to herself, the black was fading from Irdu’s eyes. She turned off the water and fetched a towel, rubbing Irdu down.
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