face, like he’s trying to see where I’m going with this. My fingertips skim the back of his neck, but I focus on my words and not the rightness I feel in touching him so intimately.
“When I woke up in Nihil, I thought I had died. All I could think about was the fact that I had failed all of you...and myself. I had spent too much time seeing all the ways being a demon and a Guardian would change who I was and the life I had built. But when I woke up alone that morning after the Vestibule, I realized that I didn’t let myself see that I was better with all of you. That each of you, in your own way, helped me find parts of me I’d always wanted to have but didn’t know I possessed.”
My gray eyes settle on his, and I stare into him, latching onto all of his tension and making sure he’s hearing my every word. “I want who you are at the core. I need every gruff, brutal, sharp-tongued, unforgiving, self-sacrificing, honorable part of you. I want you, as is.”
Jerif’s gaze flits back and forth between mine for a moment before he snorts. “So only my soul will do then?” he teases.
My lips curl up. “I mean, I am a demon.”
“That you are,” Jerif confesses piously, bringing one hand forward and threading his fingers through my bright violet locks.
“I hated that I had to tell you to run.”
I get lost in the look in his eyes and the intensity of his words as they slip like silk out of his mouth. Time to fix the cracks that the battle caused. Time to reinforce ourselves and come back better and stronger because of what happened.
I lean forward and kiss him, taking his top lip slowly and then dropping to his bottom lip, sealing our fates and letting him feel what I’m offering him. And then he offers something right back.
Our mouths start out chaste as we taste and tease and learn the curves and edges of each other’s lips. His tongue is warm as it flicks out to test mine, and it’s like sinking into a perfectly warm bath at the end of a grueling day. Inch by inch, I lose myself to his warmth, and we open up and remove all the doubt and hesitancy between us.
His kiss owns me in all the best ways that a glorious kiss can. Heat pools in lapping waves through me as his soft palm skims under the hem of my shirt and splays across my lower back, pressing me harder into him. His other hand fists in my hair as our kisses get more fevered and need spreads out between us like molten lava.
I move against him, the friction between my thighs the perfect complement to the way my peaked breasts press against the hard planes of his chest, sending strikes of pleasure straight to my clit. With a smooth movement, he rolls me onto my back, and I suck on his tongue and bite back a moan at how good the weight of him feels on top of me.
He nips at my lips and grinds into me, inhaling the breath I release at the contact, as though my sounds of pleasure are his new oxygen. I reach up and tug at the hem of his T-shirt, just as a flash of heat comes over me. I pause and look down, seeing bright red embers move through the fabric of my tank top. My mouth drops open in awe as I watch my shirt quickly burn off of me, like a flame across a gas puddle as it consumes the accelerant.
I feel heat, but no burn. Nothing hurts, and I can’t take my eyes off the quickly disintegrating fabric.
A small puff of smoke wafts up into the air between us, and just like that, I’m naked from the waist up, not a singe to mar my skin. My mind is blown over the control he has over his ability. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“Dude,” I tell him, my eyes swinging up to his face in awe. “Ooohh, do yours next,” I say excitedly, my eyes dropping to the fabric of his T-shirt, ready and waiting to watch the incredible trick again.
In a whoosh, every stitch of clothing on Jerif vanishes in a flash of flame and poof of smoke. His cock is suddenly pressing unhindered between my thighs, and I lick my lips.