The man was mine.
It wasn’t just lust I’d felt the afternoon I’d watched him fuck. And yes, I’d been capable of lust at that age—for life, for the sex I would one day have, for chocolate, for being alive. I’m made of lust. We all are. Savor it. Burn with it. Never apologize for it.
It’s what makes life worth living.
I know a truth: We fuck like we live. Timid people fuck timidly. Uninhibited people fuck uninhibitedly.
He’d fucked with one thousand percent focus, with savage devotion and lust. Staggeringly alive, elated to be.
It’s the way I’ve always lived. Fully engaged, all senses ablaze.
I recognized, that day, that he and I were the same kind of people. I hadn’t thought to ever find someone else in the world like me.
I’d been wandering the city, on my own, for six years by then. I’d seen and done far more than any child should. (When I think of Rae, I know how wrong my life was and I’ll do everything in my power to keep her childhood pure, not that Kat needs my help, but I’ll be there. Watching over her. Always.) I’d paid prices few adults ever have to pay. I’d carried sins that cut me to the core of that soul I used to pretend I didn’t have. Sins that had forced me to find creative ways of rearranging myself so I wouldn’t self-destruct.
Ancient eyes had stared out of my fourteen-year-old face at Ryodan, and I’d thought: This man will understand me. This man can withstand me.
That’s something for a woman of my complicated ilk.
He’s a pain in the ass. Stubborn, controlled, controlling. So am I.
He’s done unspeakable things. So have I. And I suspect we’ll easily speak about them with each other.
He’s fascinating, brilliant, hungry for more life all the time.
So am I.
He’s life and death, joy and grief, mercy and ruthlessness. So. Am. I.
It was hard for me to move through those years between us.
I resisted what I knew I wasn’t ready for. I resented every woman he took to his bed in a dark, possessive corner of my mind, including Jo. Even though I understood.
Then life unexpectedly gave me a man I was ready for.
And Ryodan had understood.
But…always, endlessly, I’d been pointed at this man like a beast-seeking missile, waiting for the day I was—not merely locked and loaded—but fully ready to take him on, woman to man.
That’s what Dancer had always sensed in me.
And loved me anyway.
I think both my loves are better men than I. I can’t share. I can’t be second best. I don’t know how to play that role.
“You’ll never have to,” Ryodan assures me, as he closes his arms around me from behind and grinds, hard and hungry against my ass.
“You should know I’m possessive.”
His arms tighten around me. “As am I. You and me. No one else. If you’re not okay with that, get the fuck out of my bed,” he says, as he begins pushing slowly inside me.
I gasp and thrust my hips back, needing to feel him cramming me full, like earlier when he’d been part beast, so deep it nearly hurt in the best possible way. I’m not a woman to compare. We all bring unique assets to the table. But Ryodan’s assets fit me stupendously well and the fact that they were…adjustable…well, that was a plus a woman had no reason to expect and every reason to thank her lucky stars for.
He laughs softly against my ear as he slides infinitesimally deeper, raking my nerves with a savage need he’s creating…and refusing to fill, driving me mad. “I suspect the stars will always be lucky for you, Dani.”
Growling, I push back, hard but his hands are locked on my hips and he won’t let me gain a bloody quarter of an inch.
“Let me play, Stardust. Learn what turns you on. I want to drive you wild. I want to find your breaking points. All of them.”
That makes two of us. Although I never want to see him lose control in the real world, I hunger to strip it from him in bed.
One inch, then gone, rubbing between my legs, where I’m swollen and achingly wet. Then two inches inside me. Then gone, then back and slow, so slow I nearly scream with frustration as he eases into me as if we had all the time in the world.
“We do.”
Laughter explodes from me, pure joy. Eternity. I get to love this man forever.
“Fuck, Dani, stop laughing!”
“Afraid you’ll lose control?” I tease and laugh again, a husky, wicked sound as I kicked it up a notch, and began to vibrate from head to toe.
“Son of a bitch!”
* * *
π
Later, I sprawl on top of him, staring into glittering, lazily sated silver eyes.
It’s a good thing the room was already wrecked, because we’d have wrecked it anyway. I have no idea how much time has passed down here where no light of day penetrates but am willing to bet we’ve spent twenty-four straight hours exploring each other’s bodies, testing limits, discovering what drives each other wild.
And this man is definitely wild. Hot and sexy and just the flavor of kink I like.
“I’ve only got one week,” I remind him softly.
He stiffens and growls as I fill him in on all that happened, explaining the parameters of my new existence; his silver eyes blaze with joy.
“Half the time we’ll be human. The other half, we’ll be beasts together,” he says, laughing softly. “What a fine fucking life.”
Indeed. Still, something’s bothering me. I need to know why he thought I wasn’t coming back, what Y’rill did with my “text.” “Ryodan, didn’t you get my message? I sent you—”
“A bloody chunk of star. Christ, that damned piece of rock has been the bane of my fucking existence.”
So, he did get it. “It was meant to set your mind at ease.”
“Your aim sucked, Stardust,” he growls. He rolls me off him, surges to his feet, stalks to the hearth where he collects something from a box on the floor and brings it back, handing it to me.
I peer at it in the low light and gasp.
It says:
I’M OKAY I’M
“But that’s only half of it!”
“I bloody well know that. What the fuck is the end of that sentence? You have no idea how many words I plugged in. I’m okay, I’m happy. I’m okay, I’m free. I’m okay, I’m never coming back. What the fuck, Dani?”
I turn the chunk of star over and study the edge. “It broke. It must have hit something on the way to you. Where were you when you got it?”
“On a beach.”
I frown. “A beach? You went to the beach?” Lor said he’d not come out of Chester’s since I left.
“I used to walk the ocean at night. It plunged from the sky and landed next to me.”
“When?”
He laughs but there’s a deep undercurrent of bitterness, a hint of torment in it. “Woman, you have driven me crazy far longer than you know. I got your bloody damned star three thousand, one hundred forty-one years, five months, nine days, and two hours before you turned into a Hunter at the abbey.”