He was tearing through it all, but she didn’t care because it was fucking awesome.
Golden irises met hers, the man and the beast both stilling as she poured yet more of her pleasure into his body. He grunted at the release she was sharing with him, his body taut, everything marble.
Something akin to wonder, adoration even, passed over his face.
But no, that wasn’t possible. That couldn’t be possible. That would be the only thing possible to extinguish the flames licking at every part of her body. There was no place for tenderness here, there couldn’t be. Tenderness gave way to feelings, to something Sophie had vowed off.
“Witch,” he growled, his voice liquid.
She immediately stopped the flow of magic and he twitched, his eyes hardening and narrowing.
She yanked harder at his hair, tearing at it with force she knew garnered pain, even in a wolf. Her magic made sure of that.
He didn’t move, didn’t even cry out, but that wildness returned.
“Fuck me, wolf,” she demanded, voice horse.
He didn’t need to be told twice, up and at her entrance in little more than a moment. There was no pause, no gentle stroking of her head that she feared he might do. No, he didn’t even wait to ask if she was ready, just plunged inside her.
They both cried out at his perfectly brutal entrance.
More windows shattered throughout the apartment.
The wind resumed again.
It was all inconsequential.
Her fingernails sank into the skin of his back, drawing blood. She didn’t even think of it as she let his lifeblood sink into her skin, feed into her magic. He growled at the contact—surely not the magic, as he wouldn’t have noted it—and then he moved.
Fuck, did he move.
His body pounded into her with a ferocity that would’ve broken a mortal woman. Shit, it almost broke her, and she was a lot more durable than the original model.
But it didn’t.
It took her to the brink of destruction, of pain, to the abyss that she’d become so familiar with, then tore her right back.
Every inch of her body was fire, even the parts she’d been so certain would be chilled from the grave forever.
Everything was an inferno.
His mouth attached against hers, teeth sinking into her lip, drawing more blood, sucking it into his own.
She didn’t even blink at that, simply reveled in it. She’d absorbed his blood mere moments—or was it hours?—before. Turnabout was fair play. And the moment he swallowed her blood—not for nourishment, like a leech, but for something else—a climax raked over her, shuddering her delicate bones, shaking her very core.
He growled as his form shimmered once more while she clenched against his cock, urging his own release. Hands—no, claws circled at her neck. They could’ve easily snapped it, scored the skin, severed an artery. And she’d be bye-bye immortal. She wouldn’t have even been able to defend herself in the midst of the most earth-shaking orgasm of her life.
And she didn’t care. There were worse ways to go. She’d experienced them.
But she stayed alive, because she knew this heaven didn’t exist in the afterlife.
Dim pain erupted in her shoulder as he cracked her collarbone and roared out his release, pumping himself into her with such wild abandon that it pushed her right over the edge again.
The abyss welcomed her that time, wrapping around her consciousness in its seductive embrace.
She thought she’d heard him yell something in the moments before her pleasure became too much to handle.
But she couldn’t have.
It was impossible.
“Mine!” he roared, both in his human voice and his beast’s. Both beings within him recognized her for what she was.
His mate.
His fated one.
The woman he was tied to, who he had claim over, for the rest of his life.
For the rest of forever.
The one he would kill for, die for, and more importantly live for.
Expelling his seed into his woman’s sweet and tight velvet was hands down the best experience of his long life.
Not that there was much to compare it to.
But it was something so sweet, so heavenly, it had no equal. And it would have no equal. He would be claiming her, fucking her, every moment he could until time ended.
It took him long and ecstatic moments to gain agency over his own body, to grasp true lucidity once more.
He had collapsed onto her tiny body in the midst of his release, aching to have every inch of their naked skin touching his. The wolf inside of him required skin-to-skin contact one of the most important things to his species. Other than being inside one’s mate.
But his human side wanted her sweet and smooth skin against his, rough and brutal. The need had been so desperate he’d forgotten his own strength, his own weight, and collapsed all of it onto her.
On that realization, panic took over pleasure and he immediately lifted his body from hers, ignoring the roar of his beast.
She was limp, her eyelids fluttered closed, her pale skin flushed at her face. But it was not his warmth that had discolored the rest of her body.
Ice sank into his heart and he let out a brutal curse as his horrified gaze ran over the purple and black skin of her entire body.
His stomach roiled.
He smelled the broken bones in her ribs, in her collarbone, the pain she would feel once waking.
Waking.
He’d rendered her unconscious.
He’d battered and broken the one true being that belonged to him while he was too lost in his own pleasure.
“Gods, what have I done?” he uttered.
Chapter Two
Minutes were little more than nothing in an immortal’s life. Less than nothing when decades passed like hours.
But the twelve minutes that had passed since she’d surrendered to the darkness were longer than the eight centuries he’d spent on this earth.
He paced the ruined apartment, barely seeing the broken glass that crunched under his bare feet. Or the ruined furniture. Or the singed curtain, though he smelled the burn and vaguely wondered if his witch had caused it.
Of course she’d caused it. That was her power. Even now he sensed it in the air, blanketing everything around them.
It had been how he found her in that pulsating mess of humans weeks before. He’d been blocks away, hunting a pack of vampires that was stalking young women.
He’d abandoned the doomed women without even a second thought the moment he’d caught a whiff of her power.
Scenting things was hard in this cesspit of a city, full of trash and humans and filth. He was a good tracker, the best in fact, but even he found it difficult to scent someone more than three blocks away.
Not her.
He would’ve scented her from the other side of the country.
Or so it had seemed at that moment.
He wasn’t even sure if it was his mate’s scent or her all-encompassing power that drew him. The beast inside of him had basic intrinsic survival instincts. And it had sensed a threat. A big one. One of the biggest he’d ever faced.
Inside his mate.
The fact had worried him slightly, though not as much as it should’ve since his elation at finally finding her blew everything else away.
Now he praised the gods for whatever this power was. Because it was able to repair her quickly. Quicker than normal.
On another glance to the bed, he was confronted with bruises. Had they changed in color? He stepped forward, his face inches away from her beautiful flesh.
He hardened at the scent of her, at the sight of her, and he was disgusted at himself. He was aroused at the sight of his naked woman, the one he’d brutalized with his selfish pursuit of pleasure.
But yes, he was sure that the color had changed from pure black to matted purple.
He straightened, running his hands through his hair, tearing ou
t locks in frustration. He barely noticed the pain, and what he did notice, he reveled in. He deserved it, needed it—more pain. He deserved to be flayed for what he’d done. Drawn and quartered.
Especially because, even amongst his carnal pain at seeing her—his—bruised and broken as she was, he felt joy. It was so foreign it almost felt like an illness taking hold of his body. But it was there. Happiness. Because he had found her.
And ruined her.
He let out a growl and his claw hand ripped at the ruined curtain, tearing it down so it landed with a clatter at his feet.
“Hey! Don’t ruin the décor. I had a tornado chic thing going,” a throaty voice snapped from the vicinity of the bed.
He was beside her in a moment, his eyes raking over the slowly fading bruises, sensing her accelerated healing doing its work on injuries that might have even been fatal on a mortal.
He didn’t know enough about witches to know how long it look for them to heal, what they could withstand. At the soonest possible moment, he’d make sure to learn. Everything that could be learned.
Her violet eyes were narrowed on him, streaked with pure silver, a signifier of the power running though her. Running through him.
His cock pulsated at the memory of that power touching him, curling around him and transferring her pleasure to his own body. At first his cells had tensed, as if they were going to be attacked by the utterly alien magic trying to enter him. But then everything in him relaxed, realizing there was nothing unnatural about it. It was right. She was right.
He struggled to fight the urge to pin her down and take her again, demand that she use her powers while his cock was inside her so he could feel her pleasure and his own.
But he steeled himself as soon as his eyes moved from the apex of her thighs to the bruises covering them.
She’d been awake for a handful of moments before she’d spoken. At first, she hadn’t said anything because she was confused as all fuck, and her broken body smarted more than a little. She’d fixed the worst of it with a healing spell. She could’ve taken away all of it if she so wished, because despite feeling utterly spent and ruined, she was also juiced.
Pulsating with so much power she barely even recognized it. Not because she didn’t have the power already, but because the source of this wasn’t wrong and cold and malevolent like whatever it was lurking in the depths of her grave-stained soul.
No, this was vibrant, pulsating with life and heat.
It had come from them.
From him.
From the him who was butt naked and treating her to a view of the most glorious and sculpted ass she had ever seen. Seriously, she could’ve served cheese on that thing. And the thighs. Wow. David had nothing on this guy. Every inch was strong, corded muscle. He did not skip leg day.
As her eyes had moved up, her appreciation had turned to something else when she’d seen the warped and knotted scars covering the entirety of his muscled back.
And there was a lot of real estate there. The wolf was huge. Werewolves were notoriously built, hence a lot of them earning millions for sports teams around the world—cheating in her opinion, but she cheated life regularly, so she wasn’t one to talk. But this one was something else. Large. Unyielding. Almost invincible-looking.
But something had been taken to him.
A whip. Of many things.
And it needed to have either almost killed him or repeatedly torn into flesh that rapidly healed for it to scar his immortal skin.
Cold rage simmered at the base of her spine at the thought of someone hurting her wolf. She ached for their blood, to burn their homes and families—wait, did she just think her wolf?
The clattering of the curtain chased away such dangerous thoughts.
“Hey! Don’t ruin the décor. I had a tornado chic thing going,” she said, forcing her voice to be light, any thoughts of before absent from the tone.
In one long blink he was no longer facing away from her at the window. He was there, right up in her space like in the alley.
But unlike in the alley, he was naked.
And fuck, was he naked.
She knew he was hung because of the delightful ache between her thighs, but she was glad she hadn’t had too much time to inspect how hung before, because it would’ve scared her.
And she didn’t scare easily.
Especially at penis.
But this one would’ve had her clenching with unease slightly, with a fear he wouldn’t fit.
But he did fit.
Perfectly.
The mere memory of it had her stomach quickening with need.
He seemed to be on the same wavelength, as his cock twitched.
Then something in his aura changed from thick desire to … shame? Regret? Pain.
His wild eyes traveled all over her body. In appreciation, of course—he was only inhuman—but something else.
She followed his eyes and realized most of her body was covered in bruises in various stages of healing. She was surprised at just how many there were. Sure, she’d been in pain, but nothing crazy. A training day with Scott hurt more.
Scott.
Something inside her softened at the pure depth of his concern, not communicated by words—he didn’t seem to be much of a talker—but by his entire being. The way he held his body, the energy that pulsated around him.
“Dude, no worries. This is nothing,” she said, trying to reassure him and not knowing why. “I’ve had worse training with my halfling friend.” She paused. “Shit, I hope I haven’t called him a friend to his face. That would give him a complex. Then he’d think he could do stuff like braid my hair and watch Reese Witherspoon movies. Don’t get me wrong, I love Reese, but that’s kind of like a secret pleasure, you know? Fucks with my street cred if my enemies know I like chick flicks.” She narrowed her eyes. “That means you forget that I said that,” she demanded.
He didn’t say a word, merely stared at her in that intense soulful way that was freaking her out once more now that the post-coitus glow was receding.
Fuck.
What had she done?
Her eyes went around her apartment, at the absolute carnage she’d wrought. It looked like an earthquake had hit, then a hurricane, and then some looters had breezed through.
“Fuck,” she whispered, pushing up. She hissed as the pain she thought she wasn’t feeling made an appearance.
The wolf immediately moved her into his arms as if she were china.
She struggled on forced reflex, not on instinct. She hated that some part of her liked that tenderness, craved more of it, which was precisely why she fought so hard against it.
His arms turned into vises, immediately stopping her limbs from striking out at him. He was using his strength against her, of course. That’s what these males did. She grinned as she got the opportunity to show him that strength wasn’t all about big muscles and the ability to turn into an overgrown dog.
Blue erupted from her palms and sank into his skin, slithering underneath it. He immediately tensed, throat letting out a low rumble at the pain.
What he didn’t do was let her go.
Sophie narrowed her eyes. She’d hit him with enough juice to take down a small elephant.
But she was still caught up in his arms—in his naked arms.
So she upped to it two large elephants.
Then he let her go.
She landed gracefully on her feet as he twitched against the pain. A part of her twitched as well, burning her cells for causing him pain.
She pushed that away.
He recovered quickly, standing immediately. She held up her glowing palms just in case he got any more ideas.
His jaw became granite as he stood stock-still. It took everything she had not to perve at him.
“Heal yourself,” he demanded after a long and erotic silence.
Her palms still crackled, more for her sake than his. She was worried she might launch herself at him and ride him like that mechanical bu
ll at her favorite bar.
She tilted her head, surprised he had finally spoken. She was sure she’d have to proverbially blink first.
Again, his voice was rough, wild, as if it wasn’t used often. There was a slight accent she couldn’t place, though wherever he was from, it sounded sexy as hell.
And the fact that he was a six-foot Adonis standing naked in front of her helped too.
“What?” she asked, so distracted by his nakedness and voice that she didn’t rightly understand.
His jaw ticked again in what looked like irritation. Red spiked through his energy, a different kind of anger that had been directed inward before. This was going outward to her.
That pissed her off slightly. He was the one who had gone all Christian Grey in her shit—not that she minded, of course. A couple of broken bones were a small price to pay for some life-changing orgasms, but she should still technically be angry at him.
“You have command over considerable witchcraft,” he snapped. His eyes went around the room quickly to make his point, then to her palms, then back to her eyes. They’d taken a small detour at her breasts, and her nipples had hardened immediately. “Use this power to heal yourself.”
She pursed her lips and her palms glowed brighter. “I might’ve heard wrong, you know, through the headache caused by a cracked skull courtesy of you, but it sounds like you were trying to boss me around,” she said evenly.
He crossed his arms and his muscles flexing as he did so.
Sophie applauded herself for keeping her scowl. And also for not drooling.
“Of course I was commanding you,” he snapped. “You’re my woman. You listen to me. Heal yourself.”
The blue shot forward on instinct. She felt no guilt at his hiss of pain. “Whoa. See, there was a lot wrong with what you just said,” she clipped, her voice changing as anger and magic swirled within it. “But here’s one thing you’ll learn about me that everyone else has had to learn the extreme hard way.” She shot out another bolt. “The hard way makes that look like a hand job, just in case I’m not being clear enough,” she said, smiling at his grimace of pain. “The lesson is ‘don’t try and boss Sophie around if you’re attached to your favorite appendages.’” She looked down. “And even for a wolf, that’s impressive, so I’m guessing you’re attached to your pride and joy.” Her eyes snapped up. “You fucked me. You broke a couple of bones, but I’m not holding that against you because I was a participating party in that horizontal tango and I wasn’t complaining.”