DANIKA AND REYES FINALLY reached the fortress, leaving dusk behind. They hadn't kissed or even touched since departing from the club. They hadn't spoken, either. Reyes wasn't sure if that was a blessing or a curse. What was she thinking?

Silence continued to cloak them, even when they strode inside his bedroom. Never turning his back on Danika, he closed and locked the door. She didn't face him. He leaned against it, the wood's coolness seeping past his torn shirt and into his skin. Thankfully Pain had receded to the back of his mind, temporarily sated from his battle with the Hunters, and was making no demands.

Danika stood in front of the bed, staring down at the black sheets. With trepidation? With anticipation?

Reyes hoped the latter. The Hunters had cut him so deeply and in so many places, he probably needed stitches on every limb. He'd chosen not to doctor himself, however. The pain was sublime, throbbing through him, making him quake with pleasurable sensations. He could finally be with this woman, and she wouldn't have to hurt him. He would be so gentle with her, he wouldn't allow himself to worry about corrupting her.

"Nervous?" he asked.

A moment passed before she responded. "No."

Liar. He didn't grin, though his lips twitched upward. "Shall we talk first?" Even offering a reprieve was difficult for him. He craved her in his bed, naked and straining against him.

"No. No talking."

His brow furrowed, and he frowned. She'd sounded so...determined. Why did she not want to talk with him? Does it matter? You did not wish to talk with her, either.

"The Darkest Pleasure"

Slowly she turned, finally facing him. As always, the sight of her angel face stole the air from his lungs. Such beauty in such a small package, he thought. A gift for her, perhaps, but most definitely a curse for him. He couldn't look away. Would happily have died then and there, just to have her image be the last to grace his sight.

Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittering brightly, emerald framed by black lashes. Up and down her chest moved, faster and faster, as if she couldn't quite catch her breath.

"We are to make love in silence?" he asked her. His hands itched to touch her. To cup her breasts, thumb her hard little nipples. His mouth watered for a taste of her. He'd bite her, this time. He'd - no. He would be gentle, he reminded himself.

Her eyes stretched wide. "We aren't making love."

"Then what are we doing?" he demanded, folding his arms across his chest.

"We're having sex." She raised her chin and braced her feet apart, the very picture of a warrior before battle. "And yes, silence will be...good."

Again, his brow wrinkled in confusion. "Why?"

"I want your body, not your life story," was all she said, but I want to forget you afterward hung in the air like the sword of Damocles, ready to fall and cut him into a thousand pieces.

He scowled. Once she had told him she knew nothing about him; she had wanted to know more. What had changed?

A trick, perhaps, to manipulate him into talking about his friends?

No. No, he didn't think so. His head tilted to the side as he studied her more closely. Her jaw was set in stone, her shoulders squared. The pinkish hue in her cheeks was fading.

She reached up, hands shaking, and gripped the hem of her T-shirt. She began to raise it, revealing inch after inch of creamy skin. Her stomach was flat, her navel delicate and made for his tongue.

He was in front of her a second later, his hands covering hers and stopping her progress. The shirt's material covered her face, blocking her features from his greedy view. She gasped as his stomach brushed hers.

"You do not want to want me," he breathed into her ear. The shirt prevented his breath from caressing her, but she shivered anyway. "You want to keep me at a distance, I think."

"Can you blame me?" she asked, the words spoken on a trembling sigh. "Now, let me undress."

"No, I can't blame you." He dragged the shirt the rest of the way over her head and tossed it aside.

The shoulder-length mass of her sunshine hair tumbled down, framing her face. She wore a black lace bra - one he'd purchased for her - and her breasts swelled from the top. He swallowed, wondering if she wore the matching panties.

Gaze glued to his, she gripped the hem of his tattered shirt and began to lift. He raised his arms. Ultimately, she had to stand on her tiptoes and he had to lean over to remove it. When he straightened, she uttered another of those heated gasps.

"So strong." She reached out with a shaky hand and traced her fingers over one of his wounds.

At the first brush, he closed his eyes in surrender. There was such sweet, sweet pain in having an injury stroked.

"When did you get this?" she asked.

"I thought you craved silence?"

She sighed.

"A little while ago," he said.

"From the Hunters?"

"Yes."

Her lips compressed into a thin line. "At least it's healing."

Healing? Damn. If any of his injuries decided to repair themselves before he'd taken Danika, he would pour salt into them or reopen them himself. Nothing would stop him from having this woman. Gently. Sweetly. The way he'd always dreamed of taking a woman but had never been able.

"Am I hurting you?" she asked, and then she laughed without humor. "Never mind. Just...kiss me. Take me to bed."

Bed. Yes, oh, yes. He opened his eyes and stared down at her. One step forward. Two. He backed her into the mattress. Her legs hit, and she tumbled down. Licking her lips, watching him, she scooted backward.

"Take off your jeans," he commanded hoarsely.

She eased to her back and raised her hips. Unfasten. Unzip. Down, down the denim shimmied. Oh, sweet gods, she'd worn the matching panties. They were like a violent storm cloud against her creamy skin. Hopefully wet.

His cock strained, desperate for her. Suddenly Pain seemed to stretch awake in his mind, yawning, purring. He gnashed his molars.

"Your turn," Danika said, propping her weight onto her elbows.

Had he thought her lovely before? His chest actually hurt as he looked at her just then. She was Aphrodite in the flesh. She was seduction incarnate. She was...his.

Not yet...Not just yet...She wanted him to bed her, she didn't want to get to know him. He would not allow one without the other.

"You mentioned my life story. Well, I spent several years locked inside a cell," he said, "a willing prisoner. Not because of the Hunters but because I could not control my intense need to give and receive pain."

"I don't think - "

"Back then, in ancient Greece, I battled Hunters and I destroyed cities. Screams were my sustenance. After one of my friends was killed, a man I had once laughed with and fought beside, the truth of what I was began to sink in."

"The Darkest Pleasure"

"I don't want to hear this." She shook her head, those silky locks dancing at her temples.

"I knew I could not learn to control my beast when temptation lurked in every corner. Everyone who smiled, everyone who enjoyed, I wanted to eradicate. In my demon-soaked mind, they had no reason to experience joy."

"Reyes."

"So I asked Lucien to lock me up. Of all of us, he was the one who first gained control of his demon. He did not want to, but he agreed. During those months of confinement, I learned to cut myself whenever the need for pain arose. Eventually, I trained myself to crave only that, my own pain. My demon craved it, too, the rest nearly forgotten." If only confinement worked on Aeron....

"Stop. Please, just stop."

"Why? Because knowing I suffered makes me seem more human? Because you do not want to think of me as anything more than a demon? Because one day, when we've parted, you hope to forget I ever existed?" The last was uttered in a feral snarl.

"Yes!" she shouted, jolting upright. Her chest rose and fell, fast and shallow. "Yes, okay. Yes. I shouldn't desire you, but I do. I can't get you out of my mind, even though I should be thinking about a thousand other things. We have no future. I mean, really. One of your friends wants to kill me and everyone I love. You live a life of war and all I crave is peace."

True. All that she'd said was true. "Yet here you are, in my bed." And here I am, unable to let you go.

"Yes." Both her voice and her expression softened. "I'm trusting you. With my family. My body. Don't make our eventual parting any worse for me. Please."

Please. The word echoed in his mind. Reyes met her heated gaze with his own. For the briefest of moments, he was transported to the heavens. To the past. In his mind, he saw himself standing beside Aeron, Torin, Paris and Galen.

Galen. Until Danika, Reyes had not thought of Galen in centuries. Galen had pulsed with life; his mere presence somehow made them feel stronger, better. Reyes hadn't known the warrior plotted against them every time their backs were turned.

And seeing the image of his carefree friends, so unburdened then by life and sins and suffering, he had to fight the urge to shout a warning he knew they would not hear.

They'd been celebrating that day, he recalled. The night before, a horde of Gorgons had sneaked inside Zeus's chamber, intending to awaken the god and turn him to stone. A single glance would have done it, and the king would have been unprepared, too surprised to cast his gaze downward in time.

Paris, ever the ladies' man, had been sleeping with one of the females - blindfolded, of course, to prevent turning to stone. The besotted female had blurted out her sisters' plans, and Paris had immediately alerted the Guard. Together, they'd ambushed the Gorgons, defeating them in minutes and with hardly any bloodshed.

We are unbeatable, Galen said proudly.

Torin nodded in agreement. Is it wrong that I wanted to take one of those snake-headed females as my prisoner?

Reyes rolled his eyes. You are as bad as Paris. The thought of being bitten and clawed during sex... He shuddered.

You just haven't been bitten the right way, Paris said with a grin.

I prefer my women sweet and tender, thanks, Aeron countered.

"Reyes," Danika said, drawing him back to the present.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts. If I had only known what awaited me. "I want to give you anything and everything you ask for, Danika."

Relieved, she sagged against the mattress. "Thank you."

"But making myself forgettable for you," he finished, "I cannot do. You're going to haunt my dreams for all of eternity. I have to know I meant something to you."

"You do," she said, tortured. Her gaze dropped to her legs as she drew up her knees. "And that's the problem."

"Resist me if you must, but do it later. After. I'll even help you. Here, now, give me everything." He unsnapped his jeans, pushed them down and kicked them off. Except for his weapons, he was bare underneath. "Look at me."

She did, her eyes going straight to his erection...staying. A tremor slithered down her spine.

"I am cruel and I am selfish, but this need I have inside me, this need for you and no other, is stronger than anything else I've ever encountered. I doubt two years of lockup would dull it in the slightest."

"I - I don't know how to respond to that."

"Then don't." He didn't need to hear her confirm that he'd made an impact on her and that her defenses were crumbling. The rosy flush darkening and spreading over her entire body told him plenty. "Just give. Take."

One by one, he discarded his blades. Only when he was stripped to his skin, nothing between them, did he climb onto the bed. Her pupils dilated as she watched him, and goose bumps spread over her, joining the flush.

He trapped her feet between his knees and reached up, his fingers curling around the waist of her panties. Slowly, so slowly, he dragged them down, revealing the paradise between her legs.

"The Darkest Pleasure"

She didn't try to stop him. No, she encouraged him, raising her hips to allow an easier glide. He fisted the material, its dampness teasing his palm as his gaze drank her in. Her thighs were lean, the small patch of hair guarding her femininity as sunny as the hair on her head. Tiny as she was, her legs seemed to stretch for miles.

"Exquisite," he told her.

"Th-thank you."

He leaned down and braced his palms beside her hips. "Shall I continue?"

"Yes." A plea, desperate and needy.

His cock jerked in reaction. "I've dreamed of this moment, of having you." He lifted one of her legs and placed a soft kiss upon her ankle. The skin was smooth, cold chased away by heat at the moment of contact.

Another tremor moved through her.

With his free hand, he gently pushed her other leg into the mattress, parting her thighs. Wider...wider...

He growled low in his throat, the sound primal and wild. Pain pawed from one side of his mind to the other, eager but content for the moment. Already Danika glistened with arousal. He kissed her calf, and she gripped the sheets.

"Do you want me to...Should I..."

"Hurt me?" he asked.

A tentative, "Yes."

"No." Holding her like this and not being buried deep inside her was a physical agony all on its own. "Not you."

She frowned. "Will you find pleasure without it?"

"Oh, yes." He hoped. This time, he kissed the inside of her thigh. His tongue flicked out, tasting, gliding over the smooth skin.

A moan escaped her as she raised her hips.

His fingers trekked up her other leg and stopped a whisper away from her curls. "Continue?"

"Reyes," she breathed.

"Continue?" he insisted.

"Yes. Please."

He brushed past those moist folds - sweet heaven - and buried a finger inside her. She was hot, tight, deliciously wet. "I knew you would feel this way." In. Out.

"Yes! Like that."

Taste.

He didn't know if the urging came from deep inside his mind or from the demon and he didn't care. Shaking, he leaned down and traced his hot tongue over her center. Heaven, he'd thought before. Ambrosia, he realized now. Her sweetness coated his tongue, filled his mouth. She tangled her hands in his hair, nails digging into his scalp.

Yes, he nearly shouted.

He licked and laved her, worked another finger inside, and began pumping in and out again. In and out. So good. So damned good. The pleasure of having her underneath him, spread for him, was intense, undeniable, and a moment passed before he realized his wounds had begun to close and his enjoyment...had not diminished. It was shocking. Something he didn't understand. Why?

If he did nothing, would the pleasure fade? Would his demon spring up and demand he hurt his lover? Would his demon begin to influence Danika, making her into something she did not want to be?

Reyes was unwilling to wait to learn the truth. Too much was at risk.

He reached behind him and dug his nails - claws now - into the scabbed flesh on his back. Yes, yes. The pain, the trickle of blood. As expected, heat roared through him, his pleasure intensifying.

"Who is here with you?"

"Don't stop," she begged.

"Who is here with you?" he repeated, harshly this time.

"You are."

"What is my name?"

"Reyes."

"Who do you desire?"

"Reyes."

His strokes against Danika's clitoris became frenzied. She moaned over and over, the sounds a symphony to his battered soul. She begged for more; she begged him to stop. He gave the first, refused the last, inserting a third finger inside her and stretching the tightness of her sheath.

A climax slammed into her.

She tensed around his fingers and tongue, inner walls holding him captive. He swallowed every drop of her satisfaction.

When she quieted, he rose above her. Their gazes met and held. She was trembling, sated, her eyelids at half-mast, and yet desire still shone in those emerald orbs. "You didn't..."

"No."

She licked her lips. "Will you?"

"Oh, yes."

"Do you need - "

He shook his head, the motion clipped. His body burned with unsatisfied passion. Which hurt, wonderfully so. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation. Other partners had whipped his flesh to ribbons, stabbed him, bitten him, but none had tormented him like this. The pleasure-pain sang through him, a discordant melody that offered the sweetest kind of solace. The kind he'd always dreamed of but had despaired of ever experiencing.

How had she given it to him?

"You're so beautiful," Danika whispered. "I want to paint you, just like this."

"I would like that." Reyes opened his eyes and crawled up her soft body. He removed her bra, the clasp in front easily giving way to his fingers. Her full breasts sprang free. Her nipples were still hard, but now he could see how pink and perfect they were.

He licked and sucked one, then the other, and soon she was writhing again. Soon she was begging again. Soon he was lost in the essence of her, the demon urging him on, craving more.

"The Darkest Pleasure"

"Condom," she panted. "I need you inside me. Now."

He nodded, grabbed one of the foil packets he'd stolen from Paris and stored in his nightstand and covered himself. He would not risk impregnating her, even though part of him embraced the idea - craved it. He would never do such a thing to her, never force her to bear the spawn of a demon.

In this, at least, he would not be selfish.

"Ready?" she asked him. She rubbed herself against his erection, slick. Wonderfully wanton. Her nipples abraded his chest, creating a delicious friction. For once, he didn't wish razor blades were scraping over him instead. "Ready?" she asked again.

Gods, yes.

He didn't have to guide his shaft inside her. The tip was already nestled at the brink, ready...drawn to her by an invisible wire. "Savoring," he said. "Need to savor."

She nibbled on her bottom lip. "Waiting is torture. I thought you didn't torture people anymore."

His mouth edged into a strained smile.

"Now. Please, Reyes."

Unable to resist any longer, he cupped her face and pushed all the way to the hilt, groaning in abandon as he did so. Her arms and legs wrapped around him, not just holding him captive but surrounding him with all that she was.

And just like that, she climaxed again.

Her moans spurred him on. In and out, like his fingers. In and out, like he'd fantasized. His thoughts fuzzed, Danika his only focus. Her perfect body, her thunderstorm fragrance. Her sweet moans and her hands, even now petting his back. Nothing else mattered. No one else mattered. Oh, the exquisite agony.

More. Need more.

His lips claimed hers in a scorching kiss, his tongue plundering. Her desire melded with his, heating, branding. Perhaps her goodness even seeped into him, because lights seemed to blink throughout the darkness of his soul, scattering shadows in every direction.

More!

She writhed, and her nipples continued to abrade his chest. The sweet scent of her satisfaction enveloped him.

"How can I want more?" she panted. "Can't get enough. Need...need..."

The pleasure became too much, stinging, and Reyes exploded. He hadn't had to stab himself. A little clawing, but that was hardly significant. Mostly, he'd enjoyed. A shocked, blissful roar burst from his lips, hot seed jetting from him. His spirit might even have left his body.

He didn't know what happened, how it happened. All he knew was the pounding of his heart, the clenching of his muscles, the throbbing in his bones. All he saw was heaven. Clouds, the glide of white-feathered wings, the glisten of gold, the rainbow shine of gemstones. Cool air caressed him. He was floating, soaring, weightless.

But then the last spurt of desire left him, and he collapsed atop Danika. His strength, gone. The clouds faded completely, the wings, the gold and gems, gone. He saw utter darkness and couldn't quite catch his breath. Sweat clung to his skin.

Danika was hot underneath him, panting, trembling.

"What happened?" she gasped.

"Climax." A climax unlike any he'd experienced before.

"No. Reyes, you disappeared."