He’s watching me closely. He seems to like what he sees.

“And?”

“When I was done I killed her.”

He says it without emotion, but I see more in his eyes. He hated himself for killing her. He believed he had no choice. He succumbed to a moment of wanting someone in his bed, in his home, in his world. He wanted to feel … normal for a night. And she paid for it with her life.

“I’m not the hero, Mac. Never have been. Never will be. Let us be perfectly clear: I’m not the antihero, either, so quit waiting to discover my hidden potential. There’s nothing to redeem me.”

I want him anyway.

It’s what he wanted to know.

I exhale impatiently and shove hair from my face. “Are you going to talk me to death or fuck me, Jericho Barrons?”

“Say it again. The last part.”

I do.

“They’ll try to kill you.”

“Good thing I’m hard to kill.” Only one thing concerned me. “Will you?”

“Never. I’m the one who will always watch over you. Always be there to fuck you back to your senses when you need it, the one who will never let you die.”

I pull my shirt over my head and kick off my shoes. “What more could a woman ask?” I skinny out of my jeans but get a foot tangled up trying to get out of my underwear. I stumble.

He’s on me before I hit the floor.

Since the moment I laid eyes on Jericho Barrons, I wanted him. I wanted him to do things to me that pink and clueless MacKayla Lane was shocked and appalled and … okay, yeah, well, utterly fascinated to find herself thinking about.

I admitted none of it to myself. How could a peacock lust for a lion?

I’d been as fancy as one of the proud males, in my useless plumage. I’d strutted around, stealing glances at the king of the jungle, denying what I felt. I’d assessed my tail and his killing claws and understood that if the lion were ever to lay down with the peacock—it would only be on a nest of bloody feathers.

It hadn’t stopped me from wanting him.

It made me grow claws.

As I fall to the floor beneath him, I think, here I am now: a featherless peacock with claws. My lovely tail lost, in one ordeal or the other. I look in the mirror and have no idea what I am. Don’t care. Perhaps I’ll grow a mane.

Relief floods me when his body slams into mine. Barrons moves like a sudden dark wind. He’s not only on me but pushing in me before we hit the floor.

Oh, God, yes, finally! My head slams back into wood but I barely feel it. My neck and back arch, my legs spread. My ankles are on his shoulders and I suffer no conflicts. There is only need and the answer to it all shoving inside me—sleek, hard, animal dressed up in the skin of a man.

I look up at him and he’s part beast. His face is mahogany, his fangs are out. His eyes are Barrons. The look in them isn’t. It makes me wild. I can be whatever I want to be with him. No inhibitions. I feel him growing harder, longer inside me.

“You can do that?” I gasp. The beast was bigger than the man.

He laughs, and it is definitely not a human sound.

I moan, I whimper, I writhe. It’s incredible. He’s filling me up, gliding deep and deliciously inside me where I’ve never felt a man before. Oh, God! I come. I explode. I hear someone roaring.

It’s me. I laugh and keep coming. I think I scream. I use my claws and he bucks in me, sudden and rapid. He makes that sound in the back of his throat I’m so crazy about. I love that sound.

I’d walk through hell and back, smiling, as long as he was beside me. As long as I could glance over at him and our eyes would meet and we’d share one of those wordless looks.

“You haven’t lost your feathers.” His words are strange, guttural, forced out around fangs.

I’d snort, but then his tongue is in my mouth, my jaws are wide, and I can’t breathe, and he’s right. One day you do meet a man who kisses you and you can’t breathe around it and you realize you don’t need air. Oxygen is trivial. Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.

“Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,” he agrees. He knows what I’m thinking. Always. We’re connected. The atoms between us ferry messages back and forth.

“Harder. Deeper. Come on, Barrons. More.” I feel violent. I am unbreakable. I am elastic around him. Insatiable. His hand is on the side of my neck, around my throat, half cupping my face. His eyes bore into mine. He watches every nuance, every detail of every expression, as if his existence depends on it. He fucks with the single-minded devotion of a dying man hunting God.

As he fills me, I wonder if—in the same way that sex makes its own unique perfume—we don’t really “make” love. As in create, manufacture, evoke an independent element in the air around us, and if enough of us did it really well, for real, not just for the hell of it, we could change the world. Because when he’s in me, I feel the space around us changing, charging, and it seems to set off some kind of feedback loop, where the more he touches me, the more I need him to. Having sex with Barrons sates my need. Then feeds it. Sates, then feeds. It’s a never-ending cycle. I get out of bed with him, frantic to be back in it again. And I—

“—hated you for it,” he says gently.

That was my line.

“I never get enough, Mac. Drives me bug-fuck. I should kill you for what you make me feel.”

I understand perfectly. He is my vulnerability. I would become Shiva, the world-eater, for him.

He withdraws and I nearly scream from the emptiness.

Then he’s lifting me into his arms and I’m on the bed, and he’s spreading me over the mound of pillows, nudging my legs wide, and when he pushes into me from behind, I sob with relief. I’m whole, I’m alive, I’m—

I close my eyes and ride the mindless bliss. It’s all I can do. Be. Feel. Live.

I’m Pri-ya again.

I always will be with this man.

Much later, I look up at him. He’s on top of me, barely inside me. I’m swollen, hot, and fiercely alive. My hands are over my head. He likes to tease, an inch, maybe two, until I’m crazy with need, then drive it home hard. It undoes me every time.

I know part of what turns me on so hard, makes me so violent with lust, is that he’s dangerous. I fell for the bad guy. I’m crazy about the one who’s trouble. The alpha that doesn’t play well with others and doesn’t take orders from anyone.