Chapter 9
“Touch yourself, Mayari,” Jonah drawls. “Get yourself ready for me.”
I obey, relishing in the power that has this man so preternaturally still, tense, the string of an instrument pulled tight and ready to snap. “You too,” I ask him. “I want to watch.”
Eyes flashing, he reaches behind his neck and drags his shirt up and over his head in one smooth motion, tossing it aside like an afterthought.
The sight of him hits me square in the gut—broad shoulders, a carved chest, abs that stop just shy of absurd and land firmly in lethal.
Ripped in a way that looks less gym membership and more immortal anatomy.
“Take me out,” he orders. “Use that mess between your legs to get me nice and hard.”
I reach for the hem of his sweatpants and tug it down, hooking the elastic under his balls, and now I’m definitely sure there are hearts in my eyes.
“Go on,” he murmurs. “Make it wet.”
I reach down and palm a handful of where I’m soaked and use it to stroke the length of him. Once, then twice.
The groan he lets out is unearthly. He takes a step back and takes over, taking himself in his hand, thick and long.
I almost fall over.
“Like what you see?” he jokes.
A little too much, I think. I’m embarrassingly wet and shockingly close.
“Left hand on your nipple. Pinch it—yeah, just like that,” he instructs, his arm leisurely pumping. “Right hand circle your clit. Good. Slower.”
I make an embarrassing noise. “Squeeze yourself tighter,” I implore him. “I want to see you lose control.”
“Baby, not sure you could take that.” His knuckles turn white as he follows my directions. The head of him flushes a deep red.
“Baby, I just slayed a demon,” I remind him, my middle finger dipping in and circling again. His nostrils flare. “I can handle half of one.”
He laughs without humor. “Lean back on one hand,” he orders. “Spread your knees. Spread yourself with your fingers and show me the tight little thing I’m about to destroy.”
Making a ‘v’ of my fingers, I do, and Jonah loses his mind.
“You’re driving me insane,” he groans. Still working himself with his hand, gaze hot and laser-focused between my legs, he rages on.
“In the twenty-four hours I’ve known you, you’ve tried to kill me twice, saved my life, and almost died in the process.
And now I’m looking at that pretty pink pussy and thinking it belongs to me. What the hell is wrong with me?”
I lie all the way back to the ground and spread even wider. “Punish me, then.”
“Brat,” he growls, and with supernatural speed, he’s suddenly on top of me, one hand around my throat, the other hand aligning his shaft to my entrance. My cunt parts like silk around the hot, broad head of him. “Word?” he grunts.
“Red,” I breathe, and he crams himself in.
My moan stretches long and helpless as his answering groan rolls up from somewhere deep and dangerous.
“Fuck,” I cry, at the same time he drops his head and slurs, “Mayari,” into my neck.
He lets me adjust to the size of him before he starts to move, tight and controlled, rhythmic, short thrusts. “Why can’t I stop thinking about you?” he pants over me, throwing my leg over his shoulder and turning his head to drop a kiss on my calf.
The spot he’s currently hitting has all my magic dancing across my nerve endings, so it takes me a moment to answer. “Because I’m fucking delightful.”
“That, and more,” he agrees. His eyes and hands roam all over my body while he rides my pussy. “What’s happening?”
“I’m getting the best dicking down of my l—”
“No,” he says with a chuckle, adjusting his knees so he can toss both my legs over his shoulders. He angles his head down to watch where he moves in and out of me, possessed, for a moment, before speaking again. “I feel something radiating off of you. Like energy. Is that your magic?”
I try with all my might to focus, but there’s a new spot he’s rubbing that no one has ever found. “I think so. It feels like it’s dancing. All over. Through my limbs.”
“Hmm,” he says. “Have you ever tried to redirect it? Move it?”
“No,” I say, but I have. I did with the blond demon. I redirected energy into my hands and pushed it out. “Maybe.”
“Try,” Jonah presses. He stops moving and leans his massive torso over me, folding me in half. “Try to shift it right here,” he says, gently pinching and rolling my nipple between two fingers.
I close my eyes. I imagine gathering all the magic in my body and moving, shifting it like waves, lapping against— “Oh.” My eyes fly open.
Jonah gives me a wicked grin. “Good,” he croons, rolling my nipple even harder while starting up again—deep, grinding thrusts.
I can’t even articulate what’s happening—every nerve, every thread of magic inside me drawn tight and funneled into a single, blazing point.
It’s sensation and it’s awareness, hyper-sharpened and humming, like the world has narrowed to one bright, unbearable center.
The intensity builds until it almost tips into pain, too much and not enough all at once. “This feels incredible,” I breathe.
“Remember your word, Mayari,” he tells me, a moment before I feel a pinch, a bright, delightful prick of pain. I glance down and oh shit, Jonah has claws, and he’s using them to clamp down on my nipple.
“Where the fuck did those come from?” I shriek.
He laughs and stops moving. “I can hide them. My horns, too. Want to see?”
I nod, and he goes very still.
There’s no crack of bone or grotesque reshaping. Instead, something subtle shifts beneath his skin. The surrounding air tightens, his magic pressing outward in a low, electric pulse that makes mine answer instinctively.
Then, just above his temples, the skin parts.
Two dark horns push through slowly, clean and elegant, curving back along the line of his skull.
A few inches long and sharply defined, the color of polished obsidian with faint ridges that catch the light.
They taper to smooth points, angled in a way that frames his face rather than distorting it.
If anything, they make him more symmetrical.
Devastating. The curve of them emphasizes the cut of his cheekbones, the chiseled line of his jaw.
His eyes look brighter somehow, the blue more startling against the shadow his horns cast. Ancient and wicked and unfairly beautiful.
He lowers his head slightly, watching my reaction from beneath his lashes. “Well?” he asks.
I swallow. “Rude,” I manage. “You’re somehow hotter. Can I touch them?” I breathe.
He nods.
I slide my fingers up and down. They’re smooth and ridged at the same time, like polished stone that’s been shaped by centuries of erosion.
Warm. Warmer than they should be. Something denser and more robust than bone, alive beneath the surface.
The faint grooves along their length catch against my fingertips in a way that makes my breath hitch.
They’re grounded at the base, rooted deep in his skull, and when I press lightly near where they meet his skin, his breath changes—just slightly. A controlled inhale, combined with a subtle tightening of his jaw and a twitch inside me.
I grin. My magic hums curious and bright in response, as if it’s performing its own exploration, mapping him through touch.
The texture of his horns shifts toward the tips, smoother there, almost satin-like, before narrowing into sharp, elegant points.
I drag my thumbnail along one ridge and finally look at his face.
Jonah looks like he is moments from a torturous death, eyes squeezed shut and chest heaving against my breasts, and I feel him swell inside me, growing impossibly thicker and harder. Oh shit. Fuck yes.
“What’s wrong, baby?” I croon, gripping a horn tightly in one hand and jacking it up and down.
His eyes snap open, and the ice-blue of them turns severe. The silver threaded through his irises spreads like frost across glass, and for a heartbeat he looks less like a man and more like something immortal. Predatory. Beautiful. Dangerous, because he is about to snap.
It looks very, very good on him.
He pushes up, lifting onto his knees, bringing my lower half with him, and dribbles a line of saliva down to my clit. “Divide your magic between here,” he says, with another pinch to my nipple, “and here,” he says, bringing his thumb down to press on my wet clit.
Jonah can somehow tell when I do, because then he goes to town, two claws to my nipple, the thumb of his other hand rolling in deliberate circles, all while delivering a punishing, powerful pace to my core.
I scream when I come and my magic explodes out of me in brilliant, pulsing waves of light, my body locking tight in a full-body seizure. He fucks me right through it and into another one, and another, until I’m a sobbing wreck and his jaw looks like it’s going to pop right out of his skull.
“You,” I sigh, not sure what I mean, your turn, or you’re amazing, or just, simply, you, you, you.
I take hold of both his horns and rub until his handsome face pulls into a snarl.
He plants both hands on the floor and unleashes, and that’s when I realize he’d been holding back and is finally using his half-immortal strength to fuck me right into the kitchen floor.
“Why can’t I stop thinking about you?” he grunts between dangerous drives, our skin slapping together in a cacophony of loudness and lewdness.
“Why was I so fucking devastated when you bled out onto the pavement? Why was carrying your lifeless body one of the worst moments of my life? What are you doing to me? Is this slayer magic?”
My heart and magic sing and soar. “Just me,” I whisper into his ear.
His thrusts become erratic. “Where?” he grinds out.
“In me,” I gasp, wanting nothing more than to be filled with him and not sure why. You, you.
With a groan that sounds like it comes from somewhere hellish, somewhere deep in the earth, his hips stutter, pistoning, and I’m flooded.
Warm.