I set a trap that afternoon and managed to catch a small rabbit. Triumphant as I skinned it with my little eating knife. I tried to build a fire but wasn't doing a good job.

Frustrated I grunted and fell back onto the leaves. The temperature was just right. And the leaves were soft under my back. And I was exhausted. I closed my eyes, for only a moment.

"I want you." His low rumbling voice made me shiver as I peeled an eye open.

He was crouched next to me. His forearms resting on his knees and hands casually linked as he stared down at me with a cocked head.

"You barely just left! How are you back already?" Irritation made my words bite.

No way I'd let him have me again.

"You don't understand, Zira. I will feel you again. I have to." He made a clenched gesture toward his chest. "It's this drive that controls me. I'm going to have to bury my cock in you."

"No!"

"I'm not asking, Zira. I could throw you to your back and be in you in seconds. I'm telling you because I know what I did to you last night." He shook his head. "I can't imagine how you suffered. I haunt women, I enter them, I take from them but I don't purposely damage them."

"You do tremendous damage!" I argued.

"But at least I don't intend to." He said softly. "When you call out my demon. He wants devastation, trauma, and the more afraid you become the more he feasts on you."

I'd been terrified last night.

"I know." His face was etched with what could only be sympathy. He levelled his eyes on me as he said, "You'll have to take my body."

"What?"

"You take me." His mouth tightened. "I'll do all I can to keep from hurting you if you sate us both. If you put me inside you, you work me between your thighs until we both rise and fall. Then I won't be hurting you. Then you can at least learn not to fear me like that."

"I do fear you!"

"Everyone does." He said derisively. "But not like what I saw on your face this morning."

"You'll see it again, if you don't leave me alone. I promise you!"

"Zira...Be rational. How many souls do you think I offered this deal to?"

Likely none. He takes our bodies.

"Exactly." He admitted matter-of-factly. "And I'm going to take yours if you don't take mine. Every moment your sitting here discussing it is making my monster bite harder, want deeper, more."

"How can I keep up with you?" I blurted anxiously.

"You can't. But try."

***

I worried my lip. Petrified of the concept and vividly recalling my indignity back in the tavern. All he'd made me say and do.

"I didn't make you." He pointed one finger at me from where they were linked. "You did it, if you recall."

Because I wanted his name.

"In exchange for you name!" I sat up glaring at him vehemently. Feeling the need to defend my actions.

His gold eyes watched me intently.

My hair falling around my face and my eyes snapping with icy fury.

"God, you're beautiful. I need inside you." He caught my shoulders and began guiding me back to the forest floor. "Do this, Zira. Let it be your way. Or I'm going to tear your clothes and brutalize you."

No. I can't take any more of that.

I won't survive it. But though I was filled with anxiety over what had so recently happened to me, when I looked in Van's gold eyes I felt some inexplicable trust that he didn't want to hurt me.

Though he's warning me he will if I push him. I suddenly didn't want him to change from the caring being he'd been the last few days.

I wanted to keep him like this as long as I could.

"What do I do?" I swallowed hard. Staring up at him fearfully.

"Take off your clothes."

"Why?"

"Offer me your body, uninhibited."

But despite my previous thoughts, him telling me to hand myself over like some fine prize made me angry. And my old fire flared to the surface.

"You're deplorable!"

"Far worse, actually." He grunted.

***

He rolled off me and stood with me. Tugging me up to my feet so he could frantically work loose the laces at the front of my dress.

My hands shook as I slipped it over my shoulders and let it fall to the leaves. The afternoon breeze chilling my skin. I crossed my arms over my breasts.

"No." He pushed my arms away. Stepping closer to scoop the weight of the porcelain globes. Testing the feel of them and moaning as his thumbs rolled around the nipples.

He tipped his hips forward and was already thrusting toward me. "Take my cock."

I grasped it, kneading it in my fists.

He made a purring sound. "Good, woman. Take me in your mouth."

Despite myself, I felt dampening between my thighs and a strange, tense coiling low in my abdomen. Realizing that I wanted to feel him again.

Despite everything.

What's wrong with me? I was disgusted on one level at my own response but grateful on another because I knew it would smooth what I'd learned could become so painful.

I looked up at him and his face was unreadable. Gold eyes unblinking. Wide with interest.

The afternoon sky had darkened some as clouds moved over the sun and it made his gold eyes nearly glow as they focused on me. The hard square lines of his jaw seeming almost kissable. And the smoothness of his dark gold neck looked like it would be soft and sinewed under my lips.

I could see his collar molding from his muscled shoulders and down over the flat plane of his chest and rippled abdomen. His body was honed from physical exertion.

On women.

One me. I knew.

***

I hesitantly knelt before him. Feeling my knees smashing the leaves on the ground.

I looked up at him. Watching for signs of aggression to see if he would hurt me.

I had to bend his hard rod down to reach my mouth. I pushed it against my lips and felt how firm he was. Like made of iron instead of skin.

"I want you badly." He dismissed.

He caught my cheeks and tipped my head enough I was looking up at him. "Open your pretty mouth and take me in, Lovely."