"Lord Arkin... what if someone hears us?"
The words came out embarrassingly soft. Purring, almost, pressed against his damp chest.
Lexianna despised the sound of herself. She despised being needy. She despised being soft. She had spent fifteen years building a version of herself that didn't make sounds like that for anyone.
Even her ex-husband didn't enjoy this luxury.
And yet.
Truly nothing beats good sex, said the part of her brain that had apparently defected.
She tried to maintain some shred of decorum, some illusion that she was still a rational adult with a Linkedin profile and a functioning moral compass.
But every time his hips drove forward, that impossible, mind-warping thickness filling her completely, rational thought became a concept she could only vaguely remember from a distance.
The poison was retreating. She could feel it, the ice in her veins dissolving with every wave of heat, like her body had found the only antidote it would accept and was taking it without asking her permission.
It was inconvenient…
She was curious. She genuinely wanted to understand what was happening, why this, why him, why the pineapple, why any of it.
She had questions. Organized questions.
She could not focus on a single one of them.
Especially when someone was balls deep inside you, tickling all your senses, scraping your womb and locking you to them.
Her juices were spluttering out with every thrust, and she could not help but agree with Arkin.
Shame was non-existent in the demon realm.
Arkin gripped her chin, his large fingers tilted her head back, forcing her eyes up to his. The demonic hunger burning in them was blinding.
No pretense, no patience left. Just want, stripped bare.
It tickled Lexi's heart. No one had ever looked at her like that before.
"This is my chamber," he rasped, his breath hot against her swollen lips as he danced over them, close enough to taste. "I am a Prince of the Wastelands." His hips didn't slow. "No one interrupts me."
Just get this over with, you arrogant dumbass, Lexianna thought, her nails digging into the thick wool of the mattress.
She had severely underestimated the stamina of a demonic wolf. They had been going for what felt like hours. He was too good.
It was entirely unprofessional how good he was. All designed to dismantle her sanity.
She was losing her mind to lust. The "Business Madwoman" was melting down, reduced to a shivering, whimpering mess. The sweet, heavy scent of pineapple nectar and sweat was suffocatingly thick inside the cocoon of the curtains.
She was close… so close. The pressure was building at the base of her spine, a blinding, white-hot knot of tension that demanded release.
The doors suddenly exploded open.
"Arkin! Come out here right this instant!"
The voice was sharp, female, and vibrating with absolute fury. Lexianna's eyes flew open as she planned to move, only for his hand to catch her hair. Not cruelly. Just completely.
He arched her back, pulled her upright against him, and kept moving without so much as a glance toward the curtains.
He didn't seem to care that someone had just badged in.
Oh my god.
The CEO in her wanted to die out of pure embarrassment. A coup was one thing. Having her new "business partner's" mother kick down the door felt like a nightmare.
But at the same time her body didn't care.
The intrusion and the sheer audacity of being caught, sent something electric down her spine. Her internal muscles clenched around him involuntarily, and the knot at her spine snapped.
Lexianna couldn't hold it back. She didn't see any reason to try.
She let out a fractured moan completely out of shame. Her silver tails wrapped around his waist tightly while she convulsed against him, her nails biting bloody crescents into his broad shoulders, her whole body shuddering through the wave.
"Right there," she sobbed into his neck, completely lost to the high. "Don't stop... right there."
Outside the curtains, past the privacy screen, the silence that answered he was the particular silence of people who had witnessed something they could not unknow.
The Demon Alpha, standing beside his furious Luna, went rigid. The sheer, unabashed degradation of the sound, a female clearly climaxing while his son was inside her, was too much for his sensibilities.
It was a common occurrence in the demon realm, but when it has to do with your son who you banished? Now that felt like an insult.
Because it seemed, he didn't put him into consideration, or fear him.
He clutched his chest, his face turning a dangerous shade of purple. He actually choked, coughing up a small spray of dark blood onto the stone floor.
"Arkin!" the Alpha roared, his voice trembling with a mix of fury and sheer mortification. "How dare you defile these chambers like a feral beast!"
Inside the curtains, Arkin turned his head toward the curtains, his eyes flashed red.
"Out."
It was a single word, spoken not with volume, but with authority.
The air warped. An invisible wave of concussive magic exploded outward from the bed. It hit both the Demon Alpha and Luna and sent them flying backward, their feet leaving the stone floor entirely.
They flew backward through the entryway, crashed into the corridor outside, and the heavy oak doors slammed shut behind them with a boom that shook the walls. The lock sealed with a pulse of red light.
In the corridor, the Alpha caught his Luna before she hit the ground. He pulled her upright, his hands unsteady. He was staring at the sealed doors.
His hands were shaking. He was the ruler of the Wolf Tribe, a demon of immense power, but the sheer, crushing weight of the magic that had just thrown him... he had never felt that from his son before.
Arkin's magic had always been unstable. Wild. It was why he had been banished. But that strike had been something else entirely.
His jaw tightened.
The Luna, her robes disheveled and her pride bruised, snarled. She lunged forward, her claws extending, ready to tear the locked doors off their hinges to give her son the scolding of a lifetime.
The Alpha grabbed her arm, his grip iron-tight.
"Stop," he breathed, his eyes wide as he stared at the red magic sealing the wood. "Let him finish."
She straightened her robes, threw her chin up with grievance.
"Fine," she grumbled, her eyes narrowing at the door. "But just wait until I get my hands on that slutty female."
***
Inside the silk curtains, the silence had returned, broken only by the sound of harsh, ragged breathing.
Lexianna lay sprawled across the thick wool, her body a boneless, exhausted wreck. The ache in her chest had vanished, the pressure completely relieved.
The freezing ice of the Soul-Wither poison was gone, neutralized by the heavy, burning heat pooling deep inside her.
She turned her head, her silver eyes dazed, looking at Arkin.
He was leaning over her, his chest heaving, his dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. But it wasn't his face she noticed. It was the sudden, searing heat blooming on the side of her own neck.
A golden mark, shaped like a single, stylized flame, had burned itself into her silver skin just below her ear.
Lexianna touched it, her fingers trembling.
I know what this is.
Her memories supplied the answer before she could finish forming the question.
"You bonded with me..." she breathed, her voice filled with exhaustion.
She had a lot of questions, but just as she said that sentence, her eyes rolled back, and she drifted into darkness, going completely limp in his arms.
Arkin caught her. He gently laid her back against the wool, his calloused thumb brushing a stray strand of silver hair from her sweaty forehead.
His eyes traced the golden flame mark on her neck. Looking at it as if it was his best artwork.
He didn't move for a long moment. Then, he raised his right hand. He dragged his forefinger and index finger down the length of her body, not touching, but hovering just above the skin.
A soft, blood-red glow trailed behind his touch, a wave of cleaning magic that wiped away the sweat, the dampness, and the lingering traces of their union, leaving her pristine and glowing.
He pulled the thick wool blankets over her sleeping form, ensuring she was completely covered.
Then, he stood up.
He walked to the back of his massive chambers, pushing aside a heavy silk tapestry to reveal a small, steaming pond carved directly into the stone. He didn't bother to clean himself. He simply stepped down into the water, submerging his exhausted body entirely.
The heat of the water did nothing to soothe his racing mind.
She is strange, he thought, his jaw tight.
He dragged a hand down his face. He could still smell it. It wasn't just the scent of sex. It was that sharp, tropical sweetness. The fruity, floral aroma that lingered in the back of his throat.
She smelled like a fruit that could never, ever be found in the barren land of the Demon Realm. A forbidden thing.
"Anyone."
His voice came out low, echoing off the stone.
The shadows in the corner of the room thickened. Dark mist gathered and solidified, and from it stepped a figure in black robes, masked, moving with the silence of someone trained to exist only when called.
The Shadow Guard dropped to one knee on the dry wooden floor.
"My Lord."
Arkin rested his arms on the stone lip of the pond. His eyes stayed fixed on the rising steam.
"The woman in my bed." A pause. "Do you know her?"
The guard lifted his head slightly toward the tapestry, toward the curtained bed beyond it.
"She is the Nine-Tailed Fox of the Fox Tribe, My Lord," the guard reported smoothly. "Her tribespeople claim she is cursed, the silver hair and fur are considered markings of bad omen. They call her violent and wicked. An outcast." The guard paused, his hand moving slightly toward the hilt at his hip. "Shall I remove her, My Lord?"
Arkin turned his head, slowly, fixing the Shadow Guard with a glare so sharp, so violently possessive, it was filled with intense killing intent.
The guard's breath hitched. His knees buckled, and he dropped fully to the floor, pressing his masked forehead against the wood in absolute submission.
Arkin looked away.
"Spread the word," he said, his voice returning to its usual quiet register, carrying the weight of someone announcing a fact that had already been decided. "Prince Arkin has returned."
He let that sit for a moment.
"And he has brought his bride."
The word landed in the steam like a stone in still water.
"My bride."
The guard trembled, immediately nodding his head. "Yes, My Lord. It will be done." He hesitated, his voice shrinking as he delivered the final piece of news. "Your parents are still waiting outside, My Lord."