DEV HADN'T TOUCHED a woman in two months. He wanted to touch, fondle, lick, and nibble all the parts that he'd been missing. Who was I to argue? He brought me with his mouth, with me sitting above him, so that I was staring into his eyes when he brought me screaming, my hands searching the air for something to hold on to. He put me on my back and used his fingers between my legs until I screamed his name and sank nails into the one arm I could reach. I was lying on the carpeted floor boneless, breathless, eye-fluttering happy, when I felt the tip of him begin to touch me.

"No," I said.

He stopped, his body pulling back enough so he wasn't touching me. "What's wrong?"

I fought to roll over on my side and fish for a condom in the pile of clothes and weapons. I hadn't had one when I was with Nicky, but I'd started trying to carry some in one of my ammo carriers. I finally rolled back with one of the little foil-wrapped packets in my hand.

He made a pouty face at me, still on his knees. I held the condom in my fingers, and smiled. "Sorry, we aren't fluid bonded."

"Do you use a condom when you're with Asher without me?"

"Yes," I said, and I realized that Jean-Claude had insisted on that. I wondered how long he'd been thinking Asher might have to leave.

"Then that's fair," he said. He got up on his knees and held his hand out for the foil-wrapped condom.

I grinned at him. "If you haven't been with anyone but Asher in two months, then there's something else you've been missing, unless you changed your mind about enjoying pain with your oral sex."

"Asher can open his mouth wide enough to avoid the fangs; just the sucking doesn't work."

I handed him the condom. "Well, if you don't want oral."

He grinned, sudden and wide. "I didn't say that."

He lay back on the floor, and he was already hard and ready. I began to lick the skin around the edges of his groin. "Please, just go down on me. Please, God, just suck me."

"Some of the men in my life complain that I don't do enough preliminaries."

"I won't complain," he said. He gazed down his body at me. I wrapped my hand around the base of him, and licked the tip of him. "Anita, please!" I sealed my mouth over the end of him and began to push my way down slowly, not because I had to, but because I could, and I liked the almost desperate look on his face as I inched my way down him. "Please," he said, again. I plunged my mouth down until my lips met my hand, and then slid back up the long, thick shaft of him. A look of both pleasure and pain crossed his face. It wasn't a good pain, but more as if the way I was doing it were more like teasing than action. I gave up trying to prolong things and rose up on my knees, bending my body forward over his so that I could get a better angle, kept my hand around the base of him, and let myself spill my mouth down and over him in one long, fast movement, until I met my own hand, and then up again, faster this time, until I found a rhythm that was fast, quick, with my mouth so close around the thickness of him that I had to remember to watch that my teeth didn't catch him on the down or up stroke. If we'd had a mattress I'd have used its bounce to help me mouth-fuck him, but I had to do it all with my legs and one arm for support to the side of his body.

I took my hand away on the next downstroke, and fought to get those last inches down my throat, because to sink my lips against his body, it was down the throat; my mouth alone wouldn't hold all his length. When he was buried as far down my throat as I could get him, my mouth pressed against the front of his body, I drew myself up with my mouth pressed as tight as I could get it, sucking up the length of him, doing what a vampire's delicate fangs wouldn't allow.

Dev made a small eager noise, and when I rolled my eyes up to watch his face, his eyes were closed, head thrown back, and another sound escaped him. I came up off him, and caught my breath, before starting down again. He let me do it twice more and then caught me, his big hands on my arms. His voice was strained and breathy as he said, "If you keep doing that, I'll go, and I want to be inside a different place when I do that."

"We're on carpeting; who gets to be on top?"

"You, me, I don't care. If I last long enough, then we'll change positions."

"Sounds like a plan."

I lowered myself on top of him, and even with all the prep work I was still tight, wet, but tight. "Gods," he said, "I'd forgotten how tight you stay even wet. It feels so... damn... good."

I sat on top of him with him buried inside me as deep as he could go, our bodies married more intimately than anything else could make us. The feel of him inside me so far, so deep, so big, closed my eyes, bowed my spine above him. I whispered, "Feels so good."

His voice was low, hoarse as he said, "Dance for me."

I danced for him, finding a rhythm that rocked my body over and around his, and he began to push with his thighs, legs, abs, so that we got a lower body workout that no gym could offer. He stared at me as we made love, his eyes getting wider, and then between one dancing movement and another, the orgasm caught me and I writhed and screamed above him. "I won't last if you do that again. Change positions."

"What? Where?"

"Me on top. Couch."

"Okay."

He actually started on his knees with him pinning my left leg against the back of the couch, so the angle was a little deeper, a little more, as he began to push his body in and out of mine. I rose up enough to watch him slide in and out; one moment I was watching our bodies, feeling the pleasure build, and the next stroke pushed me over and I was writhing, shrieking, fingers digging into the red couch, as if holding on tight enough would remind me that I wasn't just boneless, wordless, warm pleasure.

"Anita!" And he began to move faster, harder, his careful rhythm forgotten in the needs of his body, the feel of mine, and my pleasure rode on the almost frantic shoving of his body into mine. I screamed, and tried to move underneath him, but he tightened his hands on my thighs and forced me still as he began to go fast and faster, deep and deeper, until he began to hit the end of me with every other stroke, not pounding, but a tap, a pulse, and then finally he couldn't hold that rhythm either and he drove himself home, burying as deep in me as he could, in one last shuddering push that made him cry out my name, and made me scream one last orgasm that drowned out everything.

He pulled out, which made me writhe again, and then pushed me a little to the front of the couch so he could collapse behind me. He wrapped me in his shaking arms, a dew of sweat on his chest as he hugged me to him, our bodies spooning as he fought to catch his breath. His heart pounded against my back, and I lay there breathless, twitching, my body immobile from the waist down, as the aftershocks shivered and played through my body.

He whispered, "I've missed girls."

I managed to whisper, "I noticed."

That made him give that low, masculine chuckle, and he hugged me close, tucking me in against his body, curling around me. We fell asleep curled in each other's arms, on the couch in the living room where everyone had to walk past to get to anything farther underground. For me to forget we were in semipublic, and both of us to forget to clean up first, meant the sex was good, and we were both tired. Not a tiredness of lack of sleep, but more of too many things happening in too small a space of time. It had been a night and now a day of too much emotion. Dev and I slept all the bad away wrapped in a cocoon of flesh, and sex, and relief. As much as he loved Asher, he was never going to be able to give up women, and he knew I would never ask him to give up men. The sex was Dev's way of saying he was done with Asher, or at least done with the old rules. In trying to keep the Devil to himself, Asher had made certain he wouldn't be able to keep him at all. I slept in the Devil's arms and knew that for this Mephistopheles, the heaven of love had come at too heavy a price, and he was ready to come back to the purgatory of I-like-you-lots-let's-fuck. It wasn't true love, but it wasn't exactly not-love either.