MARIA They set back on course, her captor—since he still wouldn’t tell her his name—cutting at twigs for them pass. She noticed one time that even when the space had been enough for him to fit through, he’d still cleared it a bit before passing.She suspected he did it for her.“Shit.” He cursed all of a sudden, shoving the tip of his sword into the ground and resting on it.“You’re tired.” She observed.He didn’t answer her. He didn’t need to. It was glaringly obvious.“You need to rest.”“I don’t.” He forced out through gritted teeth. His breaths wheezed in and out through his teeth and his beautiful face was scrunched up in pain.When she looked down, she saw that the blood stain on his trousers had spread wider. He was bleeding more, and if she had to guess, it was because he was stressing the leg. He was supposed to keep the leg resting horizontally for as long as it took for an immortal’s bones to mend. For one as old as him, it would happen quicker, and that was what she’d bee

BRAN “What are you doing?” Even to Bran’s ears, he could hear how panicked he sounded, and he had every right to be.She’d shoved her fingers into the bands of her shorts and the only reason she would do something like that, was if she wanted to take it off. She’d said she wanted to have a bath, but she had to be joking, right?Her eyes flew to his, confused. “A bath. I just…” She trailed off mid-sentence and he could see the moment when it hit her. “Oh.”Yeah. Oh.He couldn’t help himself as his thoughts drifted. What had she been about to do?She’d told him that she was going to take a bath at the same time she’d attempted to take off her shorts, so there had been no time for him to process what was happening. Now that he was, he wondered if he should have let her take her shorts off if not for anything, for him to feed his eyes.It was not news that Maria had a body that could bring a man to his knees and every time he stared at her, he was reminded of that anew. She was a curvy li

MARIA “Wait here.”That was what Maria’s captor had told her almost ten minutes ago before he’d walked into the dark aclove off to the right of where she stood.After a long day of walking, they’d finally reached the demon realm. Before today, she hadn’t known that it was possible to cross between realms on foot, but it was actually possible. She’d simply thought that they were merely travelling to a friend’s home that was in the next town, but then after reaching the ends of the forest, they’d come to a wall. The end of the forest.At least that was what Maria had thought. Until her captor had stepped through stand he’d. Scared and a bit excited, Maria had stepped though it too and she’d appeared next to her captor.The other side of the wall was a town. The streets were not that busy—probably because it was dark—but she could see a few people milling around, their horns telling her that they were demons. She also saw a few that didn’t have horns and she briefly wondered what they w

BRAN The door slammed shut behind him as he stepped out of the room, leaving Maria behind.Christ, she was just so infuriating. And so fucking fearless. Bran had never met a woman like her in his entire life. The women he knew were soft and submissive, retreating at the slightest sight of his anger and hurrying to do his bidding whenever he demanded it. They did everything in their power to make sure that they didn’t anger him—Maria did everything in her power to make sure that she pissed him off.And she succeeded every time, damn her.But, Christ, he found it so sexy. Down in the bar, he’d just been about to maul her when Elizabeth had cleared her throat, pulling him back to the present. Had she not detracted him, he would have kissed her right there, damn it. Seeing the flush on her cheeks and neck from anger had the blood rushing to his cock so fast, it made him dizzy.He needed to do something about his perpetual boner for her. He hadn’t gotten laid in a long time because of his

MARIA Oh shit.Oh shit.Those two words were the only things that kept repeating in Maria’s head as the vampire slanted his lips over hers in a dominating kiss. There was no other word she could think of describe the way he was kissing her, but dominating.Her heart slammed against her ribcage as dimly, she realised that this was the vampire kissing her. Her captor. So many times had she wondered what it would be like to feel those firm pink lips on hers, to have them touching any part of her body at all, and now that he was kissing her…Gods, now that he was kissing her, she was just sitting there, frozen from shock, from the switch in events seeing as they had just been arguing a few seconds ago, and finally, doubt. Doubt that this was actually happening.She hd reason to doubt, didn’t she? The man barely tolerated her, ignoring her when she asked questions and barking at her when he was in a peculiar mood to answer—which was rarely. And again, they had been fighting just a second