Brimstone Prince. Barbara Hancock J.

was petite. Her jeans were dusty and torn at the knee. Her pack had seen better days. But as the sun rose it glinted off her hair the way the lantern light had the night before. It created a halo effect that caused him to blink and look away.

      He clenched his jaw against the burn in his blood. Samuel’s daughter. Had the affinity in her blood been so powerful that it affected her aging the way Brimstone did with daemons? He’d heard of Samuel’s Kiss his whole life. It had changed the course of his family’s history. His mother never would have fallen in love with his daemon father if it hadn’t been for the affinity Samuel had bequeathed to her. He had mixed feelings about that.

      The door opened with a whoosh of displaced air. The passive solar home was always a perfect, comfortable temperature. It was his inner heat that caused perspiration to dot his upper lip.

      “Make yourself comfortable. There should be food, drink, towels...anything you need,” Michael offered. He was already retreating to the master bedroom, where hopefully a cold shower would help him regain control of the lava in his veins.

      * * *

      Lily showered and put on a fresh change of clothes from her backpack. She washed out the clothes she’d been wearing and hung them in the spare bathroom to dry. She found canned fruit in the kitchen and sat down to eat a bowl of peaches while water ran in a nearby room. She needed calories to deal with elemental spirits, and eating redirected some of the tension from resisting Michael’s Brimstone pull.

      Had the daemon king meant to throw them together? Would he spell out what he expected from her or was she supposed to play this by ear? The debt she owed him would have its price. She’d always known that.

      Once the water had been turned off for a long while, Lily went in search of her host. She didn’t want to set up her mother’s kachinas and play her flute without warning the daemon prince to brace himself against her affinity’s call.

      She found him bare chested and tending several minor wounds in the master bedroom in front of a full-length mirror. He’d pulled on a pair of slim-cut jeans after his shower, but they rode loose and low on his hips. So loose and so low that she could see the muscular plane of his abdomen and the dusting of golden hair that disappeared into the waistband of his pants. He was lean, hard, beautiful...and scarred.

      Lily stopped in the doorway with an inadvertent gasp on her lips.

      His body was amazing. Muscular and obviously toned for something besides strumming the guitar. No wonder he’d been able to fight the Rogue daemons with his bare hands. His arms bulged and rippled as he moved to place a bandage on a cut on his side. But there were other ripples, too. Burn marks dimpled his skin on his chest and back. Similar marks lightly streaked his arms and his abdomen.

      “From a time when I didn’t know how to control the burn. It almost consumed me,” Michael said. He answered a question she never would have asked. “My father was a daemon. I’m not. I never will be,” he continued. “The Brimstone doesn’t rule me.”

      “Daemons aren’t inherently evil, you know. They’re not human, but Brimstone doesn’t actually signify damnation...” Lily began.

      “I can fight my blood and I will,” Michael interrupted.

      Lily nodded as if she understood why he would reject his heritage. She had run away from hell herself. She should understand. But his burn was already such a part of the man she had just met that she couldn’t believe he would be so deluded about who and what he was.

      “Let me help you with that,” she offered. She came into the room where he was trying to reach one last cut on his back with an antiseptic wipe.

      “Be careful. Sometimes my blood can be dangerous,” Michael warned.

      “It seems fine right now. No smoke. No fire. Look. The bandages aren’t turning to ash,” Lily teased. She dabbed at the cut and listened to his very mortal hiss before reaching for the bandage he’d already taken from its wrapper.

      “For now. I’ve got it under control,” Michael said. She could hear the tension in his voice. He spoke with a tight jaw and narrowed eyes.

      If so, he was doing better than she was. Her heartbeat had quickened. Her lungs had tightened. She was as close to him as it was possible to be without embarrassing herself and it wasn’t close enough. She’d had several months of practice dampening her affinity, but that practice fell to dust with Michael. Her hands trembled as she placed the bandage over the cut on his back.

      But worse than the tremble that betrayed his effect on her...she allowed her fingers to brush over the ripples of his scars. His chest expanded in a sudden gulp of air at her touch. She shivered. Her affinity tuned her in to the agony of his long-ago pain. No wonder he rejected the heat of his Brimstone blood. It had almost burned him alive from the inside out.

      Their gazes met in the mirror and Lily’s hand paused. She didn’t jerk it away, even though his skin began to heat.

      “You want the bandages to scorch?” Michael asked. His voice had gone deeper and more melodic than before.

      If she’d been honest, she would have told him she was a full-on pyromaniac in that moment. She’d been sheltered from this burn her entire life even though she’d been raised in hell. The daemon king had buffered and dampened and kept her safe. She’d run away from that refuge. She’d run from the frying pan into the fire. And she wanted Michael to burn. Her father had used the last hours of his life to bargain for her safety, and now all she wanted was to step into this dangerous man’s arms and throw away all thoughts of a safe haven.

      Even so, alarm flared in her breast when Michael stepped forward, nudging her body toward the mirror with his. She didn’t resist. She backed up until she was pressed between the cool glass and his hot chest. Her hand had fallen away from his back, but now she lifted both of them. She meant to press her palms against his shoulders to hold him back. But the move became another caress of sensitive fingers down the scars on his arms.

      He trembled beneath her touch and she looked up to see that he’d closed his eyes.

      “This won’t be a refuge for long. We have to determine where we go from here,” Michael said. His voice was only a rough whisper. It revealed what her touch made him feel, but he didn’t lean to kiss her. She could feel the desire in his body. She could tell that he held himself in check even though he was pressed against her. The glass at her back no longer felt cool. His Brimstone heat had transferred to her. She wondered that the mirror didn’t melt, because she felt as liquid as lava.

      “I’m going to have to play the flute. My affinity will fill this place,” Lily warned.

      “I’ll be outside. For as long as I can manage to resist,” Michael said.

      But he didn’t immediately move. Their respiration synchronized. They breathed in and out together. Each slow, shaky inhalation was a confession. Each exhalation seemed to invite and encourage their lips to draw closer. Tingles of awareness charged her skin as he drew nearer. Their mouths were only slightly apart, their gazes locked, their breath coming faster and shallower when Michael finally moved away. The cool rush of space between them was harsh. They had stood together far longer than they should have. The pause hadn’t been innocent. It had been a test of self-control—for both of them.

      Lily shivered, suddenly chilled.

      She watched as he pulled on a clean T-shirt and called for Grim. The hellhound rolled into being from the paws up as it moved toward the door. She’d been sheltered in the palace. She’d never seen one of the giant creatures until today, but he still reminded her of home. She touched the top of his head earlier because there was something familiar about the frightening beast who obviously loved his master. Touching Grim had soothed her. Touching Michael had left her completely undone. He was scarred from his own Brimstone, in and out.

      She was already certain there was no way she would be able to fulfill her guardian’s wishes if what he asked was for her to throw Michael into the flames he’d spent his whole life resisting.