“Night of Fire. A brew made specifically for . . . this.” He braced himself, but couldn’t lift the goblet up to drink.

Karla took a sip. Took another. She stared into the goblet. “You only get to have this once?”

He studied her as she sipped again. “I suppose so. Why?”

“Because this stuff is wooonderful.”

Wary, he took a swallow of the brew. Nothing happened. The aphrodisiacs he’d experienced in Terreille worked wickedly fast, pumping lust through a man’s body before he realized what had happened to him. But this . . . He drank again. Waited. It did taste good. Warm. Ripe. Some kind of brandy or wine as the base, but . . .

His limbs felt warm, relaxed, heavy. His cock felt warm and heavy. Desire softly heated his blood, sharpened his senses to the feel and smell of a female. He drained the goblet, then used Craft to send it gliding on air back to the table. Karla’s goblet followed a few moments later.

“What can I do to help you?” she asked, looking at him with lightly glazed eyes.

“Kiss me.”

The feel of her mouth on his, hesitant, exploring. The feel of her body as his hands caressed her. Desire, thick and golden, swam in his blood as his hand cupped her breast. Her tongue in his mouth ... Tart and sweet, just like the woman.

He picked her up and took her to the bed, vanishing her nightgown as he set her down on the sheets. Vanishing his own clothes, he stretched out beside her, putting an Ebon-gray shield around his left hand and forearm before he pinned her wrists above her head. Being a Black Widow as well as a Queen, she had a snake tooth beneath the ring finger of her right hand. He didn’t need her pumping venom into him in a moment of panic.

Her body responded to him as he kissed, caressed, and suckled, but he felt a tension rising in her. She’d fight him when the time came. Even knowing he was doing this for her, she’d still fight him—unless she was sufficiently distracted. There were different ways of protecting a witch during that moment when her life hung by a hymenal thread, but this way . . . Yes. If she trusted him enough to let him in, she’d be captured, distracted, and protected.

“Karla,” he said, his hand still caressing her. “Will you let me in?”

She panted, but it wasn’t excitement that made her breathless. “What?”

A psychic touch. A soft brush against her first inner barrier. “Will you let me in?”

She flinched at that light touch, too aware that he was strong enough to force open those barriers. But she opened herself to him, let him glide through the surface layers of her mind. She began to shake when he got close to her core. In another moment, she would try to push him out.