Before she knew it, Netta had reached the clearing. When she rose her gaze, her eyes were drawn to his, as though by lure. She could feel her mouth opening up in a gasp. In a moment, nothing else in all of the world held meaning for her. There was only him.

She walked, as though in a trance. Netta felt her mind wiped clean of everything that had worried her.

She strode to him with her arms opened wide to accept him as he appeared in front of her. As Ash wrapped his arms around her, she could feel his nearly crushing, trembling embrace.

She longed for the touch of his mind on hers. In that moment, the prospect of being tied to Ash with knowledge of his true name caused Netta to feel a joy unequaled in her life, a feeling that astonished her in its ferocity. It pierced her and drove her closer to his massive chest.

When she breathed in, her mouth and nose was filled with Ash's scent, as surely as she could feel the rough fabric of the black peacoat that he wore. Finally, Netta dared to look up. She saw his red eyes looking down at her, the color now truly no longer irises, but rather roiling, heaving flames. They encased dark, still black centers.

There was no prelude, could not be. Ash launched into what was to come, his rough voice as soft as he could manage. "Come with me and you will die three times by my touch."

Netta's heart seized in her chest. "Die... three times?"

Ash smiled faintly, his gaze seemed to grow distant, as though he were thinking of memories that were both painful and, yet, warming. "They will be small deaths. One for each link in a different sort of chain." He reached forward, took hold of his chain that hung off of Netta's throat. "The links that made me - the man I am now."

Ash turned with her hand in his, leading her further into the woods. The way he led them was where the snow had not been cleared. She watched as he rose his free arm, the one not connected to her by his hand, and banished the snow from the ground with a flick of his wrist.

Down, down, down the thick, snow-laden path they wandered, speaking softly.

Netta didn't know if she had been told what was to come, but she found that if she had, she could not recall it. Even as she walked in the brisk cold, she felt a lack of reality in the world around her, splintering away until the only permanence she could find was in the man's large hand that she grasped.

Netta thought that she could see something all too-familiar in between the thick vertical lines of the trees - a temple. When she turned to look, she saw that there was nothing there.

"What's the matter?" Ash asked softly, leaning down so that he could place a kiss on top of her head.

"Nothing." She murmured.

Netta looked up, knowing that her eyes were as soft as a puppy's and not caring, at the face of a man who professed that he meant, in some fashion, to kill her three times.

His hair was combed softly to the side, like waves rolling past the twisting spires of his massive, onyx-black horns to fully expose a face whose flesh was a warm, dark honey in color. The harsh lines of his face were softened by an almost drugged expression of intimate, raw affection. The lines of his mustache had been trimmed so that their bars now only partially reached down to his chin, stopping to meet across the line of his lips.

When he looked at her, Netta thought that her heart was going to burst in her chest, or that she would run the risk of fainting.

His gaze seemed almost drugged, eyes half-covered by heavy lids.

Oh, Goddess, what has become of us?

On they walked, until it became apparent to Netta that they had walked well and past where the forest reasonably should have ended.

As if guessing her thoughts, Ash remarked, "We are getting close now. I was making this place for our time together - actually, once we walked five minutes away from the clearing, we entered a bubble I've constructed for us."

Netta looked up and to her right, looking at a shadowed Ash. "A bubble? You mean, we're frozen in time?" For a moment, she felt an instinctive fear as she realized that if his words were true, she was in a place governed only by his mercy, in his control.

And I am to die tonight.

When Ash spoke, his voice was husky, a thick quality to it that surprised Netta, given the tame line of conversation before. "It's so that we can explore each other without the fear of your wretched ex-Coven to consider.  Or your new one, for that matter."

Netta struggled for a moment, fear growing inside of her. "Did they know what you planned to do out here?" Netta asked.

Ash made a soft, amused sound in the back of his throat. "After I laid you down for the night, I took the matter up with the Matriarch. She forced promises out of me, but they bought me the chance to ask you to accompany me here. To be frank, I was skeptical of her assurances, that she could get the others' consent to not trying to kill me the moment I spoke to you. As you could see, we still hadn't quite come to full agreement of what my role in your life should be. I wanted this moment to be as joyous an occasion as it possibly could be - considering the... circumstances."

Netta clutched his hand tighter without realizing it until she felt the painful tension in the muscles there. She bit her lip, felt the question that bothered her irritating her until Netta could not stand it any longer. "Why did you do it?" What she wanted to ask was, Why do you have to kill me?

Ash took his hand out of her small grasp, lazily putting his arm over Netta's shoulder. He pulled her to his side, making Netta have to hide her shuddering reaction to being pressed against his warm torso. "Why did I do what, precisely?"

Netta huffed, for a moment burying her face against the rough fabric of the black peacoat that he had worn over his suit. "Ash, c'mon. How do you go from trying to scare the shit out of me the night before to - calmly telling me that you - you want to -"

Netta felt the chuckle that wracked his ribs, resonating through her body. "I think if my kind had mothers, they would probably tell us that if we find ourselves a Witch who can do what you did last night to hold on and never let go."

It was Netta's turn to laugh. "I don't think there's many mothers who would advise their sons to find a wife based on some sort of a proficiency in bed." Netta bit her lip. "So - this is going to bind us together?"

Ash scoffed, sounding faux scandalized, fluttering his empty hand to his chest. "I never said anything about sex, Lovely. You did a whole lot of things last night, and, well, to be fair, only a decent portion of it was related to the carnal pleasures to be found between a Witch and the evil machinations of her manipulative Familiar..."

Netta muttered, "Forgive me for trying to get a straight answer out of you for once."

Ash was quiet for so long that Netta thought that he had not heard her. Finally, though, he said, "Of interest to me is why you accepted."

Netta paused. "Why wouldn't I have?" She never was a good liar. It seemed that with each step she took, the more fearful she felt.

Ash shuddered, and Netta looked up at him, worried, only to see the look of pleasure as it spread on his face, a tender smile making, of all the incongruous things to see on his face, a dimple form on one side of his mouth. The urge to kiss it pulled at Netta.

"Ooh, you keep talking like that, I'll take you where you stand." The threat came idly, then his smile - and the incongruous dimple - faded. "But there is no reason in your favor to have accepted me. I offer nothing to you. Has it occurred to you that I could still do you harm?"

It was Netta's turn to shudder. She gazed at him until Ash looked back at her, then asked, "Why do you keep trying to scare me away? Do you truly want me, when you keep trying to let me go -"

Ash cut her off, looking away, shaking his head vigorously. "You aren't stupid, so don't pretend to be to fish for information. If my - unflattering - reactions to you aren't obvious enough, nothing ever will be. If you want me to put it to you plainly, I'm not a good person. I never have been, and I don't see myself improving in any way that doesn't make your dealings with me easier. I don't want you to be surprised when you find out who - as you put it earlier, what - I am. So -" he stopped, then seemed to have difficulty speaking, his voice starting to flounder before regaining his earlier frankness. "I guess that even though we've pledged to each other, I'm offering you a chance to be happy without that knowledge."

"You're saying that if I said that I didn't want you right now, you'd just walk away?"

Ash was quiet and even looking away from him, uncomfortable from the question she had just posed to him, Netta could feel the storm building in there. Finally, he spoke in a hissing, pained voice. "For the love of fuck, don't ask me to walk away. But I can give you whatever relationship you could ask of me, I could be anyone you could want. Literally. Name the man you would want me to become, I could become that." He chuckled darkly. "Like to see any Human man who could offer that to you. But, if you don't want the horns, the dark secrets, you don't have to have them. And I understand. Honestly."

The words left Netta's mouth before she could have a chance to censor herself. "Damn it, Ash, you're beautiful."

That seemed to surprise him. He coughed, looked up at the sky as though mentally praying for something, perhaps patience. "You know that's my line, right?" He sucked in a breath, seemed to have difficulty regaining control of himself, his body drawn taut. Finally, Ash said, "You're distracting me. I'm not a good man, you keep that line of conversation going and I'm guaranteed to make you change your mind on that point."

"No, Ash, I mean it."

Was Netta imagining it, or was Ash's breathing speeding up? He moaned, a tortured, soft sound from so large a chest to resonate from out of. "That's the worst part of it. You're killing me, Witch." His voice was picking up steam, speaking faster, the passion and genuine nature of his words shocking Netta. "Keeping up boundaries with you so that you don't run off, screaming, destroys me, especially after we've -"

Why could Netta not stop herself from sticking her hand into the fire, time and time again? She blurted it out, every sense in her body screaming in need, long withheld desire. "Why bother with the boundaries?"

Ash stopped walking, his breathing sped up. "Fuck. You asked for it, you teased."

Before Netta could ask him what he meant, opening her mouth, she found that Ash had bent down to press his lips to hers. His tongue thrust, lashed, pumped into her mouth with ungentle ferocity. Not some gentle parody of a Human's, but powered by raw, unnatural power.

She didn't pull away.

He pressed lips that she had long fantasized about in secret. Had wished for for so long that it ceased to be anything except white noise in an otherwise mundane life.

Netta felt her mind melting, melding...

When she fell backward, she was vaguely aware of the fact that she had fallen into a bed.

As she started to tear first at Ash's clothes and then aided him in tearing off her dress, she was incapable of pausing for a moment of drooling anticipation to expend any sorrow for the destruction of the dress than she had borrowed.

When their naked bodies pressed together, Netta felt his name choke out of her throat. Desire had killed her memory of Ash's assurances of what he meant to exact out of her for recompense.