No, he was a sex demon whose libido had been killed by a powerful toxin.
Except, his libido wasn’t completely dead. Not around Serena.
When she had touched him just now, his body had erupted like a newly awakened volcano. That, combined with the sudden bout of poison sickness, had sent his nervous system into stimulation overload, and he’d had to get out of there. His body had felt pulled in several different directions, and he hadn’t been sure how he’d react. He could easily have pounced on her for sex. Pounced on her for blood. Or thrown up in the middle of the room.
Fantastic choices, all of them. Kill her with sex, kill her by bleeding her out, or just really gross her out.
Shaking violently, he sank to the floor and took deep, calming breaths. When the room stopped spinning, he dug through his duffel and tossed a half-dozen items on the tile before grabbing a unit of O-negative from the cold pack. Gods, he hated cold blood, but he didn’t trust himself to hunt right now. His bouts of illness were coming more often, and the last thing he needed would be to catch a meal and get sick while feeding, leaving himself vulnerable.
He supposed he could go to UG, where he could find a willing female to satisfy his nutritional and sexual needs, but at this point he didn’t think he could get it up for anyone but Serena, and how humiliating to not be able to perform. He had a reputation to uphold, after all.
Besides, he couldn’t handle seeing his brothers. The bomb they’d dropped on him had torn him open and apart. He’d been willing to give his own life to save Serena, had been okay with sacrificing UG. But how could he turn his back on his brothers after all they’d done for him?
He couldn’t.
He shot up with the anti-libido medication, and immediately, the pump of arousal in his groin mellowed out, and his skin, which had felt too tight for his body, loosened. He tossed the syringe into the garbage. Puncturing the bag of blood with his teeth, he took a long, slow pull to swallow the pills.
He gave himself fifteen minutes to finish his meal, brush his teeth, and shower, and then he dressed in sweatshorts and a T-shirt, and carefully re-packed his bag so his blood packs and meds were buried beneath his clothes. A muffled beeping noise drew his attention to the phone in his pocket. Eidolon’s callback number flashed on the screen, but Wraith wasn’t in the mood.
Between his brothers’ announcement and Serena’s true confessions, he was hanging from his last thread of sanity.
He couldn’t believe she’d confided in him like that. He should be thrilled that she trusted him enough, but guilt was starting to eat at him for the deception he was carrying out, and the more she trusted him, the more she cared about him… the more he hated himself.
And fuck if he was going to let Byzamoth near her again.
Anger flushed through his veins at the very thought. He’d suspected that the demon had been after her charm, but to hear confirmation from her had set him alight. If she was going to lose her charm, it would be to someone who gave her the most intense pleasure of her life.
It would be Wraith.
Except… even with his brothers’ lives at stake, could he really do it now? The idea that she would die because of him hadn’t thrilled him from the beginning, but now he’d gotten to know her. Care about her.
Man, he was a really sucky demon and a terrible excuse for an incubus.
Maybe… maybe he could save her. E might be wrong about his ability to cure her. If Wraith could take her virginity and make sure she survived, everyone would win. Hell, he’d done the impossible last year when he’d found the cure for Shade’s curse. Okay, so he didn’t find the cure, exactly, but he found the means to activate the cure. And the same demoness who had helped Wraith go through his s’genesis early could surely cure Serena.
Feeling better than he had since this whole thing began, he headed back to Serena’s bedroom.
When he reached her closed door, he took a bracing breath and knocked, cursing the wild pounding of his heart. She opened the door, hair wet and wearing a Family Guy nightshirt that somehow covered too much and not nearly enough.
“I showered,” she blurted, her face taking on an adorable blush as she tugged down the nightshirt.
As if doing so would make him stop admiring her legs.
And… adorable? Had he really thought that? Gods, he was going soft.
He needed to kill something.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked, and he nodded as he strode inside.
“Chronic headaches. Took some aspirin.” He glanced at the tray of food that was still too full. “You need to eat more.”
“I will. I was just waiting for you to get back. You didn’t find any demons lurking in the hotel, did you?”