“That’s a nicer word than I’ve been using to describe them.” She threw her head back against the headrest and stared at the roof. Her small breasts jutted forward, the dark valley just visible beneath the neckline of her crimson corset top. Creamy, lightly freckled swells pushed up with each breath, the way Tayla’s had when he had her on the bed, working her into a passionate frenzy.
The temporary cool-down his body had experienced a moment ago only made the sudden flare of heat even more marked. Flames licked at his skin and burned deep into the muscle, the bone.
“Eidolon?”
Clenching his teeth, he concentrated on driving and not on the erection popping at his fly.
Gem settled her palm on his thigh, and he jerked. “Eidolon, are you okay? Eidolon?”
Tayla’s voice rang through his ears. “Hellboy, are you okay? Hellboy?”
The palm on his thigh squeezed. He willed it to go higher. To squeeze harder. A low growl erupted in his throat as he turned to the woman in the passenger seat, her blue-streaked black hair pulled into twin ponytails, her profile so like Tayla’s . . . his head fuzzed and his vision swirled and he knew the woman wasn’t Tayla, but in his mind she looked like her, smelled like her, and he couldn’t wait.
Yanking the wheel so hard that vehicles behind him honked and slammed on brakes, he whipped the BMW to the side of the road.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tayla yelled, and he didn’t bother to kill the engine before he pounced on her, his control shattered.
Lust buzzed in his head, and through it, he heard the sounds of fabric tearing, of buttons pinging off the vehicle interior, of Tayla moaning. He would give her a release this time. He had to. It’s what he did, what he was born to do.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, taking her into his body. She smelled good. Dark, yet sweet, like cloves and citrus, the scents he’d forever associate with her. “I should hate you, Tayla,” he said as he wedged one thigh between her legs and used the other to brace himself against the dashboard.
She stiffened. “Eidolon.” Her palms shoved hard against his chest. “Eidolon! Shit.”
It wasn’t Tayla’s voice. It wasn’t Tayla’s breast he was caressing. Blinking, he looked down through eyes he knew had gone gold. He frowned. Tayla gazed up at him, concern in her expression. Her skin . . . no, not hers. Gem. Fuck.
Didn’t matter. His loins were heavy and full, his cock so hard it could break, and his entire body was so wired for sex that she could be a mannequin for all he cared.
“You’re going through The Change, aren’t you?” she said quietly, and that fast he snapped out of the sexual haze.
Groaning, he untangled himself from the knot of flesh he’d created with Gem and settled back in his seat. “I’m sorry.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling the fevered sheen of sweat that coated his skin. His right side throbbed, and a glance in the rearview mirror revealed a shadow on his cheek, a design pulsing just beneath the surface as though trying to get out.
“Don’t be. No one’s made a pass at me in so long I’ve forgotten how nice it can be.” She fastened the few remaining buttons on her top. “But calling me Tayla is one hell of a mood-killer.”
He groaned again. What had made him think Gem was Tayla? And why had it mattered? The slayer was nothing to him. He shouldn’t desire her like this. The s’genesis was really fucking with him. He hadn’t been this out of control since he was twenty and going through his first maturation cycle. At least then he’d had the comfort of knowing that once the days of nonstop lust were done, he’d come out of the transition stronger, bigger, more focused. Better.
That wouldn’t be the case this time.
“I have to get to the hospital. Can you drive?” His hands were too shaky to even want to try.
She nodded. “Are you okay?”
Not even close. “I’m going to transfuse myself. I’ve been saving up blood, hoping that if I transfuse when the s’genesis gets tough, the fresh blood will hold it off.”
“Even if it works, it’s just a temporary fix,” she said, in that know-it-all voice every doctor inherited upon graduating from medical school.
“I’m aware of that,” he snapped, unspent lust and harsh fact mixing into one caustic brew. “Just get me to UG. And Gem, do me a favor and leave Tayla alone.”
“No way. She knows something about my parents. She has to.”
He thrust his fingers through his hair. “Even if she does, she’s not going to talk. Nothing you can do to her will break her. Trust me on that,” he muttered.
“So what’s your great plan, then?” She made a sound of disgust and flicked the front of his shirt where a button had torn loose. “Pleasure her into admitting The Aegis is involved? How do I know I can even trust you? Boinking the enemy doesn’t say a lot for your reliability.”
That much was true. “I’m an incubus. Sex is a weapon for my kind.” Except, even he didn’t buy that, because he wasn’t sure sex with Tayla had been about hurting her, about making her feel self-loathing for seeking pleasure with a demon—a demon she should, by all rights, kill.