Eidolon smiled. “You sound like Wraith.”
“Come on. He had a point. You have to give him that much.” Shade popped the cap off the beer. “I mean, twins wrestling on the ground? Hot.”
Maybe, but Eidolon wasn’t interested in two women. He wanted only the one. Shade went on about twins, ticking his conquests off on his fingers. Eidolon recommended a calculator and swept up the plate of food to take it to Tayla, though he wished he had some oranges. Her citrus craving made sense now; Soulshredders were a tropical species that required the fruit to survive.
Halfway to the bedroom, his heart skidded to a halt. The sweet, musky scent of Tayla’s arousal drifted from the living room.
Wraith.
Eidolon sprinted down the hall, caught the corner with his shoulder, and spilled half the spaghetti onto the floor. Not that he noticed. No, all he could see was his own anger in a filter of red splayed across the scene before him.
Tayla stood in the living room, robe loosely tied and showing way too much creamy flesh. Wraith, his bloody video game on pause, watched her, his eyes glowing, not with the normal gold of arousal or anger, but with the blue-flecked gold of his hypnotic gift.
“See what it would be like with me?” he was saying. “Bet E won’t do that to you. It’s not civilized.”
The bastard was in her head, feeding her images of gods knew what.
Territorial rage lit Eidolon up like a gas-soaked torch. “Back the fuck off, brother,” Eidolon bit out. “You don’t do humans or Aegi.”
“She’s not either. Not anymore.” Wraith smiled, his white fangs gleaming hungrily. “Fair. Game.”
Darkness swallowed him. Eidolon dropped the plate and launched over the couch armrest. He slammed Wraith into the wall with a hand around the throat. Sober, Wraith could kick his butt, but he didn’t give an imp’s ass. “She’s mine.”
Wraith’s eyes went half-lidded, and if he was bothered by the fact that Eidolon was nearly choking him, it didn’t show. “Look at her, E. She’s primed. She’ll take us both.”
An image of Wraith brutalizing Tayla with his teeth as he took her tattooed itself into Eidolon’s brain, turning his thoughts to poison. “Don’t touch her,” he snarled. “Don’t you ever touch her, or I will let the vampires—”
“Hellboy?”
They both turned to Tayla, who stood there as though in a daze, her fingertips playing lazily along the edge of her robe where it gaped at the sternum. A blast of lust came from her like a shockwave, and Eidolon jerked as though she’d grabbed his cock.
“That’s never happened before. She should be calling my name,” Wraith muttered. “And what were you saying about the vamps?”
Ignoring the question, Eidolon released Wraith with a shove and crossed to Tayla. She flew into his arms, climbed him like a tree until she was wrapped around him, rubbing her face on him, writhing against his body.
She was going to take him right there.
The thought made him so hot, so deliriously fuzzy-headed, that he nearly forgot Wraith was watching and let it happen. Instead, he hauled ass to the bedroom. By the time he kicked the door shut, his jeans were unbuttoned. By the time they were halfway to the bed, he was sheathed inside her wet, satin heat.
“Oh, my God, Eidolon . . . oh, my God.” She pelted his face with kisses as she began a punishing grinding motion with her hips. “I went to get my backpack. Saw your brother . . . and suddenly, my mind just kept seeing—”
“Wraith.” Fuck. He stopped short of the bed, his heart growing cold even as he thrust into her hot depths.
“No,” she moaned. “You. He was there for a second, but it wasn’t right. I concentrated hard, and it was you.”
Pressure filled his chest cavity. A sudden, fierce instinct rose in him, a foreign and yet familiar urge. It didn’t matter that her passion had been induced by a mind-seduction. It didn’t matter that she was hardly in a position to know what she wanted from him. All that mattered was that he take her. Bond with her. Make her his mate.
“Mine,” he growled into the slender column of her throat. “You’re mine.”
“Yes . . . oh, yes.” Her voice throbbed with the promise of what she was saying. That she was his, that all his years of empty sex with empty females was coming to an end, that he would no longer worry about becoming a mindless beast, that there would be no more loneliness for either of them.
The surge of emotion triggered a chain reaction inside him. Fire shot from the fingertips of his right arm, up the tribal pattern in his skin. The designs glowed red through the sheen of sweat that had broken out over his entire body.