“I’m sorry, bro,” Shade said, but Wraith held up his hand, not wanting to hear it. Hearing it would make it real.

He brushed past Tayla and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of a dark-haired male sitting in the hallway, his arms and legs bound in Bracken Cuffs—chains used by the Judicia to negate a demon’s abilities while in custody.

The dude was wearing leather pants and boots, but no shirt.

His dermoire appeared to be faded, but it was an exact replica of the markings Wraith and his brothers wore, minus their individual signs. And he had a strange, palm-shaped burn scar over his heart.

Wraith didn’t know what the hell was up, but right now, he really didn’t care.

Serena could have very little time left, and Wraith wasn’t going to waste a single minute.

Twenty-six

Serena was in the bathroom when she heard the bedroom door open. Her heart gave a great thump at the whisper of feet on the floor. Maybe it was Eidolon or Shade coming to do whatever they were doing to make her feel better when they touched her. It was about that time. She was growing weak again, and the pounding in her head was making her vision blur.

“Serena?”

Oh, God. Josh. Maybe if she didn’t say anything, he’d go away.

“Serena. Come out.” There was a long pause. “Please.”

She couldn’t face him. She was still too angry, too hurt, too damned conflicted. She stood there at the sink, quietly studying her face, the dark circles under her glassy, red-rimmed eyes, her strawlike, mussed hair, her sallow complexion. God, she really was dying.

What an unbelievably stupid thing she’d done.

Closing her eyes, she bowed her head. No, not stupid—if Josh could retrieve the amulet and save the world. Except… he was a demon. Why would he want to save the world? And if he did want to get the amulet, would he keep it for himself?

She banged her head on the mirror. Stupid. Bang. Stupid. Bang. Stupid!

She’d fallen hard for him. An incubus who had probably used his sex demon tricks on her. Thing was, he hadn’t even seduced her with smooth lines and pretty talk. No, he’d done it by protecting her from danger, being nice to cats, and giving her out-of-this-world orgasms. He’d done it by being rough and tough, with a touch of sweet. But how much had been an act?

She heard a sigh, a shuffling of feet, and a door closing. She waited another minute. Cautiously opened the bathroom door.

Only to see Josh sitting on the floor, back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. He was wearing jeans but nothing else. Even his feet were bare. His broad, thickly muscled chest heaved with the force of his breaths, and lower, his chiseled abs bore no signs of injury.

“You look pretty good for a guy who got run through with a magical sword and almost died.” The words were casual, but what she felt for him was not, and she prayed he didn’t hear the emotion in her voice.

“You saved me.” He didn’t look at her. “I can still… taste you.”

“Because you’re a vampire.” She snorted. “And a demon. Let’s not forget that minor detail.”

A shudder shook his body, and he closed his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Yeah? That’s all you have to say?” She cursed, a nasty, base word she’d never used. “Was anything you told me about your life true?”

He finally looked at her. “Too much of it, actually.”

“Tell me more.” She crossed her arms across her chest, wondering why the hell she was bothering, why she had this crazy need to understand him.

“Serena, you don’t want to hear.”

Anger lit her like a match. “I gave you my life, Wraith, so you can damned well tell me about yours.” He flinched, and she almost felt sorry for him. Almost. “Give me all of it. Starting from the beginning.”

He rubbed his eyes, and when he was done, he looked at his lap, shoulders hunched. And there she went feeling sorry for him again.

“You’re right. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He ran his hand up and down his chest, as though it hurt. It was a long time before he said, “My dad had the same gift Shade has—he can manipulate bodily functions. He found a woman who was on the verge of being turned into a vampire… she’d done the blood exchange and was just about to die when he raped her. Used his gift to keep her in that in-between human and vamp state for nine months, raping her over and over while I grew inside her. He left when she gave birth to me and by then she’d gone insane.”

Wraith spoke rapidly, the words coming so fast Serena barely had time to be shocked. And still, he kept his head bowed, his hair falling forward so she couldn’t see his expression.

“She gave me to a wet nurse until I was five, and then she put me in a cage and turned my nurse into a vampire while I watched. She spent the next fifteen years torturing me. Torturing humans and demons in front of me. When I turned twenty, I went through the first of two maturation cycles. I needed sex or I’d die. My mother shoved a prostitute into the cage… I was crazed with need…” His voice cracked, but his head came up to fix her with a penetrating stare. “I took her, and I didn’t wait for her consent.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I warned you.”

He had. But she needed to hear more. “Go on.” When he hesitated, she put her hand on his knee out of some crazy need to comfort him. “What happened?”

“The prostitute was just doing her job, right?” His voice was hollow. Dead. “That’s how I’ve always justified what I did. Sometimes, the lie even works.” A flicker of emotion passed over his face, disgust, she thought, but then he looked down and she couldn’t read him anymore. “The next time my mother put a female in with me, I refused her, even though I knew it meant I could die. My mother tortured the girl in front of me for hours, until she finally bled out. The next time a woman was put in the cage, I did what I needed to do, but by then I had learned to use my gift. She thought she was doing her boyfriend on the beach.”

“What gift?”

“I can get inside the mind, read thoughts, trick people into thinking things that didn’t happen. I can give them nightmares.” His head came up. There was a challenge in his eyes, as though he expected her to get violent with him. And wanted it. “Or dreams.”

She inhaled sharply. “The dreams I had. Of you… it was you.”

“The first one. Any others were all yours.”

The urge to slap him made her hand tingle, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Instead, she said quietly, “You’re a bastard.”

He shoved both hands through his hair and left them there, bracing his elbows on his knees. “I’m a demon, Serena. It’s what I do.”

She supposed that was true enough. Didn’t make her feel much better, though. Especially because it was also true that he was much more than just a demon to her, no matter how much she wanted to believe otherwise.

“So what happened? After you learned to use your gift?”

“My mother lost interest in me. One day she came into my cage to kill me. I killed her instead. Escaped. Ran until her clan caught up with me in Chicago. They strung me up in a warehouse and tortured the f**k out of me for two days. Maybe more. I don’t know. After the first day, they gouged out my eyes.”

Oh… Jesus. Sweet Jesus God Almighty. Black spots swam before Serena’s eyes and she felt herself start to go over. Wraith caught her, and she was too weak to fight him. Plus, it felt good to be in his arms again. Her body was a traitor. So much so that when he lay her on the bed, she clung to him, pulled him down beside her.

“I don’t think I want to hear any more,” she said in a voice so shaky she barely understood herself. “But how… how did you survive?”

“My brothers found me.” He petted her hair with loving, comforting strokes. “They killed the vamps. Kept one alive to give me back my sight.”

She almost asked why they hadn’t used a dead vamp as an eye donor, but duh, they had a tendency to flame to ash when they were killed.

“And then?”

“I went with them to New York, where I spent the next few decades wasting my life. I was worthless. Lived like a rat in sewers, eating junkies and drunks, losing myself in any way I could. Then E and Shade started the hospital. I didn’t want to learn how to save lives, but they didn’t give me a choice. Taught me to read and write. Got me straightened out. Mostly.”

“Dear… God.” His life had been a waking nightmare.

He snorted. “God abandoned me a long time ago.” Gripping her hand, he squeezed gently. “Look, Serena, by human standards, I’m a bastard. Hell, even by some demon standards I’m that. I’ve always been selfish, not giving a shit about anyone or anything but myself. I knew what losing the charm would do to you, and if I could give it back, I would. I know you don’t believe this, but… I love you.”

Her eyes stung, and her stupid heart responded with several stuttered beats, because it believed him. “You don’t need to lie to me anymore.”

“I’m not. Never again.”

“Easy to say when I’ve only got hours left to live.”

He made a sound low in his throat. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s time to stop denying it.” Strangely, it felt liberating to say it.

His hard swallow was audible, his voice strained. “I know.”

She propped herself up on her elbow so she could see directly into his eyes. “I hate you.”

“I know,” he whispered.

“Kiss me.”

He didn’t hesitate. His mouth met hers in a bruising kiss. For the first time, he opened up and let her explore with her tongue, let her feel the sharp points of his teeth. Now she knew why he’d always led the way with his kisses, why he’d pulled away when she’d made aggressive moves. Even now, he reared back a little, but she grabbed the back of his head and forced him to stay still. This was for her, not him. He owed her, and she was going to take what she wanted.

His groan rolled through her, caressing all her erogenous zones and waking up nerve endings. Her lungs hurt and her gut cramped, but pleasure began to override the discomfort and pain.

Greedily, she reached between them and palmed his erection. She squeezed him through his pants, and he made a raw, male noise. “Were you lying when you said you couldn’t come like this?”

“No.” His tongue swept over her bottom lip. “My kind can only achieve release inside a female.”

“Then get inside me.” God, she couldn’t believe she wanted him this badly, but with such little time left, the insanity of all of this seemed so distant and unimportant.

His eyes shot open, and she drew in a startled breath at the beautiful gold color they’d gone. “Are you sure?”

His concern pissed her off. He had no right to worry about her after what he’d done. “Just do it,” she snapped. “Now.”

Hurt flashed in his eyes, but then he was tearing open his jeans, shoving her shirt up, and ripping off her shorts, and in an instant, he was inside her. She cried out at the invasion, the incredible sensations that shot up her spine.

“Gods,” he growled into her ear, “I can smell your need. It’s taking me over the edge.” His tongue dragged over her throat, and for a moment she thought he was going to bite her. Some dark, wicked part of her wanted him to bite her. “Mmm. You taste oddly… salty.”

“Its the disease,” she whispered. “It causes salty skin.”

He stiffened, and a small sound of pain broke from his lips. “I—”

“Stop.” She grasped his face, used her thumb to trace the markings on the right side of his face. “Don’t ruin this for me.” She was being selfish, but she shoved aside the tiny bit of guilt she felt.

A shudder wracked his body, but he closed his eyes and nodded. He began a slow, grinding pump with his hips, and little sparks popped all over her skin. She raked her nails across his back, and though he hissed, he hissed, “Harder.”

Pleasure cascaded across her mind as he grew more aggressive, until he was hammering her into the mattress while whispering sexy, raw things into her ear. The things he wanted to do to her flipped like erotic pictures through her head, propelling her to a white-hot cl**ax that wouldn’t end.

She cried out, calling his name. His real name.

“No.” He nipped at her lobe. “Call me Josh.”

“Yes… Josh!”

He roared in his own release, filling her with a hot splash that triggered another orgasm, and another. Her body felt out of control, a lightning strike of sensual energy that wrapped around them both and locked them into an electrifying series of cl**axes.

Gradually, the storm of pleasure dissipated, and she’d never been so exhausted.

It was a long time before she had the strength to speak. When she did, her voice was raspy, her breathing wheezy. “On the train…” She had to pause, swallow, work some moisture into her mouth. “You said someone slipped an aphrodisiac into my drink. It wasn’t a stranger, was it?”

“No.” He rolled off her but kept his strong arms around her, gathering her close. His biceps bunched up hard, his skin was coated with a fine sheen of sweat. “It was my semen. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

She wracked her brain to bring that night back to the surface of her hazy mind. She’d been crazed with lust, begging him to have sex with her. “You could have taken my virginity then, but you didn’t. Why not?”