Normally, such arousal was a beacon for any incubus, but Eidolon had always fought the urge to seek out the horny female and take advantage of her lust. At least, he had resisted the urge until a few months ago, when he’d entered his hundredth year and had begun The Change. Resistance had grown increasingly hard and painful. As his dick was at this moment.

Dammit, Wraith or Shade had better find the female and satisfy her cravings before they became too much of a distraction—or temptation—for him.

He moved swiftly through the dim corridors, nodding greetings to passing staff members, and as he approached the slayer’s room, the scent of arousal became almost overwhelming. A low, drawn-out moan forced him to bite back his own sound of need.

Muttering obscenities, he brushed past the two imps stationed outside her chamber and armed with enough sedatives to bring down a Gargantua demon, and entered.

Tayla lay on the hospital bed, fists clenched, her chest heaving with her panting breaths. His own breath froze as she cried out and tilted her h*ps as though taking some imaginary lover inside her.

Standing at the foot of the bed, his brother smirked. Eidolon should have known.

“Get out of her head, Wraith.”

“You’re just jealous because you don’t have this power.”

Eidolon inhaled deeply and prayed to the Two Gods for patience. Wraith’s mercurial moods made it difficult to deal with him in any circumstance, but throw any of his primal instincts—sex, violence, blood-hunger—into the mix, and Wraith went from difficult to impossible.

“Wraith . . .”

“Chill, eldest male sibling. She kills our kind. I’m seeing how she feels about screwing us.” He shot Eidolon a sideways glance. “Screwing you, anyway. I’m a little more selective about my partners than you are, so I’m feeding her your images.”

Eidolon almost laughed. The words “Wraith” and “selective” canceled each other out. Both Shade and Eidolon preferred humanoid sex partners, though his preferences would soon change. But with the exception of humans and vampires, Wraith would nail anything that breathed. Though even that seemed to be optional.

Tayla’s head thrashed back and forth, and suddenly he pictured her under him, doing the same as he pounded into her. He’d tangle his hands in fistfuls of her fiery hair and f**k her until she cl**axed so hard she’d beg him to stop, and then he’d make her come again just to show her he could. His c**k twitched, and he ground his teeth because this line of thinking was one that could only lead to No Way In Hell.

“Knock it off,” he growled, knowing his brother would catch the scent of his own arousal if this didn’t stop. “She’ll tear her stitches.”

The reasoning was weak; it had been twenty-four hours since Eidolon had patched her up, and in addition to his healing touch, she’d been bathed in regenerative waters and had received recuperative potions and spells from other, specialized staff members. She’d be up and running and killing demons as soon as the sedatives wore off. Which reminded him that they needed to fit her with restraints immediately. The Haven spell would prevent her from hurting anyone, but she could still tear the hospital apart.

“You know, I thought the s’genesis would loosen you up. It’s only wedged that stick farther up your ass.”

Wraith elbowed Eidolon on the way to the door, and then halted with a knowing grin. “Or maybe not. E, man, you smell like a virgin male in a brothel who can’t decide which whore to hump.” He grimaced.

“And eew. Dude, she’s a Buffy. I’d sooner shove my dick into a month-dead corpse.”

“You probably have.”

Wraith snorted. “Eliminates the obligatory cuddling afterward.” He reached for the door handle, but drew up short. “Oh, Gemella called. Wants you to get in touch. Lucky bastard.”

“It’s not like that.”

Gem, a demon masquerading as a human intern in a human hospital, regularly checked in with Eidolon, mainly to share intel on the types of demon activity that came through her hospital. He’d tried to talk her into working for him, but she felt her duty was to follow in her parents’ footsteps, using her skills to intercept human-demon issues that would create questions if discovered by human physicians.

“Whatever. You ought to make it like that. She’s hot.”

Wraith sauntered out of the room, and Eidolon turned back to the slayer. Wraith had gone, but Tayla still squirmed. Her sheet had fallen to the floor, and the hospital gown had ridden up to her waist, revealing her silky black panties. He didn’t need to touch to know they were soaked. Her scent, her sexual perfume, hung so thick and heavy in the air that it was only a matter of time before he became drunk with it.

“Damn you, Wraith,” he muttered, and moved to Tayla’s side.

Stay detached. Professional.

Yeah, because the erection popping a tent in the front of his scrubs was real f**king professional.

Willing his pulse to idle out, he lifted her gown and methodically checked her most serious injuries, which looked good, nearly healed. Only one of the wounds had required sutures, and her writhing hadn’t disturbed the stitches.

“Yes,” she whispered, and grasped his hand where it rested on her ribcage. Her needs came to him in a rush of visions, a riot of tangled limbs and sweaty skin, and gods help him, a surge of excitement rocked his entire reproductive system.

Tamp it down, E.

He tried to pry her fingers loose with his other hand, but her iron grip tugged him upward to her breast. Beneath his palm, her flesh felt tight, hot, fevered in a way no thermometer would register. Her areola puckered at his touch, and his own body hardened in response. If he were made of stone he couldn’t be any harder.

Eidolon exhaled slowly, reaching deep for control. He’d been born to the Judicia, demons known for cool, calm logic, something that didn’t come naturally to him, but that he’d honed to perfection over the years both while growing up and later, when he’d served as all Judicium did, as a Justice Dealer.

But all those years fell away as he looked at Tayla. Even half-asleep, seductive, deadly power bled from her pores. She could crush him between her thighs and he’d beg her to make it hurt. Idiot. His brothers might like to mix it up with females like her, but Eidolon’s tastes in bedmates ran more on the civilized side.

“Tayla.” He struggled with her strength and his own desire as he drew his hand back. She was a killer of his people. A butcher. “Slayer. Wake up.”

She shook her head and reached out blindly. He grasped her face between his palms and held her still. Using his thumbs, he lifted her eyelids. Pupils were equal and responsive when he turned her face toward the overhead light, though she didn’t seem to see him.

Damn, she had beautiful eyes. Green rimmed with gold, and so expressive that he doubted she could shield her thoughts from anyone. Pale freckles shimmered just beneath the surface of her creamy skin. High cheekbones added definition to her slightly rounded face, marred by the faintest tinge of a healing bruise. He let his gaze travel to her mouth, her pouty lips that parted slightly to let out the sounds of wanton desperation.

He wanted to take that mouth. Wanted to feel it take him.

Human medicine demanded ethics. Here, at Underworld General, if he, or any doctor, screwed every patient who came through the doors, few would care.

Eidolon happened to be one of the few.

Moral codes were not his concern; doctors didn’t screw patients in his hospital not because it was

“wrong,” but because the hospital teetered in a precarious position. Demons weren’t a trusting sort. Most held a distrust, even contempt, for those with power. Doctors with scalpels could kill. If word got out that the doctors were raping their patients, even fewer demons would trust the hospital’s services.

As a result, most of the staff had agreed to keep their paws, claws, and teeth off the patients. Naturally, there had been exceptions and indiscretions.

Hell, he’d be willing to make an exception with the right woman, but an Aegi killer wasn’t the right woman, no matter how much his throbbing c**k argued that she was.

“Doc.”

Tayla was looking at him, her eyes glittering with a combination of determination and lust so potent that he drew a startled breath. Her hand came up, grasped a handful of his hair near the nape, and pulled his head down with such force that he barely had time to brace his hands on either side of her head before his mouth came down hard on hers.

Her tongue pushed past his lips to tangle with his, and he growled at the taste of her. Her flavor was bold and wicked, like the scent of her lust, but beneath it all lurked a faint sweetness, as though innocence had been buried.

Buried under the corpses of his brethren she’d killed, most likely.

An icy blast speared his chest and he reared back, his control balancing on a scalpel’s edge. This was his greatest fear, the loss of restraint as The Change took him—the s’genesis had to be the reason he was on the verge of mounting the enemy like a beast in rut.

But when her hand brushed his shaft, the beast suddenly didn’t care who she was or what she’d done. He was a Seminus demon, after all, a breed of incubi that lived for sex, existed to deceive and cause misery through intimate means once the s’genesis was complete. Perhaps now wasn’t the time to fight his nature. Perhaps his nature was his weapon against an age-old enemy.

Her fingers closed around his sex through his scrub pants, and fuck, he was tired of analyzing his body, his emotions, and his instincts. It was time to just feel.

He rocked his h*ps into her touch as desire rocked the rest of his body.

“Please,” she begged against his lips, “please. Touch me.”

Groaning, he dropped a hand down to one hip and lifted her so that his erection nudged her other hip.

So much for remaining professional.

Never had Tayla dreamed anything like this. It had to be a dream, because she’d never been this turned on in real life. And she’d certainly never hoped to get it on with a doctor. Especially not a doctor as totally mouthwatering as the one who was kissing her blind and stroking her hip so masterfully that some women would already have come a dozen times from that alone.

She lifted her knees, hooked one leg around his waist. The move knocked him off-balance, and he grunted as he brought a leg up on the bed to brace himself.

“Shit.” Doc Hottie dragged his mouth away from hers. “Tayla, are you awake?”

“Shut up and let me have this,” she muttered, and tugged on the waistband of his scrubs.

He hissed when she grasped his erection. Oh, my. She measured his length and thickness with her fingers, and for a moment she wondered if there would be any pain when he entered her, but then she remembered that this was a dream, and nothing hurt in a dream.

“Tayla,” he whispered against her neck, “you’re injured. We have to be caref—”

She squeezed his shaft, and his words cut off with a strangled moan. Slowly, she stroked, rubbed her palm over the velvety head and then took him in her fist again. His ragged, sharp breaths feathered over her skin as she worked him, and when she trailed a fingertip through the drop of moisture that welled at the tip of his cock, something seemed to break inside him. The wall that had restrained him crumbled, and suddenly his hands were everywhere at once, his mouth devouring her cheekbone, her jaw, her throat.

Intense hunger, as though she’d suffered years of famine, rushed through her veins at the way his hand caressed her flesh. He skimmed over places she thought might hurt, but the memories danced at the edge of her mind, shimmering away altogether when the doctor’s tongue traced a wet circle on her neck.

His decadent touch strayed lower, over her thigh and between her legs, where he languidly, maddeningly, stroked the crease of her leg and her sex. She arched against his hand, needing his touch in the right place, but he didn’t comply, his torture deliberate. Devious. Delicious.

She wanted to see his eyes, but he’d buried his face in her throat as he nuzzled her skin, worked lower to her collarbone, nipped lightly there. Threading her fingers through his dark hair, she held him against her, reveling in his touch, in the feel of a man worshipping her flesh, if only in a dream.

Here, in a sleeping world of fantasy, perhaps she’d find the pleasure that had always eluded her in reallife sexual encounters. Here, her past didn’t matter. Her fears held no sway.

The deft touch of the man on top of her was her whole world in her dream, and when his fingers moved to trace the hills and valleys of her swollen sex through her panties, she welcomed the hot tingle of excitement that buzzed through her.

“Yes, oh, yes.”

She threw her head back and spread her legs wider. His fingers tunneled beneath the cotton, and she trembled as he circled her entrance, once, twice, her slippery juices enhancing the erotic massage. It was good, so good that she nearly came off the bed when he plunged a finger inside her. He drove it deep, slid it slowly out, and then thrust again, pleasuring her with his finger in a way no man had ever done even with his dick.

“You’re so wet.” His gravelly voice shot through her like an electric current. “You smell raw, ready.”

Oh, God, she was ready. “Now.” She angled her h*ps upward, unashamedly inviting him inside. “Please.”

The sound of fabric tearing made her heart pound in anticipation. He shifted above her, guiding his erection between her legs. The bed wobbled and her senses did the same as he rocked against her, sliding his shaft between her labia. Each stroke rubbed her aching nub with a perfect amount of pressure and slick, molten friction.

She whimpered, but he smothered the sound with his lips and surged inside her. Her eager walls clasped his c**k as it stretched her, filled her until she thought she’d unravel into a quivering ball of lust. Nothing had ever felt so wonderful.