Pleasure Unbound (13 page)

“This . . . I don’t . . .” Her gaze met his, and his breath caught at the sight of fear tangled with desire in the depths of her beguiling green eyes. “I—”

“Shh. Easy, slayer.” He buried his tongue in her folds, swiped up her hot valley in one long, slow, motion. She tasted sweet and salty. Honey and hellfire. Forbidden fruit.

Her sultry moan drifted down to him, fueling his hunger. He kissed her deeply, sucked her bud between his lips and flicked his tongue lightly over the protruding tip. Her hips came off the bed, and she whispered something incoherent as he lapped at her and then plunged his tongue deep inside.

“This is wrong,” she panted, but she arched against his lips and dug her nails into his scalp, holding him there in the place he’d like to stay for a long time. But what had been a slow burn under his skin became an inferno, and if he didn’t dip into her hot center quickly, he’d turn to ash.

“Please . . .”

Please make me come.

She hadn’t said it, but he filled in the blanks, and although he wanted to make her come in his mouth, he reared up, tore off his shirt and sent buttons pinging off the walls. Too impatient to shed his pants, he yanked open his fly with one hand and entered her with a hard thrust. Tight, silken heat surrounded him, a mix of intense sensation that made his arms shake as he covered her.

She clung to him, wrapped her legs around his waist and rode him with a strength and enthusiasm he’d never encountered. He’d taken a lot of females in his life, females who played at sex like a contact sport, but Tayla . . . she rocked his underworld. She rode him as if she had something to prove, and suddenly he found himself beneath her, squeezed between her iron thighs.

Her pulse leaped in her throat, in time with the small spasms that clenched his shaft and had him on edge and ready to spill inside her. He punched his hips upward, drove so deep her knees came off the bed. Dropping one hand, he spread her wide, used his thumb to rub her rigid button.

“Come,” he panted, his voice harsh, as if he could make her climax with a command.

“I want to, God, I want to . . .” She increased her pace, sliding up and down on his shaft so hard that the slap of wet flesh striking wet flesh nearly drowned out the fleeting, confusing voice in his head that told him to use the knife.

On himself.

Use it to draw a few precious drops of bond-blood. If she was his . . .

For all that was unholy, what was he thinking? The s’genesis should come with a warning label.

“I can’t . . .” Tayla’s cry of frustration took him down a notch, back to where he needed to be. A tear rolled down her cheek, and fuck, he couldn’t take it. She quivered with the need for release, her jaw clenched so tight her lips had turned pale.

“Please.”

Grasping her hips with both hands, he steadied her against him. “Touch yourself. Make yourself come.”

Her fingers dipped between them, and she threw her head back as she circled her bud. Her abs flexed, and her breasts, flushed and heavy with arousal, bounced as she rode him as if they were oiled. The sight of her riding him and pleasuring herself was enough to push him past his limit, and he had to bite his lip until he tasted blood to keep from climaxing.

“Won’t work. It won’t work!” She shook her head wildly, her hair a tangled mess that covered her face. “Dammit!”

She was a mystery. A beautiful, ferocious mystery, the way she was so tough, so dangerous, and at the same time, vulnerable in ways he’d never have expected and couldn’t understand.

“I will get you there,” he swore, and flipped her, pulling out so fast she didn’t have time to look surprised. Taking his cock in his fist, he pumped, imagined it was her hand squeezing his hard length. Seminus demons couldn’t masturbate to orgasm, making sex with females a necessity to relieve the intense, constant sexual cravings, but he could get himself close enough for Tayla to take over. Her slippery juices lubricated him perfectly, and in half a dozen pulls, he walked the line between heaven and hell.

“Spread yourself with one hand,” he panted, “and touch me with the other.”

Reaching between their bodies, she obeyed. The moment she closed her fist around his shaft, he came. Legs shaking as he straddled her thighs, he bent, spurted hot bursts of seed over her center, coating her quivering flesh, her swollen lips, her pulsing nub.

“Oh!” Tiny whimpers escaped her, and she threw her head back, her hips tilting toward him.

Son of a bitch, she was gorgeous, her hair whipping over the pillow in a cascade of fire, her skin slick with sweat, her muscles rippling. He held himself away from her, his breathing still not settled as he watched her approach orgasm. She didn’t need manual stimulation now. His semen was too powerful, a stimulant in its own right.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “Let it happen.”

Her gaze flew up, as if she remembered he was still in the room. A sob escaped her, and then her eyes went wild and a scream of frustration tore through the air and, apparently, the paper-thin walls, because someone on the other side pounded against them and shouted vile curses about Tayla’s sexual habits that made him want to punch through the plaster and rip out the man’s throat.

Another sob wracked her body. What the hell? No female could withstand a topical aphrodisiac of that nature . . . unless her father’s species possessed some sort of natural immunity, something he’d never heard of.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Never in her life had Tayla been so miserable. She writhed, clenching her thighs together. Her body was a powder keg, lit and ready to blow, but unable. It was as though she were being licked, sucked, caressed, held on the very edge of ecstasy until the need for relief became torture.

“Please, make it stop!”

She flailed around on the bed, humiliating herself with the begging, until she felt the cool, wet rasp of a washcloth between her legs as Eidolon washed away what he’d done to her.

“I’m sorry, Tayla . . . gods, I’m sorry.” He knelt beside her, his gentle ministrations the most intimate thing anyone had ever done to her. “I don’t understand this,” he muttered. “This shouldn’t happen.”

None of this should have happened, but she didn’t have the energy to say that.

When the lust finally eased, she lay limp, trembling, barely able to move. Her sex tingled, felt tender and warm, but at least the maddening arousal had gone.

As with all her sexual encounters with men, she hadn’t been able to climax, had never even been aroused enough to come close. But whatever Hellboy had done when he pulled out and let loose his potent—

Oh, God.

“You.” She sat up in the bed, her head spinning. “Seminus demon . . . you’re an incubus, aren’t you?”

The lean angle of his jaw grew sharper as he speared her with an unreadable look. “Yes. A rare breed.”

Which explained her unnatural vulnerability and attraction to him. Incubi were opportunistic creatures that used sex as a means to an end. Some fed on sexual energy until the victim died, some stole souls through sex, some planted their offspring inside—

Her stomach heaved. “What did you do to me? Did you suck my energy? I swear, if you impregnated me . . .”

“Don’t worry. I’m incapable of impregnating anyone until my s’genesis is complete. After that, only other demons need fear me.”

“Other Seminus demons?”

“There are no females of my breed,” he said, tossing the washcloth into her hamper beside the bed. She’d trash it later. Burn it, maybe. “We have to impregnate other species. The offspring are always male, always pure-blooded Seminus demons, though every individual shares some minor traits with his mother’s species.”

She tugged a sheet up to cover herself, because the way he was watching her made her feel like a science experiment. Besides, she was shaking like a leaf. “Like?”

He shrugged. “Shade can turn to shadow in the presence of a shadow. Wraith possesses extraordinary speed and needs to ingest blood to survive. I suffer from a terrible sense of fair play that my brothers lack.”

“Why not impregnate humans?” She couldn’t believe she was asking these questions as though they were bonding over beer and peanuts, but hey, the more she knew, the more efficiently she could kill them.

“Breeding with humans results in cambions. Sterile half-breeds. We need to mate with other demons to keep our species from extinction.”

“And these other species . . . they don’t mind giving birth to yours?”

The bed creaked and sagged beneath his considerable weight as he stretched out beside her, uncomfortably close, as if they were lovers. Real lovers and not the most mismatched pair of fuck buddies ever. The wolf and the rabbit. The predator and the prey.

A shudder shook her because she was dangerously underestimating him. They were both predators.

“They mind. Which is why, when the s’genesis is complete, we have the ability to shapeshift into the male of any species.”

“So you’re parasites who trick the females into having sex with you.”

“Essentially. The females have no idea what they’ve slept with.”

“And what happens when Junior pops out and he doesn’t look like Mom?” Now her questioning had nothing to do with the job and everything to do with her curiosity. She found it interesting that demons scammed other demons as well as humans.

“Most Seminus demon offspring are abandoned, slaughtered, or eaten within hours of birth.” She could have sworn his expression softened with sadness for a moment, but it was gone by the time he said, “Less than 10 percent survive to adulthood.”

She winced. “Harsh. Is that why so many of the brothers you were talking about are dead?”

“Most of them.”

“What about the one you said survived to the s’genesis? What happened to him?”

“He didn’t have a chance to die from the usual things, like angry males of other species avenging their females’ seductions. Roag was killed by Aegi.”

Shit. She should have seen that one coming. “I, ah—”

“Don’t,” he said softly. “Don’t say you’re sorry, because you aren’t.”

She wasn’t sure she had been going to offer condolences, but she was glad she hadn’t. When she’d told him about her mom, if he’d said he was sorry, she’d have blown a fuse. Yeah, a change of subject would be good right about now. “Your brother said you weren’t raised together . . . so how do you know how many brothers you’ve had?”

“We feel them. We’re aware of every birth, we stay connected during their lives, and we feel them die.” He averted his gaze. “Every death leaves a hole.”

For the first time, she knew the feeling. Her mother’s death had carved a canyon through her soul, and Janet’s death had cut it deeper. Tay had known foster kids who had been beaten to death, street kids who had ODed, Guardians who’d been torn apart, but she’d never allowed herself to feel sorrow. Not until Janet. Now Tayla encouraged the pain, intentionally maintaining it because although she and Janet hadn’t been close, her death had been Tay’s fault.

“Have you ever met your father? Your real father?”

“He was killed when I was two, shortly after Wraith was born.” She didn’t want to ask, afraid he’d say The Aegis was responsible again, but he seemed to know what she was thinking, and said, “Vampires. Revenge for what he did to Wraith’s mother.”

This time she did want to ask, but her mind had already moved onto the math calculations . . . Eidolon had said he had over forty siblings, twenty born before he was . . . so if the father died when he was two, twenty more had come between Eidolon’s birth and his second year.

“Sounds like your species is pretty prolific.”

He folded his arms behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. “Exactly. That’s why, once the s’genesis is complete, unless we have bonded with a single mate, we are overcome by the urge to seduce and impregnate as many females as possible.” His voice changed, went low, and something told her he wasn’t happy about this change. “It’s all we can think about. And yet, we still face extinction.”

“That would be too bad.”

He narrowed his gaze at her with such intensity that she sucked a harsh breath. “Be careful, little killer. The Fates can fuck with you in ways you can’t even imagine.”

Sitting up, he swung his legs off the bed and started to button his pants. The muscles in his back and arms flexed, and she admired them even as she reached beneath her pillow, grasped her handy-dandy steel pipe—she had a duffel bag full of fancy weapons, but nothing felt as good as heavy piece of basic metal in the palm.

He was beautiful, terribly beautiful. Which made what she was about to do that much more difficult.

She brought the pipe down on his skull. It cracked sharply, and he slumped to the floor.

“Looks like the Fates really fucked with you, Hellboy.” She peered down, almost feeling sorry for him, but she tucked that foolish sentiment away and wrote it off as near-orgasm warm fuzzies. “And they aren’t even close to being done.”

Gem burst into her parents’ Upper West Side house, hoping the call had been a hoax. The broken vase filled with her mother’s prize orchids and the blood on the floor in the formal sitting room said otherwise.

“You sons of bitches,” she whispered to no one in particular, though most of her anger was directed at herself.

If only she’d taken the threat seriously. If only she hadn’t answered the phone the first time the bastards asked her to cut for them. If only she hadn’t told them no when they called back three days later. If only . . .

Didn’t matter. The damage had been done.

But if it didn’t matter, why did the second phone call, two weeks ago today, keep replaying over and over in her head?

“Well, Gem, what is your answer?”

She looked over at her parents, who were busy serving guests in their backyard—the annual spring barbecue they hosted for the clinic staff they worked with. As Sensor demons, her parents were ter’taceo, demons who lived and worked in the human world, and none were the wiser. Life in the earthly realm came at a price for their particular species, though; every six months they were forced to return to the underground demon realm, Sheoul, and endure a painful, two-week-long regeneration ritual.