With the way the bed canopy bowed from his struggles, the chains had enough give in them to allow him to touch her if he strained. Stretching, he raked his fingers through the loose strands of her hair, marveling at the silky texture and curling waves. At his touch, she gave a little start, and then she sagged against him, putting them into full body contact.

It shouldn’t feel so good. She was his captor. If he didn’t get free, Sin would die. No amount of pleasure should be able to sway him, but Idess was pleasure in the flesh, and his incubus body could only respond.

And did it ever respond. Despite the earlier release, his c*ck was aching inside its leather prison, his balls were tight, and his skin burned all over.

God, he wished he could touch her, really touch her. He wanted to rip off her clothes, roll her onto her back, and drive into her until she screamed. He’d show her what it was like to be held captive, helpless to feel anything but what your captor wanted you to feel.

He’d torture her, all right. He’d take her to the edge of passion and hold her there until she was insane with the need to come. Only after she begged for it long enough and good enough, would he give it to her.

She was panting, and so was he, his body out of control. Lost in his own head, he hadn’t been aware that they were grinding against each other, ha**ng s*x with their clothes on. “Touch me,” he said roughly.

Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, digging in with such sweet pain. It was damn good, but he wanted her fingers to take a leisurely slide south. Far south.

“Like that. But lower.”

Her fingers dug in even more, and he hissed. How was it possible to feel both relaxed and energized at the same time?

He cocked one leg up for leverage—and to put his erection more firmly against her. But even as she arched into him, a low moan dredged up from deep in her chest and her grip on his shoulders eased. Her teeth unplugged, and he felt the warm stroke of her tongue over the skin of his neck.

Strangely, she didn’t move off him. Instead, she laid her head down on his shoulder.

“Ah… this can’t be all there is to feeding, right? I mean, we got a little below the waist action going on…”

She didn’t move. Shit.

“Angel Cake?” He rattled his chains. “Idess!” Worried that she was injured or ill or that his demon blood was poison to an angel, he tugged on her hair.

And was rewarded with a tiny squeak… followed by a series of soft snores.

She’d fallen asleep. She’d taken nourishment from him, and then, like a contented kitten, she’d nuzzled against him and fallen asleep.

Something inside him shook so hard he was surprised Idess didn’t get jiggled right off him. This was the closest he’d ever been to a female. Oh, he’d f**ked them, and he’d even cared for one he’d foolishly thought could be his. But never had any female fallen asleep on him. It was a surprising intimacy that gave him some hellacious warm fuzzies in a situation he had no right to feel good about at all.

And yet, he stroked her hair and tried to be still, because crazily, this was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him.

Eight

Underworld General was the last place Sin wanted to be. But Lore was missing, and the fact that the chick who had interrupted Sin during her assassination attempt had tried to kill Sin with his dagger was a chilling sign that he was in trouble. The only upside was that the blade had tasted the female’s blood, which meant it wanted more.

Unfortunately, the Gargantua dagger had one serious limitation; it could only be used to track a victim during the devil’s hour in the time zone where the prey’s blood had been shed. So, since Sin had time to kill, she searched for Lore in all of the obvious places. She’d gone to the assassin den. Nothing. She’d stopped by his house. Nada. She’d called and texted and emailed. Not a goddamned thing.

Her last resort was UGH, where he might be a patient… or where he might be getting all chummy with his brothers. His brothers, because she refused to acknowledge them.

And why the thought that he might be hanging out with them made her horribly uncomfortable—jealous, even—she had no idea.

She stepped out of the Harrowgate and into what must be the emergency department. A male Umber looked up from the triage desk, his steel gray lips peeled back from white teeth.

“What do you want?”

Apparently, people skills weren’t necessary to work in a demon hospital. Sin approached him, limping from the wound she’d taken during the battle with the mystery chick. “Do you have a patient named Lore?”

The Umber sneered. “I’m not allowed to give out information on patients.”

Both relief and dread flooded her. “So he is a patient.”

“I didn’t say that,” the Umber said.

Sin slammed her fists down on the desk. “You ass.”

“Is there a problem here?” The deep voice froze her to the black stone floor. It wasn’t Lore’s, but the forbidding tone was the same. This would be one of the brothers. Crap-o-rama.

Slowly, she turned. Found herself looking at a sinister medical symbol on a scrub top covering a broad chest. Swallowing dryly, she dragged her gaze up, and yup, this guy, with his short hair, I-own-this-hospital presence, and stern expression might not be the spitting image of Lore, but close enough. Plus, the dermoire that extended to his neck and connected to two rings around his throat—mate marks and maturity marks—sort of gave him away. Well, that, and his nametag. Eidolon.

Not good.

“The female is looking for Lore,” the Umber said, and inside, she cringed. This was the scenario she’d hoped to avoid.

Eidolon’s expression remained stony, and she suddenly wondered what it would take to rile him up. “How do you know Lore?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Guess you don’t want to know if he’s a patient.” Eidolon swung around and headed toward a couple of curtained cubicles.

Cursing, Sin jogged to catch up. “I work with him.”

Eidolon stopped and eyed her with suspicion. “He’s not here.”

“You couldn’t have said that without all the drama?”

Eidolon didn’t have a chance to reply, because the sliding emergency room doors opened, and two medics guided in a stretcher—a stretcher laden with her warg victim. Holy shit.

One of the medics straddled the warg, pumping compressions into his chest. Eidolon sprang into action.

“What do we have?” he asked, moving alongside the medics. Sin kept pace despite her limp, but hung back to play fly-on-the-wall.

The medic pushing the stretcher, his flashing fangs giving away his vampire status, said in a clipped voice, “Warg. Found unconscious and not breathing. Our attempts to resuscitate him were successful, but we lost him three blocks out.”

He rattled off some vital statistics that Sin didn’t understand as they wheeled the stretcher into one of the curtained rooms. More medical staff swarmed inside. Sin waited just outside, listening to more medical-speak that didn’t sound good. Well, not good for the warg. Good for her.

After a few minutes, the medics exited. One took off through the doors, while the other, the blond vamp, paused outside to scratch notes on his clipboard.

Sin cleared her throat. “Hey, how is the warg?”

His eerie silver eyes shifted to hers, but he kept writing. “Dying. Why?”

“No reason.” She rubbed her arms through the sleeves of her denim jacket and fidgeted under his unnerving gaze. “What’s wrong with him? Was he in an accident? Is he sick with something?”

“You’re kind of nosy.”

You’re kind of hot. She shrugged. “Just a concerned citizen.” Yeah, concerned Eidolon would save the werewolf and she’d have to kill him again.

The vamp watched her for a moment, and the floor seemed to shift beneath her. He really was extraordinary. He was easily as tall as Lore, his shoulders as broad, but that was where the resemblance ended. Hot Vamp Medic had a lean, athletic build, chiseled cheekbones, and a full, sensual mouth that no doubt could latch on to a female’s most sensitive spots and make her whimper.

He scanned her from head to toe. “You should get your leg looked at.”

Frowning, she looked down at the spot of blood that had seeped through her jeans and the bandage she’d wrapped around her thigh. “It’s no big—”

He didn’t even wait for her to finish. He handed the clipboard to the Umber and exited through the doors he’d come through. He was a charmer, that one.

She’d have been irritated by his blatant dismissal if not for the fact that the warg she needed to die was being treated by her brother, who didn’t know she existed. Christ, only she could get herself into this kind of mess.

This had never happened before—a victim of hers surviving even minutes after being infected by her touch—and a horrifying thought stabbed at her brain; what if he’d infected someone else? While her heart had turned to brimstone decades ago, and for the most part she couldn’t care less about the lives and deaths of people she didn’t even know, she didn’t kill for fun. When she killed, it was deliberate and quick. Controlled. Killing was the only thing she had any command over, the only aspect of her life that wasn’t chaotic, and she couldn’t stand the thought that she might be responsible for deaths she couldn’t prevent or make happen the way they should.

She paced, hanging back near the Harrowgate where the Umber wouldn’t notice her but she could keep an eye on the room. It was weird, being in the hospital her brothers had built. She hadn’t known what to expect, but disarray and unprofessionalism wasn’t it. The staff was grumpy, and when a patient came in with a spear impaled in his gut, two doctors spent so much time fighting over who got to treat the guy that he collapsed while the doctors screamed at each other.

She’d seen more order in a bar brawl.

“What the hell is going on?” Eidolon stepped out of the warg’s room, his gold-glowing eyes fixed on the guy bleeding out on the floor. His fury seemed to knock some sense into the arguing doctors, but as Eidolon rushed toward the patient, his expression told Sin that those physicians were soon going to wish their parents had practiced birth control.