Somehow, he managed to get out of his jeans without breaking the scissorlock of her thighs around his hips, managed to divest her of her clothing while her lips were sucking lightly on his collarbone. Her scent rose up, filling his nostrils with the sweet fragrance of arousal. Inhaling deeply, he let the passion high take over until his head swam with lust.

“I love it when your eyes change color,” she murmured, and he suddenly wanted to kiss her, a real kiss, not one like they’d shared the first time they’d had sex, when she was still in a dream state thanks to Wraith’s head games. Not like the one they’d shared today in the exam room, when he’d been overcome by s’genesis urges.

As though she’d read his mind, her gaze dropped to his mouth, and her tongue darted out to moisten her bottom lip. Gods, he wanted to take her mouth, but there was no way he’d be gentle, what she needed right now.

Careful to avoid her stitches, he dipped his head and tongued a nipple, eliciting a soft moan from her.

“You taste like me,” he said, savoring his dark essence in the salt of her sweat. He hadn’t come inside her since that day at the hospital, but her body was still processing his fluids, keeping her primed, ultrareceptive. “Only me.”

His c**k throbbed against her wet entrance, but he resisted the urge to possess her. Not yet. The doctor in him wanted to heal her with his touch more than the demon in him wanted to get off.

That had never happened before.

It scared the hell out of him.

Something scared her, too, because suddenly she was pushing against him. “I can’t do this. Oh, my God, I can’t do this!”

He reared back, confused, his body on fire. “What’s wrong?”

She scrambled backward, sliding on the slick floor. “It’s just . . . I can’t . . . I can’t want . . .” She buried her face in her hands. “The other times, it was different.”

Something inside him went cold, even though his body burned. “Because the other times you convinced yourself that you were being forced or coerced.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Tayla, look at me.” When she didn’t, he reached for her, which sent her into a wild flurry of motion. She swept up her clothes but slipped when she tried to get to her feet, and instead made a mad crawl toward the couch. Her curvy ass flexed as she moved, and her sex, glistening with her arousal, made for a sight that short-circuited his brain.

His blood went south, and animal instinct took over. He pounced, grasped her around the waist, and brought her ass hard against his stomach. His erection pressed against her bottom, and he shook with the need to take her. In his arms, she struggled, and he let her because she needed to think she was resisting and if this was the only way he could have her . . . he sheathed himself inside her in one stroke. She cried out at the sudden invasion, her fingers clawing at the floor as she tried to escape.

The scent of fear, nearly masked by the more potent scent of lust, rose up from her, hitting him upside the head. Sonofabitch, he wasn’t healing her, he was scaring her. His mind told him to stop, but his h*ps ground into her, his body rebelling against what his head was telling him to do.

“Please . . .”

Shit. With a roar, he tore himself away. Instantly, a firestorm of agony ripped through his gut. Still on his knees, he doubled over, sucking air through his teeth.

“Hellboy?” Tayla’s hand came down on his shoulder, and he hissed at the sensation that was only going to get him lust-drunk again.

“Get away from me.”

“But—”

His snarl vibrated the light fixtures on the walls. “I can’t control myself right now! Stay away.” Pain screamed in his pelvis. His balls tightened, pulsed as if they’d been caught in a vise. Hands shaking, he reached for his pants. He had to find a female. Fast. Being this worked up was crippling, and the pain wouldn’t ease until he found release.

The idea of taking a female other than Tayla only added to the agony.

“What are you doing?”

He spoke through clenched teeth, struggling for every word. “Hospital.” Oh, unholy hell . . . railroad spikes of hurt hammered into his pelvis. “Sora . . . demon . . . maybe.” He didn’t realize he had been muttering out loud until her fingers gouged his shoulder.

“You’re going to . . . to be with someone else?”

“Have to. Hurts.” He panted, reining in as much pain as he could. “Can’t take care of it myself.”

“Oh.” She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth, and he groaned. “I’m sorry. I just—”

“I get it. Fuck, I get it. You can’t admit you want me.” Jerking out of her grip, he closed his eyes and prayed he’d make it to the hospital without attacking the first female—demon or human—he saw.

“Next time, do me a favor and decide that before you tell me to touch you.”

He started to push to his feet, but she grasped his thigh, too close to where he really needed her hand, and sweat popped out on his brow.

“Please. Don’t go.” Still on her hands and knees, she turned, offering herself to him. Blood pounded in his head at the sight of her, sleek and toned and watching him over her shoulder, ready to be mounted.

“Be sure,” he croaked. “Because I can’t stop again.”

“I’m sure.”

It was all he needed. Going to his knees, he entered her so hard and deep that they both shouted. Her tight walls pulled him inside, her slick heat holding him like a velvet glove. He was already close to the edge, and the way she moved against him, grinding, arching like a cat, drove him to the very brink of insanity.

The friction was electric, the rhythm furious. Heat shot like liquid flame from his balls through his shaft and shit, he was done for.

“Tayla . . .”

Gripping her hips, he lifted her so she was helpless, at his mercy as he pumped into her. Her sexy whimpers blended with the sound of his harsh breathing until his roar of release drowned out everything else.

She milked his cock, took it all, and though she wouldn’t come, he knew his flow warmed her, caressed her, gave her intense pleasure all the same.

What he’d given her couldn’t come close to what she’d given him. Being inside her rivaled the adrenaline rush he lived for at the hospital. The sounds she made, the smell of her arousal, the taste of her skin . . . stripped him of thought and logic and reduced him to a creature of pure emotion and desire. Total body ecstasy such as he’d never known.

Heart pounding, breath erratic, he collapsed onto her back and they both crumpled to the floor. He wriggled so they were on their sides, spooning. He was still inside her, hugged by her tight, wet warmth as he hugged her in his arms.

Tayla shivered despite the steamy heat surrounding her, flowing through her, consuming her. She wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, except that she’d freaked. She’d asked Eidolon for comfort, and when he’d tried to give it, she’d been unable to process the emotions he’d awakened. What she’d assumed would be a hard, fast f**k turned into something else she couldn’t handle.

Her signals had been so mixed it was no wonder he hadn’t known whether to stop or go, and he’d chosen to detour. Right into the arms of another female.

Except it hadn’t been a choice for him. His physical pain had been obvious. Teeth clenched, cords in his neck straining, he’d been pale, sweating, every vein popping like it was going to burst.

“Hellboy?”

He traced the shell of her ear with his tongue. “Hmm?” His voice was deep, wonderfully gravelly.

“You can’t ever . . .?”

“No.” He began moving again, slow, easy thrusts that built sensation into a slow burn instead of the white-hot, explosive heat they usually shared. “Release can’t come by my own hand.”

Funny, since she achieved release only by her own hand. Even then, reaching cl**ax was always a crapshoot. But with Eidolon, it almost seemed achievable. Even now, every languid stroke massaged her from the inside in ways she’d never believed possible. Her heightened senses tingled, the pleasure streaking through her flesh until she was shaking from the intensity of it.

Eidolon held her tight against him as though afraid she’d run away, but that wasn’t going to happen. She’d never experienced a moment so sensual, so pleasure-rich. Never had a man taken the time to hold her, to make her enjoy being na**d.

Hot breath whispered over the back of her neck as Eidolon nuzzled her there, and she groaned when his tongue traced a path along her collarbone.

“Beautiful,” he murmured against her skin, and then sank his teeth lightly into the sensitive curve between her shoulder and throat. For a moment he held her like that, restraining her with primitive force as he rocked against her. Then she felt the warm stroke of his tongue soothing the spot he’d bitten. “I want to try again to make you come. Will you let me?”

She closed her eyes, unsure if she wanted to experience that kind of frustration again, but her body was screaming for release, was already so close . . . maybe this time she could go over the edge.

“Yes,” she said, and then she couldn’t speak because his thrusts picked up speed until he was pounding into her with enough force to slam her exhalations out of her with audible gasps.

She felt him swell, stiffen, as he dropped one hand to her sex to spread her. His shaft slipped out of her and slid between her spread folds. Moaning at the sudden, sharp, sliding strokes through her cleft, she cupped his sex with her hand, holding him against her as he came. His hot seed creamed over her sensitive tissue in a silken flood.

Behind her, he panted, his chest heaving against her back. His hard length still moved between her thighs, a hot, erotic presence that fueled the desire burning at her core. But like before, she hovered on the precipice that would go nowhere.

“Stop,” she rasped. “Get it off.”

The sound of fabric rustling accompanied some truly vile curses, and then he was wiping her clean, every stroke against her center a torture that kept her on the verge of cl**ax.

“You should bottle that stuff,” she said, when she could speak again. “I’ll bet normal women would pay a fortune for it.”

He tossed the scrub top he’d used on her across the room. “No doubt it’s a black market commodity somewhere.”

She sensed more than saw the tension that filled him. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he muttered. “But . . . what if those bastards start thinking the same thing?”

She rolled to face him. “You mean, they might take one of your species? And what, keep him chained?

Jerk him off a few times a day?”

Scowling, he pushed up on one arm. “You still don’t care, do you?”

“That’s not what I meant.” She covered his hand with hers, was glad when he didn’t pull away.

“Based on how they seem to get off on torture, I doubt gathering s**en would be pleasant. Most likely they’d insert a draining tube and take it as it’s produced.”

She shuddered. The thought of their doing something like that to Eidolon . . .

He reached over his head and pulled a blanket off the couch to cover her. “Tayla? Why do you have sex if you don’t enjoy it?”

Talk about a mood-killer. She sat up and pulled the blanket around her. “Why the sudden interest in my sex life?” Or lack thereof.

Eidolon remained stretched out on the floor, but he propped his head up on one fist. “I’m wondering what makes you tick.”

“There’s not much to tell.”

“Then tell me how it began.”

The concern in his voice was enough to remind her that she was messed up in the sex arena, and man, did she hate reminders. “Tell you what, Hellboy. You tell me first.”

“Fair enough.” He cocked one leg up, drawing her eyes to the place between, where his sex, glistening from her juices, lay heavy and semierect on one thigh. “I was twenty when the urges started.”

“Twenty? That seems sort of late.”

“When you live to be seven hundred years old, twenty is a drop in the bedpan,” he drawled. “When the urges start, sex is required to complete the maturation process.”

“How much sex?”

He shrugged. “Pretty much constant for a few days. It can be hard on a lot of us, but my parents bought me an orgesu.” At her blank stare, he elaborated. “A female to have on hand.”

“A sex slave? Your parents got you a sex slave? To have sex in their house?”

“It was the logical thing to do. They couldn’t let me die. And they didn’t want me out prowling and raping as a lot of my kind are driven to do during that phase.” He yawned, as if it were all normal.

“Besides, they paid to have her released from slavery afterward.”

She couldn’t even come close to imagining how he’d grown up if he could be so casual about the sex slave thing. “Where did you grow up? Do your parents look human?”

His fingers brushed her cheek in a feather-light caress. “They are humanoid, but their green skin and antlers keeps them in Sheoul. It’s where I grew up, though I slipped away to come topside now and then.” He winked. “I was the rebel of the family.”

Tayla laughed at that. He definitely didn’t strike her as the trouble-making kind. “When did you join us up here in the sunlight?”

“After my first transition.” He rolled one big shoulder. “Now, enough about me. Your turn.”

“You mean, when did I lose my virginity?”