“See that you don’t.” I slammed him against the wall before I released my grip on his robe. He slid down the wall to the floor, where he crumpled into a ball before disappearing into nothing.

Behind me, Miles was humming softly to himself, occasionally tossing out a word of what was obviously tourist Czech. I turned to tell him he’d have to do better than that if he wanted to convince anyone that he was possessed, but the sight of the woman standing in the doorway, her arms crossed and one lovely sable eyebrow cocked in question, drove all lesser concerns from my mind.

“Johannes?” Noelle said, watching me avidly. Amaymon? Is that the demon lord who vitiated you? Why did your father kill your mother, and more important, why do you feel so guilty about it?

For a moment, for the time it takes for one synapse to fire at another, I thought of running. I’d run my entire life—why not now? But even as I stood tense and poised to escape, the warm lilac scent that seemed to be permanently imbued in her skin wrapped me in silken tendrils, pulling me toward her.

“I am now possessed,” Miles announced loudly in a quasi-Czech accent as I walked past him to the door.

“Bully for you.” I stopped in front of Noelle and looked down at her, trying to read in her eyes that which I so desperately wanted to see.

Her expression was inscrutable, although as I watched, the corners of her mouth began to curl up. I was distracted by the sight of her mouth, and the hunger within me came to life, swamping me with the pounding, insistent need to claim her in all the ways known to man and woman.

Instantly, I was ravenous with hunger and rock hard with baser needs.

“Oooh,” she said as I scooped her up and lurched painfully down the narrow hall toward the back stairs. “I like what you’re thinking. Feathers have been underused in sexual play, I’ve always felt.”

I slid a glance down at her as I started up a flight of stairs toward my bedroom. “Just how much sexual play have you indulged in that you would feel so strongly about the subject?”

“Are you by any chance asking me how many men I’ve slept with?”

“Yes.”

“I really don’t think that’s any of your business. I’m certainly not going to ask you how many women you’ve been with, so I don’t think it’s at all fair or even politically correct to inquire as to the number of my previous lovers. You do see, don’t you, that it’s what happens from here on out that’s important, not what happened in our past?”

“Yes, I understand that.”

She looked at me as I kicked open the door to the room that had been mine whenever I was at the Abbey, a little smile flirting with her lips. My erection went from rock hard to damn near impervious to a point-blank atomic blast.

“How many?” I asked, setting her on her feet and immediately stripping her of her clothing.

She giggled, damn her delicious hide. I had no resistance to such a feminine sound and only just managed to keep from pouncing on her. “Three. You?”

“Does that matter?”

“Oh, yes.” She leaned forward to nip my bottom lip. “What’s good for the goose and all that. How many, Gray?”

I sighed, checked the bathroom to make sure Johannes wasn’t lurking about, then returned to find Noelle lying seductively on the bed. “Twenty-two, if you insist on knowing.”

“Twenty-two… goodness!” She sat up, her breasts bobbing enticingly in front of me as I struggled to remove my trousers without simply shredding them off my body. “That’s a lot of women, Gray. I don’t think I like that number. When you compare three with twenty-two, well… that’s quite a difference.”

“I was born in 1664,” I pointed out, finally wrestling my trousers off, eyeing her with indecision. Should I start with those delectable breasts and work my way down or begin at the shy, pink-tipped little toes and work upward?

“Were you? That’s really neither here nor there, is it?” She did a little mental arithmetic. “Oh, I see what you mean. You’ve had relationships with an average of seven women every century.”

“Whereas you’ve had three in less than approximately fifteen years,” I said, crawling onto the bottom of the bed, taking one ankle in hand, the sensation of her smooth, warm flesh driving the hunger and passion inside me even higher, until I thought I might fall into the deep, red well of need.

“Twelve, actually. I’m thirty-one. Three makes me sound so very promiscuous,” she said thoughtfully, watching with interest as I struggled with the hunger, keeping my bites to gentle little nips as I kissed my way up first one calf, then the other. “Wanton, almost. Are we going to have oral sex?”

I stopped licking behind her knee to look up as she lolled back on the pillows, her dark red curls tangled on the bed linens, desire mingling with expectation in her beautiful eyes. “We’re going to do whatever you like. You may command me.”

“Really?” She smiled. “Then you’ll answer my questions about Amaymon and your parents and those other things that Nosty mentioned that had you looking like you wanted to kill him on the spot but knew you couldn’t because, well, he’s already dead, for one.”

“You may command me in sexual acts,” I said, biting a little harder on her thigh.

She moaned. “Oral sex, then.”

“As you wish.” I leaned forward to kiss a path down toward where shorter, darker curls shielded her intimate secrets, but she sat up, pushing me onto my back.

“You’re going to be the recipient, though.”

I thought, at least for an infinitesimal fraction of a second, of protesting that I wanted to be the one to give her pleasure, but there was no way on this good earth I was going to stop Noelle from doing what she so obviously wanted to do.

She laughed in my mind. I don’t think there’s a man alive who would say no.

I frowned as she moved my legs aside and sat on her heels between my calves. It’s not that. I simply do not wish to deprive you of the pleasure that you are so obviously anticipating.

She looked pointedly at my erection, which, at that moment, had properties in tensile strength that were similar to titanium.

“All right. Perhaps I am anticipating them as well,” I admitted.

“Tensile strength?” She giggled and stroked her hands up my legs, her touch like molten fire going straight to my blood and driving the hunger into a fevered pitch. “I like the way your mind works, Gray. Most men, most normal men, couldn’t come up with phrases like ‘tensile strength’ at a time like this. Most men would be lying back, moaning, clutching the sheets with both hands, begging me to explore your titanium-like penis with my tongue and mouth and perhaps, if I’m very, very gentle, even a little scrape of teeth.”

“I am not most—”

She bent over me, taking the very tip of me into her mouth.

The sensation of her tongue swirling against flesh that was suddenly sensitized beyond human bearing left me moaning, clutching the sheets with both hands, and begging her to never stop doing what she was doing.

I never thought I’d like this, she told me as she continued to torment me with her mouth, almost making me come off the bed when her hands joined in. But with you, it’s different. I think it’s because I can feel what every little touch is doing to you. Now, how do you feel about this?

It’s too much. My back arched off the bed as my hips thrust upward into the sweet torment of her mouth. You’re going to kill me.

You’re immortal, my darling.

If it’s possible to die of pleasure, I’ll do it, I managed to get out before the hunger slipped control, and I was pulling her over me, thrusting up into her, capturing her cry of ecstasy in my mouth. Her fingers dug hard into my shoulders, her breasts, those delightful little strumpets bent on my utter captivation, tempting me with their silken warmth as she moved to a rhythm that was shared between us, her pleasure feeding mine, which in turn drove hers even higher. It was as if we were in a perpetual cycle of rapture, and it was only when her release claimed her that I let myself drink deeply, the skin of her shoulder a silken haven that I couldn’t resist any longer. She was mine, and I knew at that moment that I would move the moon and the stars to make sure she remained that way.

It took a long time to recover, both physically and emotionally. I knew what committing myself to Noelle would mean, knew that it would require sacrifices from both of us, and was attempting to organize a number of arguments in favor of my point of view when she lifted her head and frowned at me. She was lying on top of me, our legs and arms tangled in a boneless, utterly sated manner. The fact that she had the strength not only to raise her head but also actually to frown annoyed me.

“You do not get to be annoyed,” she told me, her frown deepening. “You have been sexed to your very limits, and if you don’t like the fact that I, as a woman, can recover from such lovemaking faster than you, a mere man, then you can just pretend to be grateful that you have a Beloved as thoughtful and aerobically fit as to be able to withstand this sort of activity without actually dropping dead of pleasure.”

“I am the one who told you that you were going to kill me with your mouth,” I told her sternly. “I said it first, so you can’t now claim that it was so good that it almost did you in, too.”

She bit the end of my nose. “You were so good you almost did me in, Gray. You were like a titanium machine, a fabulously sexy, bitey, really, really talented machine whose touch makes me burn like a Roman candle.”

I allowed her words to placate me, closing my eyes as I drew little contented patterns on her delicious ass. “You helped a little. You may take a tiny portion of the credit.”

She pinched my nipple, giggling when I opened my eyes and yelped in indignation. “Now,” she said, stacking her hands and resting her chin on them, staring into my eyes. “We talk.”

I closed my eyes and snored. “I’m sleeping. Good night.”