But Sarah had been different from the very beginning. He wasn’t going to think about her, he reminded himself. He just needed to remember that he’d bedded countless women, icy ones, shy ones, hot-blooded sexual ones. He’d performed as he’d needed to, as he wanted to, with tenderness, with passion, with love; but never had one of them held any power over him. Not until Sarah.

The Lilith would hold no power either. He would prove to Beloch and himself that her body was simply a tool he could use and discard, that he would never fall prey to her siren’s lure. He had for a brief moment. He never would again.

The house was just as they’d left it. He hadn’t bothered to lock the place—most of the inhabitants of the Dark City steered clear of him. He frightened them, he knew it. Presumably they looked at him and saw garish color and eternal damnation, and they wanted neither. The denizens of the Dark City worshipped truth and moderation, attraction rather than desire, appetite rather than hunger. He and his kind were anathema to the curbed needs of the Dark City.

He had never stopped to question who and what populated this drab and sorrowful place. It was Beloch’s kingdom, a place out of time, and the shadows who moved here seemed more like lost souls than human or demon. He didn’t care. They were no threat to him or his kind—not even the Truth Breakers or Beloch’s police force, the Nightmen. They couldn’t leave this place; they simply existed. But even here they couldn’t touch him. They could only touch her, because he’d brought her here for their cruel services.

He could smell her. He’d known her scent the moment she’d walked out her apartment building door that morning, the subtle fragrance of her skin. He wondered if she emitted a mating scent, if that was how she’d doomed so many. If so, he was mostly immune to it. He looked at her and wanted her. He knew that. Beloch must think him a fool not to have accepted that simple fact. Everyone should want the Lilith, even a dried-up husk of a man such as Beloch.

But while he wanted her, he hadn’t been tempted to touch her or take her, and he could have, so many times. It would go no further than desire, not action. He wanted her and he ignored it, as he ignored so many of his appetites. Beloch was a fool to think he’d be no match for her or his own needs.

He pushed the buttons on the old-fashioned wall switch in the front hallway, turning on the dim lights that only made the shadows deepen. She looked around her nervously, as if worried about what might be hiding in the shadows. She was foolish. The only thing she had to fear was standing right next to her. At least, until he handed her over.

“Go to bed,” he said gruffly as he released her. His fingers felt warm, almost stinging.

He expected her to scamper away, and indeed, she moved back, out of his reach. But then she paused, and he groaned inwardly. “What did Beloch mean? Why should you be frightened of me?”

“Do you think I’m frightened of you?”

“Of course not,” she said, sounding annoyed. “I’m depressingly harmless. Still, he made it sound like there’s some history between us.”

“There isn’t,” he said, only half a lie. “Until last year we had never spoken, never met. Most people think you are the stuff of myths.”

“Like demons and the Nephilim.”

He glared at her. She was so very different from what he’d expected. Her protective coloring hadn’t fooled him when he’d first taken her, but even in her real form, she was a far cry from a sex goddess. Her breasts were on the small side, the curves of her hips subtle; her chin was stubborn, her mouth tight, her eyes filled with either anger or fear. He’d known sirens—demons and humans, creatures who tried to lure any man into their clutches—and he’d even given in a time or two, for the sheer pleasure of it.

But the Lilith was like no siren or demon he knew. Her clothes were plain and baggy, her face free of paint; she wore no adornment of any kind. It was almost as if sex were simply not a part of her life.

But he knew otherwise. He knew that beneath her drab exterior the heart of a raptor existed, a predator who was ready to claw a man to pieces once she’d mated with him. Lamia, cursed shriek owl; Lilitu, the wind demon, monster of storms. And he was drawn to her anyway.

“Your bedroom is at the end of the hall,” he reminded her. He needed her gone. The scent of her was maddening, elusive, bewitching.

“I’m not tired anymore.” She moved into the formal parlor, taking a seat and looking at him out of those warm brown eyes. “I want to know what Beloch meant. What kind of test is he expecting you to perform?”

He let his eyes drift over her, slowly. He knew what Beloch was ordering, challenging him to do. He wanted Azazel to touch her, taste her, bed her. Azazel was supposed to fuck her and then prove he could walk away from her, turn her over to the shattering destructiveness of the Truth Breakers and then celebrate the destruction of one more demon.

He could no longer fool himself. They would destroy her. She might have demon blood, but she no longer had the ability to change form. She had the frail human body of a woman now, one that would break under the Truth Breakers’ hands. And he would have no choice but to give her to them.

He looked at her and his body stirred, and he despised her—and himself. Every reaction was a betrayal of who he was. He could tell himself it was simply her wiles, her powers, that were doing this to him. But he wasn’t asleep, he wasn’t drugged.

And he wasn’t going to do it. Not tonight, when need vibrated through his body and he wanted to shove her up against a wall and take her. By tomorrow he’d be back in control. By then he could take her to his bed and then walk away, untouched, unchanged. He could expose the demon the only way possible, through the act of sex. And she could no longer pretend she didn’t know what she was.

What it was. “Go to bed,” he said gruffly. “Or you’ll wish you had.”

She simply raised an eyebrow, the foolish creature. It was unwise to underestimate him. He could squeeze the life out of her in moment, break her neck, end her as he’d come so close to doing, more times than he could remember. He could end this farce.

She must have read some of the violence in his eyes. She rose, shoving her hair away from her face, and sighed melodramatically. She came up to him, pausing in the doorway. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be,” he said. Just a taste, just a warning, he told himself through a haze of desire. So she knew what was coming. And before she knew what was happening, he shoved her up against the door and slammed his mouth down on hers.

I FROZE, IN SHOCK, OUT of necessity. His hands were on my arms, imprisoning me. His body crowded me against the doorjamb, and his mouth was hard, angry, punishing.

I would have kneed him in the balls, but he was too close, trapping me between his hard body and the wall. I kept my mouth shut, wondering whether I could bite him hard enough to draw blood, wondering why my breath was coming fast and my heart was racing. It wasn’t fear. I’d told the truth—I was no longer afraid of him. I remembered his kiss from the dockside, the rush of desire that had suffused my body.

As it did now. My pulse raced, my skin heated; I was wet and ready. I thought, Fuck it, and opened my mouth for him, taking the sweet invasion of his tongue with a shock of pleasure, and I knew I’d been waiting for this, longing for this without knowing it. Longing for him, my enemy.

His hands slid down my arms to the hem of my loose T-shirt and then up underneath, cupping my breasts in the thin bra I wore. I could feel my nipples harden at his rough touch, and I hated it, hated that I wanted him, that I needed him so badly my legs shook and my hands trembled, and he was hurting me. …