I took a step back from her, though it took more than a little effort. I wanted her, and not just as a matter of course for an incubus.

But I was still wary. She had gone to great lengths to find me, and something done with such focus was not bereft of a good reason.

There was some truth in what she told me about being cast out, but I would be a fool to take her words at face value.

“If you’ve been cast out and are working only for yourself.” I gave her body an appraising look. The stole covered her fair breasts, but I could easily sense her plump curves with my night vision. “What sort of business are you in, exactly? Any special services you could offer one such as myself?”

“Not prostitution. Besides, that’s more your game, isn’t it?” Her eyes flashed icily.

“Not quite.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall where I’d had her pinned, feeling her residual body heat coming off the stone in pleasant waves. “We should get down to it, carissima. The sun will be up soon.”

“What?” She cocked her head to the side. “Will you burn up like a vamp or something?”

“I have matters to attend to. Spending all my time with you tonight has left my incubus side a little…hungry.” I gave her a wicked smile. “Of course, you would go a long way to ease my suffering.”

She ignored my overture. “Here’s the deal. Have you ever heard of The Wife of Bath: True Tales of a Vampire Vixen?”

“Of course.” I gave a bored wave of my hand. “An unauthorized tell-all book on Desmerada, Vampire Queen, revealing all her dirty little secrets. Scathing, I believe, is the word for it. Though the writer somehow managed to leave out the chapter where I would have had a starring role.”

“Do you know who wrote it?”

“No one does. Apparently, it’s part of the appeal. If that’s all you have to tell me, I best be going.” I didn’t want to leave her, but the dawn was fast approaching. If I didn’t let my incubus side out to play soon, Lilah would be in danger. I was having trouble resisting my desire for her already, a sensation that had nothing to do with my dark nature and everything to do with the way she made me feel.

“Well,” she said, drawing out the word slowly, “what if I told you I was the one who wrote it?”

“What if you did?” I could sense her frustration when she bit her lower lip, her even white teeth pressing into the plump flesh. What would her mouth feel like tracing down my chest? My shaft jumped to attention at the thought.

“My proposition is that I write the same sort of book about you.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Carissima, why on earth would I want that?”

She was whirling the dagger around in her hand now, showing her agitation with my apparent disinterest. She’d been trained and had some skill with the blade. She kept her wrist loose and let the knife do the work. Trained by the gods, but which one?

I wanted to find out whose service she’d been in, though it clearly hadn’t been one of the goddesses of home and hearth. No. Lilah was a being of fire and impulse. I could sense it in her very essence.

She stopped twirling the blade and pointed it at me. “Because you‘ve had thousands of sexcapades with all manner of mortals and immortals. And you’re a narcissist. It’s in your nature to show off.”

I had to admit I was intrigued by the offer, though Lilah didn’t need to know that. “Only thousands? You might want to up that number a bit, carissima.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Typical.”

I didn’t want to cut our negotiations short, but the sun threatened. The first dusky rays shot out over Sacré-Cœur, and my time was almost up. I needed to get back home, and quickly. I couldn’t risk letting the incubus take over, having gone too long already without sating its needs. Denying it for three nights straight was an acute agony. One more and I ran the risk of being at its mercy. “Besides, what if I said I don’t kiss and tell?”

“You do. That’s what your kind does.” She squared her shoulders and gave me a hard look.

“My kind?”

“You know, men.” She gesticulated toward me with the dagger, nearly cutting another hole into my suit coat.

Some male wounded her badly. “And you know me so well?” A chill emanated from me. I would rip the bastard’s throat out.

Lilah seemed to want to take a step back against my icy onslaught but held her ground, which only made me want her more. “Well enough to know you’d like to have a book written about you that would cement your reputation for the rest of eternity.”

Smart girl, playing to vanity. And her words were true enough. Desmerada had been the talk of the Underworld for quite some time after the withering tome about her life was published. Her love of bathing in virgins’ blood and torturing her lovers to the brink of death was often the topic of conversations I overheard in my dealings with other immortals. She quickly became the most notorious vampire queen of the last few thousand years. Her legend would live on long after the next aspiring queen dusted her, which I hoped would happen sooner rather than later.

“Why would I agree to go along with such a thing? To have my name dragged through the mud like Desmerada’s?” I enjoyed watching Lilah shift from boot heel to boot heel, her hips jutting out suggestively with each curiously nervous move.

And then I noticed it. She was holding her breath. She needed this from me, and needed it badly from the looks of things. Why? I let the seconds pass, seconds of borrowed time that made the incubus flick and curl inside me, threatening. I was only playing with her now. I would accept her offer, though my cooperation would come with a price, one that made me burn with desire just thinking about.

Even as I knew I wouldn’t deny her, I still couldn’t let her have what she wanted too easily. I turned my back and slowly ambled away into the gloom. “Besides, you’d likely never get the chance to finish it. Desmerada’s assassins are surely hunting you as we speak.”

Lilah let out a low and sultry laugh that made me stop in my tracks. “Why would she want me dead? She’s the one who commissioned The Wife of Bath.”