The night began with a knock at the door—firmer than usual. Severus glanced at the clock next to the bed, noting that she was about five minutes early. Clearing his throat, he stood and smoothed his hands down the silky soft T-shirt he had opted for tonight instead of the usual suit. Moira was a college girl, if she’d been telling the truth during their phone interview last weekend, and didn’t strike him as the kind who wanted refinement. So, he had chosen a less upscale hotel for tonight’s session, and dressed down in a pair of dark jeans and a deep grey tee. The belt and shoes were still fine leather—he hadn’t lost his sense of style completely—but her voice had sounded young, and he didn’t want to send her running by dressing like her dad.

She knocked again, the sharp rap of her knuckles making Severus grin as he crossed the small hotel room. While missing the luxurious bathroom and generously stocked minibar, the establishment boasted near-soundproof walls. He had a similar arrangement with one of the night shift front desk clerks as he did with clerks across the city, and tended to bring his screamers here. From what he’d gathered of this college student, she didn’t strike him as a screamer, but the hotel was on the south side of town, far from the sanctuary of her north-side campus, which meant she wouldn’t run into anyone familiar in the parking lot.

He’d left his facial hair scruffier today. All the twenty-somethings swooned over dark, brooding, and dangerous—didn’t they? No matter how he dressed, suit or no suit, he had a feeling he would still tickle her fancy, among other things. Most women found him irresistible, and not just because he was an incubus.

Unbolting the door, he opened it with one of his unassuming smiles—one that disappeared the moment he saw her. She stood about a foot away, a willowy, ethereal creature whose chin came up to his shoulders. Dark, mahogany hair, long and straight, hung around her sharp, angular face in curtains, and she swept it behind her ears with trembling hands. Slim, long fingers. Neatly trimmed nails. White. She was so very white that it threw him. And those eyes—an otherworldly blue—flickered up to him briefly before fixing themselves to the floor.

She was undeniably beautiful, and Severus found himself questioning why on earth she would even need his services.

“Russ?” she asked softly, her voice curiously melodic. It snapped him out of his staring, his admiring, and he opened the door with a nod.

“Moira. My apologies for keeping you waiting.”

“It’s fine,” she muttered as she darted in. Dressed in a pair of slim-fit jeans, ankle-high brown boots with just a hint of wedged heel, and a black spring peacoat that nipped around the waist, she looked as though she belonged in the glossy pages of some fashion magazine—not here with him in a soundproofed room at the Kingsview Inn and Suites. His dark brows crinkled as he gently closed the door, making sure that all his movements were obvious as he locked them in. New clients could be jumpy, and seeing him lock the door never helped.

“Now, we—”

“Here,” she said, thrusting an envelope at him, presumably full of cash, as soon as he turned around. The woman still struggled to meet and hold his gaze; she had sounded so much more confident over the phone. Clearly she wasn’t in the business of paying for sex regularly. His eyes narrowed somewhat as he assessed her, before gripping the envelope—holding but not taking, waiting for her to drop her arm back to her side.

She did, sliding that elegant hand into her pocket and finally lifting her stare to him, fixing it just over his shoulder. Severus smiled again, though the expression was far less modest than the one he’d used to greet her.

“Yes, thank you,” he muttered. The white envelope was thin, and as he turned to set it on the dresser, he realized there were only two bills inside. Now, how was little Miss Moira withdrawing two crisp five-hundred-dollar notes from her bank? Did she come from money? Most who paid for his services did. Yet she was just a wisp of a thing—beautiful, puzzling, but still only a girl.

His jaw clenched when he faced her again. This was the first time a client had thrown him by mere appearance alone. Some of the women he catered to were physically attractive in their own way, but Moira was…something else entirely.

And he couldn’t decide if that sat well with him or not.

“Now, tell me, is this your first time with an escort?” he asked, hands clasped behind his back as he strolled toward her—around her.

“Like I said on the phone, yes,” she replied curtly. “My first and only time.”

“I just wanted to clarify again.” He strolled in a slow, easy circle around her, only then realizing he was even doing it. Demons were predatory by nature. With most clients, Severus had no problem suppressing his baser instincts, shifting his persona to whatever the woman desired, and yet with this Moira, he went straight to it—the predator within. He slowed his pace until he finally stopped in front of her. “You seem nervous.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“No, I suspect not.” He smirked, peering down at her with a steadily intensifying interest. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. It’s perfectly natural to be a little uneasy with the arrangement.” Severus went for her hand, but she slid that one into her pocket too—holding her ground and continuing to look over his shoulder. Curious. “If you’d prefer, we can just talk. I’m a good listener, you know.”

During their phone interview, she had told him what she wanted: sex to completion, no oral, definitely no anal, kissing was fine. Many of his clients preferred not to kiss, and Severus didn’t hold it against them. The act was so intimate, perhaps even more so than the sex itself. Studying her lips, pale pink like an aged ballet slipper, he realized he certainly wouldn’t mind kissing her. In fact, if his slowly hardening cock had anything to say about it, it appeared Severus wanted to kiss her.

Strange.

And not entirely unwelcome.

“No.” Her steadfast refusal startled him out of his musings, and he found her hastily unbuttoning her jacket and yanking it off her shoulders. “No, I’m fine. I want to do this. We… It’s fine.”

Severus continued to watch her in a contemplative silence as she crossed the small room and set her folded coat on the chair by the window. While she was an unearthly pale creature, her hair was so stark—and it didn’t match her eyebrows. Sure, both were brown, but not the same brown. In fact, as she stalked back to him, fiddling with her nails, he noted that the eyebrows appeared drawn on. While faded, Severus also made note of dark brown smudges along her hairline, as though she’d recently used dye. Had she done it to disguise herself tonight? She hadn’t given her last name on the phone—and Severus hadn’t asked for it—but it would probably be easy enough to find her online, bad dye job or not.

“I don’t want you to feel pressured,” he told her when the silence dragged on longer than it should. He suddenly felt the urge to trail the backs of his knuckles across her cheek. Schooling his features, Severus curled his hand into a tight fist, recently clipped nails biting into his palm. Don’t touch her yet. Don’t send her running. Be a fucking professional. “Or we can do other things if you—”

“No, sex is fine.” Her cheeks flamed at the statement, and he found himself trying not to chuckle. She wasn’t a virgin, supposedly, yet her blushes suggested otherwise. “I’m just a little off-balance here with everything. I’ll be fine. Seriously. Let’s…do this.”

She bit her lower lip, grimacing slightly, and this time Severus did chuckle. He couldn’t help it.

“We have the full two hours,” he mused, dropping his voice as he reached out and pushed her hair over her shoulder. It had fallen free from behind her ear when she’d taken her coat off. “There’s no rush.”

Moira took a deep breath, then slowly let it out as she murmured, “Okay. Thanks.”

The air stood still between them, a weighted silence only made heavier by the soundproofed walls. He could always hear something everywhere else; people laughing, a TV blaring, water running. Here, there was nothing but thick air and the sound of her shaky, uneven breaths.

And the pounding of his own blood, headed southbound without delay, the demon within awakening.

For the first time in, well, ever, he found himself wanting to initiate—and not for the pleasure of her life essence. He’d had a client on Wednesday night. Sex. Oral—for both of them. Then a shower together. She’d stayed the night in the room he’d rented, so wiped out that he didn’t trust her to get home at all. He’d been selfish, taking too much, and he’d had to remind himself to be cautious before tonight’s session.

Yet he didn’t want to be cautious. As Moira took two tentative steps toward him, the third closing the gap between their bodies, he found he wanted to touch, to take, to consume.

Instead, Severus forced himself to be still, to be patient. This was just a job. A necessity of existence.

Why was he so riled up? The beast within seldom blinked at his clients, yet now his entire being hummed with interest.

Finally, those hauntingly bright blue eyes studied his face in its entirety, and he felt the blaze of their path as though they’d burned him. In the end, they settled on his lips, and he tilted his face down just enough that if she stood up on her tiptoes, she could kiss him of her own free will.

And she did. Softly. Sweetly. Those blush-pink lips brushed across his as he watched her beneath a hooded stare. Her eyelashes, black with several coats of mascara, fluttered somewhat before settling, her eyes closed as she leaned into him. When her hand came to rest on his chest, her touch like a whisper, faint, barely there—Severus was forced to lock his hands in fists again, if only to still them before they reacted.

For they were desperate to respond. Her sweet, innocent touches. Her diminutive grace. Her beauty. Her smell—heady and intense, like a lotus in full bloom. On their own, nothing. Together, the combination was deadly, for it stirred something within him, something animalistic, something dangerous, something he had suppressed ever since he left Hell, hoping to survive better among the humans than he had with his own kind.

His throat burned, the great cavern of his chest on fire. Desire. He hadn’t felt it in an age. Desperation. Eagerness. The urge to take and to defile.

He knew he ought to send her away. Cut the session short. Make an excuse. Give Moira her money back. Spare her.

Yet as her tongue tentatively swept along the tight seam of his mouth, he couldn’t. Severus succumbed instead, surrendering to a controlled fall as her long, willowy fingers crept to his cheeks, cupping his face. His lips parted, his arm curling around her narrow waist, and he smiled against her mouth when he realized that bold tongue was not quite so; in fact, it was rather shy. It hedged along the outskirts, unwilling to leave her mouth for his.

So, Severus gave her a reason not to be shy, thrusting his tongue, a tongue he could elongate for optimal pleasure should he desire it, into her mouth. Her little squeal of surprise emboldened him, his hand threading through her hair. It yearned to tighten, to wrench her head back so that he might graze his teeth along her neck.

Learn what sort of sounds she’d make then.

For now, however, he could content himself with her little moans, the racing of her breath as their kiss became frantic—dangerously so.

And then her hands fell to his chest again and shoved. He staggered back, startled by her strength, and held his hands out when he found his breath ragged. Jaw clenched, he forced his heart to slow, the damn thing slamming against its cage. If he’d thought her blushes prominent before, they were nothing compared to what he saw now. As if sensing it, she pressed her hands to her cheeks and turned away.

“I’m sorry,” he offered, knowing he needed to say something, and that seemed like the most socially acceptable phrase to utter to a distressed human. “Did I…?”

“You didn’t do anything,” she told him over her shoulder. “It’s me. I’m sorry. I swear I’m not normally this…stiff.”

Well, that was one way to describe it. He ran a hand through his hair, sensing that if he asked her if she wanted to talk again, she might force herself to do something that would distress her further.

“I could give you a massage,” he said, vocalizing the idea as soon as it came to mind. It would give him ample opportunity to take what he needed from her, skin-to-skin, and she could hopefully find some peace. His stamina was exceptional; he could massage her for the next—a quick glance at the bedside clock—hour and forty minutes, ten minutes for sex to what would likely be an easy climax if she hadn’t fallen asleep, and then it would be over. This vexing woman would be gone, and Severus could forget what she did to him, how she roused his inner darkness. Pretend it hadn’t ever happened.

Slowly, Moira faced him again, some of the redness in her cheeks dissipated. “A massage?”

“I find it, er,” he gestured toward the bed, suddenly tongue-tied under the weight of her full, wide-eyed stare, “can be quite relaxing. Many ordinary couples use it for foreplay. I’m sure you carry a lot of stress with school.”

Moira gathered her hair in her hands, tossing it to one side as she nodded. “Okay. A massage sounds,” she swallowed noticeably, “nice.”

“Why don’t I wait in the bathroom?” he offered, needing a few moments of peace to collect himself anyway—yet another first. “You can undress and wait under the sheets, as you would at an actual massage appointment. If you find that’s all you want, we can just do that.”

“No, I want to—”

“Decide on it when the time comes,” he insisted before striding into the bathroom and barricading himself inside. He leaned back against the door with a scowl, then quietly hit his head against the solid wood frame.

What the devil was wrong with him?

Shaking his head, Severus pushed off the door and found himself standing there with a raging erection—all from a bit of kissing. Something must have been seriously wrong. Was he ill? If she hadn’t appeared so innocent, he might have thought her a witch, but he didn’t get a whiff of demon from her. Not in the slightest. No magic. No tricks. It was just her—Moira without a last name. College student. Intriguing beauty. A threat to Severus’s carefully cultivated control if he had ever seen one.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, taking long, deep, even breaths in an attempt to calm himself. However, by the time he’d finished, he was still rock hard, the inner beast demanding he march back into that room and simply take her. Even the slightest adjustment of his jeans was fucking torture. He needed release. He needed her, apparently.

No. This is absurd. Scowling, he stalked to the sink and turned on the cold water, waiting for it to get extra icy before splashing his face. Even the chilly blast did nothing to lessen his ridiculous state of arousal, and as he glared at himself in the mirror, he wondered if she’d drugged him—some hell-born elixir painted across those pale lips. Was he five seconds away from passing out with a massive hard-on? He leaned in to check his lips, his teeth, and his tongue. All looked normal. No lingering residue. His eyes were clear, not the least bit dazed, bloodshot, or out of focus.

Wait.

He leaned closer. His eye colour should have been darker. He’d had a generous dose of skin-to-skin contact. His body had responded eagerly to Moira’s touch, and yet he didn’t feel as he always did courtesy of a little heavy petting. Not stronger. Not sharper. Not energized or refreshed. The same as before. Horny as fuck, sure, but otherwise… Nothing.

He tugged at his cheeks, checked his eyes again, and then took a step back, scowling. He didn’t feel worse by any means. In fact, Severus felt oddly alive for the first time in a dreadfully long time.

It was as though her kiss had awoken the long-dormant demon inside, kept quiet, pliant, and restrained around all these humans.

“Moira, Moira, Moira,” he murmured, looking back to the bathroom door. “What have you done to me?”

And why?

After splashing his face with a bit of cold water again, he patted his skin down and composed himself in front of the mirror. Whether she was aware of it or not, Moira affected him, but he couldn’t let it show. Severus had to be in control here—and his cock, the inner darkness gathering within, suggested otherwise. No one could know, certainly not the temptress waiting for him to return.

Although he didn’t have a watch on him tonight, he knew he’d given her ample time to situate herself under the bedsheets, and after rumpling his hair and checking his eyes one last time, he opened the door.

And found her precisely where he thought she’d be: facedown in the middle of the bed, the white duvet cover folded in half and the thin white sheets drawn up to her mid-back.

“Are you ready?” he asked, fighting the surge of arousal shooting through him at all that exposed skin. Odd, that his first instinct wasn’t what he could take from her, but rather what he wanted to do to her. “Moira?”

“Yes.” To her credit, she sounded more confident this time, her voice steady. As he approached, he found her head resting on her folded hands, and she slowly turned it to the side so she could glance up at him. “I’m sorry about before. I don’t know why I’m so flustered.”

“It’s very normal for your first time,” he told her, fighting the urge to run his gaze down the length of her body—what the sheets left exposed. Even if she was there for the explicit purpose of sex, he didn’t want to openly leer. Not very professional—or, given the strange new circumstances, not in his best interests. Instead, he cleared his throat and nodded toward his bag, which he’d left on the floor by the dresser. “Would you like me to use massage oils?”

“Oh, uh…” She bit her lower lip for a moment as she considered it, and Severus clenched his jaw, suppressing the image of him nibbling that tempting lower lip from his mind. Moira shuffled about beneath the covers somewhat as she said, “Massage oils sometimes give me a rash. Or they used to, anyway.”

“Moisturizing lotion?” He lifted his eyebrows. “Scent-free. All natural. I use it for clients with sensitive skin.”

Her cheeks flushed again as she nodded, then faced the bed—perhaps to hide the recent flood of colour. Severus marched across the room to grab the bottle from his bag, but found his legs mildly uncooperative, as though they had no desire to leave her side. Stranger still.

Once he had the appropriate lotion in hand, he dragged off his T-shirt, not wanting to stain it, and tossed it on the dresser. Returning to the bed, he noted that she had taken the time to fold all her clothes before piling them neatly on the armchair. For some reason, the very idea tugged at his lips and threatened to make him smile.

He took a deep breath.

Just get this over with. She’ll be a puddle of wet, dripping desire soon enough, just like all the rest of them.

As he clambered onto the bed, he realized he had no idea where to position himself. Instinct told him to settle over the delicate curve of her behind, but the second he did she’d feel his still very present, very hard cock through his jeans, and Severus didn’t want to startle her.

So, he knelt at her side, gently lowering the sheet to her hips. Silently, Moira gathered her splayed brown hair, which still didn’t look quite right, and dragged it over to one side, exposing two highly sensitive areas—her spine and her neck. Severus stared down at her as a vision of running his tongue from the small of her back to the nape of her neck danced across his mind’s eye.

Fuck.

Shaking his head, he squeezed the lotion onto his hands, rubbed it in a bit, and then got to work. The second his hands smoothed up her back, applying just the right amount of pressure, Moira tensed briefly, then let out a long, luxurious exhale. Severus smirked. Just like all the rest.

Only she wasn’t. The longer he massaged her, lingering on some knots in her upper back, Severus realized he just wasn’t getting anything from her. No matter how he touched her, no matter where he touched her, all Severus became was more and more aroused. Not stronger. Not sharper. Just hornier, until finally he yanked the sheets down, exposing her completely, and dragged his tongue along the hollow of her lower back. She shuddered, and, over the round, pert globes of her ass, Severus caught her toes curl.

A sinful grin crossed his lips, and his hands wandered lower, smoothing over her backside and gripping her thighs firmly. She gasped, feet digging into the bed now, and all Severus wanted to do was bury his face between her legs. He could smell her arousal. He could feel the heat radiating off her, the tension in her limbs when he scraped his teeth along the delicate skin of one cheek. Her legs twitched, as though startled by the flash of pain paired with what he knew was a sensuous rubdown. Severus clasped her thighs tighter, one large, firm hand on each, and used his thumbs to circle the tender flesh along her inner thighs. Goosebumps erupted—a job well done.

Severus crawled down the bed, running his tongue along the inside of her right thigh, using both hands on her left, and she moaned—the sweetest, most tempting sound he’d ever heard. Although she had requested no oral, he could easily imagine parting her legs and burying his face between them, spearing her wet heat with his tongue, tormenting her clit until she came with a scream. Bless those soundproof walls.

“Russ?” Moira’s soft voice broke through the fog of lust. He blinked rapidly and found his mouth at the curve of her ass, his thumbs hiked up on either side of her swollen sex; he’d ventured in without even realizing it, so lost in the fantasy of what she’d look like when she came that he hadn’t been conscious of his actions. Jaw clenched, he sat up quickly, about to apologize—when he found her studying him over her shoulder with a heat in her eyes that made his cock sing.

Something akin to a growl rattled around in his chest as he crawled up her, finally clambering over her and grinding his now-throbbing, yet still horribly confined erection against her backside. She arched below, head thrown back and lips parted, and whimpered softly when his teeth nipped at her neck.

Still he wasn’t getting anything.

And Severus didn’t give two flying fucks anymore.

All he could think about was her, this mystery woman who wasn’t like all the rest, and driving himself into her over and over until he collapsed.

She turned somewhat frantically beneath him, hands sliding up to cup his face as it descended upon her, mouth claiming hers again. Last time, he had let her steer. He had let her tentative touches guide them, set the pace—but now it was time for her to taste the fire, the fury, of his kiss. Severus caught her with her lips slightly parted and took full advantage, thrusting his tongue into her mouth as she moaned, exploring every crevice, marking her in ways known only to the two of them. Her hands dropped down to his shoulders while he repositioned themselves so her legs wrapped around his waist, not the other way around.

Moira tasted divine—and all he’d sampled was her mouth. He pressed harder, driving her into the bed as her heels dug into his back. Her hands, with those willowy fingers and burning caresses, wrapped around the back of his neck, and it took every ounce of his restraint not to snatch them and pin them next to her head. Lash them to the bedposts with silk. Leather. Rope that would leave her marked for days to follow.

He tore his mouth from hers and dragged it down her neck instead, fearing what the kiss was doing to him—what it was truly awakening. As he sucked at the nape of her neck, trailed his tongue along her collarbone, he found her kiss like a drug, like a weapon, severing the tether of his control. His sanity, perhaps, if he let it drag on long enough.

What sort of creature could do that to an incubus?

He glanced up at her when she keened his stage name, her hips bucking against his, before nuzzling about to find her pulse. His tongue swirled around it, sucked at it, bruising the delicate skin of her neck. Her heart beat hurriedly, but not as dangerously fast as Severus knew he could drive it. With but the simplest touch of an incubus, human hearts danced. Not Moira’s. He growled again, this time raking his teeth across her skin, and her nails bit into his neck.

“Russ…” Suddenly those hands jumped lower, skimming over his muscular figure, not stopping until they reached the brown leather belt around his hips. At the feel of her unbuckling it, he forced himself to straighten, chest rising and falling harder and faster than it should. She fumbled over the belt only briefly before wrenching it open. Next came the button of his dark jeans, the zipper sliding dangerously down his rigid shaft. He hissed when she cupped him through the remarkably thin fabric of his briefs, that damn lower lip caught between her teeth again.

With a hint of uncertainty playing across her features, Moira stroked him over his briefs, then gripped the waistline and tugged it down. His hands fisted when his cock tumbled free, falling like a lead weight between them. Her eyes widened, only for a moment, before she wrapped her hand around its head and swept her thumb over the glistening tip. His hips jolted on their own accord, and he clamped down on the insides of his cheeks.

Normally he had all the control. His clients had no sway over his body, no way to dictate his excitement. Most of all, they never took from him. Severus should have been brimming with energy, overflowing from all that skin-to-skin contact. Instead, he felt like putty in her hands, easily manipulated, suddenly pliable.

And that simply wouldn’t do.

So, he nudged her hands away and bore down on her again. He meant to pin her, smother her with his weight, but once more she wrapped her legs around him, drawing his now-freed cock ever closer to her heat.

“You are dangerous, Moira,” he growled, slipping a hand under the back of her head and grasping her hair. “Do you know that? More dangerous than I could ever be…”

“I’m ready,” she whispered, eyes wide and wild when they met his, those ethereal blues forcing him to inhale sharply. She spoke as though she hadn’t heard him, and he clenched his eyes shut when she eased her hips, her heat, along the full length of his cock. Gone were the tremors in her words, the blushes across her cheeks. Beneath him was a goddess—only Severus couldn’t choke out her name even if he wanted to.

“Ready, are you?” he managed instead, battling to contain the beast within—the beast who lived, thrived, and died for lust. This goddess had revived him, brought him back from the abyss—and she had the gall to just nod up at him.

“Russ, I want you to—”

Moira squealed, the sound muffled by his lips crashing over hers. The moment they touched again, the firestorm resumed, and Severus was lost. In her. In the now. In the lust pounding through his veins. He reached between them and steered his cock to her slick entrance. With one sharp thrust of his hips, Severus filled her. She arched up against him, moaning as her hand clasped the headboard.

Certainly no virgin, but tight and hot all the same. He found himself momentarily stricken dumb, succumbing to the sensation. He’d had a lot of sex. Severus did it for a living these days. But he’d never felt a cunt like hers. Gone were the cares, the precautions, the measures he had in place for all his regular clients. He simply had to have her, utterly. He saw nothing beyond that.

He bucked against her before easing out and pounding back in, taking her harshly. Any other woman would have broken by now, but she clung to him with one arm around his neck, rocking her hips to meet each rough thrust. Soundproofed walls contained her cries, her moans, but he wanted more. Severus wanted her screams. He wanted her skin flush and slick with sweat. He wanted to see her become the same as he, two creatures of unbridled passion.

A thousand dollars sat on the dresser by the door—a thousand dollars to make her come. Severus grinned against her lips; she wasn’t just going to come. Not once. He had another hour and a half to make her weep with such exquisite ecstasy—

“Your eyes!” She jolted suddenly, as though poked with the end of a cattle prod, then shoved him off. Severus toppled to the side, heart hammering and cock throbbing, desperate to return to its new favourite place, and quickly propped himself up on his elbow.

“What?”

“Your eyes…” She scrambled to the side of the bed, swinging her legs over the edge and pressing a hand to her forehead.

My eyes?

He faced the mirrors on the closet doors quickly. In his true form, his entire eye appeared black. Perhaps he had let his earthly disguise slip for a moment, so wrapped up in this delicious creature that he forgot himself entirely. Now, however, he looked like any ordinary human.

Well, close enough.

“I don’t know what you saw,” he started, forcing himself to calm, to settle, to regain control, “but if it frightened you, I’m sorry.” When she said nothing, keeping her back to him, Severus reached across the bed. “Moira? Did I hurt you? Are you—”

She flinched out of reach the moment his fingertips grazed her shoulder, scampering off the bed, still naked, and making a beeline for her clothes.

“I shouldn’t have done this,” he heard her muttering, and Severus made a half-hearted attempt to cover his still very prominent erection by throwing a sheet over it.

“Moira—”

“It’s not going to work,” she said, the sentiment followed by a cackle as she shimmied into her panties. Her jeans came next, and it was only then Severus realized she was crying. His skin prickled as if kissed by a morning chill. When she looked up at him, she swiped a hand across each cheek, seemingly torn between hysteria and mania. “It never works. I’m just not destined to…to… It’s never going to happen. I’m sorry.”

“Moira, why don’t you sit down and tell me what’s going on?” Clearly there was an underlying issue she hadn’t thought to share with him during the phone consultation. With her wearing more clothes, dragging her shirt over her head, bra shoved in her purse, he found it easier to restrain the beast within. Sort of. And probably not for very long. “If you need someone to listen to—”

“I don’t need you to be my therapist,” she said sharply as she grabbed her coat and purse.

“And I’m not offering to be. If you’re having problems sexually, I just happen to know a thing or two about—”

“I made a mistake doing this,” she insisted, boots crammed back on. When she faced him again, her eyebrows seemed—disheveled. As he’d suspected earlier, she had used some sort of pencil to colour them, because there was a patch of bright white peering back at him in the middle of her right brow. Curiosity at an all-time high, he stood, keeping the sheet around himself and extending a hand to her.

“You’re upset—”

“And that’s none of your concern. Keep the money.” Tears streaking down her face in thick glossy tracks, she raced for the door and tried to open it. The lock gave him a few precious seconds to get his briefs and pants tugged back up, but by then she had everything unlocked and was gone. Severus called her name, hurrying after her—only to find an empty hallway on either side of him. The elevator at the far end of the hall was in use, but it was going up, not down. Logically, he could assume she’d taken the nearby stairwell, but he opted not to follow her.

She was right, of course. It wasn’t his concern. She wasn’t his to pick apart and put back together at his leisure. None of his clients were.

But Moira was a mystery. As he went back into the hotel room and closed the door soundly behind him, Severus found he couldn’t make heads or tails of what had just happened. None of it. Not the fake hair colour. Not her strength. Not the way she affected him—the real him. And certainly not the way he couldn’t take from her as he did with every other human.

Clearly, she wasn’t a human. There was no other explanation.

Yet she was no demon either, no enchantress or witch. Not a creature of Hell, period.

So, what, exactly, was she?

And why did she make him feel alive for the first time in centuries?

Tonight, he had no answers—just a stubborn hard-on and disconcerting sense of powerlessness over his own body—but Severus was determined to find them.

And soon.