Heart of the Incubus

by Rosalie Lario

  The truth smacked her hard. “You know what Jeffrey did to me.”

  Cresso flushed. “Yes.”

  “And these dreams I’ve been having the past few nights. Of us…”

  His lips pressed tightly together. “I’ve had them, too.”

  “Oh my God.” She sat back in her seat. Confusion melded with anger, tightening her stomach. Here she thought she’d done a good job of hiding her emotions, and he could see into her mind all along. He knew exactly how she’d been humiliated by Jeffrey, down to the smallest mind-numbing detail. The bastard.

  “Gen, I’m sorry.” He tried to grab her hand, but she snatched it away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t know how to stop. You have to believe that.”

  She shook her head, and when he pulled into the parking lot, she unbuckled her seat belt. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” That was the honest truth.

  He started to park the car, and she hopped out before it came to a full stop.

  “Gen. Wait.”

  “No. Leave me alone.”

  Genevieve raced toward the entrance, uncaring how upset she looked right now. She needed to be by herself, to process all this. She needed to understand what Cresso wanted from her.

  By the time she walked up to the guard desk, she’d managed to compose herself. But then Will gave her a cautious look. “You have mail. Um, Dr. Taylor asked me to give any more of these to him, but since it’s addressed to you…I found it slipped into our mailbox, but there’s no stamp on it.”

  When he pulled out the envelope with the familiar scribbled handwriting, a flash of panic came and went, replaced by numb acceptance. Of course, there would be another letter. Anything else would be too easy.

  …

  He’d really fucked that one up. Somehow his attempt at an apology had morphed into a sordid confession of how he’d dreamscaped with her.

  Good one, dumb shit. Now she had even more reason to hate him.

  Cresso threw the car into Park and raced out after Genevieve, but the woman had suddenly developed superspeed. She fled inside the building.

  He caught up with her at the security desk, just as Will held out an envelope to her. If the cream color hadn’t already clued him in on who sent that letter, the way she blanched would have.

  This was too much.

  “I’ll take it.” He stopped beside Genevieve and smoothly relieved Will of the envelope. He wanted to burn the fucking thing, but that would be pointless.

  Genevieve’s eyes flashed. “I can handle it on my own.”

  “I know you can.” Yet he didn’t want her to be alone.

  She looked like she was going to continue arguing, so he said, “Let’s talk about it in your lab.”

  Her mouth snapped shut and she nodded before turning and marching toward the lift. He stepped in behind her, right before the doors shut. She held out her hand. After a moment’s hesitation, he gave up the letter.

  The cold, scholarly expression slid back onto her face, and Genevieve tore the envelope open. She unfolded the piece of paper inside. He didn’t even have to look at it to see what it said. One word was stamped across the page, in letters so big and bold that they were visible from the other side: SLUT.

  Her fingers shook as she lowered the paper, and that more than anything sparked an inferno of fury blazing deep in his chest.

  “That’s it,” he growled. “No more of this.”

  Genevieve took a deep breath and leaned against the wall. “What could we possibly do? We don’t know who’s sending them.”

  The door opened, and Cresso followed her down the hall and into her lab. “I’m gonna question each and every person on that lift last night. It has to be one of them.”

  “What if they don’t admit it? It’s not like we can beat them all up.”

  “The hell I can’t,” he muttered.

  “Cresso.” She turned to him. “Without evidence, we can’t do a damn thing.”

  Shit. She was right, and he hated it. “I want you to stay in here. Lock the door to the lab. I’ll go talk with them and see what I can find out.”

  When she gave him a shaky nod, he headed for the door. But then he remembered. There was a lot of unfinished business between them. He stopped and faced her. “Gen.”

  Wariness lined her eyes. “Yes?” From the way her body stiffened, she didn’t want to get back into their discussion right now. She wasn’t ready.

  Hell, it could wait.

  “Don’t forget to lock the door.” With those words, he left.

  Dr. Summers’s lab was his first stop, but she wasn’t there. Neither was Dr. Benedict, and since the scientists kept their labs locked when they weren’t present, he couldn’t get inside either one. So he walked down to the next floor and found Dr. Jessup in his lab. Not that he suspected the nagora demon of being the stalker. The old man was far too kind and gentle for that. But perhaps he’d be able to provide him with some information.

  Dr. Jessup sat at his desk. He looked up from his paperwork when Cresso walked in. “Good morning, Dr. Taylor.”

  “Morning.” Cresso cleared his throat. “Listen, about last night in the lift, Dr. Russell and I aren’t—”

  “Oh, there’s no need to explain. What you young ones do on your own time is your business.” Dr. Jessup lifted his pen back to his clipboard.

  “Did any of the other doctors say anything after we exited?”

  Dr. Jessup’s brow furrowed and he met Cresso’s gaze. “Not that I recall.”

  Yeah, that was wishful thinking on his part. Still, Cresso’s money was on either Dr. Summers or Dr. Benedict being the culprit. They were by far the shadiest of the group.

  “Thank you.”

  He’d go by each doctor’s laboratory to see if he could learn anything of value. Hell, he’d break into Dr. Summers’s and Dr. Benedict’s offices, if that was what it took to learn the identity of the stalker.

  …

  After hours of blindly staring at her research, Genevieve finally gave up all pretense of getting any work done. How had things come to this? The office playboy had professed that he’d fallen for her, of all people. Yeah, she supposed he might be lying to get into her pants, but that didn’t seem like him. For one, he had his pick of gorgeous women. But beyond that, if all he wanted from her was sex, he was going to a lot of trouble to get it. Why do that, when there were probably a hundred other women who’d have given it up with only the slightest provocation from him?

  He shared your dreams.

  A moment of panic had her whirling away from her station and blindly stalking toward the door. Once she’d taken the time to fully process Cresso’s explanation of dreamscaping, she’d gone from utter humiliation into a massive state of confusion. He knew her greatest fear, and yet it hadn’t frightened him away. Instead he’d promised never to do to her what Jeffrey had done. She believed he meant what he said. If these past few days with him had taught her anything, it was that he wouldn’t have told her something like that if he didn’t mean it. But whether he would be able to hold true to his own vow was another story.

  The bottom line was she was scared to trust him. And that fear might never go away.

  So what to do about it?

  Genevieve bit her lip and unlocked her door, striding out into the hall. It seemed eerily quiet today, but perhaps that was simply because of her inner turmoil. She locked her door and her footsteps echoed along the floor as she headed toward Cresso’s lab. Empty.

  Beside his lab, he kept a small examination room for his test subjects, both human and succubus. The door was open and there was no one inside. She stepped in and absently ran her fingers along the bare counter.

  Three weeks. That was how long he’d gone without sex. Because of her, he claimed. For an incubus, that had to be excruciating, especially considering his body’s base reaction to the opposite sex. She recalled the succubus who’d visited him a few days before, the way he’
d frowned and shrugged away from her touch. He’d resisted her, no matter that his body must have been screaming for release.

  Unbidden, another memory of Jeffrey with the two nurses surfaced.

  No, Cresso wouldn’t do that. He might be tempted, but he wouldn’t act the way Jeffrey had. Jeffrey was an egotistical human with a God complex, a man who lived for the accolades he received as part of his profession. Cresso was an incubus, admittedly a man with a lust for life, but he did the things he did to help his species.

  What if his hunger overtook him, though? Another woman, or two, might catch him at a weak moment.

  What if he gets bored?

  A tray of labeled vials behind a glass case caught her eye, and she realized what had subconsciously drawn her in here. Cresso stored quantities of the vaccine in this room.

  Genevieve opened the case and slipped out one of the vials. Thanks to Cresso’s manipulations, one dose of the stuff now lasted a month. She held it in her hand and stared at the opaque, light pink fluid. Oh God, she couldn’t believe she was even considering this.

  It doesn’t mean you’re going to sleep with him. You should simply be prepared for every scenario.

  While the scientific part of her brain recognized the practicality behind her rationale, the rest of her didn’t know what to think.

  A rustling sound broke her out of her haze. She turned and saw Tom, the maintenance man, standing outside the room with a rag and spray bottle in his hand. He smiled at her. “Everything okay, Doc?”

  “Oh…yes.” The door to the glass case was still open. She couldn’t quite hide her blush as she closed it. Tom’s eyes narrowed in on her, and she tried to look as innocent as possible while palming the vial in her hand. “Excuse me, I’m looking for Dr. Taylor.”

  Tom’s suspicious gaze followed her as she raced down the hall to her lab. Between this run-in and last night’s elevator incident, she’d be lucky if by the end of the day, half the staff didn’t believe that she was having an affair with Cresso. When she reached her office, she locked the door and leaned against it. Her fist was clenched so tightly that the vial dug into her palm. She uncurled her fingers and looked at it.

  It doesn’t mean anything. Just a precaution.

  Then why was her heart beating like a drum? She moistened her suddenly dry lips and tried to calm her racing pulse.

  “Oh, hell.” There was no point in standing here debating with herself all day.

  Genevieve moved across the room and retrieved a syringe from one of her drawers. She filled it with the fluid and shrugged out of her lab coat. After rolling up her sleeve, she stared at the syringe for one long moment. For some reason it felt as if she were crossing an invisible boundary line. But that was crazy. It wasn’t as if the vaccine would do her any permanent harm.

  Makes sense on a scientific level, right?

  Right. And she was nothing if not a scientist.

  On a deep breath, she shoved the needle into her bicep.

  Chapter Nine

  Cresso didn’t bother waiting until the usual time to claim Genevieve. Instead he headed to her lab shortly before six o’clock in the evening. He’d barely seen her all day, mostly because he’d been busy trying to investigate. The fact that he was no closer to knowing who it was made him long to throw everything in sight. Hopefully Mac would have better luck than him. The detective had visited him earlier and cased the building again, trying to sniff out any unusual scents or pick up on something that might turn out to be a clue.

  He knocked on Genevieve’s door and she looked out the glass window before unlocking and opening it.

  “Ready to go?” he asked her.

  She nodded and retrieved her purse, then followed him to the lift. After a moment of silence, she rubbed the side of her nose. “Seems quiet in here today.”

  “Apparently a lot of the scientists are out sick with some strain of the flu virus.”

  The fact that he and Genevieve hadn’t spoken about what happened that morning weighed heavily on him. “Listen Gen, about the dreamscaping—”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  When he examined her face, she didn’t meet his gaze. “But I want to apologize for intruding on your dreams. Even though I didn’t intend to do it, it was wrong of me to remain there once I knew we were telepathically communicating.”

  She flushed. “I said don’t worry about it. I know it’s not your fault.”

  He wanted to press the matter, but since she didn’t seem too keen on it, he let it pass. When the lift opened, they headed out the building’s exit and climbed into his car. Genevieve glanced at him and opened her mouth to say something, but then snapped it shut.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Just wondering if you found out anything else.”

  Somehow he had the feeling that she’d been about to say something different, but he didn’t challenge her. “No. I wanted to question Dr. Summers and Dr. Benedict, but they were both out sick.”

  He made a quick turn, and she braced her hand on the dashboard. “You don’t sound as if you believe that.”

  “What are the odds that our two top suspects are both out sick on the same day? It seems too coincidental to me.” He paused before admitting, “I broke into their offices and searched them, but I didn’t find anything suspicious.”

  She nodded and let out a little sigh. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Don’t worry. Mac has a couple of guys staking out their houses.”

  Not to mention that he planned on paying them both a visit tonight, after he took care of some pressing business. His need to feed. Even now, being in the same room with Genevieve had him so amped up he could barely breathe. The only thing stopping him from bombarding the car with massive amounts of his incubus allure was a tremendous force of will. He wouldn’t be able to hold to that for very long, though—not in his weakened state. And he would have to feed to gain strength before he faced down whoever was targeting Genevieve.

  Damn it, he didn’t want to seek out anyone else. But Genevieve had turned him down. What were his alternatives?

  As if she sensed his internal struggle, Genevieve asked, “How are you doing?”

  “Okay.” Because he couldn’t say what he really felt: that every second was a struggle not to pull her onto his lap and make passionate love to her.

  When he arrived at the Four Seasons, Genevieve laughed. “You know, maybe I should be thanking this stalker. Between your apartment and this hotel, I’ve experienced more luxury in these last few days than I’ve had my whole life.”

  Hell, he’d drown her in splendor if he thought it would make her happy. But he knew it wouldn’t. She would never be able to trust him, and that would make her constantly miserable.

  Cresso stopped in front of the valet and exited before tossing him the car keys. He made sure to take in every detail of the guests in the lobby before they made their way upstairs, but nobody struck him as being suspicious. Once they arrived at the suite, Cresso unlocked the door and moved aside for Genevieve to enter. When she stepped inside, the back of her skirt pressed against the generous curves of her behind. He went instantly hard, and his gut clenched so tightly he had to bite back a groan.

  “I’m gonna hop in the shower,” he managed to choke out. With that, he fled into his connecting room. He couldn’t take much more. He had to get out of here. Now.

  Cresso turned on the hot water and stepped under the blast. The scalding liquid did nothing to help his erection, but at least his stomach didn’t hurt as bad without her delectable scent clogging his nostrils. Things would be so much easier if he still believed she disliked him. Then all his hopeless mooning would be for naught. However, now he knew differently.

  Genevieve desired him. If the dreams they’d shared last night were any indication, she burned for him. Yet she couldn’t trust him, and he didn’t know how to change that. Perhaps if he remained celibate for some period of time, if he continued to reassure her of his feelings, she would come
to believe him. But even that option was taken from him. An incubus couldn’t remain celibate and survive.

  In other words, no matter what he did, he was royally fucked.

  …

  The tension between the two of them was almost unbearable. Genevieve hadn’t really thought about it before, but now that she knew he hadn’t fed in so long, she supposed it must be torture for him to be so close to her without getting anything in return. So what was she going to do about that?

  She went into her bedroom and grabbed her blue silk pajamas before stepping into the connected bathroom and turning on the shower. Maybe that would help to clear her head. But once she’d showered and dressed in her pajamas, she was no more certain of what she should do than when she’d gone in.

  Food. She’d start there.

  She headed for the room-service menu, which was rather extensive, and decided on a red apple and walnut salad with celery and carrots. Even though Cresso clearly didn’t need to eat food, it didn’t feel right to order without at least asking him if he wanted something. So when she heard him rummaging around in his room, she headed for his open door. “I’m going to order some dinner. Do you want anythi—”

  She cut off when she saw him. He’d donned a pair of black slacks and was in the process of pulling a burgundy sweater over his head. His damp hair curled around his strong, masculine neck, and the sight of his bare chest—of the hard planes and well-defined muscles of his pecs and abs—sent a bolt of pure lust racing through her body and into her loins. God, he was so gorgeous. Heart-stopping.

  How the hell had she resisted him for so long?

  Cresso tugged on his sweater and met her gaze. “No, thanks.”

  Genevieve resisted the urge to drool while she eyed his outfit. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Yes, I have a few things to take care of. Don’t worry—you’ll be safe here. I’ll ask Taeg and Maya to look in on you.”

  Something about the way he said that put her senses on alert. “Everything okay?”