Page 28 of Inflamed By an Incubus

A woman trying to force herself on the incubus.

And the incubus resisting.

Evelyn closed the recording and looked at the one dated today, resisted the urge to click on it and stared at the list, her pulse pounding in her ears as she fought to make sense of what she had seen and the fierce reaction it had tugged from her, how angry she felt as she rolled through everything in her mind, replaying woman after woman throwing herself at him.

A desire to storm to his cell and yell at him, to open it and strike him pounded inside her, unsettling her.

She stilled as something struck her.

He hadn’t kissed most of them.

Some of them he had kissed, but it had been brief and he had looked angry when he had made the female leave him alone, his face as dark as midnight and markings churning with obsidian and crimson.

Why hadn’t he seduced them? It was clear to her that the scientists wanted to record an incubus seduction and study it. Was he resisting because he didn’t want to go along with their plans and was trying to anger them?

Or was it because of that gold band that encircled his finger?

Evelyn breathed slowly and deeply to calm her racing heart, giving herself a moment to banish the unruly emotions that had her head spinning. When she was settled again, back in control, she switched to watching the footage of his cell, studying how he was around others.

She noticed something as she fast-forwarded through hours of video, pausing only to watch the times someone stopped in front of his cell, or he was talking to the male in the cell opposite him.

She jotted down timeframes on a piece of paper someone had left near the monitor and flicked between them, making sure she hadn’t just imagined it.

And then sank back in her chair and stared at the incubus paused on the screen.

His markings were different whenever she was the one standing before him.

He reacted to her in a way he didn’t with any other.

“There you are.”

Evelyn jumped out of her skin and spun on the chair to face Annette as the brunette entered the room. She quickly forced herself to relax at the same time, not wanting the scientist to see how rattled she was. Her heart kept pounding a fast rhythm though, wouldn’t settle, no matter how many times she told herself it was fine that she had been watching footage of the incubus. She felt as if she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t be though.

She felt guilty.

When Annette glanced at the screen behind Evelyn, she realised it wasn’t guilt she was feeling.

It was nerves.

She had discovered something about the incubus and the look slowly settling on Annette’s face left her in no doubt the woman was going to demand to know what it was that had her so jumpy. Her first instinct was to lie, and she caught herself before one could leave her lips. She had no reason to lie to her colleagues. She had no reason to protect the incubus.

Evelyn looked over her shoulder at the screen, unable to shake the strange feeling that she did.

She had a reason, only she couldn’t remember it.

“What have you noticed about him?” Annette came to stand beside her.

Evelyn cleared her throat. “I was just studying the shifts in his behaviour. He seems comfortable with the male in the cell across from his. They talk quite frequently. Seems to be the fae language.”

Not a dialect Evelyn was familiar with though. She knew a little of the common fae tongue, enough to get her by, but was far from fluent.

Annette’s lip curled. “That can’t be a good thing. Anything else?”

“His…” She forced herself to say it, because she didn’t know the incubus, and she owed everything to Archangel. “His markings are different at times. I noticed it yesterday when I was speaking to him.”

“They change colour frequently, although he seems intent on remaining angry towards us.”

She shook her head and frowned. “No. I mean, I know that. His markings were gold and blue, but there was dark pink in them too.”

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