Page 7 of Entranced By the Basilisks

“What? We can’t catch up before getting down to business? It’s been a long time since we’ve gotten together.”I missed you.He doesn’t say the words. I don’t know why that’s the feeling I’m getting from him.

“We’ve gone longer in the past,” I say.

Ari only nods. “We have.”

He breaks off a bit of dried meat with a flash of his white teeth, and I narrow my eyes. I pick a grape from the board. The tart sweetness doesn’t help with my suspicions at all.

“So uptight,” Ari purrs. “We used to talk before fucking. Don’t you remember?”

My cheeks heat and I mentally curse my pale complexion.

“Yes, I remember.” Flashes of past liaisons move through my memory in the way Ari meant them to, I’m sure.

“So relax.” Ari’s bare foot strokes against my ankle, coaxing. It’s a tease, a gesture of what his tail would do if he were in his other form. It works.

If I didn’t know him better, I’d assume he was somehow hypnotizing me. He’s not. I may not be able to do much, but I can sense the magic of our people.

I grab another grape and grumble, “The library is fine. We now have a restoration expert in-house. It’s helped our efficiency.”

Ari’s face brightens. “That’s wonderful.”

I shrug and wonder if Ms. Rivera would agree. Being a weak paranormal in our world is hard enough. I can’t imagine what it would be like for a human.

“Still having to kowtow to donors?” Ari asks, his lips curving.

I roll my eyes. “Another one wants to host a party. It’s going to require closing the whole building to the public. I hate it—”

“But money is money.” Ari accompanies the words with a flourish of his wrist.

I almost smile at that, but bite it back, relaxing a little into the cushions. I can do this. I can sit here with him without the sky falling. We can exist in the same space as we have for years.

I nod. “Money is money.”

“You look like you’ve been running yourself ragged in my absence. Maybe I have to drop in more often. Make sure you’re sleeping a full night,” Ari says.

The comment is salacious, but there’s that undercurrent of domesticity again that has my hairs rising.

I frown. “Ari—”

“So grumpy.” He cuts me off as if he knows what troubles me. “Are you approaching a shed?”

I make an annoyed sound that is much more hiss-like than I mean to. Our kind sheds our old skin a few times a year. It’s an unpleasant and itchy process.

“You can’t say I’m grumpy just because I’m fighting you on something.” I should have saiddisagreeing, fighting between us holds significance.

“But I love when you fight me,” Ari says, not one to ever miss out on saying something suggestive. His smile is wide and his fangs flash.

I swallow, pulling my collar away from my throat and wanting to roll my eyes at my own reactions. But Ari is an expert at pulling whatever sensation he wants out of me.

“I haven’t needed to train in a long time,” I say.

Ari scoffs a laugh. “Which is good since what we do would in no way count as training.”

I huff and my lips curve. “I let you win.”

It’s a lie, but taunts don’t need to be truthful.

“Is that right?” he asks, a gleam in his eyes that has my breath catching.

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