Page 47 of Incubus

29

Roth

I knewshe was burning for me, wanting my touch and more, but then she turned cold again, backing away from my embrace and ending the passionate kiss I would dream about for centuries to come. Why?

She stood away from me, needing a second to steady herself before turning her back to search for the shirt she’d removed for Paris. The very thought made me let out a growl, the incubus growling right along with me. But what had turned her from a blaze of heat and sensuality into the walled fortress I now saw before me?

Before I could even ask, she had pulled the shirt over her head and said evenly, “This is just business. That’s all. It has to stay that way. We can’t get involved like this.”

“Which one of us are you trying to convince, carissima?”

She ignored me, then hurried past and into the house, leaving me unsatisfied on a multitude of fronts.

I took a seat on the arbor bench, still intoxicated from the taste of her on my lips. She’d had me under her spell until something spooked her. Could it have been the incubus? The demon seemed to scratch its claws down the inside of my chest at the very thought. Its denial was palpable. If not it, then what? I wasn’t certain, but I did know one thing for sure. She would answer my every question, and soon. I couldn’t enthrall her like Paris had—the very thought of the vamp made me tense into a ball of unspent fury—but I had ways of making her talk, though I was more inclined to make her moan. Either way, I’d get the information from her, even if she wasn’t inclined to give it. It’s only a matter of time.

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