“Um, thanks,” she said, her voice quiet and embarrassed. Her mood didn’t match her tone, though. I could sense my mate was still aroused, and there was an edge of inquisitiveness and pride. Shelikedthe fact that she’d reduced me to this primitive, rutting male. The scent in the room told me she wanted more, her succubus side begging her to stay. But there was still a tinge of something else lacing her scent. She was still hesitant to give her all.

Quick as a whip, Lex had left my room calling “Goodnight!” from the hallway before the sound of her bedroom door clicked shut.

My heart wanted to follow her into her room, to finish what she’d started, but my instinct told me not to. My mate was setting the pace, and she needed time to digest what had just happened. She would let me know when she wanted more.

It took a long time before my body was ready to move. My wings had dissipated at some point, but I hadn’t realized when. The house had cleared the mess of things that I had knocked off the side tables when my wings had spread—thank the Goddess, as I vaguely remembered there being lit candles everywhere. Ishuffled under the covers and settled into the warm spot in the middle of the bed. A spike of desire permeated the air, and I knew Lex was feeling the heat of my body mirrored in her own room. I didn’t move though, and neither did she.

This was the earliest I’d ever gone to bed, but Hades himself couldn’t drag me from it. Warm, satisfying relief settled into my bones. My mate hadn’t balked at my ineptitudes.

And they wouldn’t be ineptitudes for long. A little bit of practice, and I’d be back to my old self.

But for now, seeing the pleasure it gave my mate to know just how much control she had over me was enough. The fact that I was still rock hard had me drifting off to images of me fucking my mate like a wild animal, continually filling her over and over with my seed until her belly was swollen with it. Until it took and we created a little witch of our own.

Chapter 12. Lex

Billy’s peals of laughter rippled down the phone. She wheezed, and I could picture her clutching her sides, drawing in deep breaths before a fresh wave of laughter overtook her. I should never have trusted my best friend to offer me some serious advice, but the moment she started laughing at the ridiculousness of my situation, my soul was soothed.

Itwasridiculous.

Billy’s wheezing laughter was infectious, and I soon found myself matching her tenor. Whatever was constricting my heart seemed to loosen a bit.

After a few steadying breaths, one more fit of laughter, and a few more final breaths, she said, “So, let me get this straight. Your grandma gave you a possessed house, which tricked you into accidentally summoning a sex demon who needs sex to survive, who’s actually your fated mate, that you initially wanted nothing to do with. But now you’ve met him, he’s the most attractive man you’ve ever seen, and he’s kind andconsiderate. He can’t go back to his own realm and refuses to feed off another, so to feed him and satisfy your own succubus side, you decided to jack off in the same room, which ended up with both of you just watching each other get off. And, without giving away the details—which is what you’re supposed to do for your sex-deprived friends, Lex. I need to live vicariously through you now that you’re fucking a sex demon—it was the most erotic experience of your life. And now you think you might be falling for your fated mate. But instead of fucking his brains out, you’ve banned him from coming downstairs so you can keep writing your thirty-page essay on why Chad deserved a shriveled-up dick, but you can’t write anything because all you’re thinking about is fucking your mate. Did I miss anything?”

“That’s about it,” I said, slumping onto the hard kitchen chair.

The memory of last night had played on a constant loop in my head all morning. The moment Lochran had descended the stairs, his chest bare and his hair sticking out at angles, all I could think about was jumping on to the copper countertop and begging him to fuck me. The way his lip had twitched when he sensed the spike in my desire told me he was thinking of equally dirty thoughts. But all he’d done was make pancakes. He’d eaten with a wide grin on his face, his stomach not grumbling once. My heart swelled at that, a sense of pride that it was because of me that my mate was no longer starving.

Mate.

I hadn’t wanted to use the word, but it just felt right. I should probably have anotherconversation with Lochran. I needed to tell him why I’d never done the summoning before now, and why I had a sex ban in place. And I should probably tell him that, now that he was here and things had started to progress between us, I was open to reevaluating a relationship.

That was putting it lightly.

After watching him last night, the thought of having any other male in my bed was repugnant. Ionlywanted Lochran.

The moment I sat up and saw his cum coating his dick and torso, I was a goner. I was used to men coming quickly. It was part of the succubus touch.

But that was mortal men.

I never dreamed I could have that effect on a full-blooded incubus. And I hadn’t even been touching him. It wasn’t my succubus side that drove him wild. It was me. I’d felt a surge of power and control that I hadn’t felt before.

Do you want to see just what you do to me, witch? How quickly you can make me lose control?

The way he’d dragged his fist through his spend, pumping his shaft for me like he needed to show me just how much his cock ached for me. I quivered, remembering how the shadows had pooled around him as he’d thrust up into his fist, the way his wings had materialized behind him, clamped shut, before spreading out, the span almost the length of the room, knocking candles and clutter off the nightstand.

You have me under your spell, and you don’t even realize.

Hearing that had tipped my succubus over the edge. The intensity of the orgasm rolling through me as I thrust my fingers into my pussy, picturing Lochran spearing me with his thick length, was enough that I was seeing stars. The only thing thatstopped me from falling back and writhing in pleasure was the need to watch Lochran. The way his dick exploded, his cum spooling out of him in thick jets, made me wish that he’d come inside me, heating my walls with his seed.

My succubusyearnedfor him.

“What am I going to do, Billy?”

“You could just, you know, lift the ban and have sex with him,” she said, a note of wariness in her voice. Billy had tried her best to understand why I had placed myself into a sex ban, but when I had attempted to explain it to her, I couldn’t quite muster the words to describe how I’d felt. How does one say that she felt betrayed by her succubus? That she couldn’t trust her instinctual needs anymore?

Also, as a wolf shifter and an emerging alpha, Billy was more in tune with her primal side than I could ever understand.

My succubus was only a small part of me. While I didn’t survive off desire like a full-blooded sex demon, the part of me that was desperate to fuck was driven by the biological need to feed. Aside from Lochran, it was rare that I found pleasure in the men I took to bed, but it had always been just enough to quell that side of me. Billy’s wolf, however, had a different primal urge to satiate. Hers was a newly budding need to claim her mate... when she eventually found them. That need was driven by the urge to reproduce, to expand and lead her pack. I didn’t know much about wolves, but I knew it was going to be just as rough a ride for my friend to deny her alpha as it was for me to deny my succubus. Actually, scratch that. It was going to be ten times worse forBilly.