Page 56 of Incubus
“I think…it’s time you went back to your own room now.”
Nathan blinked and the spell was broken. The pheromones still lingered, still made his blood pump a little hotter for how close he was to Sasha, but his mind came back to him with a screech and he realized what he had been doing. “Yeah…” Nathan said, pulling away. “Sorry. Just…sorry.”
Nathan turned for the door, gripped by panic and guilt as he all but ran from Sasha’s side. He knew he could blame thepheromones, knew Sasha would let him blame them, but it wouldn’t change what he had almost done.
Breathing hard with his skin burning hot, Nathan fell back against Sasha’s door as soon as it closed behind him. Something choked in his throat but he would not let it rise. He wasn’t that weak.
Walter was there beside him, saying his name, asking, “Couldn’t you hear me, Nathan?”
“Leave me alone, Walter,” Nathan said, and turned away.
He didn’t look at Jim when he returned to their room. He didn’t respond with more than a grunt when Jim tried to talk to him. He crawled into bed and faced the wall, longing even more for morning and for all of this to have been a bad dream he could somehow forget.
Chapter 21
Hands.Softhands.Lips.Definitely lips. And skin. Everywhere skin. And yet Nathan knew there wasn’t nearly as much skin as there could be.
What was he doing? He couldn’t remember. Where was Jim? Jim was here with him, wasn’t he? But there was no Jim, no motel, just the bed, his bed, and the sheets were already pulled back. They were sitting on it, not lying down yet, but they would get there. Oh, Nathan knew they would get there.
The hands touching him were gentle, the way one held his face as they kissed, and the other brushed the small of his back to pull him closer. That was where the skin was. Nathan was fully clothed, but his shirt was hitched just enough at the back for that hand to touch him bare.
They were barely meeting tongues or truly embracing but already Nathan felt feverish. The warmth. The wet. It wasn’t enough. So Nathan pressed more deeply into the kiss and reached out, and again he found skin. When he touched backthere was only skin. He wanted to be like that too, and felt constricted in his clothing.
Nathan couldn’t remember a time when it was ever like this, tentative and thrilling. Maybe his first time, years ago, but it was hard to remember that now. It was hard to remember a time when he had ever been with anyone else. There was only this, only now. Because there might not be a tomorrow.
Not once the dark fae took him.
Nathan pulled out of the kiss, out of the hold that had started to encase him. He couldn’t have this. He couldn’t have anything. He was marked. He was already dead.
Finally opening his eyes, Nathan discoveredSashastaring back at him.
Unseen hands grabbed Nathan suddenly from behind, forcing him to lie back on the bed. Above him was the face of his brother. It was Jim. With slit eyes.
“I thought you liked itrough, Nathan,” said Jim.
"I knowIdo,” said Sasha.
Nathan’s eyes darted down between his legs. Sasha was on top of him, climbing slowly up his body. The incubus didn’t look nearly as tender and accommodating anymore. His eyes were incubus red with slit pupils like Jim, and when he grinned—not smiled, butgrinned—he revealed his fangs.
"Time's up, Nathan," Jim spoke from above him.
"Time to collect," Sasha said, and his suddenly formed claws, black and sharp in place of his hands, cut into Nathan's skin as his shirt was ripped open, revealing his bandaged wounds and the scar that marked him like a beacon.
“You’re ours now.”
Nathan'seyessprangwideas he awoke, but he couldn't move. He felt bound by the sheets, though they only loosely covered him. He panted, his breaths heavy as he willed his pulse to slow, willed rational thought to return.
It was a dream. It was only a dream.
The mark practically ensured Nathan's dreams would be intense—nightmares. He remembered the first one he had had, that very night after he had killed the Messenger and sealed his fate: a replay of the past, him and Jim as children, losing their parents, only Jim had been different, already changed and losing himself to the dark fae blood inside of him, manifesting as those damn slit eyes. Sasha's addition to the dream was not an improvement, despite the unfairly blissful beginning, which Nathan decided he could blame on the pheromones. The other thing he knew he could blame on the pheromones was his pounding headache.
Nathan rarely got hangovers, but normal hangovers weren't anywhere near as bad as what he was feeling now. His head throbbed. His sinuses ached. He thought his brain was going to explode and almost wished it would just to make the pain go away. It was like withdrawal or what it must be like to come down from a very powerful high.
Groping blindly for his watch on the nightstand, Nathan was thankful he hadn't called out or thrashed about in the sheets when he awoke. He blinked at the time; it was almost noon. He supposed he must have needed the rest, or maybe the pheromones had put him into such a deep slumber, Jim hadn't been able to wake him.
“Finally up, huh?”
Nathan jumped. His brain was still a little fuzzy and so was his vision as he blinked toward the sound of that voice. Jim and Sasha were sitting at the table in the middle of the room. It took Nathan a moment to realize they were playing cards.
