Page 20 of Changeling
“Yeah, well according to Wade thepsychic, you would have eventually done it yourself.”
“Eventually and having actually done something are two different things!”
Alex giggled, glassy-eyed and content looking as she leaned into Jim and stroked the sleeping chimera in her lap.
Sasha tossed the empty wine bottle over to where they had tossed the others and scowled. Even his bright blue eyes looked glassy. He pouted at Nathan and said, “Are you disappointed? Wishing you were still with her?”
Nathan let out a boisterous laugh that would have jostled his wounds if he wasn’t numb from the drugs and alcohol. “Hell no! She’s crazy. Not my type at all. She was just hot.Ishot. I don’t have any regrets, believe me. Especially not…now.” He waggled an eyebrow at Sasha, which pushed the pout into a grin.
“Well you do seem to enjoy yourself with me,” Sasha said. Then, before Nathan could even hope to react, Sasha was climbing on top of him, disrupting the comforter from the others’ shoulders as he pinned Nathan to the roof and kissed him hard.
Nathan and his wine-and-medication-riddled brain didn’t mind at all—Sasha’s larger body on top of his, that warmth and enveloping presence. Not to mention how Sasha’s sweet-tasting tongue plunged deeply, and his hands traveled down Nathan’ssides like he wanted to strip Nathan down right there on the roof.
While Nathan had forgotten about his wounds, Sasha was careful enough not to press their chests together. He just laid there gently on top of Nathan. It wasn’t long before Nathan felt that familiar heat beginning to pool, especially with the way Sasha’s tongue moved against his own, those soft hands slipping up underneath Nathan’s shirts to feather up his belly.
“Hey,” came Jim’s dissenting voice, sounding far, far away, “none a that while we’re still here,” he said, and before Nathan could complain, Sasha was being pulled off of him and rolled onto his back between the two brothers.
Nathan mourned the loss of Sasha’s weight and heat. But Sasha was laughing, and when Nathan glanced over, he saw that Jim and Alex were lying back on the comforter now too, and the redhead had rolled onto his other side, facing Jim.
“Sorry, Jimmy,” the incubus said, “I’d say you can join in, but I don’t think Nathan would appreciate that. Or Alex. Mmm…or maybe shewould.”
Nathan lifted up a little to better see the others and watched as Sasha planted a sloppy kiss right on Jim’s lips. Alex started giggling uncontrollably, but the reaction from Jim, an expression somewhere between a grin and a grimace, was enough to send Nathan into a fit of giggles too. Sasha soon joined them.
They had definitely drunk that wine way too fast.
By the time their laughter had stilled and they were silent again, Nathan’s head was whirling, and thinking clearly or not, he knew just where he wanted the conversation to go. Drunken confessions were always the easiest to weasel out.
“Hey,” he said, pushing Sasha’s shoulder with his hand, “I wanna hear the story.”
“What story?”
“You and Alex,” Nathan said, grinning mischievously. “There’s a story there about how she knows what you are, I know it. You always evade me,” he added with a look at Alex.
Alex simply stared back at him as cryptically as ever, resettling a stirring Wally on her chest after having disrupted the chimera when they laid back.
Jim frowned but looked insanely curious.
Sasha’s face went almost white. “It’s not what you think. It was an accident. I hadn’t fed in almost a month—”
“So youdidsleep with her!” Nathan accused, even though he didn’t really care about past involvements, especially not when he was halfway to drunk—or all the way. “I knew it. Next thing I know you’ll be saying you slept with Jim!”
This time both Sasha and Jim let out loud, rancorous laughs. “That’d never happen,” Sasha assured Nathan. Then he turned to Jim. “Not that you’re not hot, mind you.”
“Appreciated,” Jim nodded.
Nathan snorted.
Alex giggled again, like they were all just too ridiculous. “Am I even here?” she asked. “I’m part of this story too, you know. And you’re already way off. Sasha and I never slept together.”
Nathan’s brow furrowed. “But…he just said—”
“I said I needed to feed, and that Alex finding out what I really am was an accident. I never said I fed fromher.” Sasha looked across at Alex, who stared back steadily at him, leaving the decision in his hands whether or not to tell the rest.
Finally, Sasha sighed and hung his head.
“Okay, I’ll tell you. But you have to understand this wasn’t something I planned. It was a long time ago. I was…eighteen, I think. I’d stupidly gone too long without feeding, and I was in bad shape. I couldn’t even control the glamours anymore. My eyes were red, my fangs out, my fingers black and almost claws…I figured I was screwed. There was no one I could go to for help,because I couldn’t tell anyone the truth. So I decided to come to the Gatehouse…and let whatever seals might be here take care of me.”
The realization of what Sasha meant by that sobered Nathan more than he wanted to admit, and he frowned. All remaining giggles ceased and a silence fell over the others as Sasha went on.
