Page 67 of Obsession

Damion’s suddenly in front of me, eyes glowing. “I was under a hex! Of course I want you now that I’m back to my right mind. Aubry, I love you,” he says, running his hand through his hair in frustration. “I’m so sorry for the way I acted. I wasn’t myself. You know me, and you know that wasn’t me.” He grabs my hands with his warm ones.

“I hear what you’re saying, but my heart is having trouble playing catch-up,” I say with a shaky voice, dropping his hands. “You hurt me. I know you didn’t mean to, but it hurts just the same.”

“And so you decided to hurt me in return? Did you sleep with him?”

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course I didn’t!” I try to storm past him—going where, I’m not sure—but then I stop, spinning around on my heel. “Why? Did you sleep with someone?”

“Aubry, my feelings for you disappeared, and we were broken up—”

“Oh my Goddess, you did! Who?” I ask, feeling sick to my stomach.

“Stacy Martin, a client of Gabe’s. It was a one-time thing. Aubry, I swear to you, I would have never slept with her but for that witch’s hex!”

“Human or succubus?”

He sighs in frustration. “She’s a succubus.”

“Stacy the succubus.” I give a little acrid laugh. “Glad to hear you’re sticking with the alliterative she-demons. I need you to go.”

“This isn’t fair! I would never intentionally hurt you. My feelings for you were gone, erased completely!”

“And now I need time to sort out my feelings. Please go,” I say as a tear escapes my eye.

He walks over and wipes the tear from my cheek with his thumb and pulls a rose from behind my ear, floating it next to the feather on my nightstand. “I’ll go for now, but I’m not going to let you go. You are mine. Do you understand?”

“Damion, go,” I say with more force.

He lets out a frustrated growl as he vanishes.

Stepping in the shower, I let the tears flow. That was so not how I envisioned our reconciliation. Scrubbing my nails three times to clean out the graveyard dirt, I finally give up, leaning my forehead against the cool tile.

Taking a deep breath, I try to calm myself and see this situation from Damion’s perspective. He broke up with me because he was under the influence of dark magic—all his feelings for me had been stripped away. And then he met someone and they had sex. If the situation were reversed, and suddenly I felt nothing for Damion, broke up with him, and met someone and hooked up, I couldn’t be held responsible for those actions. He didn’t cheat on me. My logical brain knows this is true, but my heart feels like it’s been run through Aunt Callie’s blender. For a second time, now.

Chapter 28

I know I shouldn’t torture myself, but I do anyway. “Little witch,” Sonia answers.

“Do you know a succubus named Stacy Martin?” I ask.

She makes a derisive noise. “Yes. Why?”

I debate on what to tell her and decide on the truth. “You know about Bettina’s hex. Well, last night I broke the spell with the help of a voodoo priestess.”

“How does this involve Stacy?” She says her name with disdain.

“Damion had sex with her while we were broken up.”

“That fool. I don’t care if he was hexed, he should have known Stacy’s bad news.”

“How so?”

“I’ve only ever had one human male that I cared about. Stacy stole him from me. Not because she wanted him, but because that’s just what Stacy does. She views conquest like an Olympic sport. She’s conniving and can’t be trusted.”

“Where does she live?” I swear to the Goddess, if she says next door to Damion, I quit.

“The last I heard she’s in Atlanta.” She pauses for a moment. “Do you want me to take care of this for you?”

I’m not sure what that means, but to be safe I say, “No thank you. At least for right now.”

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