Page 59 of Demon of Dreams

“I want to see Sebastian Romero.” I opened my eyes.

Cory smirked. “Are yousurethat’s who you want?”

“I’m sure I don’t wantyou.”

He spread his hands. “I’m a manifestation of your subconscious. If you really wanted me to turn into someone else, I would.”

“You’re a pain in my ass, is what you are.”

His smile was wicked. “You can be a pain inmyass, if that’s what you’re—”

“Goaway.” I shut my eyes and refused to listen. Someone else. I needed someone, anyone else. Someone as far away from Cory as I could get.

Someone from my past, perhaps? Someone who—actually, no. That was a bad idea. I avoided thinking about my past for good reason. Even picking a hookup from high school felt dangerous—too close to what had come after that.

A woman. The idea popped into my mind. Not someone from my past, but someone here. Generally, I avoided sleeping with women these days. Ever since—no, we weren’t thinking about that—but the point was, just because I hadn’t fucked a woman in a while didn’t mean I couldn’t imagine one here.

Nat. That was it. Natalia Kazansky, another Vesperwood professor. She counted cards when playing poker, smoked truly atrocious cheap cigars, and would talk your ear off about mushroom hunting if you let her. She also had a phenomenal body underneath her froofy silk blouses and houndstooth trousers, from what I could tell.

“Show me Nat,” I said aloud. I opened my eyes.

Cory wasn’t smirking anymore—he was grinning, openly. He waved at me from his side of the desk.

“Me again. How much longer are you going to do this? Because I’m pretty sure you said you had a class to get to, and Isaac’s powerful, but he can’t keep this up forever.”

It had taken me a long time to truly believe Isaac when he said he didn’t see what I saw in the trance. He had to maintain it, he pointed out. It took so much energy to make the trance deep enough to mimic the incubus’s dreamworld that he had none left over for spying inside my head.

But thinking of him now just pissed me off. Isaac was the reason I couldn’t get Cory out of my brain. Isaac—the man who thought that my teaching Cory was anything other than a joke.

I’d been born half-human, half-incubus, but my ability to dream had been wrenched away from me, cut off like a limb. I couldn’t even dream simple, regular dreams anymore. And I had no way of accessing the particular dreamstate required to satisfy an incubus’s needs. I could sense it hovering in the back of my mind, just out of reach, but I’d never be able to touch it again.

It was a curse, and seeing Cory did nothing but remind me of all my failures.

“Get. Out.” I stood abruptly, the chair toppling over behind me. “I don’t want you here. I want anyonebutyou.”

“See, you say that, but then—”

“We’re not doing anything. I don’t want to see you. I would rather waste this trance and risk Isaac’s anger than touch you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I saw all that emphatic eye-closing a minute ago. Very impressive. Bravura performance. The only thing is, you’re looking at menow. And I can tell from your eyes that you’re notnotinterested, so…”

His eyes locked on mine as he brought a finger to his mouth and swirled his tongue around it. Then he dragged it down his chin and onto his neck, shimmying suggestively.

I snapped my eyes shut and folded my arms across my chest. In addition to being gorgeous, Trance Cory was apparently a brat. For a second, I wondered if the real-life version was too, before reminding myself that I didn’t want to know anything about the real-life version at all.

“Oh, so that’s how we’re doing this. Real mature.”

I said nothing.

“This isn’t stopping me, you realize. I’m still here.”

I ignored him. I’d meant what I said. I would rather run out the clock on this trance than give in to the urges of my subconscious.

The room was quiet for a moment, until Cory said, “Fine. I can work with this.”

A soft rustling arose from the other side of the desk. I frowned, but refused to crack an eyelid. I must have looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care.

Footsteps and the faint rub of fabric against fabric approached. I could feel the heat of another body directly in front of mine. Cory was inches from me. I could smell him in the air—clean cotton and vanilla—and I tasted blackberries on my tongue.

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