Page 32 of Let Me Win You

I shrugged. “A relatively tall human. With red curly hair and those…what do you call them?” I waved a hand in front of my face. “Freckles.”

“Geoff?”

“Who is Geoff?” My shoulders rose, and my hands clenched into fists, as if ready to fight the human whose name slipped so easily from the lips I couldn’t wait to kiss again.

“He’s our new and only employee,” she explained. “Jess hired him just before we left for the city to do the challenge because we needed three people on our team. I don’t know him that well…” Her eyes opened wider as she stared at me with a new horror. “Tell me something, Invi. Did you open the door naked?”

“Yes.”

“Oh no…” she groaned, dropping her face in her palm.

“Nic, sweetheart, these are the only clothes I own, and I procured them literally on the day we met. I’m simply not in the habit of being dressed.”

“Right.” She scraped her hand down her face. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“No. But by his outfit that consisted only of a bathrobe and a bottle of wine in an ice bucket, it was quite clear what he had in mind.”

Her cheeks turned the loveliest shade of pink. “But it doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense to me,” I disagreed. “He clearly thought you were in your room alone and desired to spend the night with you. I can’t blame him for seizing the opportunity, but I couldn’t let him have you. I just couldn’t…” The stubborn horntried to make its presence known once again, and I rubbed my forehead against the itchy spot. “Even the slightest possibility of losing you to him was more than I could bear. I realized I couldn’t wait until the morning and risk someone claiming you before me. I had to bring you here, where I thought we could be alone. Where you’d be mine and mine alone.”

“Oh, Invi…” She shook her head, her lips pursed in displeasure.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I tried to explain. “Never in a million years would I have wanted you to fear me. I went to the teahouse to get us some pastries for breakfast, afraid that baking them myself would take too long and they wouldn’t be ready by the time you woke up. And the tail… Well, my brothers and I were created as monsters. That nightmarish form is just more comfortable for me to be in, but I never meant for you to see it.”

“Is that form, with the horns and the tail… Is that the real you?”

“It’s all real, Nic. All of me. In every form. No matter what I look like on the outside, I can only be me on the inside.”

She drew in a breath, slowly spinning her wine glass on the table by rotating its stem between her fingers.

Moments ticked by, and she said nothing. Needles of apprehension pricked my chest. I had told her everything. I’d deliver my apology the best I could, but I feared it might not have been enough.

“Do you hate me?” I expressed my fear out loud before I could think better of it.

“Hate?” She glanced up. “No. I don’t think I ever did, even when I seriously tried to hate you. I wasterrifiedof you, though.”

“But not anymore, right? Tell me you aren’t afraid of me anymore.”

“I don’t think so. No.” She let go of her glass and placed both hands on her lap. “But of course, it all depends on what you do from now on, on how you act in the future.”

My chest expanded with hope.

“Does it mean there is a chance for us to have afuturetogether?”

Frown wrinkled her forehead. “That wasn’t what I said.”

But she didn’t deny it either.

I gripped the edge of the table.

“Then say it. Say it isn’t so,” I challenged, halting my breath in anticipation of her answer.

Her chest rose with a long breath as she searched my eyes.

“But why, Invi? Why me? What is it about me that you want so much? Because, let’s face it, I’ve lived in this body for close to three decades now, and I never had a man fight for me this hard before. Men don’t find me very desirable, to be honest. I’m not sure what you see in me that attracts you, but whatever it is?—”

“Your soul.”

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