Page 124 of Incubus
Nathan didn’t interrupt, allowing Sasha to find the courage to say whatever this was, as he stroked small circles over the incubus’ back.
“You can’t imagine what it was like. The way my friends…the way everyone looked at me after I said I wanted to be a seal. Shiarra said she wouldn’t allow it. People I’d grown up with and known all my life wouldn’t even talk to me. I just…I couldn’t stand it. I had to get away. I…I ran away. But I was too young, newly matured. I needed to feed. I’d never fed from a human before. We don’t need to until we’re sixteen, and even then we’re supposed to be trained by our guardians to learn how to control ourselves. I thought…I thought I could handle it. She was older, seventeen or eighteen. It was my first time, but not hers. We both wanted it, both needed it. I thought it would be okay. But I couldn’t…I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know how to stop. I…I killed her.”
The incubus was trembling, so Nathan held on tighter, letting the bare emotion of what Sasha was admitting wash over him.
“Nothing could have kept me from being a seal after that.Nothing,” Sasha said firmly. “When Shi found me afterward…she knew. And she knew she couldn’t stop me from becoming a seal anymore, either, didn’t even try. I had to be a seal. I had to protect people from being hurt by creatures like me.”
“But…you’re not like the things you hunt,” Nathan said, understanding now that the sadness ever-present in Sasha was about more than just loneliness. “You don’t think that, do you?”
At last Sasha lifted his head again and his eyes shone with wetness, tears staining his pale face. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” Sasha said, timid, as if he was awaiting some awful blow.
“You didn’t lie. You’ve never hurt someone because youwantedto, and don’t let Gabriel’s bullshit make you think otherwise. Someone else of your kind might have enjoyed what happened to you, might have let it take them over and became a killer.Youbecame a seal.” Nathan widened his smile and lifted his free hand to brush the hair back from Sasha’s face. “A kickass seal with sexy eyes and pop culture trivia up the wazoo. My kinda guy.”
Laughter strangled in Sasha’s throat, the tears in his eyes erupting in new streams down his face. But he was smiling, so Nathan took it for a success.
Then Sasha’s hands were on either side of Nathan’s face and the incubus was desperately kissing him. Nathan could barely lift his head but he reciprocated as best he could, seeking out Sasha’s tongue for those familiar deep kisses he had grown to love so much.
A few of Sasha’s tears fell onto Nathan’s cheeks and he realized Sasha was crying harder as they kissed. When Sasha finally pulled away with a gasp, he was sobbing, open and raw. Sasha's forehead fell against Nathan’s and his blue eyes fluttered closed.
“I love you, Nathan. Please don’t leave me.”
A shock jolted through Nathan’s body. Sasha sounded small and desperate like he had in the warehouse, when his mind wasn’t all there. But Nathan knew Sasha meant his words, and that scared Nathan so much, he had no idea how to reply.
The hospital room door opened, permitting a pretty young nurse with a clipboard. Sasha immediately pulled away from Nathan and started rubbing at his eyes.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the nurse said, her feet faltering as her face filled with color. “I have to check his vitals,” she explained to Sasha, smiling in a way that said they had spoken before. She turned to Nathan and continued her trek to the bed. “Good to seeyou’re awake, Mr. Smith. Your brother is outside talking to the doctor. I’m sure he’ll be in soon.”
Nathan took quick stock of those details. He didn't have health insurance or any working credit cards, so it made sense for them to use an alias, but he didn't know if he was supposed to beNathanSmith or something else.
Gentle fingers pushed into Nathan’s hair and he felt the weight against his side leave him. Sasha’s eyes were impressively dry when Nathan looked up, though some redness still betrayed that the tears had been there.
“I’ll go tell Jim you’re awake, okay, Nathan?” Sasha said, giving Nathan in one simple sentence the very information he needed. Sasha leaned down to kiss Nathan’s forehead and Nathan flicked his eyes to the nurse, finding her smiling at them as she busied herself with Nathan’s chart and the machines. “No moreaccidentslike this are ever allowed to happen,” Sasha added.
An accident.As good of an excuse as any.
Then Sasha was leaving, walking away, but Nathan couldn’t bear for them to part just yet. There were so many other things to say. He managed to snag one of Sasha’s hands with his own before the incubus could get too far, but Nathan’s breath hitched when Sasha turned around.
“We’re…we’re good, right?” Nathan said, unable to muster up anything more than that, not with someone else in the room.
Sasha took Nathan’s hand and lifted it to his lips, making Nathan feel so silly in front of a nurse he would have hit on a few months ago. But he didn’t care. He loved those lips. Owned them, damn it. They werehis.
“Yeah, Nathan,” Sasha breathed against his fingers. “We’re good.”
The nurse had a secretive smirk on her face after Sasha left while she was checking Nathan’s IV, asking how he was feeling,telling him that the doctor would go over more of the details like what medications he would have to take, all that. But Nathan’s eyes strayed to the corner of the room where a chair was pushed all the way to the wall almost as if it had been set there on purpose just for Walter.
Nathan smiled, nodding to his Spirit Guide in silent gratitude for being there. Walter nodded back, but something shifted in his face to mar any smile he might have offered, something like anticipation and grief, like he had something to tell Nathan but wasn’t yet sure how.
“You know,” the nurse said,Keaton, Nathan saw on her nametag when he turned back, “your boyfriend is a real sweetheart. Didn’t leave your side once, right there with your brother. He must really love you.”
Nathan’s first instinct was to correct her on the use of the term ‘boyfriend’. The word sounded off for some reason. There needed to be a new word to encompass everything Sasha filled up in Nathan’s life, one that didn’t make Nathan blush or feel stupid, or that sounded as vaguely inadequate as ‘partner’.
But since that new word didn’t exist yet, Nathan decided not to correct her.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “I guess he does. Wouldn’t put up with me otherwise, right?”
Keaton laughed. “You’re going to be fine, Mr. Smith,” she said as she left and, if not for the retained look on Walter’s face that everything wasnotfine, Nathan might have believed her.
Chapter 50
