Page 36 of Incubus
“A deal,” Sasha repeated. “Either you’re attracted to me, or you’re not, right? So we find out for sure. If I’m wrong, I promise, I’ll drop this. No more flirting. Nothing. Sound good to you?”
“Too good. How am I supposed to prove it?”
A devilish smile tugged at Sasha’s lips. “It’s simple enough. You let me steal just one little kiss—”
“Ha,” Nathan laughed, if a little uncomfortably.
“And,” Sasha went on, “if you feel nothing, really nothing, fine, I’ll accept it. But if you do...”
“What? Your next feeding time is me? I don’t think so.” Nathan really wanted out of the alley. He couldn’t understand why his legs weren’tmoving.
But Sasha, in that moment, while answering that question, didn’t look devilish at all. “Whoever said I only wanted to feed on you?”
Nathan shuddered. He was really starting to hate how often that happened around Sasha, and he knew he couldn't blame it on the cold. But he couldn’t actually agree to these terms. It was ridiculous.
“Come on, Nathan,” Sasha pressed, though he didn’t try to move any closer. “Just one kiss and we can end this little dance we’ve been doing.”
“Listen…I…”
“What? Don’t you want to prove me wrong? Or...” Sasha’s mouth quirked up into a renewed smile, “...are you afraid I’ll be proven right?”
Nathan’s fists clenched at his sides. “If it’ll shut you up for two seconds…fine,” he said, though he felt a surge of panic the moment the words left him. “But I swear, if you try anything…”
“Just…a kiss,” Sasha said, grinning wide as he began to move forward again, crowding Nathan into the corner beside the dumpster. He wasn’t giving Nathan any time to prepare, he was just moving in for the kill.
Nathan tried to tell himself that this was a good idea, tried to focus on Sasha no longer hitting on him and being able to just put all of this weirdness behind him. At leastsomeof the weirdness. Sasha was still an incubus.
That got Nathan thinking.
Incubus.
“Wait,” he said, a hair’s breadth from Sasha’s lips and feeling suddenly very short and very small. “No…incubus stuff, either.”
Sasha’s brow creased, so close to Nathan that he could count the lines. “Incubus stuff?”
“None of that….you know…pheromone crap. No cheating.”
The lines in Sasha’s forehead disappeared and he smiled. “Nathan, I couldn’t make you like me if you didn’t already even if I doused you in pheromones. It doesn’t work that way. This is just us. Just you and me. For all intents and purposes, right now I’m practically human.”
“Ha,” Nathan laughed. “Right.”
“No tricks,” Sasha said, moving in that much closer so he was practically speaking against Nathan’s lips. “Just…”
Nathan didn’t realize his eyes were shut until Sasha's lips were on him. Half of him thought he had to be dreaming and that when he opened his eyes he would be alone. His senses told him differently.
Sasha’s lips were as soft as Nathan’s were chapped, and pliant, and giving. They enveloped Nathan like no lips ever had. A flicker of what Nathan had felt when Sasha shared the feeding experience with him stirred in Nathan's stomach, like an echo, and he found himself leaning in. Sasha was sowarm. Even without his jacket, he radiated heat and that glorious smell of leather.
That's when it finally struck Nathan. Fae didn't have a scent—not any that Nathan had ever met before—but Sasha did. And it was intoxicating.
Sasha’s lips were moving against his, and Nathan was moving his too, and their mouths were open just enough that the smallest tilt of Sasha’s head pushed the kiss deep enough to touch tongues. Nathan shivered, and shivered again when he felt Sasha’s hand at the curve of his face and neck—gentle, guiding.
The kiss was lasting too long already. Nathan had to think quickly. He readied himself as much as he could and pulledaway, smiling. “See,” he said, and his voice didn’t waver in the slightest. “Nothing. Sorry, man.”
Sasha blinked at Nathan, frowning at first, until he found a smile too, though it wasn’t a truly happy one. “No big deal then,” Sasha said. He pulled his hand away slowly so that it brushed Nathan’s neck as he lowered it. “Thanks for…humoring me. Guess we should go back.”
“Yeah…” Nathan nodded. “Just, uh…gimme a sec, huh? If I look all flushed, Jim will get the wrong idea.” He grinned, a wide and devious grin.
“Gotcha. Take too long, though, and I bet he’ll still worry.” Sasha stretched his grin as well, but it wasn’t genuine. He headed back inside the bar, leaving Nathan in the cold.
