Page 13 of The Fae Menagerie
An immediate knock at the door drew my attention. It was washday, after all. Before I'd brought Parker back through the portal with me, Aidan and I had spent these evenings, one day a week, together. He was a stickler for cleanliness.
I don't know when I'd stopped showering daily, but it had been around the same time I'd realized Aidan would never want me. He was using me for sex the way I'd used plenty of others.
Payback was a bitch, and so was my mother. I bet she'd handpicked him herself.
"I told your little plaything to wait in the living room," Aidan said. "It's been a long time since we've fucked in your shower."
My cock, which had been painfully interested in Parker, had no regard for Aidan's condescending sneer. I whipped off my garment and showed Aidan my predicament.
"Not happening."
He grinned. "You don't need an erection for me to fuck you."
Oh, how quickly the tables had turned. That was how I'd seduced him that first night. I'd fallen to my knees and made sure he wanted me as much as I needed him to want me, and then we'd had glorious sex in my bed.
Looking back on it, it had been mediocre at best. In the week since I'd brought Parker to my enclosure, I'd developed a conscience.
"I shouldn't have seduced you," I said. "I know you'll never love me. I'm sorry I played with your emotions like that."
"Sorry?" Aidan scoffed. "I was doing my job. The meal wasn't half bad, either."
Gods, how could I have been so stupid? Aidan was an incubus, after all. He'd been feeding off me, and the entire time, he felt nothing but lust.
He lowered his head and gazed at me through the fringes of his dark hair. "Are you saying it's over?"
I was sentencing myself to a life of celibacy, but I nodded. "It's over. I'm not an all-you-can-eat buffet."
His grin turned downright evil, and his black eyes flashed with inner light. "You're going to wish you'd chosen differently."
"I wouldn't be in here if I knew how to make better decisions," I admitted. I offered him my hand. "Friends?"
He rolled his eyes and turned his back to me. "You were never more than a convenient meal. Now, you're as useless as the spider fae, and harder to remove from the bottom of my shoe."
As far as breakup insults went, that wasn't the worst I'd heard, by far. Prince Drummond had sworn he would see me dead and feast on my bones. That one still gave me nightmares.
I stepped into the shower and forgot all about Aidan's insult. If only he would have done the same.
Chapter
Five
PARKER
A second weekpassed as quickly as the first. Doyle showered every day, as did I, but instead of looking refreshed, he looked more and more bedraggled. Purple crescents bloomed like bruises beneath his eyes, and the wrinkles in his forehead never seemed to vanish.
"Are you all right?" I asked when he gingerly adjusted his ass on the uncomfortable viewing couch.
"Didn't sleep well last night."
He didn't have to say it. He hadn't slept well since I'd arrived, when I had taken his place in his bed.
"We can switch," I said. "I'll sleep on the couch, and you can sleep in your bed."
He glanced at me with a frown that deepened the creases in his forehead before looking away. "I wouldn't do that to you. It's uncomfortable for a fae. It could injure a human permanently, and I won't have that on my conscience."
"I didn't think you had a conscience," I quipped. I regretted it when he hid his face with his hands.
"Hey." I pulled his hands away, only to find him silently giggling behind them. I no longer regretted my barb. "Look, it'sa big bed." I'd said the same the first night. "We can share, right? You on your side, me on mine."
