Page 2 of Incubus with Benefits
“Steven? Steven Steven? Grabby hands, won’t take no for an answer, Steven?”
“Yeah. That Steven. First of all, he doesn’t even deserve the job. The idiot thinks JavaScript is a type of coffee. His whole team complains about him. But apparently, being the boss’s nephew means you can accuse people of anything and get away with it.”
“Fuck him,” Penny growled. “And fuck the whole freaking company too. You’ve been there for years. Didn’t you work all last weekend to finish that project?”
“Yup.” We were supposed to have a girls' night out, but I’d canceled to get the work done.
“Do we need to put a curse on Steven? Or the company? Cuz I’d totally be in.”
Now that was an idea. And with Penny and Griselda, the curse would be a doozy too, especially now that Penny, who used to be the “special-ed witch,”—her preferred words, not mine; she said she was stealing the description back and owning it so no one could use it against her again—had found her incubus lover. Prax now acted as an amplifier as well as a power source for her magic.
“Don’t tempt me,” I said. “But I kind of care about the people I used to work with.”
I wondered what was going to happen to my team. Were they going to hire someone new to replace me? I felt the anger bubble up again and made a little growl.
“Now, Steven on the other hand…I should turn him into a toad!”
“That very witchy of you, but I’m pretty sure that’s illegal now.”
“A gnat!”
“Also, illegal. I love you, Lily, but I’d prefer not spending tomorrow busting you out of jail. I know what we can do,” Penny said. “It’s Thursday. Let’s go to Delerium and dance it out. We’ll make up for the lost night out last weekend. And celebrate the fact that you’re now free from your nine-to-five.”
Delerium was Darlington’s premier night club, serving both the human and magical monster community since forever. Since Penny moved to Darlington full-time, she, Gigi, and I have been going a lot more, mostly because Penny’s sexy hunk of an incubus mate, Prax, was friends with the owner.
Julian was sin incarnate. An incubus who oozed with irresistible sexual energy, he was a successful business owner to boot, something I really looked up to. And from what I’d seen of him so far, he was a decent person, demon or not.
The last time I’d been at Delerium, Julian had joined us to dance, and we were grinding up the dance floor together, the heat of his body and perfectly timed movements promising the most carnal of desires. But then he’d had the audacity to invite me up to the club’s private rooms like I was one of his incubus groupies.
No,Hey, did you want to go grab some dinner?Not even a freakin’ coffee date! The nerve!
I might have laughed in his face.
The thing was, I wasn’t the type to scoff at one-night-stands. I had a few under my belt. It was the expectation, the cocky way he’d said it, like there was no flipping way a silly human like me could ever resist his incubus charm that had set me off.
“Does your silence mean yes? Or no?” Penny asked. “We can also go to that new magical rage room that just opened up. What’s it called? Lemme Smash?”
I imagined channeling all my energy and flinging it at a monitor with Steven’s face on it. Yes. That sounded perfect, but I might want to dance it out first. Besides, I wouldn’t mind flaunting my body at the sexy incubus again and reminding him of what he couldn’t have.
“They both sound good, but let’s go dance.”
“Great! We can go to Delerium tonight.”
We set a time, hung up, then messaged Griselda, the final witch in our little trio of BFFs, with the shitty news and our plan. Unlike Penny, whose magic tutorial business allowed her the freedom to set her own hours, Griselda’s coffee shop meant that she wasn’t able to join us at the rage room, but she was all for dancing tonight since Fridays were now her days off.
A motion at my balcony door had me glancing over to find the stray cat, still a kitten really, who’d been coming around our building recently, eating from the bowl of food I’d left out for it. At first, the bigger cats had eaten everything, so I’d placed thebowl inside a dog crate with bars just big enough for the smaller black cat to fit through. I was glad it worked.
I wondered if she’d let me pet her.
Armed with a piece of chicken from last night’s leftovers, I went out to try my luck.
Chapter 2
Julian
Ilookedoutacrossthe throng of hot, dancing bodies as they moved to the driving beat. Delerium pulsed with life, just the way I liked it. Magic and desire danced to the thudding bass that vibrated up through my boots and into my soul. Strobing lights cast flashes of white and violet across bare skin and slinky fabric. This was my domain, a little patch of paradise carved out and hidden away in an unforgiving world.
I’d opened this dance club decades ago so that my incubus and succubus friends wouldn’t have to hunt anymore. No more alleyway seductions that could lead to our exposure to the human authorities. No more dangerous bargains with wizards and witches that could see us imprisoned and bound by magic. No more living at the fringes of society.
