Page 30

I froze mid-step. “Thedate?”

“You were going to help me find a date?”

“Right.Thatdate.” I forced a casual nod, praying my voice didn’t sound as flustered as I felt. “Yeah, of course. I’ll, uh... think about it tonight, and we can figure something out tomorrow.”

Before he could say anything else, I bolted up the stairs, flung myself into my room, and collapsed onto my bed. With a groan, I buried my face into my pillow. What the hell had just happened?

The way my body had reacted to Devlin—the way I wanted more—it wasn’t supposed to feel like that.

He wasn’t my mate.

So why did it feel so right?

Chapter 9. Devlin

I woke bleary eyed the next morning. My dreams had been dominated by images of Jen and me reenacting her scenes. Heat flared in my chest, rolling through my body like a slow burn, pooling low in my gut.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to offer my help in such a physical way, but in the moment, it had felt so right. Showing her rather than telling. Feeling her body shift beneath mine, the soft catch of her breath, the way her lips parted when she—

I exhaled sharply, willing the images away, but my cock gave an unhelpful twitch beneath the covers.

You’re just excited to finally have contact with someone who won’t react to your incubus touch.

Logical. But it did little to soothe the raw edge of hunger stirring under my skin.

I ran a hand down my face, forcing a deep breath. I needed to get my head on straight before I so much as looked at her today. Before we tackled the next scene.

Boundaries.

I made a mental note to speak to her, to have them firmly in place before we moved forward. And yet, even as I made that promise to myself, my traitorous mind wandered back to the scene we were meant to work on today.

Mina and Kieran had been traveling for days, the push and pull between them growing taut with every mile. Kieran, unable to ignore the scent of Mina’s desire any longer, had finally snapped—choosing to take himself away from camp, under the guise of dividing tasks, just to find relief from the ache clawing under his skin. He hadn’t realized she’d had the same idea. That, tucked behind a boulder, her breath caught in her throat, her fingers between her thighs, she was fighting the same battle.

And that she could see him.

My body instinctively reacted, heat curling deep in my belly as my cock thickened further. I groaned, shifting onto my back, throwing an arm over my eyes.

I had to come up with a way to help Jen improve her scene—something better than her version of:

Mina’s scent followed him wherever he went, and his wolf howled for relief from the torment. Kieran found a clearing, her scent lingering even there. With no other option, he undid the fastenings of his pants and grasped his length, running his hands up and down his manhood until he found release.

While I was well-read, I wasn’t a writer. I didn’t have the creative vocabulary to help Jen describe the scene in a way that would make itfeelreal. I could show her what Kieranshouldbe feeling, how his body would react, the primal frustration clawing at his control. But words?

Showing her was all I had.

But there was a thin line between reenacting a scene to help her visualize it and being the weird sex demon who suggests jerking off in front of the witch who let him stay in her house.

Boundaries.

Set boundaries. Confirm boundaries. Stick to boundaries.

That was all I had to do.

My stomach let out a soft gurgle, and I glanced at the alarm clock. Almost midday. Still too early for an incubus to rise. I tossed and turned, stubbornly trying to drift back to sleep, but it was useless. The image of Jen, the way she leaned into me, lips parting, as if for a fleeting moment she had forgotten we were merely reenacting a scene, was etched into the back of my eyelids.

My stomach gurgled again. Maybe mortal food would help?

Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I grabbed a T-shirt from the neatly folded pile BooDini had left for me—totally notcreeped out that it had been in my room as I slept—and tugged it on as I padded toward the kitchen.