Page 13 of Changeling (The Incubus Saga #2)

Alex moved for Jim’s free side and snuggled under the now stretched to its limit comforter. Nathan noticed that Jim only looked slightly ruffled by her proximity against his side, while Wally scrambled down into Alex’s lap to avoid the chilly air.

“Al, that’s not even just halfway to awesome. That is full blown awesome times three. Pop one of those babies open,” Nathan said excitedly.

“We’re not waiting until midnight?” Sasha asked.

Nathan let out a laugh. “That’s for tourists. Real men can drink whenever they want. And ladies. And hey, how exactly are you getting that thing open?” he asked, glancing across the others as Alex pulled one of the bottles from the bag. “You didn’t think to bring a wine opener?”

“Well,” Alex said with something of a blush, then moved her gaze to Sasha, “I was kinda…hoping…” She passed the bottle to the incubus, and he laughed.

Sasha took the bottle in his left hand as his right formed claws.

He stabbed his taloned thumb into the cork and pulled it cleanly out.

“I also do parties,” he chuckled as Jim politely plucked the cork off of his thumb and chucked it into a corner of the roof.

“Bottle opener gets first drink,” Sasha finished with a grin, downing back a long swallow of wine.

He licked his lips appreciatively before handing the bottle back to Alex at the start of the line.

Nathan leaned forward to read over the bottle’s label as Alex took her first drink.

He didn’t know wine but he certainly didn’t mind drinking it, especially when he didn’t have to pay for it.

This was a red with some sort of Spanish name.

The alcohol content was impressive, but the wine tasted fantastic, something Nathan found out after his first swallow.

He couldn’t have beamed at the others any bigger.

Walter stepped from his perch onto the main part of the roof with a sigh.

Nathan continued to ignore him. He would have plenty of time for worrying later; tonight he wanted to enjoy good wine and good company and forget whatever might lie ahead.

Not soon after, Walter turned and stepped dramatically off the edge of the roof to disappear into the night.

Nathan decided to take the departure as a blessing.

As the night progressed, Jim tried to keep Nathan from getting too many pulls on the bottle—or bottle number two, three, and four—worried that too much alcohol and his meds would be dangerous, but he wasn’t very successful at stopping Nathan, and soon, Nathan was blissfully buzzed.

He hadn’t had any other drinks in more days than he could count because of the meds, but damn it, this was a special occasion.

“Yep, totally slept with her,” Jim laughed, “after we’d only just met her, too.

” He laughed again and downed the last of bottle number four, to which Sasha whined and then snagged the empty bottle afterwards.

“I didn’t expect Nate to actually date Wade, so I wasn’t surprised when things didn’t work out. ”

“Hey, she cheated on me!” Nathan protested.

“Yeah, well according to Wade the psychic , you would have eventually done it yourself.”

“Eventually and having actually done something are two different things!”

Alex giggled, glassy-eyed and content looking as she leaned into Jim and stroked the sleeping chimera in her lap.

Sasha tossed the empty wine bottle over to where they had tossed the others and scowled. Even his bright blue eyes looked glassy. He pouted at Nathan and said, “Are you disappointed? Wishing you were still with her?”

Nathan let out a boisterous laugh that would have jostled his wounds if he wasn’t numb from the drugs and alcohol.

“Hell no! She’s crazy. Not my type at all.

She was just hot. Is hot. I don’t have any regrets, believe me.

Especially not…now.” He waggled an eyebrow at Sasha, which pushed the pout into a grin.

“Well you do seem to enjoy yourself with me,” Sasha said. Then, before Nathan could even hope to react, Sasha was climbing on top of him, disrupting the comforter from the others’ shoulders as he pinned Nathan to the roof and kissed him hard.

Nathan and his wine-and-medication-riddled brain didn’t mind at all—Sasha’s larger body on top of his, that warmth and enveloping presence.

Not to mention how Sasha’s sweet-tasting tongue plunged deeply, and his hands traveled down Nathan’s sides like he wanted to strip Nathan down right there on the roof.

While Nathan had forgotten about his wounds, Sasha was careful enough not to press their chests together.

He just laid there gently on top of Nathan.

It wasn’t long before Nathan felt that familiar heat beginning to pool, especially with the way Sasha’s tongue moved against his own, those soft hands slipping up underneath Nathan’s shirts to feather up his belly.

“Hey,” came Jim’s dissenting voice, sounding far, far away, “none a that while we’re still here,” he said, and before Nathan could complain, Sasha was being pulled off of him and rolled onto his back between the two brothers.

Nathan mourned the loss of Sasha’s weight and heat. But Sasha was laughing, and when Nathan glanced over, he saw that Jim and Alex were lying back on the comforter now too, and the redhead had rolled onto his other side, facing Jim.

“Sorry, Jimmy,” the incubus said, “I’d say you can join in, but I don’t think Nathan would appreciate that. Or Alex. Mmm…or maybe she would .”

Nathan lifted up a little to better see the others and watched as Sasha planted a sloppy kiss right on Jim’s lips.

Alex started giggling uncontrollably, but the reaction from Jim, an expression somewhere between a grin and a grimace, was enough to send Nathan into a fit of giggles too. Sasha soon joined them.

They had definitely drunk that wine way too fast.

By the time their laughter had stilled and they were silent again, Nathan’s head was whirling, and thinking clearly or not, he knew just where he wanted the conversation to go. Drunken confessions were always the easiest to weasel out.

“Hey,” he said, pushing Sasha’s shoulder with his hand, “I wanna hear the story.”

“What story?”

“You and Alex,” Nathan said, grinning mischievously. “There’s a story there about how she knows what you are, I know it. You always evade me,” he added with a look at Alex.

Alex simply stared back at him as cryptically as ever, resettling a stirring Wally on her chest after having disrupted the chimera when they laid back.

Jim frowned but looked insanely curious.

Sasha’s face went almost white. “It’s not what you think. It was an accident. I hadn’t fed in almost a month—”

“So you did sleep with her!” Nathan accused, even though he didn’t really care about past involvements, especially not when he was halfway to drunk—or all the way. “I knew it. Next thing I know you’ll be saying you slept with Jim!”

This time both Sasha and Jim let out loud, rancorous laughs. “That’d never happen,” Sasha assured Nathan. Then he turned to Jim. “Not that you’re not hot, mind you.”

“Appreciated,” Jim nodded.

Nathan snorted.

Alex giggled again, like they were all just too ridiculous. “Am I even here?” she asked. “I’m part of this story too, you know. And you’re already way off. Sasha and I never slept together.”

Nathan’s brow furrowed. “But…he just said—”

“I said I needed to feed, and that Alex finding out what I really am was an accident. I never said I fed from her .” Sasha looked across at Alex, who stared back steadily at him, leaving the decision in his hands whether or not to tell the rest.

Finally, Sasha sighed and hung his head.

“Okay, I’ll tell you. But you have to understand this wasn’t something I planned.

It was a long time ago. I was…eighteen, I think.

I’d stupidly gone too long without feeding, and I was in bad shape.

I couldn’t even control the glamours anymore.

My eyes were red, my fangs out, my fingers black and almost claws…

I figured I was screwed. There was no one I could go to for help, because I couldn’t tell anyone the truth.

So I decided to come to the Gatehouse…and let whatever seals might be here take care of me. ”

The realization of what Sasha meant by that sobered Nathan more than he wanted to admit, and he frowned. All remaining giggles ceased and a silence fell over the others as Sasha went on.

“So I scrambled inside, late one night, trying to find a room where there might be someone…anyone who’d stop me before I hurt someone. I didn’t realize I’d gone into Elaine’s room until she came in.”

That got Nathan’s attention. Elaine Ferris was Alex’s mother. She’d died a couple years ago, but had always run the Gatehouse like a pro. Nathan had often thought of her like another mother, or at least a long lost aunt.

“Once she realized it was me—we’d met briefly when I’d come through before—she wouldn’t listen to a word I said.

Just told me to keep as much control as I could…

so she could help me. I told her it was too dangerous, but she…she said if feeding was all I needed, there was no way she’d let a seal kill me for nothing.

I managed to keep enough control not to hurt her or take too much, but…

I’d let almost all of the glamours drop to make sure my focus was on being careful with how I fed.

My wings were spread out behind me over the bed as we finished, and… ”

“And that was about the time I walked in.”

Nathan gaped at Alex, imagining Jim’s expression had to look just as stunned, though he couldn’t see his brother’s face since it was turned toward her. That was not the story Nathan had been expecting all this time.

“Oh, I almost screamed and brought the whole Gatehouse down on him, but Mom was quick,” Alex said.

“She explained, Sasha transformed human, we all went to bed, and things were awkward for…well, awhile. After Mom died…I don’t know, I guess it seemed silly to care about something like that, so I told Sasha to suck it up.

We’ve been on good terms ever since. Mom saved his life.

Now he might be the only thing that can save yours. ” Her eyes stared fixed at Nathan.

“It was what it was,” Sasha said. “Don’t make a big deal out of it. We never did."

Silence settled over them again, and the cold started creeping in enough that they all sat up and huddled under the comforter like before. Eventually, the somber mood was too much for Nathan. He was close enough to drunk to not want the night to end on a sour note. Especially not on New Year’s.

“You know…I always thought of Elaine as a MILF…just never figured that to be so close to the truth.”

One of Alex’s shoes thrown at Nathan’s head later and they were laughing again.