Page 4 of Changeling (The Incubus Saga #2)

“Ow! Shit! Would you watch what you’re doing?! Geez.”

Nathan grit his teeth as Jim finished replacing the last few stitches that had ripped when he fell. Jim was good at this stuff usually, but that didn’t mean it didn’t sting.

“Stop complaining. You move too much,” Jim replied roughly, face close to Nathan’s bare chest as he sewed. “And you’re the one who had to go and pull these things. I’m almost done.”

Nathan grimaced all the way through to the last stitch.

He hated that Jim made it sound like he had done this on purpose.

“Yeah, coz I asked the evil teddy bear with fangs to attack me. Did you see the bite in my leg?” He gestured down to where Sasha had finished disinfecting and cleaning the bite and was now wrapping Nathan’s ankle in gauze.

In actuality, there weren’t any teeth marks, but the creature had torn open Nathan’s recently healed bullet wound, and he was still pretty sure teeth had been involved at some point.

There was a snicker from the doorway and Nathan turned his head to glare at Alex.

They were in what was often used as the first aid room for when seals came in injured.

Alex had gladly offered up supplies and use of the room when Nathan came limping down the stairs, blood soaked through his pant leg and a few places on his T-shirt.

Currently, Nathan was kicked back on what had obviously been a dentist chair before it found its new home in the Gatehouse.

It worked well enough to elevate his leg for Sasha, gave Jim easy access to the stitches, and had an accompanying table to set gauze and supplies, where Nathan’s necklace was currently resting while his wounds were treated.

Blessedly, Sasha had finished with Nathan’s leg and came up by his head with a fresh dose of pain meds and a glass of water. Nathan took the lot gratefully.

“Vacation, right?” Nathan winked at Sasha as he downed the drugs.

“Be honest,” Sasha smirked back, “did you really expect anything else?”

Nathan huffed. "I'm sore and anxious and really sick of adding insult to injury—literally. So yeah…I was hoping for peace and quiet for a change." He closed his eyes and sighed, enjoying Jim’s gentler touch now as his brother placed clean bandages over his wounds. “Don’t we deserve a break from the nasty, bitey things in life? I’d give another few stitches for that thing to have actually been a raccoon.”

“What did you say it looked like?” Alex asked, walking a little farther into the room.

“Like Gizmo on steroids,” Nathan grumbled. He didn’t want to open his eyes again just yet. The dentist chair came complete with that annoyingly bright light, and Jim had been using it to better see by.

“Gizmo?” Alex questioned. “Like from Gremlins ? Cute, furry, Chinese creature that sings?”

“More like a gremlin and an Ewok had a love child and it isn’t happy about it,” Nathan said. He put a hand over his face and peeked through fingers at Sasha when the incubus laughed. “I’m serious. Doesn’t make it any less scary or vicious. Did I mention the opposable thumbs?”

“Several times,” Jim said.

“We thought you’d never shut up about it,” chimed in Sasha.

Nathan grimaced even though the brunt of the pain had finally started to subside. “Okay, you two need to stop tag-teaming me or we’re going to have a problem.”

“Tag-teaming you, huh?” echoed Alex. “There’s an interesting mental picture.”

Bright light be damned, Nathan’s eyes went wide with the horror of imagining that mental picture, and the next thing he knew Jim and Sasha were holding him down as he struggled to get out of the chair.

“It was just a joke,” Alex defended, though she was still smirking.

“Can I at least throw something at her?” Nathan grumbled at whichever of the men holding him down would listen, even though he was already calming down and letting them still him. “Whatever. Forget it. Can we concentrate on the baby hellbeast upstairs?”

“Sorry for the trouble. Honestly,” Alex said. “I say we leave the thing be until morning. It hasn’t attacked before, just now, after being disturbed. So I’d be willing to bet it’ll stay hidden tonight. I’d rather we had a fresher start on catching it.”

Nathan wasn’t too sure he liked that idea. He doubted he could sleep comfortably knowing that thing was scurrying about somewhere above his head.

Now that he was patched up, though, he gladly accepted the clean shirt Sasha handed him, and painstakingly pulled it over his head. It was like starting from square one with his wounds, all tender and recently stitched. Nathan really hated Evil Gizmo right now.

“Jim and I can finish the room we were painting,” Sasha said to Alex as he and Jim helped Nathan out of the dentist chair. “Might as well, so we’re finished with it. It’s not too late yet.”

Jim nodded. “Sure. But you,” he said pointedly to Nathan, “are going to sit, rest, and do nothing. At least for the rest of tonight.”

Nathan didn’t argue; that’s what he’d wanted to do in the first place.

As Sasha and Jim disappeared once again to the downstairs room they had been painting, Nathan placed his necklace back where it belonged around his neck and followed Alex into one of the lounges.

“For the record, I really did think it looked like a raccoon when I saw it,” she said, helping Nathan situate himself in a cushier recliner, something he only allowed because he really was that sore.

“Can you hand me the remote?”

Alex grabbed the TV remote from the coffee table and plopped it into Nathan’s hand. “Don’t get used to this now. Basic cable. With a few extras. Might have ESPN.”

Nathan flicked the TV on and started surfing. “Not much of a sport’s guy,” he admitted.

“I think we get SyFy,” Alex snarked.

But Nathan had struck gold already. “I’m good,” he said, basking in the genius of Airplane as the stewardess with a guitar knocked the sick kid’s IV out. Again. Alex left with a chuckle, and Nathan allowed himself to get comfortable.

The next thing he knew, Lloyd Bridges’ character was upside down sniffing glue, and Nathan was jolting awake. The movie was almost over.

Nathan’s chest didn’t hurt anymore save its usual dull ache, and when he put weight on his leg as he got out of the chair, the expected sting didn’t come. Praise pain meds , he thought, even if they did make him a little queasy sometimes.

When he came out of the downstairs bathroom a few minutes later and wandered into the bar area, he saw Alex hovering by the jukebox pretending to dust or something equally implausible while actually peering into the nearby doorway.

Nathan looked around her as he approached and saw that the adjoining room was the one Jim and Sasha were painting.

Both of them had at some point removed their shirts and were speckled in white and blue paint.

Nathan had to smirk. “You are so busted,” he whispered beside Alex’s head, pleased that even in a weakened state he had been able to sneak up on her.

To her credit, Alex didn’t even flinch. “I can’t admire a job well done?” she said without turning. It was more than obvious she wasn’t talking about the act of painting.

Nathan snorted, but any comeback he might have been preparing fell from his lips as he got pulled into the scene alongside her.

Jim was only too happily forgotten as Nathan focused on Sasha and hummed.

Bare chest, flecks of paint, the usual low-riding jeans that were snug in all the right places, and the peek of tattoo curling up from below Sasha’s waistline.

Nathan could see the tribal wings too, flexing over Sasha’s shoulder blades.

Distantly, Alex’s voice filtered into Nathan’s hearing, filled with humor. “Is it the tats or just that he wears his jeans that low?”

“Both,” Nathan said in a low voice. Alex’s snickering brought him back to reality and he raised an eyebrow at her. “You asked.”

“Yeah, but the crazy thing is…you had an answer. So tell me,” she said, grinning dangerously now and backing up a few steps to lean casually against the jukebox, “have you slept with him yet?”

Okay, maybe Nathan wasn’t quite as comfortable with being open about all of this as he had thought, especially considering his uncomfortable laugh poured out of him. “Uhh…what?” he managed, blaming the drugs for how much his voice shook.

“So that’s a yes,” Alex nodded to herself. “Guess I have to hand it to him; Sasha has to be good at what he does to get into the pants of a guy like you this quickly.”

Nathan’s defensive shields instantly rose.

“Okay, first,” he said, still keeping his voice low to avoid alerting the pair in the other room, “if you think months is quick then you don’t know me.

And if you think the only thing Sasha’s after is a good meal, tasty as I’m sure I am, then you can just…

” He trailed. Alex was smiling all self-satisfactorily again.

Damn it. “You’re bullshitting me, aren’t you? ”

“You make it so easy,” she smiled. “Besides, I have to mess with you a little. If you didn’t get all defensive, I’d worry you didn’t really care about him. Guess you do.” Her humor-filled expression turned sincere, and Nathan softened as he realized her true intentions.

“So what about you?” he asked. “Any…unresolved issues I need to know about between you two?”

Alex laughed a little uncomfortably. At least Nathan thought it was uncomfortable.

Maybe he was just imagining things, since he was so used to his own uncomfortable laugh.

“I hesitate to even call us friends sometimes,” she said.

“Despite the sociable guy act, he keeps to himself most of the time and is so private I hardly feel I know him at all.”

“You know enough to know he’s an incubus. And that didn’t really answer my question.”

The smile on Alex’s face turned to pure guarded confidence. “I foresee no love shapes in your future, Nathan. Sasha and I have nothing… unresolved .” She said that last word slowly, lingering on it like a tease.