Page 56 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)

“I’ll…I’ll go talk to him. And make sure Walter’s okay too,” Alex said, her voice small as she moved swiftly past Nathan.

She paused near the entrance to look back.

“You know I’d speak up if I felt strongly in either direction here, Nate, I just…

I don’t know what the right answer is. But you better be damn sure of the side you’re on if you’re going to follow through with this. ”

For what might have been minutes, Nathan stood there, Sasha close at his side. Sasha was acting too still and strangely small for someone Nathan still had to look up at in order to meet gazes. Nathan easily saw as well as felt how much Jim and Walter’s words had shaken him.

“Prrp?” came a soft chirp from Wally on the bar’s countertop. Nathan had forgotten she was there, in cat form, a permanent member of their group amidst the others.

Absently, Nathan reached out a hand, and Wally bucked up into his palm. Feeling her emotions was strange, more direct and single-minded than what he felt from the others. She was anxious, worried. But he chose to take her head butts and gentle chirps to mean she trusted him.

“Hey,” Nathan coaxed Sasha gently, turning back to face him. “They’re angry, and probably justified in being angry too, I know, but we’re not wrong . Wanting to believe in this, in us, isn’t wrong.”

“I know that, Nate. Unless…” Sasha frowned deeper.

Blue eyes met Nathan’s, holding his gaze steadily.

“Just promise me, Nathan, promise me you really want this for us, because you believe we can win the war regardless. Not because…not because you’re too afraid to face the choices you might have to make.

” His gaze was sharp, intense as it had ever been when his eyes still glowed.

“You are special, and important, and more crucial to this war, I’m sure of it, than you realize. Don’t choose me for the wrong reasons.”

Nathan didn’t once break eye contact as he said, “I promise.” He smiled and pulled Sasha in against him, embracing and enveloping his… human like he had wanted to all morning.

His heart ached for how he was evading Sasha with that hug, but he ignored the feeling, allowing himself to feel grateful that right now Sasha didn’t have the ability to know he was lying.

Everything would be better now. Nathan was never meant to be anyone’s savior.

A chuckle from Sasha shook Nathan from his thoughts. “What?” he asked, pulling back enough to see Sasha’s face.

“Nathan,” Sasha said like he was chiding him, “you’re still wearing the shirt you ruined. I can feel the tears from your wings.” He accentuated that by fitting his fingers inside the holes and stroking Nathan’s shoulder blades.

Nathan shivered a little, feeling not only his own spike of arousal from having Sasha close against him and acting playful, but feeling Sasha’s desire too. It made Nathan feel like every emotion he had was multiplied. “I love this shirt,” he said.

“It has wing holes now, Nathan.”

“So?”

“ Nathan ,” Sasha laughed.

“What? You wanna see my wings?” he offered, asking with a sultry lilt to his voice that he almost startled himself with when he realized there was a bit of a growl there too.

Sasha’s face flushed. He bit his bottom lip as he nodded.

It dawned on Nathan that he probably shouldn’t have offered this when he didn’t really know how to control the changing back and forth part yet. In fact, he wasn’t sure even after his misstep earlier that he knew how to pull back the glamours while also protecting his clothing.

No time like the present to practice, he figured. The twins still had a while before they’d get there.

“Okay.” Nathan stepped back from Sasha, looking behind and around him to make sure he wouldn’t knock anything over when he did this.

Wally remained perched on the countertop, looking on with a curious tilt of her head.

“Nathan, the incubus,” he announced with a wink.

He slapped his hands together, took a deep breath, and focused, trying to go as slow as possible.

The weird thing was he could actually feel it, instinctually almost, which he supposed made sense or he wouldn’t be able to hold a human glamour at all.

Still, it was strange how easy it was now that he was actually trying to do it on purpose.

He looked down his body and was pleased to see his shirt fading, bringing forth a white, incubus chest, but with his necklace still displayed because he’d never want to hide that.

Nathan looked up, caught Sasha’s blue eyes that devoured him as he changed. With as much force as he dared, Nathan flexed his claws, shifted on his raptor feet, and let his wings shoot out fuller behind him.

“So?” asked his gruffer, foreign sounding incubus voice. “Do you approve?”

Sasha started at Nathan’s face, up his coiling horns, then back down his body, slowly . When his eyes dropped below Nathan’s beltline, he choked with laughter. “Nate…you forgot something.”

Crap. Nathan was already pretty sure he knew what Sasha meant when he looked down and saw that not only did he not have his jeans and shorts, which was intentional, he also didn’t have that nifty black covering thing either.

He couldn’t help gaping a little though, because he had the tattoos.

Of course he had the tattoos, but he had sort of forgotten about them.

They coiled black around his hips, down his thighs, and intimately between his legs. The design was like Sasha’s but also not, something completely unique to Nathan. Narcissistic as it may be for him to think so, it was pretty damn sexy.

Nathan thought for a minute, concentrating on how Sasha looked with that incubus speedo thing.

In moments Nathan had his modesty back, though not by much considering the covering didn’t leave too much to the imagination.

Of course Nathan had always liked that about Sasha’s.

He looked up again and saw that Sasha’s eyes were still focused very much south of the border.

“Hey, my eyes are up here, dude,” he grinned fangs. Fangs . The mere thought made him have to tongue them.

Sasha moved swiftly across the floor. He grabbed Nathan around the neck and kissed him hard, with that same intensity Nathan knew so well.

Nathan worried for a moment about kissing with fangs, but it wasn’t all that different than when Sasha had them.

He felt how they pressed gently against Sasha’s lips, felt Sasha shiver in his arms.

Then he wondered, “Hey,” gasping out of the kiss, “am I still radiating pheromones?”

Sasha laughed, thoroughly out of breath and heavy-lidded as he looked up at Nathan. “No, Nate. I just want you because I want you. You’ve always been unbelievably hot to me. But right now? Fuck .”

They kissed again, briefly, struggling to keep from going too far. Nathan had to be careful how he held Sasha close with his claws out, but he managed. “So…you’re all naked, huh?” Nathan asked with a sly smirk. “No more tattoos, I mean.” He traced his claws along the line of Sasha’s jeans.

As if to tease him, Sasha lifted his T-shirt and tugged his jeans down a bit. The skin was bare where incubus markings had once been. “All gone. On my back too. Bet the clover’s still there though, if you wanna check.” He winked.

“Oh I’m sure I will,” Nathan said, closing the gap between them again.

“I feel bad,” Sasha said suddenly, holding back, his smile faltering. “I shouldn’t be this happy when everyone else is…pretty much pissed. Makes me feel like a selfish jackass for wanting this so bad and not giving a shit about the consequences.”

“We deserve this,” Nathan said. “Maybe I was too hard on Walter. No, I know I was. I get why he was angry. And I get why Jim is too. But they’ll get over it.

They can be as pissy as they want, but when we stop the apocalypse, both of us as an incubus, together , we’ll be telling them ‘I told you so’s’ and everything will be fine.

Jim was wrong about one thing,” he said as he began to will himself human again if only to hold Sasha’s face with gentler hands, “this isn’t just for me.

I want this for you . I want you to be happy, to be able to give you all of me without anything standing in our way. ”

Sasha wrapped his arms around Nathan, slipped his fingers inside the T-shirt slits again where the wings had wrecked it.

They kissed, slow, brand new almost in how the experience was different but still familiar.

The feel of Sasha’s tongue on Nathan’s, of those lips tight and moving, their chests closely met and pulses racing so strongly that they could both feel each other’s heartbeats, it was all Nathan ever needed to know that he was right.

“Nate…” Sasha said, breath hot on Nathan’s mouth, “is it okay if…if even after you’re trained and ready to turn me…

if I stay human a few more days? You’ll learn really fast, in a day or two, and I just want a little more time to know what this is like.

Is that okay?” He sounded hesitant and unsure of himself asking that.

Nathan swelled with love for Sasha because of it.

He smiled, nuzzling his cheek against Sasha’s and keeping them close.

“Course it’s fine. Long as you want, baby.

Might be fun to try out some things while we’re still switched, huh?

Long as I know we’re getting our happily ever after out of this, nothing can spoil it. ”

“Yeah…” Sasha gasped out gratefully.

Nathan couldn’t help thinking, like he had so many times already, that they deserved this, but when his eyes met Wally’s blue-grey ones over Sasha’s shoulder, still sitting on the countertop, her expression was more human than he had ever seen it.

And she didn’t look like she believed him for a second.