Apparently they were going to act like the handjob never happened. It had been four days, and Quentin hadn’t so much as mentioned it. Ted could be cool with that if Quentin wouldn’t keep looking at him that way—like he was a giant triple-decker waffle cone and it was the hottest day in July.

Sure, Quentin tried to cover it up—by turning away, or by writing up yet another list of stuff for Ted to do, or by calling a bunch of local construction companies to line up work crews.

But Ted caught him often enough to know. It hadn’t only been awesome for Ted. Quentin had felt it too. Wonder if it’s because we’re technically married now. Maybe the spell boosts our feelings or pleasure or something.

While Quentin was on his phone, pacing back and forth across the shell of the lodge kitchen, and bitching at Larry about delivering something or other, Ted snuck out to the porch and used Dr. Kendrick’s app to start a video chat with Supernatural Selection.

Zeke’s face appeared on the screen. “Good morning, Supernatu—” His eyes widened. “Mr. F-F-Farnsworth. To what do I owe the pleasure?” His voice squeaked a bit on the last word. Ted tried not to take it personally. Yeah, he was big, but he wasn’t standing in front of the guy, for crying out loud.

“Hey, Zeke. I had a question about the contract spell.”

“If it’s about the escape clause—”

“No, no. We’ve got that covered. I was just wondering . . .” Ted scratched his beard. How the heck do I put this? “Does the spell, you know, make you feel things more? Like more intense?”

Zeke eyebrows drew together. “What kind of things?”

“You know. Things.”

“If you’re referring to affection, then no. Absolutely not. Despite rumors to the contrary, love spells are not a thing. We can’t make you fall in love with your contracted spouse. Or vice versa.”

Hmmm. Guess he’s answered that question a time or two. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t mean feelings like feelings. I mean feelings like, well, feelings.”

Zeke’s expression turned wary. “I’m not sure I know what you— Oh! Do you mean sexual sensation?”

Ted blotted his forehead with the back of his hand. “Yeah. That.”

“No. I’m afraid that’s another rumor. There’s no magical replacement for sexual chemistry. If there were—” he smiled ruefully “—we’d be out of business.”

“Ah. Okay. Sorry to bother you.”

“It was no trouble.” Zeke bit his lip. “I’m really sorry for the mix-up in your contract, by the way. I still have no idea how it could have happened. I’m glad you and Mr. Bertrand-Harrington have amassed the necessary ingredients for the escape clause.”

“Yeah. We’ve amassed all right,” Ted muttered.

“Excellent. We’ll see you a week from Tuesday, then. Have a nice day.”

Ted tucked his phone in his pocket and stomped back inside the lodge. Right. A nice day. Not likely, with Quentin switching back and forth between a hard-nosed taskmaster and the lead in a slow-burn porno.

Ted wasn’t sure which one was hotter, but it was a damned pain in the ass to build a staircase while sporting a semi that grew every time Quentin gave him one of those looks.

Like now. Shit.

“Something up, Q-Bert?”

Quentin jerked like he’d been startled awake. He blinked those big dark eyes a couple of times. “No. Nothing. The generator will be delivered next Wednesday. The electricians will be here to install the wiring beginning—” he swiped his finger across his tablet “—tomorrow at eight. We were lucky. Most of the crews in the area were already booked. Apparently this is a busy time for them, with so much of the exterior work having been completed during the warm months.”

“Yeah. Rusty and I could have gotten hitched in August, but he still had a lot of projects going on. So we decided to wait.” Ted buckled on his tool belt. “Guess it would have been better for you if we had, huh? Then we wouldn’t have gotten all screwed up this way.”

“Yes. I suppose.”

Ted glanced up at the weird tone of Quentin’s voice. He almost sounded sad. Or maybe mad. It was hard to tell when he sliced off the ends of his words that way. “You got any more calls to make?”

“Not today. I’ve done all the damage I can for the moment.”

Ted grinned. “Oh, I don’t know about that.” He picked up a hammer and held it out, handle first. “Time to get your hands dirty.”

Quentin stared at the hammer like he’d never seen one in his life. “What?”

“You told me I could put you to work on unskilled labor. Now’s the time. You can help me with the staircase.”

Quentin put his hands behind his back, shaking his head a little wildly. “Oh no. I couldn’t. You’re doing such beautiful work. I wouldn’t want to screw it up.”

“They’re just nails, Q-Bert, and the treads are oak. Not much you can do to hurt them.” Ted waggled the handle. “Come on. It’ll help you work off some steam. Seems like you could use it after hollering at Larry for a solid half hour.”

Quentin gave him a sour look, then took the hammer. “Working off steam might be a good idea after all.”

Ted led Quentin over to the main staircase—the real one, which would replace the rickety temporary one that the martens had used for access to the upper stories. He took one of the pre-cut treads off the stack and laid it over the first notch in the stringers. “Here. You position it like this, and drive the nails in here, here, and here.” He took a nail out of the tool belt at his waist and knocked it in. “Like that. I’ll do this side and the middle, and you can do that side.”

Quentin was staring at him again—not with that look exactly, but close.

“What?”

He pointed at Ted with his hammer. “It only took you two strokes to sink that nail. How do I even . . .” He threw up his other hand and walked away a few paces, then returned. “Seriously?”

“It’s not a contest, Q. Besides, that’s why I’m doing two sets and you’re doing one.” He pulled a handful of nails out of the pouch—carefully!—and laid them on the floor. “Get cracking.”

“Fine.” He picked up a nail.

Ted tried not to watch Quentin fumbling while he sank all six of his own nails, but the way Quentin was holding his hammer? Finally Ted couldn’t stand it anymore and burst out laughing.

“It’s not a dick, Q-Bert. Hold it down near the end of the handle. If you choke up on it that way, you don’t get any force out of the swing. You’ll be pounding the same nail for a week and never get anywhere.”

“Sounds like my sex life,” he muttered.

Quentin did as Ted suggested, but his aim was so bad that he nearly smashed his thumb.

“Careful there, John Henry. Here. Let me show you.”

Ted grabbed a piece of wood from the scrap pile. Using the pencil from behind his ear, he drew several circles about the same size as the nail heads. “We’ll use this for target practice. So you can get the feel of the swing.”

“Anything that saves my fingers is fine with me.”

“All righty, then.” Ted positioned the board on the nearby plywood worktable. “Come here.” Quentin approached warily, and Ted manhandled him into position. “Grab the hammer.” Quentin picked it up. “Not like that. What did I just say?” He snatched the hammer and took Quentin’s wrist in the other. “You hold it here, at the base. Pretend you’re trying to keep from shooting too soon.”

“I’d really rather not equate the tool with my—”

“Tool?” Ted waggled his eyebrows.

“Very funny.” But Quentin gripped the handle when Ted nudged his palm with it.

Ted put his hand over Quentin’s. “Now, get used to the weight, the feel of its momentum.” He guided Quentin’s swing, the hammer head swishing through the air. “Feel that?”

“Y-y-yes.”

The toasted marshmallow smell wafted up from Quentin’s skin, distracting Ted and going straight to his cock. He let go and stepped back before Quentin could feel Ted’s own tool trying to get in on the action.

By this point, though, he knew what that aroma meant—incubus on the rise. Screw it. We’ve been dancing around this for days.

“Q-Bert, I’ve been thinking.”

“A dangerous pastime,” Quentin murmured.

“What?”

“Never mind. You were thinking. Carry on.”

“I don’t think handjobs qualify.”

The hammer slipped out of Quentin’s grip, narrowly missing his foot. “As—as what, precisely?”

“Consummation, of course. If you ask me, consummation requires an exchange of more than skin. It needs an exchange of fluids.”

“I’m not sure Merriam-Webster would agree.”

“Why? Is Merriam some kind of witch arbiter?”

Quentin laughed breathlessly. “It’s not a person. It’s a dictionary.”

“Then who cares?” Ted didn’t. He didn’t care about much of anything right now except getting his hands—and his mouth—on Quentin’s dick. Finding out if he tasted as much like marshmallows as he smelled. “Do you really want to show up next week and find out we’re disqualified on a technicality?”

“No.” Quentin drew out the word. “I suppose that would be bad.” His pulse beat wildly in his throat, and Ted wanted to sooth it with his lips. But that’s not part of this deal.

“Then PBJ.”

“You want to eat a sandwich now?”

“Not peanut butter and jelly, you dork. Preemptive blowjobs. What do you say? We don’t want the fine print to come back and bite us in the ass.”

Quentin nibbled on his lower lip. “But, Ted, if I hurt you—”

“Hey. You can do anything you want, Quentin, and if you don’t want to hurt me, you won’t. End of story.” Ted dropped to his knees, even though the plywood subflooring wasn’t the softest. “I’ll go first. In fact, you don’t have to go at all if you don’t want to. My mouth, your dick—I think that counts as doing it together.”

“Oh trust me,” Quentin said breathlessly as Ted opened his fly and took out that lovely cock. “I am absolutely doing it too.”

The marshmallow scent intensified as Ted pumped Quentin’s shaft twice, then licked slow and dirty, from base to tip, with an extra lap at the slit. “Oh man. What I wouldn’t give for some melted chocolate right now.”

“Wh-what?”

“You, Q-Bert—” Ted sucked in the head, then let it go with a pop “—are like the world’s biggest and best s’more.”

I should stop him. I should back away. I should be strong.

But when Ted hummed around Quentin’s cock, he could do nothing, heat building in his core, pushing out, infusing his blood, his skin, his bones, and very possibly completely imploding his brain.

“Ted.” He strained to get more than one word out, but that seemed to be the only one left in his vocabulary.

Ted pulled off and grinned up at him. “You need something, Q-Bert?”

Quentin nodded, running trembling fingers through Ted’s hair, pushing that one wayward lock back. “But I shouldn’t—”

“Enough. You’ve fed me that line before, Q, and I don’t want to hear it. I’ll say again—a hundred times, if I have to. I. Trust. You.” Ted’s eyes, so dark and deep, made Quentin’s cock throb. “And I want you, no point in lying about it. From how you’ve been looking at me, I think you want me too.”

“But Ted . . .” Devil take it, it was hard to think with his cock bobbing inches from Ted’s mouth, Ted’s energy enveloping him like a velvet cocoon. “I’m—”

“An incubus. I get that. And you know what I say? So fucking what?”

“You wouldn’t say that if you were lying withered in a hospital bed, fighting for your next breath.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“How do you know? It happened before. I can’t—” Quentin fumbled with his fly, trying to stuff his eager cock back into his underwear. “I can’t let that happen to you.”

Ted stood and circled Quentin’s wrists gently with his huge hands. “Then don’t. You’re not evil. You’re not selfish. And you’re not controlled by your instincts any more than I am. Let go for once in your life, Quentin. Let go and trust that I’m strong enough to catch you before you fall.”

He cradled Quentin’s jaw, his palms callused but his touch gentle. Quentin imagined that if he could possibly open his eyes, he would see gold light shooting from Ted’s fingertips, bathing Quentin’s face.

Then Ted’s mouth touched his own, Ted’s beard soft and springy against Quentin’s skin. Quentin inhaled sharply, lips parting, but Ted didn’t take advantage and invade with his tongue. He kept the kiss chaste and soft and devastatingly sweet. Time spun out during that kiss. Had it just begun, or had it lasted for Quentin’s entire life?

Maybe I didn’t have a life until now.

Then Ted drew away, straightening up, and Quentin swayed forward, chasing that precious heat.

“Damn, Q-Bert. If there’s one thing I’d change about you, I’d wish you were a tad taller so your mouth wasn’t so far away.”

“Sorry,” Quentin whispered, still dizzy.

“Don’t be. I’ll just have to adjust my angle, that’s all.” He dropped to his knees again. “This is a good one. But I need a little more skin.” He tucked his thumbs under Quentin’s loose waistband and glanced up. “This okay?”

Quentin didn’t reply. Couldn’t. Instead, he shoved his pants and underwear down to his thighs, baring cock, balls, and ass.

“That’s what I’m talking about. Now, just stand there and look at the lake.”

“Lake?” Quentin stroked Ted’s hair. “What lake?”

Ted grinned once more, then engulfed the head of Quentin’s cock, and Quentin threw back his head, fighting a scream. I can’t . . . I shouldn’t . . . I ought to pull out before I come, before I take too much, before I—

Ted grabbed Quentin’s ass in both hands and tugged him forward, swallowing around his cock, and it was too late.

Quentin came, and with each pulse, another burst of Ted’s glorious golden energy—his enormous, gentle, generous essence—filled Quentin like the beat of a dragon’s heart.

After Quentin’s last spurt, Ted let go with a gasp and toppled backward onto the floor.

Terror spiked in Quentin’s chest, nearly canceling his euphoria. “Ted! No!” He dropped onto his knees, hampered by his pants still bunched at his thighs and heedless of his bare ass hanging out in the chilly air.

Ted’s body started to convulse. No no no. I knew I shouldn’t have allowed it. Haven’t I learned anything from my own pathetic past? I—

Then Ted grabbed his arm and hauled him down until he was lying across Ted’s heaving chest and staring into Ted’s laughing face.

“You’re—you’re not having a seizure?”

Ted laughed harder. “A seizure? Hell no, unless you call coming so hard in my pants that I saw stars a seizure. Hot damn, Q-Bert. Is that what sex with an incubus is like?”

Quentin pushed himself onto his knees. “Well obviously.”

“Whoa. I bet ’cubi who aren’t as uptight as you have no trouble getting dates. For a minute, it felt like my whole body was one giant dick.”

Quentin shot him a disgusted look and stood, yanking his pants up to his waist again. “Unsurprising, since now you’re acting like one.”

“Hey.” Ted sat up and took one of Quentin’s hands in his. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out. Seriously, you’re amazing. That was amazing. And no matter what happens, I’ll never regret that, for a while, you were my accidental husband.”

I’ll make absolutely sure you don’t regret it. Quentin smiled tightly as he withdrew his hands. I’m keeping you safe from me from now on. Restraint, damn it. I can do it. Even if it kills me.