Helena
If Graham heard Jake yelling at me, he gave no sign of it as we drove to the house. I was determined to project confidence. Billie hit a nerve when she talked about my boarding school education. As far as I knew, a confident woman knew how to play hard to get. How to say no. How to be aloof and modest.
Yeah, they taught me all of that and I wasn’t nervous at all on that footing.
What they never taught me was what to do if you were just feeling super charged up surrounded by sexy men all day, and they seemed as into you as you were into them. How long was I supposed to play hard to get? When Graham kissed me it was so hot that my lips still remembered every moment, and I was proud of myself for making him wait.
Now it was almost a month later and I was just itching to feel a man in real life. Dream sex was awesome but it was different. It lacked the raw edge of reality, the sweat and the smell of desire and all the messy stuff of life. I had never minded getting dirty.
Graham’s eyes flicked toward me like he caught a hint of the need building in me now.
The whole time he was driving, his phone kept vibrating with messages and missed calls, and occasionally he glanced at it, but now he turned the phone off.
“Here’s the house,” he said, stopping in front of a house that was cute as a button.
“A shotgun shack! In pink! How did you know I would love this?”
“I’m not sure I did know you would be this excited about a ‘shotgun shack’, but I got the feeling you like a lot more color in your houses than in your wardrobe.”
“That’s very true. Well, if I had a place of my own and I was more settled, I would want one just like this. Just the right size for me and a dog.”
“Just a dog?”
“Well…we’ll see what happens.” I hopped out of the car. We were close to a town now, within walking distance to shops and restaurants, one of those touristy small towns. It was the type of town a witch might prefer, one where you could open up a shop to sell herbs and human-approved magical stuff, or tell fortunes, or some silly thing, and walk to a bar in the evening for a nice drink in the fresh air, without being so saturated by human life that it killed you. We were about fifteen minutes from Greenwood Manor. Deveraux wasn’t the hermit that Fiore had been, but then, I could tell that from the house. I don’t know when he last partied as an old man, but it was obvious that at one point, he had a house worth showing off to friends.
Graham opened the little gate that surrounded the house, waved me into the spot of front yard where a few flowers clung to life before a frost nipped them, and entered a passcode to get the key.
Despite the small size of the cottage, it still had double front doors and inside it was just a dream. The style was effortlessly Bohemian with a well-worn rug and an antique green velvet couch, and old prints advertising Louisiana musicians on the walls around a small brick fireplace. Straight back was a dining/work space and a kitchen, and the bedroom must be up the spiral staircase in the attic space. The decorating theme was carried through perfectly from end to end, with glass-door bookcases, tall windows that generously spilled in light, instruments hanging in the dining room, and heart of pine flooring.
“I can tell you’re happy,” Graham said. “I’m glad you came to see it. As soon as I saw it listed I thought it was a place you would appreciate, even if it is a ‘human’ house.”
“It’s not your style, is it?”
“I’ve always been more of a minimalist. I don’t enjoy dusting. But I don’t have to dust this one, so let’s enjoy ourselves. Gumbo tonight?”
“Yes, please!”
We had a lovely evening. Hot, spicy gumbo loaded with shrimp and Andouille sausage on a cool night is not something I’d say no to, and I wasn’t inclined to say no to the handsome man sitting across from me either. Except that he seemed a little troubled, and so was I.
We had a bottle of wine to share, and we were drinking more than we ate. I felt like we needed to talk but I wasn’t sure what to say.
“I’ve never gone so long with my phone off,” Graham said. “And…now, of all times.” He held up the phone. “This doesn’t feel real anymore.”
“It’s not…your world,” I said. “You’re just learning that.”
“My world is…” He reached for my hand, running his fingers across my skin so lightly that I shivered, but his touch was almost absent. He looked at the restaurant, small and candlelit and old-fashioned, with dark wood chairs and tables and paintings of old riverboats on the walls. Piano standards were playing gently. The world will always welcome lovers…as time goes by.
“I’ve never gone so long without sex either,” he said. “I mean, since the first time.”
“Ohhh. Well. Good,” I said. Good? Should I have said that? But it was good. If he was a warlock, I might have rolled my eyes, but I knew how genuinely hard it was for an incubus not to have sex, especially when he’d been running this election campaign and needed energy and power. Sex was literally food to him, and he must be running on empty. But he’d controlled himself very well today, I thought.
The very idea was making me sweat.
“What do you want?” Graham asked, turning back to me. “Out of life? In the long run?”
“Ummm…I don’t know. I guess…I already have what I wanted.”
“But no home of your own. No dog either. I saw the way your eyes lit up in that cottage.”
“Yeah, I might be a little lonely sometimes. I wasn’t really thinking about a husband or kids. So much pressure on me to get married when I was young. Sometimes I would think, it’d be nice to have an old Airstream trailer or something to drag around, but then I would hate driving. I like to speed.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t mind having the Sullivan brothers around to work with more often?”
“I—I don’t know.”
His eyes twinkled in the candlelight as he slipped his fingers beneath mine. “None of this is what you thought you wanted, is it?”
“Nope…”
“Me neither. But…you know what I do want is just to make you really happy tonight and I don’t care if you aren’t sure what you want, or who you want. I need to follow my gut, not the world I thought I knew, because that world is slipping away from me.”
He didn’t seem so jealous as he was before. I wondered what on earth Byron said to him when they were talking.
“What about your election?” I asked.
“I’m going to lose,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I haven’t had sex in a month. I didn’t want to win with magic.”
I giggled—the giggle was definitely thanks to the wine. “Watch out or you’ll start having dream sex with old ladies.” If an incubus couldn’t get sex in real life, they could start feeding in dreams, and there were plenty of jokes in the magical world about incubi getting stuck in dreams with horny old women on accident.
An incubus who wasn’t getting laid at all was a demon whose powers would grow weak and desperate. Was he doing this to prove something to me? That was pretty cute.
“I’ve never done anything without a plan before,” Graham said.
“I know. I could tell that from the moment you ordered the low calorie heart-healthy option in the diner. You’re a sensible plans guy.”
He finished off the wine bottle, dividing it between our glasses, and then he pressed his knees against mine as his gaze told me that tonight…he knew why I was here. There would be no second thoughts. I felt the strength of his long legs, the brush of fine suit material against my thin tights. He pinned my knees between his and then, under the table, he slipped a hand between the tight space between my thighs and stroked as far as he could reach without being too obvious. Just that one simple touch made me almost too hungry for him to eat the gumbo. The gesture was dominating and left no doubt about what I’d always known about him. He was going to have his way with me tonight.
It wasn’t even that scandalous a move on the surface but it left me flustered. My heart was beating faster now as he opened his legs and released me, edging his chair back an inch. He fidgeted a little in his chair and took a slightly tortured breath that told me without even having to look that his cock was ready to claim me right then and there.
“Hurry up,” he said, his voice sharpening in the sexiest way.
I scraped up the last few spoonfuls as he asked for the check. We walked about a mile home mostly in quivering silence, his hand on my back, his jacket draped over his sleeve, hiding his arousal as we passed some retirees walking toward the restaurants.
When we got to the cottage, he slammed the door behind us and seized my wrists, leading me to the antique sofa.
“Not the sofa!” I said. “Antique upholstery!”
He grinned wickedly. “The table for you, then.”
“Or there’s this invention called a bed—oh!” His arm went around my hips and and scooped me up.
“No time for beds,” he said, sweeping aside all of the stuff on the table—flowers in a vase, a corded telephone, a container of pens—putting me down on the table. “I need you now.” He yanked my tights down to my boots and then he tugged on the boot laces. “Why don’t you have zippers on your boots?”
“I don’t like zippers.”
“At least I know—it isn’t often—someone tears your clothes off in a passionate rage,” he grunted, tearing them off my feet. Then he expertly removed his clothes—all of them. You know how most people manage to look a little more ridiculous when naked? Not Graham. He looked as comfortable as a Roman statue on display, and ohh goddess, that huge cock was coming for me.
“Condoms! I don’t have any condoms!” I cried. “I haven’t been making any birth control spells!”
“I got it,” he said smoothly, producing one from his wallet. I swear that rolling the condom down his shaft made it look even bigger, like the Magnum was quite snug. I guess I’m about to find out if I’m ready for one man, much less four, in real life, I thought.