Page 21 of Succubus

“Maybe I overreacted,” he says. “Before.” And his voice goes lower, a little rough.

Oh God.

“I really like you, Tempest.” Everything shifts instantly into gold and fire, and my moronic heart is pumping scalding hot joy. “I know what I said the other night, and I know you said you aren’t looking for something right now. But I think I left that part out.”

I hear my own strangled breath.

He is about to touch me; I can feel the space closing between our fingertips.

Maybe I didn’t kill Adam.

Maybe I didn’t kill Adam.

I snatch my hand back. Joel follows it with his eyes, his brow creasing. He withdraws his own hand, blinks. He’s so transparent, the hope folding up behind his eyes. “Sorry,” he says. “Did I misread— ”

I stand up with such force I knock my chair backward and it rocks. I catch it before it can fall. He rises, too, mechanically. “I think I’ve really embarrassed myself here.” He pushes an agitated hand into his hair. “Please just forget— ”

“No,” I interrupt, barely above a whisper.

His eyes go to mine, searching. Why does he have to look at me like this? Why does he have to look like this? The gentle kindness in his face that makes me want, with depraved compulsiveness, to see him orgasm, to see him grit his teeth against it, to push him to some frantic limit of pleasure and watch him lose his mind.

“No,” I say again. “You didn’t. I just. I can’t.” Don’t say it, I tell myself. I say it: “I want to.”

More than I’ve ever wanted anything, I think. I am in love with you. Goddammit. I need to stop thinking that.

“Then maybe— ” he starts.

I shake my head fiercely, cutting him off.

He gives a quick respectful nod. But he steps toward me. I step toward him. We are a foot apart, the smooth side of the table sliding itself against my jeans.

His eyes slip, weighted, from my eyes to my mouth, where I feel his attention pressing like it is a mouth itself.

Stop it stop it, shrieks my brain, a banshee’s warning.

Oh God, I can’t help it, I move reflexively toward him, tipping my face up. I want to be drunk, to be oblivious. I want to fall into him, to forfeit my awareness, to be someone else. I want it so badly it possesses me, claims my limbs, commandeers my frontal lobe. I am ravenous, drowning. I am not responsible for what I’m about to do.

He bends down. As though he is being pulled by the force of my need.

There is nothing stopping him. Nothing between us except for a useless inch of air. I feel all my good intentions, the work of these past years, funnel through a terrible, narrowing chute.

You love him? something in me asks. Too quietly. But I still hear it.

You really love him? Then how can you risk his life?

Monster.

Murderer.

They would still be alive now.

But you killed them.

And you haven’t learned.

I wrench myself away.

I am responsible. I will always be responsible. Otherwise I’m unforgivable. Otherwise all of them—even if Adam somehow escaped, the rest of them—will have died for nothing.