Page 11 of Double Shot

Man, he was so unbelievably pretty. Even prettier when his attention was focused on me, which was making me both incredibly nervous and almost excited in a breathless, terrified kind of way.

His eyes tracked down my frame and back up, and something flared in them. He met my gaze again and offered me a tiny smile, flicking his date a wary glance to make sure he didn’t notice.

I tried to smile back. I really did. But my face was suddenly frozen, and I couldn’t move or react or do anything but stand there like a big idiot and stare at him.

I hated being in my human form. I felt ugly like this. Awkward and weird and like I was wearing a literal skin suit, even though for werewolves, our human forms were even more second nature than most other species. A lot of werewolves preferred their human forms, because they were more coordinated and less prone to following their natural instincts. They felt more controlled.

I felt the opposite.

The incubus’s smile dimmed when I didn’t react. My pulse leaped, as if I’d just missed my chance for something but I didn’t even know what. He looked back at his date and nodded as if he’d been listening the whole time.

Did he know? Had he been able to tell that I was the guy from the restroom? That the dick he’d stroked and spat on was attached to me?

He didn’t look at me again. I mean, why would he? Why would he give more attention to the big creep who’d been staring at him with a blank expression from across the bar? He was already stuck with one weirdo tonight; he was probably trying his best not to increase that number to two.

My gut churning with disappointment, I turned back to face the group of my co-workers. Crossbody and Vince had migrated over to the side and were standing very close together as the fae leaned back against the wall, smirking in response to whatever Vince was murmuring in his ear. The incubus hadn’t noticed them, and I tried not to let myself wonder if it was because he’d been distracted by me.

It couldn’t be. I wasn’t that distracting. Especially not compared to those two.

Heidi, Mads and Carl were sitting together at a table having a very animated conversation, and Kit and Gabe were having an extremely aggressive thumb war while Biff and Val sipped their beers and watched with mild interest. Not everyone had come out tonight. Dan and his boyfriend, Rafe, who was the IT manager at work, had game night on Mondays, so they weren’t here. Holt had said he was taking Taylor out for a fancy dinner—something he did often, because he liked to spoil his human partner—and Seb and Larkin had made some vague excuse before heading home the moment the clock hit five-thirty.

Susan was busy with her boyfriend, Asmo, tonight, and Kenneth and Corey were at their knitting club. I hadn’t mingled much with our newest colleagues, but some of them seemed fairly sociable, so I was surprised that John-o’-the-Wisp and La Dame Blanche, at least, weren’t here. The Beast of Burden and the Ghastly Boys were even quieter than me—Beast, in fact, was totally silent—so their absence wasn’t remotely surprising.

When I’d agreed to come out after Vince asked, I’d grown incredibly anxious. I’d started making plans to visit the club after we left the bar, because I knew I’d need some kind of release from the tension.

But now, after the incubus in the restroom… I was feeling calmer. More settled.

Maybe I didn’t need to go to the club after all.

I looked at the incubus’s table again, wondering if I should go over there and rescue him even though he’d told me not to. But now I was worrying that I’d freaked him out by staring at him without smiling, and I didn’t want to make him more uncomfortable by suddenly approaching their table.

I wasn’t exactly an inconspicuous guy in this form, which was why I hated it so much. I was tall, with wide shoulders and weirdly intense blue eyes that probably made me look even creepier. I felt ugly like this, but I knew, objectively, that I wasn’t actually ugly. I was probably conventionally handsome, in human terms at least, despite my crooked nose—it had been broken too many times to count—and snaggletooth. But receiving appreciative glances while in my human skin just made me more self-conscious.

Had the incubus liked the look of me? He’d smiled at me.

Did he know I was the guy from the restroom? He wouldn’t have been able to recognise me from the meet and greet, because I’d been in my werewolf form then. I was always in my werewolf form at work, so none of the fans knew what I looked like out of it.

Besides, it sounded like he’d moved on from whatever little crush he’d briefly developed on me that night. I mean, he was on a date. With someone he wasn’t actually interested in, but still.

And even if he hadn’t been… even if I’d just seen him from across the bar, and we’d made eye contact, and he’d seemed to be as attracted to me as I was to him… Even then, nothing would’ve happened. Because I was always too scared to make a move. Always too in my own head to just go for things. Always too anxious to live in the moment.

Except for those times I let myself be someone else. Like in the wrestling ring. And at the club.

And while sticking my dick through a glory hole.

I cast the beautiful incubus one last appreciative look before turning away with a sigh.

Well, I hoped he found The One someday.

And I really hoped it wasn’t the guy with the billy goat beard and baby poop shirt.

Chapter 5

Healthy Smoothies and Smelling Parks

Klaus

“So how did the date end?” Nat asked me the following afternoon as we went for our morning jog. We were only a couple of hours late this time, which was better than usual. Most weeks, we delayed it by a whole week and promised to walk twice as far the next time. We never actually did that, though. There was technically a walk at some point in our futures where, if we genuinely tried to catch up, we’d be walking about three thousand miles.