Page 89 of Double Shot

The moment someone asked me where I grew up or what I did or what music I liked, my brain just short-circuited and I became incapable of giving anything more than the briefest of explanatory answers using as few words as possible. Preferably just one, if I could get away with it. And remembering to ask things about them in return? Forget it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get to know other people or strike up conversations, it was just that my brain refused to let me. The organ that worked harder than any other in my body, which refused to shut the fuck up for even a few seconds most of the time, would suddenly go completely blank.

It sucked. Especially right now, because I really wanted Nat to like me, and I really didn’t want to embarrass Klaus by coming across as cold or rude or just plain fucking weird. So before Nat could ask me any of the inevitable getting-to-know-someone-new questions, I launched into a rushed and jumbled explanation about our upcoming pickleball team-building day at work. It was already at the forefront of my mind, due to me dreading it, and it felt like an appropriate conversation topic for this kind of scenario. People talked about work at times like this, right? This kind of shallow, surface-level stuff that couldn’t make anyone uncomfortable. It felt safe.

Not that I watched what I said around Klaus anymore, because he made me feel safe, but Nat was a stranger. An extremely intimidating one, at that.

Although, what I’d assumed would be a fairly neutral, uninteresting piece of information seemed to affect Nat a lot more intensely than I could’ve anticipated.

He gasped, his hand shooting out to grip my arm. I stiffened instantly. I wasn’t comfortable at all with these kinds of casual touches from people I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to seem rude, so I tried to relax. I caught Klaus watching me, then saw his gaze dart down to where Nat was touching me. There was no jealousy in his expression, just a simple dawning understanding. Without a word, he grabbed Nat a drink from the cooler and held it out, which made Nat reflexively release my arm to take it from him.

“Thanks, babe,” Nat said as I met Klaus’ gaze and he gave me a tiny smile that told me he had my back.

For a horrifying split second, I thought I was going to burst into tears.

“Oh my gods, Bri,” Nat was saying. Apparently he’d already started calling me Bri. I didn’t mind it, mainly because I hoped it meant I’d passed the Nat test and had his approval. “Are you going to the Heracles Community Centre for the pickleball thing?”

“Um, yeah, I think that’s where Larkin said it’ll be.”

“Oh my gods,” Nat repeated, this time reaching out to pat Klaus’ leg excitedly. Klaus didn’t react whatsoever, just continued eating, which made me smile. “That’s where I work!”

I blinked at him. “It is?”

“Yes! Oh my gods, mouse, I’m going to have a whole… armada of sexy professional wrestlers playing pickleball right in front of me for an entire afternoon.”

Klaus made a little noise in the back of his throat and gave Nat a stern look that made my balls tingle. “And you can ogle all of them except this one.”

Nat waved a dismissive hand. “Obviously. This might be the most exciting thing to ever happen at the Heracles Community Centre. Like, ever. In its entire history.”

“Uh, is it old…?” I asked hesitantly, since that seemed like an appropriate follow-up question to his statement.

Nat made a face, screwing up his nose. “It was built in, like… the fifties, I think? Or maybe the twenties. Which time period was it when the old people got all pissy about how the youth had started rebelling?”

“The fifties,” I said, just as Klaus answered, “The twenties,” at the exact same moment. We shared a brief, private grin as Nat cracked open his can of soda and took a loud slurp. The sound seemed to prompt Klaus to reach back down to the cooler, and a second later he was passing me a cherry cola without a word.

Fuck, I wanted to kiss him so bad. I wanted to worship him. Had he been about to suggest I stay the night before Nat’s arrival interrupted him? Did that mean tonight would be the night? The thought made me both ravenously eager and undeniably nervous.

I needed to make sure I kept at least a somewhat level head during. I couldn’t just turn into a mindless, snarling beast, pawing at him and fucking him as hard and fast as my body craved. I needed to take my time with him. Trace every single inch of his skin with my tongue. Find the places on his body that made him cry out. Make him come multiple times before I even considered coming myself. He was an incubus; that meant he could essentially come as many times as he wanted without needing any kind of break. I hadn’t slept with an incubus before, but I still knew some things about them. And okay, yeah, I’d done some research. I liked research. It helped me feel more in control.

I didn’t have to talk much over the rest of lunch. Nat and Klaus chatted, both of them including me but seeming satisfied with my short, quiet answers. I wasn’t really all that uncomfortable anymore, either. Klaus knew how I was, and Nat seemed to have just accepted it. Maybe Klaus had told him I was quiet.

After lunch, Nat went upstairs to hang up and put away all of Klaus’s clothes for him while the two of us unpacked the few boxes in the living room. There wasn’t too much to unpack, but Klaus didn’t seem upset by that—he said he was excited to be able to go out and actually buy things that he knew wouldn’t just get taken or broken by terrible roommates.

“We could head to the grocery store when we’re done,” I said as I broke down the empty cardboard boxes. “Get you some milk and coffee and bread and stuff.”

“Oooh yes, good idea.” Klaus glanced up at me with a smile as he put away his books on the small bookshelf in here.

“So, uh…” I cleared my throat and kept my gaze focused on the flattened cardboard box I was folding into a neat rectangle. “Is Nat staying tonight?”

“No,” Klaus said quickly. “No, he’s not. So… so if you wanted to…”

I looked over at him and found him already looking at me. We stared at each other as the faint sound of Nat singing to himself drifted down the stairs.

I swallowed thickly and nodded. “Yeah. I’d like to.”

I saw Klaus’s throat bob with a swallow too. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

The air between us was suddenly crackling with tension, and we couldn’t look away from each other. I was positive that if Nat hadn’t been upstairs right now, we would’ve already been tearing each other’s clothes off.