Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,93

but I didn’t know how. It felt like it had last night, with so many emotions suddenly bubbling up that I didn’t know what to do with any of them.

And then it hit me, and I really freaked out: this was Pritkin’s first time in more than a century, and I was screwing it up!

When we had first met, he’d been that strangest of strange things, a celibate incubus. Or half of one, with the half in question thanks to an overbearing demon lord of a father with ambitions he’d expected Pritkin to help him fulfill. Specifically, by having sex with other formidable demons, an act that allowed members of the incubus royal line to create a feedback loop that magnified power, giving both parties more than they’d started out with—a lot more. Power Pritkin had been expected to use to secure his father’s delusions of grandeur.

Imagine Rosier’s pique when his son decided that he didn’t want to be a glorified prostitute and told the old man no. I assume that had something to do with why Rosier never bothered to warn Pritkin that his pretty fiancée was a power-hungry demon in her own right, and planned to gain what birth had denied her by instigating the feedback loop on their wedding night. Something that . . . hadn’t gone well.

Pritkin had never had sex with a fellow demon before and didn’t know how to stop the spell once it had begun. And Ruth, his fiancée, didn’t get the chance, not being strong enough to participate in a loop in the first place, something that Rosier should have known. The result had been Pritkin draining her dry before she ever got anything back, leaving the horrified bridegroom with a dried-up husk in his arms instead of a warm, living woman.

At least, it did until he got up, strapped on his weapons, and went to find daddy.

That hadn’t gone well, either, since the demon council takes a dim view of those who attempt to slaughter one of its members. Pritkin had been sentenced to death, something that Rosier—who’d realized he’d screwed up—managed to get commuted to banishment on earth. That had suited Pritkin, since he hated the hell regions anyway. What didn’t suit him was the other part of the deal: no sex. Of any kind.

I wasn’t sure if Rosier had been the one to include that, but I was suspicious. He had hoped that Ruth, who had loved the hell regions as much as Pritkin had hated them, might be good for his son. Or, at least, that she might be good for him by persuading Pritkin to give his father’s realm another try. And when that blew up in his face, he’d gone with plan B.

He’d assumed that his son would come running back in no time, desperate for the very position he’d once refused. Because, for an incubus, no sex equaled starvation, pain, and a slow, lingering death. But Pritkin was only half incubus, the other half being an amalgamation of human and fey, and stubborn as all hell, so he survived.

But freedom had come at a price, including the loss of all the power he’d once gained from his incubus nature, which was slowly starving. Not to mention the lack of any kind of a normal life—no wife, no kids, no close friends who might notice that he just never aged. It was a lonely and bitter existence, and one that left him with no chance to grow or escape, or do anything except endure.

But now he could. Now, he could finally have a normal life again, except he was with me and I was a mess who’d repressed my feelings for so long that I didn’t know what to do with them now that I couldn’t. And I couldn’t.

I stared up at him, my breath coming faster, tears filling my eyes. This was important, and I was screwing it up. This was important—

Pritkin took my face between his hands and regarded me soberly for a moment. His palms were big and warm and rough, and the green eyes were steady and calming. He’d showered, but not shaved, and at least a day’s worth of stubble clung to the cheeks and jawline. Along with the serious case of bedhead he was currently sporting, it made him look rumpled and real and young, like the much younger version of him that I’d encountered on my search. And fallen in love with, because apparently, my heart knew Pritkin no