really want to know?”
She hesitated, and then her lips pressed flat. “Point taken. Maybe it’s not worth the risk of even asking around, then.”
“I guess you’ve got to weigh the odds. Would it be worse to do nothing at all and one day soon this bar gets stormed, or to just put out some very careful feelers that you can divert toward me?” I took another bite and chewed while she thought that over. Then I added, “I’ve never seen anything like this before, Jade. You know I wouldn’t be making an ask like this if it wasn’t important.”
A couple of college-age kids with facial studs that might have been disguising an actual horn or two had come over to the counter farther down. Jade sighed. “I’ll think about it—even if I check, I’m not sure I’ve got anyone for you. But if I do… I’ll reach out to your private number?”
“You’ve got it. Thanks, Jade. I appreciate whatever you can do.”
It was late enough that a few of the patrons were starting to sway with the music beside the tiled pond people used as both wishing well and, when drunk enough, wading pool. I hadn’t planned to dance, hadn’t planned to stick around longer than it took me to gulp down the rest of my meal, but as I tossed back the last sweet-and-sharp swallow of Jack and Coke, warm hands gripped me by the waist. The now-familiar bittersweet scent of cacao laced with caramel wrapped around me.
“I’ve finally got you alone,” Ruse said in his equally chocolatey voice, tipping his head so his lips brushed the shell of my ear. Just that small contact, not even a kiss, sent an eager shiver through me.
I swiveled on the stool and looked up into his languid eyes. My heart might have skipped a beat at the heat in his gaze. Even with that silly baseball cap on his head to hide his very real horns, there wasn’t anyone sexier I’d ever seen.
He couldn’t have worked any of his seductive voodoo on me while I had my protective badge pinned to my undershirt in its usual place over my heart—just in case I happened on any shadowkind whose motives I couldn’t trust—but he had plenty of totally non-supernatural charm to go around too. Taking the allure out of the incubus would have been as impossible as taking the purr out of a cat.
“We’re hardly alone,” I had to point out, motioning to the crowded room. “Did you follow me here? I thought you were taking care of your new best friends?”
Ruse grinned. “Oh, they’re well taken care of. Sometimes I impress even myself. I just had a suspicion I’d find you here. I know who you turn to for information and reinforcements.”
“I’m not sure I’ve gotten either.” I gave his solidly muscled chest a nudge, more playful than designed to push him off me. “You’ve found me—what are you going to do with me now?”
His grin stretched wide. “Why don’t we start with a dance? That seemed to work well for us last time.”
The last time we’d danced together—in my old apartment after he’d put on an ‘80s dance mix to cheer me up—I’d pulled him into bed with me later that night. I still wasn’t totally convinced that diving under the sheets with him again was a great idea. All the heights of bliss he could take me to were offset by that whole emotional manipulation side of his powers. He’d promised never to poke around inside my head again, but he’d promised that before the first time he’d done it too.
As he led me onto the dance floor, my uncertainty wavered. I’d forgotten just how good his hands felt against my body—trailing now from my waist over my hips and down my thighs. He stayed close as we shifted and swiveled with the music’s haunting rhythm.
When I stopped for a moment as one song faded out, Ruse pressed a kiss to the bare skin at the side of my neck. I couldn’t stop my breath from hitching at the jolt of pleasure.
“Hmm,” he murmured against my hair. “The devourer has joined us in the shadows. I’m getting the impression he’d like to have you this close always. You know, my offer to show him the ropes between the sheets—perhaps literally, if you’d enjoy being tied to the bedposts—still stands. Imagine all the fun we—”
Before he could finish that torturously tempting offer, another of our companions pushed through the dancers