“Well, don’t you look smart.”

“Do you think so?” Moira tugged at the slightly too-tight waistline of her black knee-length skirt, one of the few articles of clothing she owned that still kind of fit after her physical changes—a piece she hadn’t been able to wear since the tenth grade, back when it was part of her high school’s uniform. It flared gently around the knees, but the belted area up top was digging into her already-smallish waist like it wanted to lock around her spine.

“Well, your butt looks good in the skirt,” Severus said after giving her a slow once-over with that brooding black stare of his, and Moira felt her cheeks warm in an instant. Thankfully, they only went a little pink now; two weeks into this working partnership, Moira had almost gotten used to his flirty attempts at making her squirm.

“And the blouse? Not too frilly, is it?” She’d borrowed it from Ella, since she didn’t have anything that fit the business wear aesthetic Severus had insisted upon as they texted before bed last night. With a plan to go straight into the belly of the beast, he’d wanted them both to look the part. While he was handsome as ever in a tailored grey suit and crisp white dress shirt, the checkered red tie surprisingly fashion forward, Moira felt like an imposter.

Which was accurate to the situation. In all the time that she and Severus had worked together, she’d never felt smaller than in that very moment, standing across the street from Seraphim Securities. She was a grad student—an art history grad student, at that. She had no business waltzing into any of the corporate buildings downtown like she belonged there.

But then again, Severus was an escort in his free time, so, really, neither of them had a place here.

“I think you need a bigger bust to fill it out properly,” he remarked after another painfully long moment of study. He pinched the mustard chiffon between his fingers. The color was always a knock-out on Ella’s darker skin. On Moira, something had seemed off, but she hadn’t had time that morning to scrounge up something better.

“Cool,” she snapped, swatting his hand away. “Thanks. Great confidence boost.”

“Your bust is fine,” the demon muttered, rolling his eyes. “The perfect size, if I remember correctly.” Her blush darkened. “This just seems a bit big, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s the best I can do.”

“Come here.”

She tried to shuffle away, but he was too quick, catching her wrist and tugging her toward him. Then, as one might with a child, he spun her around, tucked his fingers under that too-tight waistline, and started stuffing fabric into it. Moira bit the insides of her cheeks, stock-still and blushing furiously.

And here she’d thought she had kicked the habit. Moira had met Severus at the café for breakfast every day for the last two weeks. She would get their meal—whatever that morning’s special was—and he’d reserve their seats at the front counter overlooking the street. For the most part they’d sit in silence, both eating and watching, Severus sketching up a storm. Although she didn’t know much more about him now than she had at the beginning, she had gotten used to him—to the way he purposefully leered and snarked and made comments with the express purpose of making her squirm.

She should have hated it—his forwardness. She should have put him in his place immediately. But she let it happen. She blushed and sighed and rolled her eyes, all the while battling a burn deep inside her, one she only ever felt around him.

Moira liked him. She knew she shouldn’t. He seemed to be trying hard to ensure she didn’t, but she did, and there was no denying it any longer. Not only was the guy breathtaking, but he seemed genuinely intent on keeping her safe—despite all the grumbles about her naivety regarding the demon world, which were accurate—and he had proved to be a talented artist. As of today, they had ten near-perfect sketches of the different angels they had seen come and go from Seraphim Securities these last two weeks. The likenesses were uncanny, and Severus intended to approach his demon contacts in the community soon to start matching names to faces.

Today, however, he wanted a rough idea of the interior layout of Seraphim Securities. If they eventually did manage to find Moira’s dad, Severus figured the best approach would be to confront him head-on at work when his guard was down. Severus wouldn’t accompany Moira inside for that, but he’d expressed an interest in the building’s floor plan just in case she needed help.

It was almost…sweet.

Of course, he could want that kind of info for his own purposes, but that wasn’t Moira’s business. If it made no impact on the search for her dad, let the guy do whatever he wanted.

When the Farrow’s Hollow Building and Service Development Center insisted there were no floor plans on file for Seraphim Securities, Severus had suggested they press the woman who sat at the front desk in their ground-floor lobby. The whole thing seemed risky, and Moira had been a bundle of nerves ever since she’d woken up two hours before her alarm went off that morning. Yet as Severus fiddled with her outfit, a little handsier, a little rougher, than he needed to be, she had some confidence in the fact that he appeared cool and collected.

Moira might not know a thing about this world, about the real angels and demons walking amongst mankind, but she almost felt safe so long as he was with her. In recent months, she had felt her strength grow, and she was only half angel; Severus was a full-blooded demon—from Hell. Should something go wrong today, that ought to count for something.

“There,” Severus said, taking longer than necessary to smooth the creases out over her hips. “All sorted—”

“Stop.” She batted his hands away, then stepped to the side to study her reflection in the café’s front window. He’d managed to turn a flouncy, slightly-too-puffy blouse into something that looked tailored to her figure—an hourglass figure at that. When was the last time she’d seen her body sport an hourglass figure? Months. Maybe even a year. Chin lifted, she appraised herself a moment longer, then gave a curt nod. “Nicely done.”

“I think so.” He slid his hands in his pockets as the sounds of early morning rush hour traffic pervaded the early morning quiet. “Your hair looks good too. I was worried it’d be too noticeable, the white.”

She swallowed hard and ran her hand over each side, catching any flyaways. Normally Moira wasn’t one for painfully tight French braids, but when she had told Ella she had a seminar presentation that morning and couldn’t wear a wool cap, her bestie had taken pity on her.

Knowing Moira didn’t want the whole world staring at her new hair, Ella had slicked it back with some styling product, then braided it in a rigid French plait. The tail end tickled the nape of Moira’s neck whenever she looked down, but all the styling product had managed to make her hair look a bit darker than the usual blindingly bright white. All the other angels had the same insane shade of hair, and it was a wonder more people weren’t curious about why everyone who worked in Seraphim Securities rocked the same styling.

Ella had been all too eager to help with her hair and outfit, and Moira had left the house with her stomach in knots. She hated lying to her, but the truth was still way too out there, even to share with Ella. So, Moira had told the most harmless lies possible, hoping that should she ever tell Ella the truth, her best friend would understand the need for secrecy.

Understand, sure, but Moira didn’t expect her to forgive. Not right away, at least. Best friends don’t keep secrets. They’d made a pact in elementary school.

But when it came to all this—

“Okay, okay, stop staring at yourself.” Severus’s voice cracked sharp as a whip through her musings, and she straightened up, her palms clammy, and faced him again.

“So, are you sure about this?” she asked, hoping to hide her nerves with a confident tone and moderately direct eye contact. “About, you know, this.”

Severus’s gaze followed her nod toward the depressingly masculine building across the street.

“Not really.” He pursed his lips for a moment, then shook his head. “Look, we’re here before they usually arrive. I estimate we’ve got about forty-five minutes to get the information we need and get out. If things go south, there’s a fire exit just off the lobby that’ll take us into the alley.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “And then?”

“And then we hope that I know the side streets of this city better than they do,” he told her with a cheeky grin. Severus thought he was so charming sometimes, so slick. A part of her knew it was an act—no one could draw like that, possess the attention to detail, take the time and care, all for something that had no obvious benefit for himself, and be a total arrogant horndog too. The act became more and more transparent with each passing day. The other half of her, however, didn’t want him to stop.

“Come on,” Severus muttered, moving toward the road. “We’ve wasted enough time already.”

Moira hurried after him, her kitten heels clicking noisily on the sidewalk. They stood side by side on the curb, waiting for the sudden rush of cars to pass, then darted across the street. Severus’s hand hovered over her lower back the whole way there, straight up to the tinted twin glass doors at the entrance. Moira glanced up as he held one open for her, catching Seraphim Securities scrawled in gold, antiquated font across the front of the building. Severus was right; the angels weren’t trying to hide it. But then again, why should they? If their purpose on Earth was to corral wayward demons and discipline problematic humans, they had nothing to hide.

Taking a deep breath, she strode inside. Shoulders back, chin up. Confident, but not too showy, not like she was better than everyone in a ten-foot radius—which only consisted of Severus and the woman behind the enormous metallic front desk in the middle of the empty foyer, a woman who couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Moira. As she marched forward, the clack of her damn heels thundering with every step, she tried to project that she belonged in a place like this. Because, from the receptionist’s slow, unimpressed up-and-down appraisal, she would need to prove that.

Moira bit the insides of her cheeks, ruffled but less annoyed than she could have been, and stopped about a foot from the metallic monstrosity of an information desk. At no point did the receptionist mirror Moira’s forced saccharine-sweet smile.

“Can I help you?” she droned, pushing her chair away from the computer and standing. The enormous wall hiding her actual workstation came up roughly to her waist; the woman was a giraffe. “The offices won’t be open until eight.”

“We’re a little early, but I was actually hoping I could speak to you,” Moira said as she offered her hand for the woman to shake. When the receptionist continued to stare back like Moira was the gum she’d just peeled off her shoe, she retracted it and forced it to her side. “My name is Rachel Clemmons, and this is…”

Shit, what was his cover name? They had both agreed to use fake names during this initial run into Seraphim Securities; Severus had suggested it after he’d had a good ol’ guffaw over the fact that Moira had used her real name when she’d booked him for that night. At the time of his less than gentle ribbing, Moira had just continued to eat her ham and cheese omelet in a stony silence, not responding until he changed the subject.

“Aaron Tanner,” Severus said, sidling up and planting his hand on the desk. “We’re architecture students from the university interested in acquiring some building blueprints for a research paper we’re working on.” When the receptionist’s entire face seemed to pucker, a rejection nigh, he carried right along. “We won’t need to take it out of the building. Photos will suffice.”

“If you need a floor plan, you should ask the city—”

“We did,” Moira told her, feeling only slightly smug when the woman pressed her lips together in a frown. “We were told your employers haven’t registered one with the city.”

“As I recall, my employers are not required to do so,” the receptionist said snippily, “nor am I able to just give out private information—”

“Perhaps we could come to some sort of agreement.” Quick as a striking viper, Severus snapped his hand around the woman’s wrist. At first she appeared startled, but then, as if injected with a fast-acting tranquilizer, her entire body seemed to melt under his touch. Her eyelashes fluttered, and suddenly she was all smiles.

“Oh, an agreement, eh?” The brunette practically purred. “What did you have in mind?”

“What are you doing?” Moira whispered heatedly to Severus as she searched for surveillance cameras. Besides the golden-doored elevators just off to the left, the emergency exit to her right, and two bushy ferns on either side of the main doors, the lobby was the epitome of stark—and not a camera in sight, as far as she could tell.

“You’re the one going on and on about how kosher we demons are,” he murmured back. “Take a look, firsthand, at the effect of an incubus on a human.”

Moira swallowed hard, staring wide-eyed at the receptionist—who had very likely heard Severus say he was a demon. However, it soon became apparent that the woman couldn’t tell you what decade this was, let alone what Severus had admitted. She just gawked at him like he was some sort of god, and a twinge of unwelcome heat roiled inside Moira when Severus smiled right back—that handsome, endearing, genuine sort of smile she’d only seen him use on her.

“Come now—” his eyes darted down to the woman’s breasts, which she’d thrust in his direction, her hips pressed up against the computer station below—“Mary. Honestly, is that your real name, or do they just make you wear the name tag?”

“It’s my God-given name,” she cooed back, rubbing her hand over his arm. “You feel like ecstasy.”

Moira wrinkled her nose. “Yikes.”

“Well, I’m taking more than I usually would,” he said with a sigh, then glanced back to Moira. “She won’t remember this encounter.”

“That’s a relief.”

“For who, exactly?”

She bit her cheek, wanting to slap that smile right off his face. It was pathetic that this had such an effect on her. Just disgraceful. And weak-willed. And… And…

Ugh. Now she could see why women fell for assholes all the time. They really knew how to get under your skin.

“All right, Mary,” Severus rumbled, his attention on the receptionist again. “We’d like the floor plans for this entire building. Every nook and cranny. Do you think you can do that for me?”

“They’re upstairs,” she said dreamily, now clutching at his sleeve. “In a locked room. Off-limits.”

“How scandalous. Perhaps you could give me a tour—”

“Hey!” barked the deepest voice Moira had ever heard. Its rich, somber timbre reverberated off the walls, hitting her full force, rattling her bones, and both she and Severus whirled around at the sound of a briefcase slamming into the tile floor.

There, almost engulfing the main doorway, was Angel number seven, dressed to the nines in the standard well-fitted suit and tie getup. He must have been pushing seven feet—seven feet of rippling muscle, that is. Near-identical eyes to Moira’s darted between her and Severus. Black-skinned, yet somehow still sallow like her, and robust; they’d giggled over the fact that while he had no hair—a glint of sunlight off his bald head could cause an accident on a good day—his eyebrows were just as white as hers.

They had also argued about his jaw; Moira always said Severus made it too sharp, that it was bulkier, more square. Now that they were up close and personal, Severus would be pleased to know he’d been right.

“Time to go,” Severus muttered, immediately releasing the receptionist, who flopped back into her chair with a moan, and grabbing Moira’s hand.

“Out, demon,” the angel roared, striding toward them with a fury that made Moira’s knees weak. Luckily for her, it didn’t matter if she was weak-kneed or not—because Severus was doing all the running for her. With an arm hooked around her waist, he hoisted her up and bolted for the emergency exit, keeping her flailing body squarely between himself and the pursing angel. As soon as they all but fell through the steel door, an alarm blared overhead, its piercing shrillness like a drill buzzing into her skull.

They were off and running as soon as they stumbled into the alley, and Moira trailed after Severus, clutching at his hand, hoping she wouldn’t roll her ankle in these damn heels.

When they reached the end of the narrow corridor, the alarm muffled by the now-firmly-shut door, she finally clued in to what Severus had done during their hasty retreat.

“Wait. Did you just use me as a human shield?!”

Severus wrenched his hand from hers with a yelp.

“Mind the rage, sweetheart,” he shouted back, neither of them breaking their stride as they turned sharply to the right and raced down the alley behind the low-rises next to Seraphim Securities. Skirting garbage dumpsters and wayward trash bags, Severus made a big show of blowing on and shaking out his hand, and when he looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes were completely black. “You nearly burned my hand off.”

“Well, maybe you deserved it.” Not that she’d done it intentionally—or even noticed it had happened. But good. Moira hoped it hurt as much as his dramatics implied. “I’m not your human shield.”

“No—technically you’d be a half-human shield,” he said, throwing her a wink before grabbing at a rusted door, which was slowly opening as an employee in a grey chef’s jacket sauntered out of it, phone and cigarettes in hand. The man leaped out of the way, and Moira muttered her apologies as they blitzed inside.

“If you ever do that again—”

“I’ll consider myself warned,” Severus called as they hurtled through what looked like a high-end kitchen—one of the many obnoxiously expensive restaurants one block over from Gabriel Street. Italian, given the amount of pasta prep she caught in passing, a chorus of fuck you and get the hell out of here accompanying them all the way to the dining room. They made a pit-stop at the front, the room quiet and dark, the tabletop linens needing to be changed. Severus had the doors unlocked in a matter of seconds, and she followed him out, her heart pounding.

They pushed on until they had about four blocks between them and Seraphim Securities, darting across throughways and cutting off cars. By the time they finally stopped, Moira was winded—but not as winded as she should have been—and rightly terrified.

“He knew you were a—”

“Of course he did,” Severus muttered, shooting her one of those duh looks he was so good at before peering around the corner of a building. “They’d know in a second.”

“He caught us—”

“We just need to lay low for a couple hours,” he insisted, taking her hand and hauling her across the intersection when the light changed. “Demons heckle angels all the time. Stupid demons, but those pompous fucks know the difference between hecklers and the big players. I’m a nobody. We’ll be fine.”

While he might have sounded confident, the twitch in his cheek and the clench of his jaw told a different story. Swallowing hard, Moira readjusted her grip on his hand and held a little tighter, her surge of human shield–rage ebbing—for now.

“Where can we go? They’ll find us—”

“My place,” he said curtly before another sharp turn took them down yet another alley. “My cousin spelled the place up tight as per my roommate’s father’s request. The entire building is hidden from demons, angels, and everything in between.”

Severus stopped so abruptly that she ended up crashing straight into him—it was like colliding with a wall. Glaring, Moira pulled her hand free and rubbed at the faint sore spot on her arm.

“Look, I know that was a bit of a disaster, but we’ll be fine,” he told her, his tone soft—comforting, almost. “We’ll regroup and try again. It’s not our only option.”

Too jumbled from what had just happened, the best Moira could offer in response was a nod. His gaze flickered down to her hand, but rather than reach for it again, he stuffed both of his in his pockets.

“Come on. We’re not far from my place.”

Moira would have preferred to sit in a dark, quiet room, preferably her bedroom, and decompress—but that hardly seemed like an option. So, she followed, an ear cocked for the sound of fluttering wings, all the while wondering if they were in deeper shit than Severus let on.

* * *

“Well, have we settled down yet, or are we still feeling prickly?”

Moira stared at the half-drunk tea in the oddly charming china Severus had rustled up from his cupboards. Green tea—nothing special. Given all that she’d seen in the last hour, she had expected some weird magical herb blend that was supposed to calm her down, but no. Just green tea—from the shop up the street, where Severus and his roommate Alaric got all their groceries.

“I don’t know,” she said, slowly lifting her gaze to where he stood across the open space, leaning against the black metallic railing. Behind him, a thousand tiny, too-steep steps connected all four floors of his enormous, invisible house in downtown Farrow’s Hollow. Moira was still trying to wrap her head around that, but she resented the accusation that she was the only one rattled by what had happened this morning. “Are we?”

She stared pointedly at the tumbler of whiskey in his hand—his fifth glass, if she had been counting correctly.

“I’m fine,” he fired back. “It’s you I’ve been worried about.”

Something between a snort and a scoff leapt from her mouth, and she ignored his eye roll while she finished the rest of her tea. As she’d suspected—it was lukewarm at this point, all the lingering bits of loose leaf flavor at the bottom leaving an odd taste in her mouth. Without a word, she held out her hand. And waited. And waited.

And waited, until Severus crossed the space between them and handed her his whiskey. The small sip burned all the way down her throat, scalding the green tea taste in the process, and pooled in her belly, warm and ever-present. She handed the glass back with a muffled cough, a hand over her mouth, and Severus strolled back to his spot along the railing, with its thin wrought iron bars in place to ensure no one tumbled over and onto the stairs below, finishing the rest of his drink in a moody silence.

He wasn’t fine. But neither was she.

Once he’d been sure they had no angels tailing them through the back alleys, Severus had cut back across town with Moira in tow. Three streets over from Seraphim Securities, they’d passed the popular university crowd hang, The Inferno, and stopped a little way up the street in front of an enormous, gaping space between two red-brick apartment buildings.

Exhausted from running in heels, Moira had dreaded another detour through the garbage-dumpster lined alleyways. It was then Severus had taken her hand again, and as he pulled her into the alley, she quickly learned what he had meant when he’d said his cousin had spelled his home up tight. One moment they were outside—the next, she was walking into the ground level of a long, narrow building, clutching Severus’s hand so tight that he complained he’d lost circulation.

Panicked, Moira had whirled around to find Severus closing the front door, which sat next to an enormous window overlooking the sidewalk—the same view one might expect from a ground floor apartment in any of the buildings around them. Only this building had been invisible to the naked eye from the outside.

“You need a special mark to get in and out, to even see or touch the building in the first place. The only way someone without the mark can get in is if they’re touching someone with said mark,” Severus had told her, totally blasé about the whole thing as he lifted his shirt to reveal a crudely carved pentagram over the left side of his ribcage. “Alaric and my cousin Cordelia have the same branding. It’s her mark. Bit cliché for a witch, but that’s the key in and out. No one else, demon, angel, human, vampire, garden gnome, will be able to find us.”

To the rest of the world, there was no building. They would walk right through yet another dusty, abandoned alley—the illusion a product of his witch cousin’s magic.

It had been a lot of information to take in all at once. Unable to get a word out, Moira had just plopped down on the floor, as cross-legged as her skirt would allow, while her brain scrambled to connect the logic dots. Rather than console her, Severus had disappeared to make tea and grab a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the ground-floor kitchen. He then led her up those nightmare stairs to the fourth floor—his floor—and sat her down on a leather couch in front of the window that faced the street.

And there she’d been, almost totally immobile, for long enough that her limbs were starting to stiffen. As she set the little china teacup down on the window ledge, catching a glimpse of the sunny, beautiful spring day outside, Moira knew she should have been thinking. Processing. Coming to terms with everything she’d seen and learned. But her mind had been relatively blank, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because she had already decided to accept whatever Severus had to throw at her—or if she was just in shock.

Despite not thinking like she should have, Moira had memorized nearly every detail of Severus’s home. Four floors. Invisible to outsiders, but tastefully and sparingly decorated on the inside. It made her think of those house-hunting shows she and Ella had shamelessly binged on during undergrad exam seasons. Who didn’t want to look at pretty, expensive houses in far-off lands? The shows were like cotton candy—no substance, but enjoyable. The building Severus shared with this Alaric guy reminded her of something she had seen in Amsterdam: tall, dangerously steep stairs, thin but multi-level.

A grey and black colour scheme carried throughout the interior, from the painted exposed stone on the walls to the slick black hardwood on every level. First floor: kitchen and dining area. All the latest appliances. Sleek furnishings. Second floor: Alaric’s level. A bit messy compared to the rest of the house. Furnished with a huge L-shaped sectional and an enormous wall-mounted TV. Third floor: empty. Under construction, apparently. Severus hadn’t elaborated.

Fourth floor: Severus’s domain. Sparsely furnished save for the couch and a trio of black bookshelves, each filled to the brim with books—orderly chaos. A white and grey checkered rug at the foot of the couch. A glass coffee table. No curtains over the windows. Across the space, beyond the stairwell next to the wall, just like on Alaric’s floor, was a closed door, which she assumed led to a bedroom.

Moira wasn’t sure why it surprised her that Severus kept his personal space neat and tidy, but it did. He just had all that personality. She assumed it would carry over into the way he decorated his home. Not so. Not a photo, painting, or decorative vase in sight. No plants either, save for the herb garden growing in the kitchen downstairs.

“Moira?”

“Hmm?” She blinked out of her staring, heart pitter-pattering hard when she found herself the sole object of his attention.

“Really… How are you feeling?”

Her jaw clenched briefly as she considered it. How was she feeling? Like her whole world had been turned upside down. Like her body wasn’t hers anymore. Like their first and possibly only attempt to get into Seraphim Securities had been a complete disaster and she was still no closer to finding her dad. So, just peachy.

In no mood to discuss it, not yet, she shuffled to the edge of the couch, elbows propped up on her knees, and rested her chin on one fist.

“What did you do to the receptionist?”

The muscles along his jawline flickered, as though he too were clenching in response to a question he didn’t want asked. Silently, he strode across the narrow room and set the glass tumbler on one of the bookshelves. Jacket gone, button-down sleeves scrunched up to his elbows, tie loose, that face—he was positively swoon-worthy. Moira hated that she thought that—hated that he had this unspoken method of distracting her.

“I did what I do to all humans,” he admitted softly, trailing his fingertips along a few books before turning on the spot and pinning her with that unflinching stare. “I charmed her.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Some demons are born with certain gifts,” he told her, hands in his pockets as he began pacing back and forth from one side of the room to the other—no more than ten or twelve feet, at the most. “I was born an incubus. You know we draw strength from humans to survive, surely, but we give a little of ourselves in the process. Our touch is…electric. It’s exhilarating. Exciting. A sexual thrill without the penetration.” He grinned when she made a face. “Oh, don’t look like that. It’s what we do. You must have felt it.”

“Felt what?” Her cheeks warmed. “A sexual thrill without the penetration? No. I can’t say I did.”

He paused for a moment, brow furrowed. “Come now. You don’t need to be embarrassed by it. The sensation is perfectly natural. It keeps our, er, suppliers compliant. Many humans climax from touch alone.”

Moira stood abruptly, moving before realizing she had responded so viscerally to the idea. How nice for all those women—to be able to orgasm just from an incubus touching them. How fucking swell.

“Well, you and I weren’t headed that way, if that’s what you’re implying,” she said stiffly, her stomach in knots. His chuckle only made the heat in her cheeks burn brighter.

“Look, I know you’ve got some angel in there,” Severus pointed to her, waving his hand up and down her body, “but there’s human too. I know you felt something that night. It was clear in your…response.”

Mouth hanging open, Moira gawked at him, no longer caring if he saw her blush. “Wow. Wow. You really are full of yourself.”

“It’s not an issue of being full of myself,” he growled back. “It’s a fact—”

“No, what I’m telling you is a fact.” She tugged Ella’s bunched-up blouse out of the waistline of her skirt, suddenly too hot. “Look, this isn’t a challenge to your ego, but I didn’t feel like you were, you know, drugging me, or whatever it is you do to humans. I’m sorry, but I didn’t.”

“You don’t need to be ashamed of the way your body responded to—”

“I was just trying to get into it!” she cried, wanting to run her hands through her hair—only to remember it was drawn up in a tight braid. At this point, however, many rogue hairs had escaped, likely giving her a half-crazed look. She exhaled sharply and planted her hands on her hips. “I was just trying to get into the moment. I was nervous as hell about hiring an escort, and I just… I just wanted to have a good time for once. I figured that would be doable with a professional.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “And are you telling me that didn’t happen?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“That’s bullshit,” he snapped, starting to pace again. “You and I would have had a grand old time together, just like every other human out there, if you hadn’t run off scared.”

“No—”

“Yes,” he sang the word back at her, almost cruelly, and glared. “It’s just a part of your fucking biology. I don’t know what you’re playing at here, trying to tell me otherwise. Clearly, you’ve found one of my buttons, and you’re trying to push it. To what end, I have no idea.”

“You are so full of yourself!” Moira half shouted, glaring right back. “This isn’t about you. This is me, trying to be honest. If what usually happens when you touch a human was that live sex show with the receptionist, then no, that didn’t happen!”

“Right.” Severus’s eyes swept up and down her figure again, almost dismissively, and he snorted. “Of course not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” That, what, there was yet another thing wrong with her? She had always been self-conscious about the fact that she’d never fully orgasmed before. Always. Now here Severus was, telling her that she should have felt something that she didn’t, and Moira didn’t have to put up with it. Not from him. She got enough of that crap from her own critical self.

“Look, you’re half human,” he ground out. “You must have been close to—”

“No, I wasn’t!” Moira marched right up to him, blocking his path, going toe-to-toe with the demon and refusing to wilt under his glare. “Was I having a good time? Yeah, you give a really good massage, and I was kind of getting into it once the nerves went away. But you’re just like all the rest of them. You’re the same as every other guy who can’t get me off.”

His nostrils flared, and in one blink, the whites of his eyes vanished, replaced by an inky black that did strange things to her—things she wasn’t ready to admit to. Moira swallowed hard, refusing to be intimidated just because some sex demon was getting a reality check.

“I always thought I was just picky, that the guys I was with were inexperienced, something,” she continued, her voice low and carefully controlled. “But then I couldn’t do it myself either, and suddenly the guys touching me didn’t feel like anything anymore. No one does. Every person in my life who touches me, it’s like…it’s like a gust of wind. It’s nothing.” She stabbed an accusatory finger at his chest, all the while unsure of who she was really angry at here. “You were supposed to be different. And you were! I finally felt like I was being touched again, like I wasn’t totally disconnected from the world, but then it ended the same as it always does…with me unsatisfied, hating myself, and yet another guy who can’t help me close the fucking deal to add to my list.”

Mouth suddenly dry, Moira pressed her lips together and realized she was shaking—and closer than she should have been. Hell, she was up on her toes, glowering at him like he was the one who was totally fucked up. And he wasn’t. Sure, he’d inadvertently poked the bear by refusing to accept her truth, but—

“I,” Severus hissed, his voice like the first rumble of thunder before a devastating storm, “am nothing like the little human boys you’ve no doubt fumbled about with through the years.”

“Oh yeah?” She cocked her head to the side, eyebrows up. “I’ve yet to see a single shred of evidence to back that up.”

“That night, I was as good as I always am.” His cheek twitched, hands curling into fists, and Moira gulped. She knew she ought to back down. She knew now she was the one poking the bear, adding fuel to the fire, but she couldn’t help herself. He didn’t get to win this one. Severus had a leg up on her in just about every other part of their strange relationship, but not this. Because Moira was right, and he was being a stubborn, petulant sex-demon ass.

“Are you good though?” she whispered, tilting her face up and holding that all-black stare. He must have leaned down to meet the challenge, because she felt the buzz of their proximity, the hum of anger and something far more dangerous boiling beneath his skin.

And she liked it, the danger, far more than she should.

“Because, let’s think,” Moira carried on, their noses nearly touching. Severus continued to glower down at her, still as a marble statue save for the odd twitch in his lips, the flare of his nostrils, the flicker of his jaw muscles. She inhaled softly, her gaze dropping to his lips. “You escort for a living. Your whole schtick is that you use it to sustain yourself. I get it.” Moira held her hands up. “I don’t judge, as long as you’re not killing your clients. But let’s be real… You don’t have to actually try all that hard. Like you said, some of them climax just because you’re touching them. It’s their biology. So, really, are you good?”

“Each and every one of my clients experiences pleasure beyond what she’ll ever receive from any man in her lifetime.” He over-enunciated his words. Anger-enunciating. It was kind of hot—and she knew, once again, that it shouldn’t be. Why couldn’t she stop staring at his lips? Drawing in a shaky breath, Moira lifted her head further, tipping it back just enough so that it wasn’t their noses about to bump, but their mouths.

“Well, yeah, of course they do…because you’re drugging them.” She nibbled her lower lip, not missing the way Severus’s eyes became heavy-lidded—as though watching her just as she had been watching him. Moira cleared her throat, her anger slipping away word by word. “And, you know what? I don’t think you would have made me come. You know why?”

“Why?” he snarled.

“Because you’re probably just not used to trying,” she murmured, grazing her lips over his before swiftly retreating, adding about two feet of much-needed space between them. Severus seemed to lurch after her, but he righted himself quickly as Moira planted her quivering hands on her hips and shrugged. “Just accept it, Severus. You’ve been showering me with hard truths since we met. I think it’s time to swallow a taste of your own medicine. You are a fucking lust demon. You don’t have to work to make women come, so, logically, when you’re faced with someone immune to your crap, you trip up a bit. You’ve just never had to try before. I get it.”

What the hell was she even accomplishing here? Pissing off the only creature in town who could possibly help her find her dad, all because he, what, didn’t believe her? Had used her as a human shield? It was petty, but damn, did it ever feel good.

Severus straightened, rolling his shoulders, his knuckles cracking. She expected to see rage glowering at her again. Instead, she found bemusement. Frowning, she countered his step toward her with one giant step back.

“Oh, sweet Moira, I have been trying,” he told her, following step for step until the backs of her legs nudged the couch—and still he stalked her. “I’ve tried to keep it all in. I’ve tried to push you away, tried to create some distance between us, but I suppose that’s been my fatal flaw, hasn’t it? My error, thinking of you as some silly human who’d be taken by my tricks…by my mask.”

“W-what?”

His smile was positively predatory. “I think it’s finally time to stop trying…”

Moira shrieked when his hands clamped down on her forearms, his grasp so solid and real that it made her heart skip a beat, just as it had the first time she saw him. Smiling, his eyes still black as the night, Severus yanked her toward him, and in one swift movement, threw her over his shoulder like she weighed absolutely nothing.