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Then, with me done, he cleaned the bed the best he could before throwing a clean flat sheet over the spot.
“Sleep on this side.” He moved me over to the dry side of the bed. “We will get everything clean in the morning.” Then I was being hauled back into his arms and cuddled against his furry chest.
With Mateo’s arms around me, and his wings above me, and my body happily sated, it wasn’t long before I fell sound asleep.
Chapter 16
Eva
Nobody ever warned me how difficult it would be to focus on my work with an incubus right outside our workplace window. Prax had insisted on keeping me within view, so he’d parked his perfectly sculpted ass on the bench directly outside in the hall. And to think he’d been the one with the gall to claim Mateo would draw too much attention!
If he had the ability to turn transparent or take on any form he wanted to blend in, then why didn’t he? I suspect it was because he was getting a lot of attention from all the women at my workplace, and he thrived on it. It didn’t matter whether the attention was negative or positive; as long as he was getting a ton of women riled up, Prax loved it.
He’d taken one look at me this morning and immediately looked away again, as if he realized something had happened between me and Mateo and I was no longer on the market. Was it that obvious? Did I have a “just screwed and happy about it” look to me? Or had Mateo warned him off behind my back? Whatever it was, Prax was getting his fill of female attention, considering my office consisted mostly of women.
I could see the two younger interns taking turns strutting right by him with their lipstick freshly reapplied and their skirts hiked higher than was appropriate, trying to catch his eye. To their credit, the photocopier was right there. So technically they were still working.
The rest of my coworkers only took furtive glances as they admired the perfect masculine specimen on display. It was winter, and despite the cold, Prax was showing a lot of tanned skin.
At least he wasn’t topless, like he’d been this morning when he’d come to meet me at Mateo’s place. I’d insisted he conjure some clothes so he could fit in better, warning him that some Karen might overreact and call the cops on him if they thought he was naked, even though he was most definitely covered in all the parts that really counted.
In the end, he’d settled on a pair of leather pants and a silk shirt, open at the front. It wasn’t much better at not drawing attention, but at least it was clothes. He also looked completely human.
Oh, and I’d also had a little talk with him about toning down the rapey vibes.
“Do you women not like assertive males anymore?” he’d asked.
“If that’s your idea of ‘assertiveness’, I don’t think most women ever liked it,” I’d replied honestly.
“No one ever complained before. But I appreciate that this is a different time; I’ll dial it back.”
I’d worried at the time about what he’d meant by that. But by this point I was more worried about one of my co-workers jumping him than the other way around.
The person who was the unhappiest about Prax’s presence was…no surprise…none other than Tamara. She’d grumbled loudly several times already and had already questioned the two interns if they really needed to use the photocopier that much, implying that they were only there for the view. It turned out they really did have that much photocopying to do, go figure.
She stood with her arms crossed over her chest in her office doorway. “Eva, I need to see you in my office. Now.”
Oh boy. She’d seen me arrive with our distraction du jour, but even if she hadn’t, she probably would have figured it out, since Prax kept waving at me. Since she couldn’t very well go out there and ask him to leave—I mean, technically he wasn’t doing anything wrong—she decided to take it out on me. Amazing.
I put on my best business-as-usual face, and we went into her office. The rest of us only had cubicles, and she liked to laud that over us often.
“Close the door behind you,” she ordered.
I did. But I didn’t sit down. I stood, clipboard in hand, looking like I was so busy that I didn’t have time to chitchat.
“This is a place of work, Evangeline. You can’t have your little boyfriend hanging around outside.”
Yuck. Who the hell did she think she was, using my full first name like that?
I tried my best to keep the snark out of my voice, but failed. “That is not my boyfriend. I’m single. Remember?”
That had always been the reason she’d thought it was acceptable to hand me work at 4:55 PM on a Friday that needed to be done ASAP. According to her, the other ladies had families, and I should “be more considerate.”
In this workplace, there was this weird unspoken competition to be the busiest-seeming person on staff. Anyone without children made a big show of staying late at least a few times a week, even though we all had the same workload, and I had no problem finishing mine on time. Since I refused to play this game, Tamara decided it meant I didn’t have enough work and would spring rush projects on me right before it was time to swipe out for the day.
My stock answer had always been that I would love to help her get that done if she’d approve the overtime. Of course she’d never do such a thing, so she’d tell me then and only then that it could wait until tomorrow.
“I don’t care what he is to you. He can’t stay here.”
