“She said I manhandled her and manipulated her emotions,” he muttered, either oblivious or uncaring as to my mounting anger. “She essentially accused me of taking advantage of her desire for me.”
“Ah.” Some of my ire died with that revelation. It seemed Guinevere’s crush on Zane hadn’t waned as much as I’d thought. Or was it hoped? The two sentiments were often closely related. “She still fancies herself in love with you.”
He grunted. “Not sure I’d call it that. Lust, yes. But now there’s a healthy dose of hate, too.”
Zane peeled off his blazer and draped it over the small table near the front door. His black Oxford shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, revealing his smooth muscles. Effortlessly fashionable, a trait I admired, given my penchant for the same.
I stared at him, studying the angles of his face, the shine of his hair. Frustration, both emotional and sexual, rolled off him in droves. Typically when in my presence, his attention was all for me, but his gaze hadn’t stopped roaming the room. There was a nervous energy to his body that had nothing to do with his lack of feeding.
“Something else is bothering you,” I observed.
He met my gaze once more, his blue eyes heavy with emotion. Shoving his fingers through his thick hair, he turned away from me and walked to the lone chair beside the bed, where he perched next to a pile of my clothes.
“I didn’t just kiss her, my lord,” Zane said, adopting his subservient tone in a very clear effort to hide his emotions. “I lost control.”
I imagined Zane’s lips on Guinevere’s, his hands on her body. Not a feeding kiss, like I’d shared with her, but lust. Pure desire for the sake of desire. A kiss for the thrill of it. The mental image of the two of them wrapped around one another sent blood straight to my cock.
Instead of anger that Zane had broken my rule, I felt… I felt like I needed to know more.
“How did it feel?” I asked, taking a seat on my bed across from him.
Zane met my gaze, one dark brow rising toward his hairline. “My lord?”
“Kissing our dear Guinevere. How did it feel?” I knew what the experience was like for myself, but I wanted to hear his point of view.
“All-consuming,” he breathed, the hunger in his voice palpable. “I think I drowned in her and came back to life, and now I want to do it a hundred times more.”
I recognized the light in his metallic blue eyes, the flush barely visible in his cheeks. His pulse pounded visibly in his throat as his lust filled the room and inundated my senses. I hardened further, stirred by his desire.
I’d never heard him speak of any of his conquests with the same fervor he saved for me. It explained why his gaze hadn’t run over me the moment I opened the door in nothing but a pair of sleep pants. Usually he couldn’t keep his eyes off my torso, but tonight, he maintained reasonable eye contact.
Because the succubus had gotten under his skin.
And now he wanted more.
Oh, how I understood that feeling all too well.
When I didn’t speak, Zane went on. “I started thinking about how we might lose her, and I was struck by the thought of a world without her in it and I got… a bit reckless.”
“We still may lose her,” I pointed out, needing both of us to be prepared for that potential outcome. “So I understand your sentiment. If we’re unable to discover who is committing these crimes, there’s a very real chance she’ll be banished to Hell.”
We stared at one another in silence as the words filled the air between us. The idea of Guinevere at the mercy of Hell for the rest of existence left me cold and dissatisfied.
However, mulling over only one of multiple possibilities was a waste of time, especially when we had a team in place to attempt to reroute fate. Deciding on a course of action to solve the problem was the only way to fix it, so I pushed away all thoughts of Guinevere in Hell to focus on the issue at hand.
“We need to focus on how to fix it,” I said out loud, changing course for our discussion. “Ashmedai seems to believe this is all related to power shifts and thinks someone is using Guinevere to distract me.”
Zane inclined his head, and all traces of his earlier emotions faded from his expression, replaced with his usual shrewd intelligence. “That’s an interesting theory. I assume that’s why he wants you to complete an audit?”
“Yes.”
A small part of my mind cautioned me against confiding in Zane, even as I told him about Ashmedai’s concerns. My last confidante had been Amarella, and that hadn’t turned out well in the end. But I’d long considered Zane to be more than just my lover. Not a consort, of course, not like Amarella had been. More like a companion or a partner. Speaking to him of the things I couldn’t share with anyone else felt right.
Zane stood and crossed to the small wet bar in the corner of the room. “By conducting a demon audit, you’ll learn who is growing in power,” he said as he opened the cabinet and extracted two glasses. “I assume you have a list of where to start?”
“I do.” In fact, I’d spent most of the evening working on it after I’d left Zane and Guinevere at her home.
Zane splashed my favorite scotch into both glasses, his tone teasing as he asked, “Am I on this list?”
