He kissed her back.
His lips were warmer than a human’s, as were his hands as he cupped her face. He tasted like a bonfire in the deep woods, smoke and darkness and the scent of dead leaves. This was an awful idea. They were coworkers. He wasn’t human. Her mother would probably kill him, literally.She didn’t care. Her soul was in hock to the Infernal Plane and everything in her life was turned upside down. She’d learned over and over that she couldn’t ever have anything she wanted, but for once, she was going to go after it anyway, at least for the night. She could have Luke. She raised her own hands to thread her fingers through his hair, but felt the warm smoothness of scales instead.
He stopped and pulled back, looking sad. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” she said, searching his face anxiously. When he didn’t respond, she said more urgently, “You keep telling me you can’t read my mind, just my desires. Luke, I can’t read your desires, either. What doyouwant?”
He swallowed unhappily. “I’m not Luke, and you want Luke.”
Had there been a switch? Did he have a twin? Was that a thing? Then she realized. “Be Lucareoth.”
“What?” He looked startled.
She tried as hard as she could to send a picture of yellow eyes and purple scales. Sexy, sexy purple scales. “I don’t want Luke the human intern, I want you. Be you.”
He inhaled sharply, and then dropped the illusion. The hair in her hands vanished, the skin smoothing into scales. They felt warm and smooth and lightly patterned under her fingers. She focused on how good satisfying her urge to stroke those scales felt, willing him to feel that completion of a desire although in no way did it reduce her need to continue stroking his skin. His pupils dilated as he realized she was trying to send him feedback deliberately, and he gave her a smile so full of delight that it broke her heart a tiny bit. She grabbed his horns and pulled him back down to her.
He yelped a little into her mouth. “Sensitive!”
She winced and pulled her hands away. “Sorry!”
“You don’t have to drop them,” he said, guiding her hands gently back. “Just be gentle?”
She stroked the base of one horn with a finger and he shuddered a little.
“How, ah,” she tried to find the right words. “How different are we?”
“Close enough, from what I understand,” he murmured. With his chest pressed against hers, she could feel his voice rumble and she went weak at the knees. “Shall we find out?”
***
“Shit!” she said, some time later. “The rolls!”
18
By midnight, they’d cleaned things up and put the sadly over-proofed rolls into the oven anyway.
Gisele emerged from her room when the pans banged into the oven. She pulled Morgan aside as Lucareoth unpacked the chicken hearts they had picked up from Whole Foods on the way home.
“A) You go girl! Congrats on ending the dry spell, you have no idea how bad this is straining my ‘don’t kiss and tell’ rule,” Gisele said in a low voice. “But also, B) this isn’t my business but you’re my best friend and I’m worrying here—demon-to-human STDs aren’t a thing, are they?”
“We used protection,” Morgan assured her. “Both the magical and the latex kind.”
“Oh good, because I’m pretty sure the clinic can’t handle it if you sprout horns or something.”
Morgan almost snapped at her—of all people, Gisele shouldn’t be making ignorant comments. But she looked again at the strain around her friend’s eyes. This was a lot for anyone to handle. And the only reason Morgan even knew the protocols for interspecies sex was because her mother had drilled her in them in a series of mortifying conversationswhen she was fifteen. Weirdly, interplanar coupling was less risky than with merpeople—there were a couple of deep-sea-borne diseases that humans were particularly susceptible to that didn’t seem like the kind of thing that should be able to jump species but nonetheless could.
Horns would be the least of your worries.
“I’m almost set up,” Lucareoth said. He’d stayed in his demon form and Morgan felt vaguely guilty for not having encouraged him to drop the illusion when he was at home earlier. “There are a lot more chicken hearts in this container than we need. I don’t suppose you folks are willing to eat these, at least?”
“I’ve never had a chicken heart,” Morgan said. “But if they sell them at Whole Foods, someone must eat them, which means someone must have a way to make them tasty. We bought them—I don’t want to throw them out.”
“I’ll text my abuelita, she probably has a recipe,” Gisele said.
“Gisele, could you hide in your room again?” Lucareoth said, looking worried. “I don’t mean to boss you around in your own house, and I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of human etiquette I’m already breaking here, but I don’t want Bel’aliol to know you exist.”
“In terms of etiquette, it would be great if you two could keep me up to date on whether your official household status is boyfriend/girlfriend or just friends with benefits, but no pressure there,” Gisele said easily as Morgan blushed. “And I also would prefer if your terrifying boss never knew I existed. It’s sweet of you to protect me.”
