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Raini shrugged. “I’m just a little conflicted about something. I need to work it out in my head.”
“No, you don’t,” said Devon. “You need to talk it out with us. You need to offload all your worries. Let us take this burden from you.”
Raini almost crossed her eyes. “You are so nosy.”
“Absolutely,” Devon admitted, unrepentant. “But I prefer ‘curious,’ as you know. On a serious note, I’m worried about you.”
“This has something to do with Maddox, doesn’t it?” Khloë narrowed her eyes. “I know you went to see him last night. Your mom mentioned it.”
Devon straightened in her seat. “What did he do? Do we need to pull out the bat?”
Raini gave the hellcat an exasperated look. “No, you don’t. He didn’t do anything, he just … made a few things clear that surprised me.”
“Such as?” Khloë pressed.
Raini took another bite of her sandwich. “He isn’t affected by the succubae allure.”
Harper’s brows flew up. “At all?”
“Nope,” replied Raini.
Devon pursed her lips. “That’s good, right? I mean, you feel more comfortable around people like that.”
“I do,” Raini confirmed. “And it is good. It’s just that, well … he wants to cross the platonic line.”
“That can’t surprise you. He eye-fucked you the first time he saw you.” Khloë frowned as a pickle slipped out of her sandwich. “I’m actually surprised it took him this long to make a move. You really didn’t expect it?”
Shaking her head, Raini rested her half-eaten baguette on the crackly wax paper it had been wrapped in. “He didn’t say or do anything over the past four months that would imply he was interested in going there. At first, I thought he’d decided not to complicate the situation. Now I’m thinking that, in truth, he was giving me time to get comfortable around him so that I’d be less likely to turn him down.” She folded her arms. “Go on, tell me I’d be stupid for not doing exactly that.”
Harper forked up some creamy coleslaw. “Look, I’m not his biggest fan, but it isn’t really anything against him as a person—I don’t know him. I simply don’t like that he won’t claim you as his anchor. Not just because the bond would stop you from going rogue, but because I don’t like that he doesn’t appreciate how insanely lucky he is to have you. If it wasn’t for the fact that Khloë’s alive because of him, I would have ripped him another asshole by now. But what me, Devon, or Khloë think of him isn’t what matters.”
Khloë’s brow creased. “It’s not?”
Harper scowled at her cousin. “No, it’s not.”
“Speak for yourself,” the imp uttered before taking another bite of her sandwich.
Harper slid her gaze back to Raini. “What matters here is what you think of him.”
Raini bit her lip. “I know he’s not good in the typical sense of the word. But I don’t believe he’s entirely bad either. He’s so very alike and in tune with his demon, which I think is because he exists in a kind of emotional purgatory. Because if you’re filled with both pure light and pure darkness, you’re neither one nor the other. So your world would be … gray.”
Devon’s shoulders lowered, and her face softened. “Yeah, that would be a fucker. And now I’m feeling sorry for him.”
Harper lifted her water bottle. “It’s no wonder he wants you in his life, then, Raini. Someone like you—bright and bold and beautiful—would act like a beam of light slashing right through that gray. And I’m finding it hard to begrudge him having that.”
Khloë frowned again. “Why?” she asked with a child-like confusion.
Harper sighed at the imp. “I thought you and Keenan were working on your struggle with empathy.”
Khloë straightened, affronted. “I can be empathetic. I feel bad for people, like, all the time.”
“That’s sympathetic,” Harper pointed out. “Also, you’re lying.” She cut her gaze back to Raini. “What was your demon’s reaction to his declaration?”
Raini drank more of her soda. “I would have thought it’d be totally against the idea of me hopping into bed with him, since it isn’t exactly happy with him right now. But it hasn’t put up any kind of objection.”
Pulling open a bag of potato chips, Devon narrowed her eyes. “It’s up to something.”
Khloë nodded. “That would be my guess, too. Our inner entities often have their own agenda, and they don’t always want to share it.”
“It’s also a little smug,” said Raini. “My guess? It views him acting on the sexual chemistry as his resolve weakening, and it thinks that if he and I are sleeping together, he’ll eventually give in to the call of the bond.”
“That would make sense.” Done with her sandwich, Khloë wiped her mouth and fingers with a napkin. “In your shoes—if I didn’t have Don Juan, of course—I wouldn’t be opposed to playing a game of attacking the pink fortress with Maddox.”
