How to Raise an Incubus, #2

H2RAI 2: From Italy, With a Warped Kind of Love

How to Raise an Incubus 2: From Italy, With a Warped Kind of Love

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"What the hell happened to you?" I asked Selene, before surprising us both by launching myself at her in the mother of all hugs.

She was stiff in my arms, as she had every right to be, but that didn't stop me from squeezing her tight and saying a silent prayer that she was back in my life. In that moment, I wasn't angry with her for knowing what Andrei had done and keeping it from me. In that moment, I wasn't amazed that this was yet another incubus I cared for. I was just glad she was here.

Fucking hormones.

"Get her off me," Selene protested to Temp, sighing with relief when I eventually released her. "What the hell happened to you?" she wanted to know. "Have you suddenly become the best friend I never wished I had?"

Temp snorted with laughter.

"Fine. Be a bitch." I lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.

Selene's face softened and she wrapped her arms around me. "I see that carrying my lord's seed has made you soft," she said into my ear.

I pushed away from her. "Why does everyone keep calling them that? I'm not a manure-covered field and these babies are not little oats that Farmer Anghelescu has sown inside of me!"

"Calm down, Rae." Temp put his hand on my shoulder and he transferred his serenity to me, instantly cooling the heated anger that had threatened to consume me only moments ago.

Selene held her hands up in surrender. "All right, all right. Clearly, I was wrong. You're still the same hothead you were before" – she gestured at my stomach – "this."

I rolled my eyes at her. "So are you going to tell me where you were, or do you want to stand in my room all day?"

I ended up getting Temp and Selene downstairs while I donned my oldest sweats before joining them. They were arguing about something in the kitchen and both shut up when I came in.

"Where are we, high school?" I commented dryly, marching to the refrigerator and taking out a bottle of cold water.

Selene had already dipped into my father's bourbon. She swirled the liquid around in her glass before downing it in one gulp.

"I was just about to order take-out for dinner," said Temp, a little too casually.

"And I was about to go out to feed," Selene added. She set her empty glass on the counter.

I narrowed my eyes at them both. Standing side by side, they made the unlikeliest couple – Temp, in his usual band T and jeans, and Selene, looking like a starving hooker in a butt-skimming red dress.

"Don't kill anyone," I said automatically, leaning against the fridge.

Selene shot me a dark look. "How about you talk to me when a warlock-slash-demon-hunter-slash-psycho banishes you to a dimension in which you're nothing but a fucķing aura, huh? Then we'll see how hungry you'll be." She paused, eyeing Temp. "Even this creature's starting to look fuckable."

Temp backed away, holding his hands up. "Hey, I'm fragile. If you can't handle this with care, don't handle it at all. Besides, that is never happening."

"An aura?" I wrinkled my nose.

"An aura," Selene repeated. "No physical body. Simply floating around in nothingness. And the hunger..." She blew out a breath. "When I find that hunter, I will rip him to shreds and wear him."