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“So,” I said into his chest. “Were you serious about me being a succubus?”

“Yeah,” he said. No hesitation. Then he paused. “How much do you know about succubi?”

“Umm.” I stared at his collarbone. “Just that they’re pretty, bitchy types who climb the social ladder with sex and sometimes kill their lovers.”

He laughed. The sound rolled through his chest and broke at the end when pain caught him by the throat. He sucked in air through his teeth. “That’s what social media will do for you,” he said.

I grimaced. Fair.

“No,” he went on. “Succubi take life force from their lovers. In exchange they give gifts. Power. Luck. Protection. That is why they are coveted in high society. They also get their strength from their first lover, which is why that lover usually ends up dead. Full drain.”

I pulled back enough to look at him. Or at the mask, at least. “So, what happens now?”

“Now, your powers start manifesting,” he said. “You’ll be hungry for the next few weeks while things settle. Sometimes uncontrollably so. Try not to kill anyone, Liv.”

“Wait.” I blinked. “I’m just going to be a horny bitch for weeks?”

He laughed again, quieter. “And you have a willing victim. How convenient.”

Before I could say that he wasn’t a victim, he hooked his arm around me and dragged me fully onto his lap like gravity worked differently for him. My blanket slipped, and he caught it with one hand and pulled it up over both of us.

He tilted my head, lips brushing the sore skin at my neck. The spot jumped like he had shocked it.

“Don’t do that,” I muttered.

He did it again just to be an ass.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The door jumped in its frame.

I groaned as someone practically beat it off the hinges. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Liv!” Sam yelled from the hallway. “Open the damn door.”

“Oh no.”

His head angled toward me. “Friend?”

“Best friend.” I scrambled for my phone on the coffee table. Screen lit up. Twenty-seven texts. Six missed calls. Mostly from Sam. One from Daniel. A meme from Mandi that had aged badly in the last twelve hours.

“How the fuck did my phone get put on silent,” I muttered.

“Liv!” Sam shouted. “I swear to every old god with a drinking problem, if you’re dead in there, I’m going to kill you.”

He slid me off his lap with shocking care, stood from the couch, and had to grip the armrest when his leg nearly gave out. The blanket fell. He pulled it from the floor with one hand, wiped dried blood from one corner like that helped, and wrapped it low around his hips. Fully naked, mask still on, and bleeding through his bandages.

“What are you doing?” I whisper-yelled. “You look like a murder suspect.”

“I am a murder suspect.” He strode to the door like he owned the apartment.

“That is not the flex you think it is,” I said, still whispering.

He cracked the door, then yanked it wide.

He stood there with the blanket held low with one hand, mask on, bare chest out like some kind of murder god who had lost his pants.

Sam stood on the other side, one hand raised to knock again and the other gripping what appeared to be a travel-size stun charm. Sam’s face went white and red all at once. Her jaw hit the floor. “Oh my demons,” she yelped.