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There was another rapid knock, this time followed by my boss’s voice. “Brian? Brian! We need to make sure you’re okay!”

Fuck. I’d forgotten to text Holt to let him know I couldn’t go into work this week. He was super understanding about ruts and heats and stuff, so it wouldn’t have been an issue. It’d just slipped my mind, even though Klaus had tried to remind me several times before I’d easily distracted him with my tongue or my dick.

“You just vanished from the team-building day and your car hasn’t moved in the parking lot at work!” Holt knocked again. “We haven’t heard from you. We’re worried.”

I still didn’t move, looking back down the hall at my bedroom door. I really didn’t want anyone near Klaus. Holt was pushing it by standing on my front porch, to be honest. And Seb? Another werewolf? Over my dead fucking body.

Holt hammered on the door. “We’re not leaving until we have proof of life! I’m not having Vince set up a fucking vigil in my office again.”

My lip curled with a little growl. Reluctantly, my movements stiff, I reached for the handle and unlocked the door. Holt was speaking before I’d even finished opening it.

“Oh my god, Brian, we’ve been worried about you! What—” He stopped when he saw me, dishevelled and breathing hard and with a wild glint in my eyes. “Are you okay?”

Seb was standing beside him in silence. He took one look at me and turned to leave. “Rut. Let’s go.”

“What? Wait, but—” Holt took a second or two longer to catch up, but he seemed to get the gist of the situation pretty quickly when he looked down and saw the mammoth erection straining under my towel. “Oh my god. Okay, yes, let’s—Oh god. So sorry to interrupt, Brian. Take as long as you need!” His voice grew more and more hysterical as he hurried after Seb before beginning to fade the further they got. “Good lord, Seb, did you see it?! It looks like he’s smuggling a bowling pin under there. I was genuinely scared that it was going to take my eye out for a second. How is he not toppling over? Is that normal for werewolves? Christ, I can’t even imagine—”

I shut the door, blocking him out, and turned to stalk back down the hall, letting my towel drop to the floor as I went. I skidded to a halt when I reached the bedroom door, because Klaus was awake and out of the bed, standing beside it with his fists clenched by his sides and his head lowered, glaring up at me furiously.

“Who. Was. That?” he asked in a low, trembling whisper.

“I—” I blinked hard to focus. Klaus had asked me a question, and my current top priority was giving Klaus anything he wanted. “My boss.”

For some reason, that made him gasp. “That hussy?”

“Um, I—” At least this was knocking some sense into me. Temporarily. I was so confused that some of the rut haze lifted. “I have no idea if Holt’s a hussy—”

“Did he touch you?” Klaus demanded, stalking closer, sniffing the air.

“Of course not.” I frowned.

“He better not have.” Klaus reached me. His hand shot out and cupped my balls. It wasn’t a remotely rough grab or anything, but I hadn’t been expecting it in the slightest, so I gasped with a little jolt. That seemed to startle him too, and he blinked hard, staring up at me, before his face suddenly crumpled. “Oh Lucifer. I’m sorry.”

“What? I—”

“I’m sorry, Brian.” He was sniffling, his eyes growing glassy and red, which was pretty fucking alarming. “It’s the heat. It—I didn’t mean to call your boss a hussy. Please don’t tell him.”

I lightly settled my hands on his shoulders. “I promise I won’t. Please… please don’t cry,” I begged, because I couldn’t stand the sight of it. Especially right now.

Klaus sniffed again and nodded, trying to pull himself together. Only then did he appear to notice that he had my balls in the palm of his hand. He blinked down at the sight, and his gaze grew heavier in a rush. His chest started moving faster as his breaths shallowed.

He slowly looked up at me, eyes thick-lashed and dreamy as they roamed over my face and chest and stomach. “Brian…”

It was like a switch flipped in my brain. The tone of his voice, the husky heaviness in it lit up some part of my hindbrain that immediately knew exactly what it meant. I could already sense the approaching wave of uncontrollable lust. The interruption had managed to clear the fog from my brain a little, but now it was rolling right back in.

Because my incubus was giving me the look.

I shifted closer, my hands settling on his waist as I ducked my head to nuzzle his throat. But before I could, rapid movement from the corner of my eye had me freezing in place.

Before I could even blink, Klaus’s tail whipped out and wrapped around my wrist. With shocking strength, it yanked, startling me so much that I had no time to brace. I stumbled forward, and it yanked again, this time practically hurling me at the bed. I landed on my back with a bounce, staring up at Klaus with wide eyes.

He was breathing hard and fast like a pissed off predator, eyes lit with something wild and unsettlingly hot. He climbed on top of me and crawled up my body, his horns and flashing eyes and whipping tail and flexing wings making him look like a medieval demon sent to seduce me and siphon off my innocence—the nightmare and secret fantasy of every repressed human who couldn’t make sense of their desires.

“Mine,” he growled when he was sitting on my stomach and we were nose to nose. “You’re my werewolf, so make sure that floozy you work for knows it.”

A part of me wanted to laugh, because I knew it was the heat making Klaus act this way. Plus, that was not a conversation I even remotely needed to have with Holt.

I doubted my worked-up incubus would be open to hearing that right now.