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He feigned stumbling over a piece of broken furniture and tumbled into her. Her hands shot up to slam against his chest, magic sizzling through his clothes, but he’d already succeeded—he managed to press his nose into the crook of her neck for one blessed second, inhaled her scent until he grew light-headed, and staggered back.
Hazel stared at him with her hands still up, her breath a tad faster, her pupils dilated. “Next time you stumble,” she said in a voice that had gone husky, “hold on to something else or plant your face in the dust.”
“Why?” he sneered, trying to calm his racing heart and ignore the maddening need to grab her and strip away her clothes as well as her pretense of not desiring him. “Did I make you feel the kind of dirty you’d rather not admit to?”
Shuddering, she wrinkled her nose. “The kind I need to wash off with lots of soap.”
He bared his teeth at her. Only she could do that to him—make him want to snap at her at the same time he wanted to plunder her mouth and elicit those delicious little sounds from her that she made when she was on the edge of climax.
While he struggled with his warring impulses, Hazel cleared her throat, flicked her braid back, and took out her phone to snap pictures of the scene. Always so thorough. Meticulous. Not just in this, but in everything she did. He’d seen her cook. She followed the recipes down to the smallest instruction, painstakingly measuring each item, even when she knew the recipe by heart. Her clothes were all ironed, and her outfits color-coordinated from her earrings down to her shoes.
Even now she looked incredibly put together, her appearance one of sophisticated, casual chic with no concession to the fact that it was half past three in the morning.
“Tell me,” he said, irrational irritation beating underneath his skin, “do you roll out of bed perfectly coiffed?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She didn’t even deign to glare at him. Just kept taking photos of the room.
Oh, but he did want to know. He wanted to know every single damn thing about how she went to bed, what her sheets smelled like, what her body would feel like underneath him on a comfy mattress—instead of pressed against a tree—what she would sound like sated and sleepy next to him after several rounds of hot and sweaty sex…
Fucking hell.
He had to do something about this. Whatever his obsessive fixation with her was, he had to get rid of it, flush it out of his system so he could be a rational, carefree demon again instead of this bad copy of an incubus on a heavy dry streak. Avoiding her wasn’t working, ignoring his craving only made it worse, and nothing else measured up as a distraction, so…
“One night.”
Hazel raised a brow, her focus on the picture she was taking. “What’s that? Is that the longest you’ve gone without insulting someone?”
He clenched his jaw. “You and me, one night, no holds barred.”
A small smile tugged up the corners of her mouth. “Honey, I’d crush you in a fight, and you know it.”
The casually dropped endearment set his teeth on edge. “I don’t want to fight you,” he gritted out, amending that statement with, “unless that’s your idea of foreplay, then I’m game.”
She stilled. Lowered her hand holding the phone. Turned to look at him—finally. Her expression was blank, her mood unreadable. She didn’t even blink. “What, exactly, are you suggesting here?”
“You want it in crude terms? All right, then.” He shrugged, feigned a nonchalance that couldn’t be farther from the truth. His heart thundered, his stomach was queasy, and was that sweat on his palms? “One night of fucking. Glorious, naked, sweaty, dirty fucking to get this annoying thing between us settled once and for all. I know you want me as much as I want you, and it’s time we screwed our brains out so I can get on with my life.”
For a long moment, she just stared at him while the bloody nausea in his stomach threatened to spill over into the rest of his body.
Then she exploded with laughter.
Covering her mouth, she bent over, her shoulders shaking, and laughed with gulping breaths. His face flushed with heat, he balled his hands into fists and glowered at her as she straightened again and wiped at her eyes. When she saw his expression, she stopped short.
“Oh, dear gods,” she said, her voice hoarse from her laughing. “You’re serious.”
He pursed his lips. “Well?”
She pulled her shoulders back and pinned him with a cold look, all amusement erased from her face. “Every time I think you can’t get any more ridiculously rude, you go ahead and establish a new record. Congratulations on the worst come-on since that random guy who messaged me on Facebook saying, ‘Your lips look like they should hold my dick.’?”
The anger firing up his nerves wasn’t even in response to her slight against him. “Some fucking bloke sent you that? Did you hex his ass?”
She crossed her arms. “I told him my teeth would be too busy chewing up his baby carrot, and attached a close-up of a shark’s jaws.”
He choked back a laugh, grimaced, and was about to steer the conversation back to his—far more tactful—proposal when his acute demon hearing picked up commotion on the street outside. Holding up a hand for her to remain quiet, he sprinted to the front of the house, which he’d checked before Hazel had arrived, and peered out of the living room window.
The next second, he was back at Hazel’s side, pulling her along with him toward the back door. “If you’ve got a bit of distracting magic or whatever, now would be a good time to use it.”
“What’s going on?”
