Another shrug.
“Tell me right now.” Her voice dropped. “Are you a shifter?”
“In a way.”
“I swear to god, Hunter, if you don’t start talking, I’ll leave right this moment.”
He looked away for a second as if searching for a half-answer and sighed when he found nothing. “Alright. I’m a demon.”
Ah. Demon. That tracked. She’d read about them, and while saying he was a demon was not the most specific answer given how many kinds were out there, they all shared some traits. Elusive. Dangerous. Seductive.
Trouble.
Her eyes narrowed, remembering that their powers varied greatly depending on what demon, but some were more intrusive than others. “Did you get into my head?” she asked. “Read my mind?”
“I mean.” He pulled his shoulders up, lessening the importance of the topic. “Not all the way in.”
“Fuck this.”
She shot to her feet so fast the chair scraped back with a scream. Her heart pounded at the rhythm of every single thing she’d thought about him in the last week, and it all crashed down like a humiliating thunderstorm. How weirdly safe he’d made her feel. How she’d noticed him when he came in late.
Oh.Oh no. How hot he was, and how she thought his body belonged on top of hers. Or underneath.
She had to get out of here. She marched away, made it right outside when he grabbed the sleeve of her coat. She pivoted without thinking, her training and instinct first and foremost, and hit.
The right hook took him square in the jaw. His head snapped to the side, and he stumbled back a step.
She could’ve sworn, just sworn, he mumbled, “I wish you would stop doing that.” But that was impossible because she would remember hitting him.
Feeling his face with one hand, he reached out to her arm, but she wrenched it away as if his touch burned. “Don’t touch me.”
Hunter froze. Hands up, palms out. “Okay.”
“No. Notokay.” Her voice came out too sharp, too loud in the silent street. Her pulse was hammering in her ears, and she couldn’t seem to slow it down. “You were in my head.”
“It wasn’t–”
“Don’t.” She took a step back, hand raised like she could physically ward him off. “Youdon’tget to decide what it was like. You don’t get to be in someone’s head without permission and call it ‘not all the way in’ like it’s a funny joke. It’s a violation.”
He didn’t flinch, but something changed in his posture. He stood there, still and quiet, a demon absorbing a blow that hadn’t fully landed yet.
Well, he was about to learn the meaning offuck around and find out. “You think this is normal?” she barreled on. “That this isfine? That we sit here and drink peppermint coffee and joke about shit while you’re crawling in my thoughts like some twisted peeping Tom?”
He had the decency to actually wince that time. “I wasn’t crawling.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, biting the words. “Am I misrepresenting your abuse? Was it more of a casual psychic loiter?”
“Daphne–”
“Don’t say my name like that.” Her throat burned. “You don’t get to say it like it means something.”
He ran a hand down his face and muttered, “What if it does?”
For a second, for one stupid second, her heart lurched because he sounded honest. Confused.
But no.
No, no, no.
