The incubus chuckled at my annoyed huff. “I come bearing a gift.” He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket, and I saw my name written in neat cursive handwriting using purple ink. Willow always wrote me notes using purple ink she’d spelled to look glittery. She knew how much I loved pretty things.
“Why do you have a letter from home for me?”
“I was in the admin office and I saw it on a stack of other letters for first-years. The headmaster doesn’t let first-years receive mail until the end of the first semester.” He winked. “I figured receiving it early might cheer you up.”
When I tried to snatch the envelope, the incubus lifted it above his head. Given he was well over six feet tall and I was shorter than the average witch, I had no chance of reaching it.
I pouted. “Please, can I have it?”
“I need a kiss first, pet.”Ugh. Still, it wasn’t as if I hated the idea of kissing the incubus. Goddess knew I’d imagined it more than a few times. Ever since he’d pinned me against a tree, I’d wondered what kissing him would be like. Maverick had interrupted us that time, but my bear wasn’t here right now.
“Just one kiss?” He smiled before his gaze dropped to where my amulet rested in the valley between my breasts.
“Just one,” he confirmed before leaning in until our lips were almost touching, but not quite. “But I didn’t say where, now did I?”
“Hey! Impressionable juvenile kitsune right here! I’ll need trauma counseling if you do sexy things.”
Kenji’s loud complaining in my head was enough to break the trance the incubus had me under.
“On the lips or get lost,” I told Zane. “My familiar said he will file a report with witch HR for sexual harassment otherwise.”
Zane snorted. “Really? The same familiar I saw inside a mage sex club the other night?”
My eyes nearly popped out of my head in surprise before I turned toward Kenji.
“Is this true?”
The little shit vanished, leaving nothing but a cloud of white hairs floating in the air.
“Alone at last,” Zane purred. “So which lips?”
He cupped my jaw, rubbing his thumb across the seam of my mouth. I shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. Now that Kenji had fled, there was nothing stopping me from kissing the incubus.
Other than Maverick.
“I shouldn’t let you kiss me,” I admitted as he leaned back in.
“Why, pet?” He seemed curious rather than annoyed.
“My bear…” I said before remembering nobody was supposed to know about Maverick and me being mates.
“The bear’s not your only mate.”Wait…what?My stomach dropped. That made no sense. Yes, shifters sometimes formed harems, but I wasn’t a shifter. Stars, did he mean I was one of several females in Maverick’s harem?
The thought of my bear being intimate with other females made me want to vomit. And also smite them with fire magic. The floor beneath my feet smoldered. Smoke rose in little spirals, but Zane seemed unperturbed.
“What do you mean?”
“Calm down, pet.” Zane smirked, not at all concerned about me exploding in a fireball of jealous rage. He took my hand and placed it on his chest. “Can’t you feel it?”
I could feel many things. Namely, his firm pectoral muscles, and when I slid my fingers lower, the lines of his abdominals. The magical tether between us tightened the same moment the amulet burned my skin.
“Yes,” I admitted, still confused about what, exactly, I could feel.
“We’re soul-bonded, sweetheart,” Zane whispered against my mouth before he claimed me as his own.
This was no gentle kiss. Nothing like when Maverick kissed me; he treated me like a precious, fragile gift, one that might break if he pressed too hard.
Zane pushed me back until I slammed into the wall with a thud. His fingers threaded through my long hair, digging into my scalp so hard I whimpered. But the bite of pain only made the kiss hotter.
