“Because we are both adults, I have a favor to ask.”
“Please do. I would love a way to atone for my treatment of you the other night.”
“The thing is, since we are already being honest about how much we don’t like each other, you are uniquely suited to help me with a particular problem.”
Again with the not liking. Velario wasn’t sure he wanted to know what favor she had specifically for someone who didn’t like her. But he continued to listen without interruption.
“You see, I have a slight issue I can’t solve on my own. It’s why I came to Lhanaperi in the first place.” She paused. “I’m saying this all wrong. The problem I want you to help with is related to the issue that brought me to Lhanaperi, but isn’t the exact reason for my visit. Khiran’s helping me with that. But he can’t help me with this, of course.”
“Of course,” Velario repeated, at a complete loss. She had traveled to Lhanaperi because of some issue Khiran was helping her with? Khiran helped physicians treat small children by using his lure to make them more comfortable, but Velario didn’t know how that could help Reyn. She seemed ready to talk in circles for quite a while, so Velario dared a question. “You need Khiran’s lure for something?”
“No.” She looked down at her hands, clasped tightly together in her lap. “I need him to teach me how to use a lure.”
“You’re part succubus?” This was not what Velario expected to hear. All right, he hadn’t known what to expect, but certainly not this. It made a certain amount of sense, though. Reyn’s popularity came from her being exactly who she was, but a lure would smooth the way.
“Probably? I certainly have a lure of some sort, but we can’t fully figure it out.”
“All right.”
She looked up at him in surprise.
Velario shrugged. “So you might be part succubus. Where do I come in?”
Reyn stared at him. Velario’s easy acceptance of this revelation seemed to flummox her. He wasn’t sure how she had expected him to react—he didn’t understand why she was so nervous. He was friends with Khiran, after all.
Finally, Reyn continued. “Khiran and Lisca recognize the power, but it doesn’t match their understanding of a lure. Except for when suddenly it does. And I don’t fully understand how to use it, or when I am using it unconsciously. So I’ve been working to figure it out. I’ve been testing the impact it has in various situations with Lisca and Khiran, but there is one situation that I can’t test with them, but I think it is actually where I use it the most.”
“Reyn,” Velario said gently, “I am completely lost right now.”
She looked at her lap and fiddled with the lace ruffle on her gown. “It’s just that I have limited evidence, but from that evidence, I think my lure might have had an impact. They both finished early, you see.”
Velario closed his eyes and counted to ten. He was very much afraid he did see. In fact, with his eyes closed, he saw a bit too much in his mind’s eye. He opened his eyes and waited until Reyn met his gaze. “Reyn, are you talking about sex right now?”
Her head jerked in a swift nod. “Yes.”
“Let me see if I have this straight. You might be some sort of succubus. You can’t control your lure, which does not always behave like a normal succubus’s, but you think you use it during sex because your previous partners came too soon.”
Her chin dipped once more. “Yes.”
“And you are telling me all of this, after mentioning having me do you a favor because . . . ?”
Velario understood exactly where she was going with the conversation, but he couldn’t believe it. No way in the five hells was Reyn asking him what he thought she was asking him.
Except she was.
“Because I want to see if I’m right, and we understand what our relationship is and isn’t, so there won’t be any confusion if I test my hypothesis with you. If you agree, that is.”
If he agreed. It wasn’t exactly a passionate proposal, but Velario would not let that stop him. If he didn’t agree, she’d find someone else. He knew better than to think anything he said would convince her not to go through with such an experiment. So if she was going to do it anyway, why not with him?
Just the thought of her inviting another man to her bed had him clenching his fists. He made himself relax. She wasn’t inviting him to become her lover in truth. Reyn only wanted to test if she used a lure during sex. He had to respect that, even if he wanted more. If he couldn’t, then he had to refuse. And he would not refuse.
She was wrong about him not liking her, but that hardly mattered.
Reyn stilled herhands before they smoothed down her already smooth gown again. It had been surprisingly simple to make her proposal to Velario that morning. Once she got past the initial admission of her status as a succubus—and he accepted it without so much as a blink—the rest had felt easy.
She hadn’t decided before he arrived if she would do it, though the idea had lodged in her mind after her conversation with Lisca. Then he had sounded so earnest in his apology that she forgave him with little trouble. Despite how he had acted after the opera, she trusted him. He wouldn’t go around talking about her—actually, the fact that he had insulted her to her face was a mark in his favor. With Velario, she had someone she was physically attracted to, who resisted her lure, and who would understand what her proposal meant and did not mean in terms of their relationship.
This was just sex and a test of the effects of her lure. Nothing more.
