Page 14 of Snowed In with an Incubus

Jaz woke up warm and content, rested in a way she hadn’t felt in a long time. Someone was holding her close. This might haveconfused Jaz if she was fully awake, as Brandon wasn’t a cuddler. But Jaz was still in that fuzzy space of half sleep, perfectlyhappy to enjoy being held without questioning it.

Her happy hum trailed off in confusion when she realized her arm was stinging. Why did her arm hurt? And why was it so cold? Most of her was pressed up against something warm, but her leg was exposed to the air, and that was freezing.

She cracked her eyes open.

An orc woman stood over her. She had a puffer jacket and a smug, surprised smile. When she caught Jaz looking, she raiseda mitten-clad hand in a wave.

“Hello,” Tammy said.

Jaz yelped.

The arms around her tightened, and Jaz found herself shoved upright as the man sat up underneath her.

Incubus, Jaz corrected herself, pulling a jacket to cover up her boobs. She’d gotten stuck in a tattoo studio in a monster town andslept with an incubus who was shockingly gallant about everything before giving her several mind-altering orgasms in a row.Also, she broke up with her cheating boyfriend. Also, she quit her job, and both her aunt and her best friend, Lilian, might think she was dead in a ditch with the way her lastmessages went.

“Wazzappening,” Sam slurred, arms still tight around her. He blinked hard in the studio light. “Tammy?”

Tammy waved again. “Morning, Sam! Power’s back on.”

Sam nodded, rubbing a hand through his messy hair. He glanced over at Jaz, blanching when he noticed how naked she was behindthe jacket she was holding over her chest.

“Happy New Year’s Eve,” Tammy said. “Looks like you two are ending the year with a bang.”

Sam threw a jacket at her. “Turn around!”

She did, chuckling.

Sam gave Jaz a tense look and slipped out from under the jacket pile, grabbing her clothes and throwing them over. She caughtthem gratefully, shimmying into her bra and wincing her way through pulling her shirt on. On second thought, she pushed hersleeve up over her SecondSkin, not wanting the pressure of a sleeve on her healing ink.

“We need keys,” Sam blurted as he wrestled his tight jeans back on. “No, wait. A back door that opens from the inside! Andspare keys, why don’t we have spare keys?”

“We did,” Tammy said, surveying the ceiling. “I lost them.”

“It’s a safety hazard,” Sam cried.

“You seem to have made the best of it,” Tammy said smugly. “Can I turn around yet?”

“It’s not funny,” Sam snarled, color high on his thin cheekbones. “I forgot to take my potion last week. I could’ve—”

He stopped. Jaz’s stomach sank as she remembered his guilt-stricken face last night. Even curled over in pain, he’d been soworried about hurting her. He’d looked so worried when he saw the marks he’d left on her skin, only settling down when she reassured him that she didn’thave a problem with them.

Tammy’s smirk vanished. “Oh,” she said, turning and immediately averting her eyes as she saw Jaz hitching her jeans up. “Uh.But everything went … okay?”

“Everything’s great,” Jaz said, so loudly they both startled. She grimaced, lowering her voice. She laid a hand on Sam’s arm,giving him a reassuring squeeze. “It all worked out, right?”

“Yeah,” he said after a second, some of that guilt leaching out of his expression. “It … it worked out alright. But itcould’ve been bad, and I’m not risking that again just because you can’t remember where you put your keys!”

Tammy held up two familiar black keys. “Found it,” she said, tossing one of them to Sam. “And this time wasn’t my fault! Damncat dragged it under the fridge.”

She picked awkwardly at her fangs, which stuck up from behind her lower lip. “Sooo. You weren’t rostered for today, right?”

“I was,” Sam said, buttoning up his jeans. “But I’m going home. No appointments today, anyway. You can deal with the walk-ins.”

“I’ll hold down the fort,” Tammy said. She seemed much less inclined to make fun of them now that she knew it was an incubus-inspirednight together. She kept shooting Sam surprised looks that Jaz couldn’t decipher. Was last night a bigger deal than she thoughtit was?

Tammy stopped Jaz as she picked up her handbag. “Nice work.”

For a second, Jaz just stared at her, thinking she meant sleeping with Sam. Then Tammy tapped her arm where her sleeve waspulled up above the tattoo.