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He’d seen Reynard vulnerable, and he’d stood up for him. He’d cared. I understood. Because I cared too. “It’s not wrong to care about someone.”

He sat upright. “For you, maybe . . .” His eyes widened. “Wait . . . It’s your fault! Your need to fuck him has rubbed off on me.”

I spluttered my whiskey. “That’s not—it’s not like that. I don’t, I mean, it’s just⁠—”

“That’s it! You’re gagging for his cock, and since I’m tuned into you, so am I. It’s not me at all. Fuck, that was close.” A strained, slightly panicked laugh fell out of him. “Imagine wanting to fuck a vampire. Ugh, yuck.” He grimaced.

Uh. I did sort of want to do that.

“No offense.” His smile flopped and faded from his face as a new thought ruined his mood again.

Maybe he was right. I definitely had a thing for Victor Reynard, but most of that was mixed up in the fangs-in-neck scenario. Was Zee angry about his secondhand lust for Reynard? We hadn’t really talked about feelings or relationships, mostly because he’d made it clear that whatever relationship we had wasn’t supposed to be more than business with benefits.

“I just wanted to come back here after going to Razorsedge,” he said, sulking again. “But he’s here. And I was going to fucking dance, but then I got to thinking about what would happen if he watched and liked it, and it messed with my head, and then you arrived, and here we are. Fuck. I’m not usually this messed up. It’s Daddy Fuck-Hard’s fault.”

He had feelings for a vampire, which I suspected was a demon no-no. He’d also had to go back to Sebastien to find a friend who had gone missing. Then there was the opening of the hotel, and the shadowbeast who had tried to kill him—it was a lot to handle. And because Zee was so . . . Zee . . . I sometimes forgot, not everything rolled off him like water off a demon’s wings. “How can I help?”

“You’re sweet, Kitten. I’m okay.” He breathed in through his nose, nostrils flaring. “But back at the club, I—” He swallowed his words, and tried again. “You ever cut yourself off from a part of you, and hidden it so deep that you don’t recognize it anymore? I mean, if you try to be that person, you can’t?”

More than he could ever know. “A little,” I admitted.

Zee winced, and sighed hard. “Forget it. I’m just hungry. I haven’t eaten in like, forever. Wanna get wasted and fuck?”

“An admirable solution to almost all problems, I find,” Tom Collins piped up before I could attempt an answer. “Besides the fucking part. Unfortunately, your cheap asses made it so I am not equipped with that bonus package.”

Zee’s eyes lit up. “There’s an upgrade for that?”

Oh dear. “Tom, can we maybe get some space here?”

“I’m a few lines of code away from a sexbot,” Tom unhelpfully explained, with a little gleam in his brown eyes.

No, this wasn’t happening. I did not need an incubus demon and a sexbot in the hotel bar.

“You don’t say.” Zee sat straighter, his interest piqued. “How does that work, then?” He circled his hand, gesturing below the bar. “You got much going on down there?”

“Buy the upgrade, then fuck around and find out.” Tom grinned. “Refill your cock-tail, sir?”

“Fuck.” Zee chuckled, holding out his glass for a top up. “We should definitely get that upgrade,” he said, watching Tom Collins saunter off to serve another customer.

“We aren’t getting that upgrade, and you can’t have sex with the AI bartender. It would be inappropriate. Like having sex with the jukebox.” I gestured at the neon jukebox sitting in the corner, playing a jazzy record.

Zee glanced over, then back. “You say that like I haven’t.”

“What?”

“What?”

I narrowed my eyes. He hadn’t. Had he? How was that even possible? Did it . . . have holes?

Zee’s eyebrows jumped.

He was joking. Wasn’t he? I laughed. “No sexbot.”

He pulled a sad face and made his wings droop. “Buzzkill.”

“Even if I wanted to upgrade Tom, which I don’t, we don’t have the money for upgrades.”

“Ugh, everything is so much easier when the answer is always to fuck it.” Zee slumped hard against the bar. “Tell me something good. Anything. Good news only. Lay it on me.”