your sleeping face, and that turned out to be your shoulder. Which just wasn’t as special.”
“Your life is hard.”
Sunshine was pouring in through the window, turning his sword and his ring into brilliant lines of light. Mae wondered what time it was.
Nick threw the battered old copybook at her, barely pausing as he sharpened his sword, as if it was a throwaway gesture.
“I thought,” he said. “Since you were here. That we could maybe have another lesson.”
Mae clenched her fingers on the sheets and found herself looking at the book as if it was a snake. She turned away to the curve of Nick’s back over his sword, and swallowed.
“Funny thing. I can’t seem to teach anyone to be human while I’m not wearing any trousers.”
“Is that so?”
Mae made a regal gesture, dismissing him from her presence. Nick threw his sword up into the air and then stood to catch it.
“Fine,” he said. “I need to go wet the sandpaper anyway.”
Nick left the room and Mae lunged for her jeans, stepping into them and pulling them up over her underwear, which had polka dots. She did up the button of her jeans and felt a lot better.
Normally she wouldn’t have been all that bothered, but today she felt the urge to be in full armor. She wasn’t feeling entirely comfortable with herself.
She had kissed Alan. Alan had kissed her. She’d really liked it. She’d given Seb her word, and now she was leading Alan on.
That fever fruit stuff was
It would’ve been reassuring to be sure that she could attribute what she’d done entirely to the fever fruit, but she’d been able to handle it better this time. She hadn’t been stumbling around trying to make time with Gerald— God forbid!—or anything. Maybe the fever fruit had made her a little more reckless, a little more inclined to give in to desires she already had.
She was in such a mess.
Mae put her face in her hands and then pulled herself together. So she was confused and conflicted and all kinds of embarrassed. She had a demon to teach.
And these were pretty basic human emotions.
“You decent?” Nick asked from behind the door.
“Yeah.”
“Pity,” he said, coming back inside with the wet piece of sandpaper, which he was smoothing gently up the blade of his sword. Mae had no idea why he was doing it, but he was absorbed enough that she wasn’t sure he would have noticed any indecency right away.
He went for his bed, sitting on the end and resting his sword against one knee.
“Do you get embarrassed?”
“Do you mean am I worried about people seeing me with my jeans off?” Nick asked. “Sure. Sometimes people are overcome. They fall down. They hit their heads. It’s worrying.”
“I actually knew you were shameless already,” Mae informed him. “I asked you about being embarrassed. Do you ever think about something you’ve done or said, and want to curl up and hide?”
Nick considered.
“No.”
“Humans do,” said Mae, sitting down on the bed herself. “You should try to avoid embarrassing us, or we might kick your ass.”
Nick laughed. “That’s a concern.”
He lay back on the twisted sheets, one arm curled under his head, free hand resting against his chest.
“Hey,” Mae said. “You should hold my hand.”
She reached out and touched his hand, and he flinched violently away.
“Why?” he demanded. “You were in the car. I told Jamie—”
“You told him why demons don’t touch humans,” Mae said. “You want to act human, though. Humans touch other humans. Comfort, love, duty, or fear, we do it for a thousand different reasons. If you give a damn about a human, if you want to even pretend to give a damn, then sometimes you have to touch them.”
Nick rolled like a cat and suddenly Mae was flat on her back against the pillows, with his face an inch away and his hands pinning her down.
“What difference does it make?” he said into her ear. “I’ve touched you before.”
Mae punched his chest and turned her face away, trying not to register that the corner of his mouth brushed hers as she did so.
“You touched me for a reason,” she said in a strained voice, concentrating on the wall and not Nick’s warmth and weight. “Sometimes you have to touch someone for no good reason except to let them know you’re there.”
The weight and warmth was gone suddenly, and Mae lay on the bed unmoving for a moment before she sat up
