“How are you?” He asked.

“I’ll be fine,” I responded quickly, my eyes scanning the crowd to see if Lacey was here yet.

“When’s the last time you fed?” Dullahan asked and a muscle jerked under my eye.

“Last month,” I said. Liar, hissed in amusement in my head.

“What’re you thinking? You need to feed.” He leaned against the wall, sighing. He crossed his arms and I felt the faint smell of gasoline and leather.

“We’ve had this conversation plenty of times before,” I said quietly, my head dipping down slightly. I didn’t like talking to him of all people about feeding. Except he demanded to know, wanting me to give him a honest-to-god schedule of when I planned to fuck.

“You think starvation is building tolerance and I think you’re being short-sighted,” his raspy voice grumbled. He was agitated—worried about me tonight. Worried I’d be the demon I was.

“I’ll be fine,” I repeated, snapping the words out. I was saying the same damn thing too much tonight. I was fine, just fine. I’m fine. A great indicator that I was teetering on the edge. “I won’t even need to let him out to get the job done,” I added. Dullahan clicked his tongue.

“Him,” he sighed. “You’ll figure out how to accept what ya are one day.” He rubbed his calloused fingers over his scarred face. “I’ll be upstairs in the room, just in case.” I turned to him with wide eyes.

“In the room? Are you insane?” I asked, my eyes flipping back and forth between his. He raised an eyebrow at my intense reaction.

“What’s wrong with that?” He asked. I pulled my eyes away from his and found myself staring straight ahead at his chest. It was wide, I could see the shirt under his jacket tight across his pecs. He would be such a filling meal.

Tendrils of incubus power began to seep from my skin. No one could see it but me. It was a fine red mist, clouding the air between us. It moved towards the man in front of me and I sucked in a breath. If that touched him it would be bad. My eyes snapped shut and I got it under control, my teeth nearly chipping as I ground them together and backpedaled into the wall on the other side of the hallway.

“You’re getting worse,” I heard Dullahan say, his gravelly voice going soft. I didn’t know what to say. I opened my eyes, the mist was gone.

“Just…not in the room. Stay in the hall,” I said as a compromise. “Unless you want to watch me work,” I teased, the words slipping out before I could stop them. I grimaced. Sometimes I couldn’t help myself. The need was always pressing on me inside, always building up in my gut. Dullahan gave a booming laugh and smacked me on the back hard enough that I was forced forward from the impact.

“I’ll stay in the hall then,” he said with one last chuckle before giving me a placating smile and wandering off into the casino floor.