"I love you, and part of loving you is telling you when I think you look like shit," Natalie said, leaning over the broad arm of the pedicure massage chair.

I nodded, pressing my back into the rolling knobs of the chair, pretending they were Khell's fingers as I let my eyes blink slowly shut. When I opened them again, I was back in the city, sitting in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked busy Clark Street.

"Are you eating?" Natalie asked.

"Are you practicing this kind of interrogation for when Emmett gets older?" I asked, before adding, "Yeah. Irregularly, but that's not my problem."

"Showering?"

The small woman with incredibly strong fingers, and slightly pointed ears peeking through a curtain of what I was pretty sure was bottle-purple hair, gave me a speculative glance from under her bangs.

"Daily," I said, for both their sakes.

"'Cause you have paint on your face," Natalie pointed out, and I blushed. "You haven't had paint on your face since college. Are you sleeping?"

The tears that sprung to my eyes were spontaneous but not surprising. I got weepy when I was tired, and I'd been tired for weeks now. I shook my head, unable to speak through the sudden knot in my throat, and Natalie only reached across the arm rests to take my hand.

"Okay," she said softly, our pedicurists taking care to keep their heads ducked as they bundled us up in warm, damp towels. "Do you want me to come over tonight? Theo can watch Em, and we can order food and drink wine and watch movies. You always pass out during a movie."

I smiled at the thought, and at having a friend who knew me so well. But then I thought about waking up in the middle of the night again, at the edge of an orgasm that wouldn't crash, feeling lonely and awful and horny and simmering with the urge to go and do anything else.

I opened my mouth to offer Natalie an excuse. If I could stall a few more days, we'd be near the full moon, and then she'd be busy with Theo and I'd be off the hook for another week or so.

Before anything could come to mind, a figure on the sidewalk across the street caught my eye. Tall and beautifully broad, a dark hoodie covering his head, a rich green fist wrapped around the handle of a gym bag. And that ass, hugged in gray sweatpants, flexing with every step toward the double doors of the Crossfit complex.

Khell!

My pedicurist squawked as I stood, feet tangled in the towel, planted in the mini jet tub. My cunt throbbed at the thought of him, the sight of him, already growing wet and ready for the orc who'd trained it so well.