Free Base Instincts by Larissa Ione Page A

threesome thing a handful of times, but it was all casual. I’ve never found a male worth trying to break through her jealousy for a real relationship.” He glanced at Slake, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he could be the first. Yeah, it was way too soon to start thinking about the future, but damn it, he’d never experienced this kind of intimacy with anyone, and while it wasn’t like him to share all of this shit, it felt . . . right.
    Slake scowled. “How can she be jealous if she doesn’t want you for more than sex?”
    “She says her species focuses on ownership.” He was surprised by the bitterness in his voice, but then, he was getting tired of playing her games. “They’re possessive of everything they consider theirs. They won’t even give a friend a meal if they’re starving. Sharing some things is punishable by death.”
    “Why the hell do you put up with it? Why don’t you tell her to take a hike?”
    “I’ve tried to leave her,” Raze admitted. “I made it a month before I nearly died.” His body tightened as if it too remembered being in extraordinary pain and misery. “Most of my kind are natural charmers. They love females and can talk one out of their panties in about ten seconds. But I’m not like that. I spent every waking second trying to figure out how I was going to get sex when I needed it, and I hated fucking strange females. I hated myself, and the stress was killing me. I’d go too long between releases, and then I’d get violent and sick . . . until I took it too far one night and collapsed in a filthy alley behind a hound-hump.” He shuddered at the memory of waking up outside the werewolf brothel, his body burning with fever, his eyes bleeding, and Fayle sucking his cock. Somehow, she’d found him and saved his life once again. “My life with Fayle isn’t ideal, but it’s better than the alternative.”
    “I guess I can see that.” Slake’s expression was troubled. “But she’s keeping you from being happy.”
    “Happy?” Raze snorted. “I gave up wishing for that a long time ago. I take what I can get.”
    Something flickered in Slake’s dark eyes. Sadness, maybe? “That doesn’t sound like any way to live.”
    Raze looked up at the ceiling again. “I’ve accepted my lot in life.”
    Very slowly, Slake reached over and brushed his knuckle over Raze’s personal glyph on his neck. A burst of electric pleasure exploded from the thin raised lines of the mark Raze had never been able to identify.
    “Is that why your personal symbol is an ancient Lydian symbol for acceptance?”
    Raze jerked his gaze back to Slake. “How do you know that?”
    “My people make weapons for species of demons you probably have never heard of. One or two speak ancient Lydian, and they always demand that certain symbols be carved into the weapons they commission.” Slake pulled his hand away, but the symbol kept pulsing pleasantly. “So? Are you an accepting person?”
    Raze almost said yes. But would it be the truth? He’d accepted the fact that he would never be a normal Sem. He’d never be attracted to females, and he could never be with a male the way he wanted.
    But that didn’t mean he liked it. And the more time he spent with Slake, the less accepting of his situation he was becoming.

 
    Slake and Raze lay in silence for a long time, long enough that Slake finally realized he wasn’t going to get an answer to his question. He wanted to ask more about Raze’s relationship with the succubus, partly to gain any information that would help him complete his assignment for Dire & Dyre. But it surprised him to realize that most of his curiosity had more to do with wanting to know how Raze would be affected by losing Fayle.
    It sounded like Raze truly needed her. For his life. For his sanity.
    Fuck.
    Slake shouldn’t care. He shouldn’t. After being rejected for who he was by his family and the one male he’d loved, a male he’d had been weak enough to let back