Succubus On Top by Richelle Mead

pretty. “Thanks, but I’m gonna stay here for a while.”
    Alec looked very pleased with himself. I turned back to her.
    â€œOkay, but can I ask you something real quick, Case?” I smiled sweetly at Alec. “It’ll just take a minute.”
    I steered her away, catching her as she stumbled. Closer inspection revealed she’d been indulging in more than just alcohol.
    â€œCasey,” I told her, once we were out of earshot, “I don’t think you should be hanging around with him.”
    â€œWhy not? He’s a nice guy.”
    â€œI don’t know about that. He just used the same pick-up lines on me. I think he’s trying to get laid.”
    â€œEvery guy here is trying to get laid. I know the game.”
    â€œYeah, but—”
    â€œLook,” she said, “I appreciate the big sister thing, but I’m not stupid. I can handle this.” A mischievous look crossed her face. “Besides, I never would have thought you would be the one preaching sexual caution.”
    Like I didn’t know what that was a reference to. Damn O’Neill’s libido. I made a face and attempted a few more logical pleas. She rejected them all, indulgence soon giving way to annoyance. By then, Alec hadn’t been able to control himself. He came back over and put a possessive arm around her. She looked up at him adoringly, and I knew a lost cause when I saw one.
    Seth and I met up back at my place, and he listened with admirable patience while I vented about men preying on women.
    â€œIsn’t that what you do though?” We were sitting on my living-room floor, setting up a game of Scrabble.
    â€œI . . . no. It’s not the same at all.”
    â€œHow so?”
    He held my eyes for a moment, and I finally looked away. “It just isn’t. Do you want to go first?”
    He let the matter drop. Another nice thing about being with a nonconfrontational guy.
    I quickly discovered playing Scrabble with Seth was like playing Monopoly with Jerome. A losing battle from the first turn. Admittedly, my knowledge of more than two dozen languages gave me a large vocabulary, but I didn’t craft or manipulate words on a regular basis. Seth was a master. He could study the board, spend a minute calculating, and then play some word that was not only worth tons of points but interesting too. Maize. Hexagon. Tawdry. Bisque.
    That last one was just cruel.
    Meanwhile, I was spelling words like as , lit , ill , and tee . And almost never on high-point spaces.
    â€œWait,” he said. “That’s not a word.”
    I looked down to where, in a moment of desperation, I’d played zixic on a triple-word-score space.
    â€œUh, sure it is.”
    â€œWhat’s it mean?”
    â€œIt’s sort of like . . . quixotic, but with more . . .”
    â€œBullshit?”
    I laughed out loud. I’d never heard him swear before.
    â€œMore zeal. Hence the z.”
    â€œUh-huh. Use it in a sentence.”
    â€œUm . . . ‘You are a zixic writer.’”
    â€œI don’t believe this.”
    â€œThat you’re zixic?”
    â€œThat you’re trying to cheat at Scrabble.” He leaned back against my couch, shaking his head. “I mean, I was ready to accept the whole evil thing, but this is kind of extreme.”
    â€œHey, it’s not cheating. Just because your limited vocabulary doesn’t include this word doesn’t mean there’s anything sinister going on.”
    â€œCare to back that up with a dictionary?”
    â€œHey,” I said haughtily, “I don’t appreciate your zixistic tone.”
    â€œIf you weren’t such a zixy woman, I’d be angry.”
    â€œYour zixicism is infuriating.”
    The game forgotten, we spent the next twenty minutes coming up with as many zix variations as we could. Interestingly, it seemed to function just as well as a suffix as a prefix. I suspected that if Bastien had