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“But . . . how?”
“Succubus, darling.” She’s not looking at me, her attention instead on the couple with their questing hands. One of them moans, and I can’t help shivering in response to the need in that single sound. Rusalka smiles, a slow curling thing that makes her lips look particularly kissable. “Dreams are our purview. We can’t travel to the human realm the same way the bargainer demons can, but my people have been visiting human dreams for millennia.”
That should scare me. I think it does. Maybe. “So you’re the one who’s been putting those dreams in my head my whole life?” Not my whole life, really, but ever since I hit a certain age, I’d wake up some nights too warm and restless and throbbing. I thought it was a manifestation of all the sin I tried so hard to avoid during my waking hours. But if it wasn’t me...
Except Rusalka is shaking her head. “No, love. We can manipulate the dreams a little, but the source is you. It’s what draws us to you in the first place. Beyond that, we leave evidence behind in the way of a particular energy signature.” She inhales deeply. “You’ve never been touched by one of ours.”
I want to call her a liar, but isn’t she telling me what I already know? I study her because it’s easier than looking at the scene developing, the dancers sinking gracefully to the floor that’s now a bed. Rusalka seems so at ease in her skin that envy sprouts its green tendrils inside me. What must it be like to experience that confidence, that comfort?
“You could find out, you know.”
I shudder. “You can read minds?”
“I can read desire. With you, it’s practically the same thing.” She grins, revealing tiny fangs that almost look like a vampire’s. “You are a burning pyre of desire, Belladonna. It’s a tragedy that you are so resistant to taking what you want.”
As if it’s that easy, even when I want to take something. I drag in a breath. “I’ve been told all my life that it’s a flaw, a sin, to want the things I do.” To want the people I do.
“A lot of people say that. I don’t care what they think.” Rusalka’s smile widens, but her orange eyes glow sympathetically in a way that makes me think she’s not judging me. “What do you think?”
Even Ruth couldn’t quite mask her feelings when I finally confessed that I find women as attractive—if not more so—than men. She told me that she loves me despite my sin, her expression so earnest, as if she wasn’t driving a dagger into the very heart of me. That was the moment I walked away from the church entirely, the moment when the rift between my sister and me became something I didn’t know how to cross. I still love her, but it hurts. It’s never stopped hurting.
“How can love be a sin?” I whisper, the words rotting in the very heart of me. I asked my father that once, and it was the only time he raised his hand to me. I swallow hard and say the words again: “How can loving someone be a sin? Why does God care what I do in my bed?”
“I think you know the answer to that, love.”
I hate her a little in that moment. Not for anything she’s said, but for the confidence that comes from her in waves. This person has never experienced the doubt I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try. I clear my throat. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it might.” They shrug, not pressing the issue. “What do you want, Belladonna? Not your god, not your family—you.”
“I don’t know.”
Rusalka chuckles, the sound an invitation I don’t know how to accept. “You may not be willing to admit it, but your desire is written across every bit of you. Would you like to see?” They don’t wait for a response, waving a hand leisurely in the direction of the couple.
Even as I tell myself not to, I follow the movement... to find the couple has shifted. No longer safely faceless, they are intimately familiar. Or at least one of them is. It’s me, back in the bed, Rusalka hovering over me, smiling that slow smile that’s an invitation to do unspeakable things.
I whip my head around to find her still sitting in the throne next to me. “What? How?”
“It was there all along, love.” They sound satisfied and... intrigued? Their orange eyes flare brighter as if they’re gaining energy from this. “You’re all raw need. Would you like me to show you the possibilities?”
No. It’s bad enough that our doppelgängers are laid out, my leg wrapped around her slender hip, my fingers digging into her short blond hair. What more could she possibly offer? I lick my lips, curiosity blooming inside me. Even before I all but sold my soul to a demon, I was flawed and imperfect in a way that I stopped believing God could fix. There’s no amount of faith that can change who I am at my core.
But . . .
My skin heats unpleasantly. “I can’t. I shouldn’t.”
“Ah.” I expect Rusalka to berate me, but she just hums a little under her breath, her gorgeous face contemplative. Finally, she says, “My people have many gifts, and one of them is to raise the desire in the humans whose dreams we visit. It’s how we feed.”
“... Oh.” A shot of pure fear goes through me, quickly followed by desire, and then I’m doused in shame because I shouldn’t be even considering taking them up on their offer. Except I am, aren’t I? And that’s what set me apart from my family and community before I left: knowing I shouldn’t and doing it anyways. “Do it.”
“Belladonna.” She says my name on a sigh. “Ask me again when you wake up. I’ll give you everything you want, and more. For now, enjoy the show.”
I turn to ask her what she means, but she’s gone, throne and succubus disappeared as if they never were. I frown, but a moan brings my attention back to the couple. They’re no longer simply kissing. Rusalka’s double has pressed mine down and is kissing a descent to the apex of her—my—thighs. If I concentrate, I can almost feel the brush of her lips against my heated skin. I want to blame the real succubus for this, but I know better. My dreams have always been like this, at least in sensation if not in vision.
And then Rusalka drags their tongue up my double’s center. I shouldn’t be able to see it so clearly, the way their tongue parts my folds and delves between them, but it’s clear in the unknowable way dreams can be.
I cross my thighs and squeeze them together, but I can’t begin to say if I’m trying to banish the growing heaviness of my body... or chase it to completion. It doesn’t seem to matter.
Her tongue pushes inside my double’s pussy even as she holds her quivering thighs wide, and I swear I can feel the slick sensation between my thighs. It makes me jump, but there’s nowhere to go. Even as I command my body to rise and run, my limbs go heavy and unresponsive—except for where I grip the arms of the throne, my knuckles white.
