Page 61 of Succubus

CHAPTER 20

The house feels sensitized, sentient. As though it knows I’m here.

I wait, and it seems like the Japanese maple is waiting, too, spiky leaves poised spread-handed above me. The night holds its silver breath.

I hear footsteps—he’s alive!—hear him coming down the stairs, crossing to the door. My relief alarms me; I stuff it down, a useless sock, to the bottom of the hamper. It hasn’t been long enough anyway. He opens the door without hesitating, like he already knows what he will find.

I can’t surprise him anymore.

He towers over me in the doorway—larger, it seems, every time now—the hall behind him a tangle of shadow. His hair is messy, he was in bed; he’s wearing a soft T-shirt and loose sweatpants, but his eyes on me look fully awake.

There is a moment of total silence, and the air between us thrashes, seethes.

He is so mouthwatering, so horrible and beautiful, I want to tear something apart. Maybe him. My heart heats up, beats between my thighs. I can’t contain this; I can’t manage it at all.

We move at the same time, slamming together at the threshold, and he lifts me up, hands burning into my skin even through my clothes, and hauls me inside. He kicks the door shut and then we are against it.

This time he takes his glasses off himself, and my sweater (my shirt with it), and I am briefly grateful for the way the slippers fall off my feet. His hands are all over me, rough; running down my sides, my back, seizing my hips. I am biting his chest through his shirt—I am vampiric—I wrestle it off. And then he has flipped me around, he is behind me, his mouth on my neck, his hands on my breasts.

I fall back into him—his bulk, his breadth is a wall, unmovable. I strain forward, twisting, and he won’t let me go more than a matter of inches.

He doesn’t try to keep me quiet; there’s no one to hear. I am loud, I am feral.

In what seems like only moments, I am on my knees on the stairs.

I am forgetting the plan.

I think I can feel the place inside me where our powers meet: two waves, each swallowing the other, countervailing currents heaving, an elemental deadlock. This time, I don’t waver. I am not compromised enough to falter or weaken. My heart kicks imperviously in my chest.

He’s angry and desperate. “I hate you,” he tells me. “I hate you. You’re so— ” He wrenches his gaze off me, and I think for an absurd second that he was going to say “beautiful.”

“How many men have you killed?” he asks me.

“You can’t kill me,” he says, his voice ragged. “I’m not going to die.”

“Why— ” he gasps, panting. “Why.” And I understand what he’s asking.

Why did it have to turn out like this?

Why is it so good?

His hands linger on my waist. For a moment, he touches my jaw, my cheek, and his fingers are unintentionally gentle. They seem to want to stroke me; I can almost feel him restraining them.

He knows the answer.

It’s magic.

Is it only magic?

I can’t think, anyway.

“Get out,” he says immediately after, his voice flat. He’s already half dressed, the star pendant on his chest catching the faint light as he moves.

I stand up, shivering in air that feels colder now that his body isn’t warming me. I step forward and put my open hand on his abdomen, stopping him in place. We are still for a moment. I feel only halfway real, borderline euphoric, diluted by the dark, my surfaces turning fluid. I can’t see reality well enough to identify its edges, its firm little details. I have stepped into the shadowland, the literal gray area.

He looks down at my hand, his jaw tensing. Then his gaze slips upward, and again I feel it as though it has weight and heat. I feel his eyes reach for my face.

I think of his threat. To kill me if I don’t find Dick Face for him. I wonder what he’ll threaten next, since I’m still here.