My teeth clamped down, snapping like a trap around Beck’s fingers. The coppery tang of blood flooded my mouth, and I sputtered, gagging again as all thoughts of ecstasy drained rapidly away.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Beck

  My lust reflected in the incubus’s eyes. Those vibrantly violet orbs pulsed every time I pounded into him.

  I’d covered his mouth, intending to silence him and to stop myself from putting my lips on him instead. Then he flicked his tongue across my palm like a viper scenting the air and—shit—I wanted to be inside that hole too, fucking and gagging him until all he felt and tasted was me.

  I thrust my fingers past his teeth into the chasm of his mouth. He gave a surprised cry and bucked beneath me, but I pressed in deeper, levering his jaw open as I reached farther down his throat. He gagged and jerked again, but the garbled cooing sound that followed sent vibrations straight to my cock. His eyelids fluttered, and his purple irises rolled back as he wrapped his tongue around me and started to suck.

  The horny bastard purred and moaned and arched up into me while drool made tracks down his face.

  His perfect fucking face.

  I’d gone into this with the plan to forget him, but I already knew that image would be burned into my mind long after the night ended.

  Cherry drew a sputtering breath, half drowned by the saliva he struggled to swallow with my fingers invading his throat. Gulping, then gasping, he tightened every muscle in his lithe body while his ass clenched around my dick.

  I came fully inside him, burying my release so deeply he’d be feeling it for days. As reluctant as he’d been at the start of this, he was beautifully responsive now. Just beautiful, really, in a way men rarely were. From his soft jaw and upturned nose to his pink lips puckered around my fingers.

  His climax was pure rapture, everything I’d hoped to see when I turned him over. Fucking him from behind would have been expedient, efficient.

  But I wanted this view.

  The incubus’s hole clamped onto my shaft, and he cried out as milky cum spurted across his belly. It didn’t quite get on his face, but it covered me, and I couldn’t stop a near-primal growl from rumbling out.

  I stayed in him longer than I should have, captivated by his mewling sounds and the suction of his throat until stabbing pain overtook everything else. Agony spiked in my fingers as Cherry’s fanged teeth broke the skin. They grated against my bones, and I shouted, trying to free myself from a bite that made me wonder if I was balls deep in an incubus or a snapping turtle.

  “Damn it, kid, let me go!” I bellowed.

  I’d seen those double canines when he smiled. I never imagined I’d feel them too.

  Cherry stirred from his reverie, and his entire face went slack. His mouth fell open, leaking drool tinged red with blood.

  Liberated, I lurched away from him, staggering back from the mattress that barely passed for a bed and crashing into the dresser. My fingers throbbed with aching heat from deep puncture wounds. They were dripping already, dotting the floor with crimson while I scavenged my discarded clothes, looking for something to staunch the flow.

  I grabbed my jacket first and wound it around my hand before scowling at the incubus.

  “What the fuck?”

  He looked wrecked. Scarlet hair frizzed loose from his ponytail, and blush splotched his face. His chest heaved with panting breaths, shimmering from the trail of cum that stretched from his sternum to his navel. And there was blood too. My blood, being hastily swiped from his chin by trembling hands.

  “I’m so sorry,” he gasped. Tears shone in his eyes. “I didn’t mean… I’m a vegetarian!”

  Despite my shock and the pain searing up my arm, his declaration startled a laugh out of me. “When I agreed to a quick bite, I didn’t mean it literally,” I said.

  He certainly didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. I almost felt bad for him, which was absurd since I was the one with holes in my fingers.

  “You… you’re bleeding,” he said, stating the obvious.

  I wrapped the suit coat tighter, wondering how I would explain the stains to my dry cleaner. “A bit,” I replied. “I’m just glad I didn’t put my cock in there.”

  My gesture to his mouth caused his frown to deepen.

  I retrieved the rest of my clothing and dressed while Cherry tucked up in the corner of his bed. He hugged a pillow against his nude form, no doubt getting cum all over the case.

  The sight was as sorry as this room—this closet of a space with only the barest essentials and a void of comfort. I’d wanted to flee the moment we arrived because the bars on the window made me feel uncomfortably enclosed. I wondered if this was a room they merely used—shabby digs for Maslow’s venture into the Vegas skin trade—or if Cherry… lived here.

  Once I was dressed, sans jacket since it was being used as a tourniquet, I glanced back at the incubus. I’d thought he looked pitiful in the executive suite, but this was exponentially worse.

  I felt sorry for him. That was how this whole thing started, and also how it would end.

  Worming my uninjured hand into my suit coat’s pocket, I located my money clip before asking Cherry, “What do I owe you?”

  He looked up with his eyes watery and face flushed. “For what?”

  I tipped my chin toward his bed. “Pleasurable company. A midnight rendezvous. A tryst…” I trailed off, unsure how I could make it any clearer. “For letting me fuck you,” I concluded flatly.

  His mouth made an O shape, and he nodded. “Umm… It’s uh… it’s on the house.”

  I snorted. “That’s a lousy business model. I doubt Maslow would approve.”

  At the mention of his boss, Cherry’s features hardened. “It’s fine,” he mumbled.

  “You’re sure?” I asked.

  He hugged the pillow tighter, looking small with his knees tucked on either side of it and his chin resting on top. “Yeah. Positive.”

  I crossed my arms, trying to make the bulky bandage of my coat look more natural for my impending walk of shame through the club. Assuming I could find my way out of here. Cherry seemed pretty settled in, and I wouldn’t have expected him to escort me, anyway. His job was done.

  Turning toward the door, I made it one step before Cherry’s voice chased me.

  “Please don’t tell him.” I glanced back as he clarified. “Maslow, I mean.”

  I shook my head. “Kid, I’m not telling anyone about this. Your secret’s safe.”

  Retracing my steps down the hall, then the stairs, I skulked back into the crowded club. Blacklights shone on the stage, illuminating the dancer, Hemlock, posed in patent leather with his tail wound around the pole. He had the crowd fully under his spell, so no one paid me any mind.

  I emerged from the building and into the muggy Nevada night. Livingston was long gone, but the limo was parked right where I’d left it. Colette was there too, smacking a wad of bubblegum while she lay across the hood, watching traffic crawl by on the Strip.

  She stirred at my approach, raising her blonde head and turning toward me.

  “It’s illegal, you know, leaving your dog in the car.” Her French accent gave the words a musical lilt, one of a few holdovers from her human life.

  I kept my jacket-wrapped hand tucked against my chest as I wandered up beside the limo and leaned against the front quarter panel. “You could’ve come in.”

  Her eyes slid sideways, the whites glinting in the club’s glaring neons. “And join the masses ogling nubile demon boys dancing to ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!?’” Her nose scrunched. “It’s an experience I won’t miss.”

  “You sound like me.” I huffed a laugh.

  “Mmhmm,” she agreed. “Spending a few hundred years with someone will do that.” Swinging her legs around, she pushed off the hood to land with a crunch on the parking lot grit. “What kept you?” she asked while dusting off her slacks. “Livingston left an hour ago, looking less than pleased.” She drew closer to me, then sniffed the air. “What’s that smell? Sweat, shame, and… sex?”

  My smile turned tart. “Funny, I thought you’d pick up on the blood first.”

  “Blood?”

  My finger throbbed dully as I unwrapped the jacket, then raised my wounded hand to the glow of the lot light. The flow of blood had slowed, but my skin was smeared with remnants of red.

  Colette dipped in, grabbing my forearm and bringing my hand to her line of sight. “Did you get into a fight?” she asked, then bared her teeth in a wolfish grin. “A sex fight?”

  “I don’t get in fights,” I replied as she released me.

  “Oui, I know. That’s why you hired me.” Her chest puffed with pride before she sobered. “We should put something on that. I have first aid.”

  Circling to the passenger side of the Lincoln, Colette opened the glove box and pulled a small metal tin from inside. After locating the essentials, she urged me to sit while she crouched beside the car.

  She unwrapped an alcohol wipe and set to work scrubbing dried blood from the lines of my fingers. I tensed as she neared the puncture wounds around my knuckle, waiting for the impending sting.

  “So, I’m no expert,” she mused, “but this looks like a bite. Do they have animals in there, or…”

  “No animals,” I replied. “Just a very hungry incubus.”

  Colette’s ponytail bounced as her head snapped up, and she grinned. “The new kid!”

  I sighed. “One and the same.”

  She daubed a bit more before palming the stained wipe. “So, you and he…” Her grin turned wily as she stabbed her index fingers together, tip to tip.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” I asked.

  “Making the dicks kiss.” She gave one more press to emphasize her point. “Très romantique.”

  I scoffed as she opened a cloth bandage and measured it against my wound.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Livingston left, you stayed, and the incubus bit you… why?”

  “He was hungry.”

  The image of Cherry clinging to my coat hem in the executive suite, looking at me with round, anguished eyes, remained poignant. He’d given me the full Oliver Twist, “Please, sir, I want some more” act, and I’d believed him. His pale skin was almost sallow, and the stage makeup didn’t quite mask the gaunt shadows on his face.

  I wasn’t sure if energy starvation took the same toll as physical deprivation, but there were symptoms. The incubus had a problem I’d taken it upon myself to solve.

  No, it wasn’t nearly that altruistic.

  Luxe called me chivalrous; maybe I’d let the compliment go to my head.

  Colette finished wrapping my knuckle, then stood and stepped back. “I thought they fed on vibes, not flesh.”

  She waved for me to watch my legs as she swung the passenger door shut. Walking around the hood, she climbed into the driver’s seat and donned the black cap and gloves she’d left on the dash. As she adjusted her hat in the rearview mirror, I offered a belated reply.

  “I think he’s new.”

  “Bien sûr.”

  The keys hung from the ignition, adorned with a brass bullet casing salvaged from her revolver. Colette started the engine, and the Lincoln rocked into drive, rolling toward the stream of cars patrolling the Strip.

  “No, I mean new, new,” I clarified. “He’s young. Fresh.”

  “And sexy?” Colette eyed me.

  I tested my bandaged finger, mentally recounting the evening from the moment I saw the incubus swathed in silks to the way he looked on his back, his face lit by the glow pouring through that barred window.

  “Beautiful,” I murmured, mostly to myself, but of course, Colette missed nothing.

  “You didn’t kiss him, did you?”

  Glancing over, I found her wearing an apprehensive frown.

  There were myriad reasons I didn’t make a habit of affiliating with incubi or succubi. Their entire existence was based on predatory instincts, and they had supernatural gifts to further the cause of securing and subduing prey. I wasn’t as vulnerable to those charms as a human, but I wasn’t completely immune.

  And I refused to be fucking prey.

  Accepting a kiss from an incubus was as good as giving consent. Like a few of nature’s other hunters, sex demons secreted venom in their saliva. Ingesting it put their victim under a spell and formed a thrall bond that could linger for weeks or months. For humans, it often ended fatally, with their wills broken and bodies reduced to husks.

  I was offended Colette even asked, like I would succumb so easily to the young demon’s charms. I wasted no time in assuring her.

  “No, I didn’t kiss him.”

  “C’est bien.” She bobbed her head.

  We merged into a gap in traffic, heading north on Las Vegas Boulevard toward the Grecian Hotel, where I had a residential suite. Progress was predictably slow, and I settled in my seat while pushing my bloodied suit coat into the floorboard.

  “I assume the deal with Livingston went south,” Colette said after a few moments of quiet.

  I grunted assent. “His son caught him selling surveillance tech to private militaries. Wants to turn him in. He deserves every bit of what he’s got coming.”

  I left out that the way Livingston had manhandled Cherry was infinitely more problematic than his dodgy business practices. Almost as problematic as why I’d felt the need to fuck him afterward, lick him and make him mine or some shit.

  Colette tested her gloved hands on the steering wheel. “Well, you didn’t get back in the deal-making game, but you blew the cobwebs off your sex life, so… not a total loss?”

  Cobwebs. I scoffed.

  Sure, it had been a while since my last dalliance, but I hadn’t expected to stumble and fall into bed with an overeager incubus. Maybe I’d been deprived enough to be just as hungry as he was.

  Still, the whole thing was absurd. I slept with a prostitute. Rather, I accepted sexual favors from a prostitute who felt like he owed me something when all he needed was a good meal. I was better than that. I should have been better than that.

  “I shouldn’t have gone there,” I said, slumping. “Fucking pretty boys.”

  Colette snickered. “That’s a little on the nose.”

  I rolled my head toward her, not bothering to mask my fatigue. “Have you ever heard of noodling, Coll?”

  She raised a blonde brow. “Like noodle making?”

  “No, just noodling,” I replied. “In the southern states, they have these massive, mud-and-shit-eating fish that live in muddy, shitty holes underwater.”

  “And you’re telling me this why?”

  “Just listen. Some backwoods genius decided the best way to catch the damn things was to stick their hand in one of those muddy, shitty holes and wiggle their finger until a mammoth fish thinks it’s a worm and takes a bite.” I indicated my bandaged appendage. “That’s what happened to me tonight.”

  Colette pondered that, like what I’d said was profound rather than absurd. “Are you saying the incubus’s mouth was a muddy, shitty hole?” she asked at length.

  “I’m saying that place is.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder at the Devil’s Dollhouse fading slowly into the distance.

  Colette glanced back at the sign with the neon red demon swishing its tail back and forth. “I don’t know, Beck. It’s a pretty nice club…”

  “It’s shady,” I grumbled, thinking again of barred-over windows and mattresses tossed on the floor.

  “And shitty,” Colette added. “And muddy.”

  “And I almost lost my damn finger.” I sighed.

  After a few moments of silence, Colette clapped her hand against the steering wheel. “So, the incubus was the fish!”

  “Forget it.” I waved her off.

  The limo continued its sluggish advance along the Strip. It wasn’t the first time I’d considered that walking might have been better than dealing with the hell that was Las Vegas traffic. But Colette took her job of chauffeur seriously, and her task of bodyguard even more so. I couldn’t have her drawing her revolver on the first pedestrian that bumped into me. Humans spooked far too easily for that.

  Ahead on the right, the Grecian Hotel & Casino came into view. Its white, windowed edifice loomed over the manmade river that wound throughout the entire property. It had been called the Venetian years ago, before the demons took it over. New management turned the Italy-inspired boat ride into a hellish tribute to the river Styx, and the sky-painted ceilings inside now depicted characters and scenes from the Greek pantheon.

  I’d called the place home even before the renovation, but it felt cozier now. Taking the demon out of Hell didn’t take Hell out of the demon, I supposed. That infernal place would always have its hooks in me.

  While I studied the fountain spewing black water on the Grecian’s front lot, Colette flashed another cheeky smile.

  “What’s his name?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Irritation edged my words. I thought we were done talking about the damn incubus.

  Colette clucked her tongue. “You didn’t ask?”

  “His stage name is Cherry,” I replied. “They don’t use their real names. It’s a… privacy thing.”

  “You mean like you smashing your privates into his?” Again with the finger dicks colliding like bumper cars.

  She giggled her way through it, going so far as to pucker her lips and make a noisy smooching sound before I muttered, “I’m starting to think you don’t know much about sex.”

  “Certainly not as much as an incubus. He must be an expert.”

  I barked a laugh. “No, no, I wouldn’t say that. Not an expert. He was… adequate.”

  And reluctant. Shifting away from me like a shrinking violet until I started pegging his prostate.

  Colette hummed an amused sound. “Sing his praises, why don’t you?”

  “He’s pretty,” I admitted.

  “You said beautiful.”

  My expression soured. I had said that, but it didn’t bear repeating.