by Lila Shaw
Evernight Publishing
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2012 Lila Shaw
ISBN: 978-1-77130-148-0
Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor: JS Cook
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To my sista from another mista, Sandi—thanks for all the moral support. Love ya, girlie.
SUCCUBUS GAMES
Romance on the Go
Lila Shaw
Copyright © 2012
There are deities who may take you under their wings, making you their protégés of sorts. Form such associations with delicacy and caution for they are rarely for your long-term benefit. Jealousy amongst their kind when unleashed is frequently visited upon the innocent.
“I’m With The Gods,” Adventures of an Olympian Groupie by Pamela D’Mar
Chapter One
I learned the hard way to stay out of fights that don’t concern me. The memories of those you support are extremely short and those you oppose extremely long. And if they’re petulant gods from MountOlympus, well, you can kiss your ass goodbye.
Sisyphus Prison has been my home for centuries, and neither its landscape nor its inhabitants do much to recommend the place. A few are interesting fellows, who, like me, are only guilty of being caught between two bickering deities.
Every year the gods descend and watch our games, the highlight of which is this gladiator-type match where the winner is granted his or her freedom, and the loser is banished to Tartarus, the underworld of Hades. The wardens hold a lottery to determine the combatants. Competition to play in the Games of Sisyphus is fierce because anywhere, even the underworld, is better than Sisyphus.
Standing in the center square with hundreds of others, I rip open my envelope and stare at my ticket, number 1811. I lift my chin into the gentle breeze and smile to the heavens. 1811 is the date of the Games in reverse, surely a lucky omen. “Thank you, Aphrodite,” I whisper to my patroness, the goddess of love, though I doubt she’s listening.
Tyche hosts the lottery and chooses one lucky winner each year. She’s the goddess of chance and fortune, and therefore deemed neutral and objective. Go figure. She doesn’t like me though, not since I seduced one of her boy toys. He was a dud, so no huge loss on her part. But really, what did she expect when she sent him to rough me up over a little past due rent? I was, am, a succubus. Sex is my thing, what keeps me alive, and men are my utensils. Poor things don’t stand much of a chance when my hunger rages. This quirk of my nature, of course, always makes me the evil temptress.
Approaching briskly through the throng of inmates also hoping for their shots at freedom is Narcissus.
“Hey Willow! You ready for the drawing this year?” He pulls out a mirror and fusses with his hair.
“Sure do, Narce. Lucky number 1811. You?” I wave my ticket between his face and the mirror.
He spins out of reach. “Yo girl, course I do. I’m number seven.”
“Seven? As in zero-zero-zero-seven? As in you were somehow one of the first ones to get your number?”
He tilts his head. “I don’t know why you act so shocked. I told you I’m tight with the warden.” A wink hints at exactly how close they might be.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter since pure chance determines who gets picked, right?”
Narce cocks a brow. “Sister, that’s what they want you to believe, but I happen to know they never put more than the first five hundred numbers in the bowl.”
My mouth drops. “What? Why not? Who told you this?”
“Tyche just likes to be a bitch, and I heard it from her sister, Nemesis, the tall one with the thinning hair in the back?” He ruffles his own gorgeous locks for emphasis. Never a bad hair day for Narcissus.
I roll my eyes. Narce can be such a queen sometimes. However, his gossip is usually right. I need a ticket under 500 to even have a chance at being selected.
“I don’t suppose you’d trade tickets with me?” I bat my eyelashes, but flirting with Narcissus is like offering a light to the sun. The dude only thinks of himself and is impervious to my wiles. Maybe that’s why we get along so well—he is as safe from me as I am from him.
He flops his hands on his hips, pokes out his lips and shakes his head.
“Do you know anyone else with a low ticket number?”
Narce screws up his mouth and scans the crowd, eyes squinting.
“Why don’t you get glasses so you can see better? Your eyesight’s getting worse.” I constantly nag him about this, but he never listens.
“Can’t break up the perfect lines of my face with something so obnoxious as…ugh…spectacles.” He rises on his tiptoes. “Ah, yes! There’s one. Helveticus. He showed me his digits—403.”
“Does he know about the cutoff?” I step closer to follow Narce’s line of sight. I’ve never met nor heard of this Helveticus guy.
The man in question puts Narce to shame in the looks department, not that Narce would admit it. Helveticus stands nearly six and a half feet tall. Hair of darkest ebony flows down his back but is trapped in a loosely tied leather strap. The locks of hair in front of his ears are tightly braided into thin ropes. A full beard, not too long, not too short, no visible signs of leftover meals tangled within, adorns his face. The white toga he wears sets off his deeply tanned skin and crystal blue eyes. Someone’s been hanging out in the Apollo tanning fields. He’s strong too, with big, bulgy muscles in his arms, shoulders, chest and calves. I wonder what he did to merit a spot in this wretched place?
“I doubt he’s been clued in. You shouldn’t have any problem convincing him.” Narce pats my back. “Good luck to you, Willow. Win or lose, if you’re chosen, you’ll be granted a pass out of here.” A broad grin overtakes his face. “Then I’ll be the best-looking one.”
Leave it to Narcissus to prize a higher ranking in the beauty poll over his freedom.
Helveticus stands quietly waiting for the drawing, which is not for another hour. He’s not talking or reading or doing anything, with his arms dangling at his sides. His calm would have grabbed my attention even if his low number had not.
I glide toward him, my most alluring pout affixed to my face.
“Hi.” I step close enough for the pheromones I produce to work their magic.
His gaze drifts up and down my body, lingering on breasts barely covered by my Rufus Lorrie designer toga. Oh yeah, he’s hooked.
“Hello.” He tears his eyes away and focuses on some object off in the distance.
I follow his sightline to Narcissus flexing his biceps while a bored-looking nymph holds his mirror for him.
“I’m Willow. My friend Narcissus pointed you out to me.” I find opening with a truth, accompanied by a healthy dose of love perfume, usually works much better than playing the coquette.
“The fellow with the mirror?” He extends his hand out in front of his face to pantomime Narce’s constant companion.
“Yeah, that’s the guy. Anyway, he said you were participating in the drawing.”
“Everyone here is participating.” One brow lifts, the other one hunkers down. He’s suspicious.
“Right.” I glance around, alert for observers or eavesdroppers. Now comes the lying. “See, here’s the thing. I’ve got this ticket here.” I hold up my 1811 ticket. “Only these nu
mbers are very unlucky for me. I’ve consulted the Oracle and it agrees. So I was wondering … if you might … want to switch?” I thrust my breasts forward to recommend them and by extension, my suggestion.
He narrows his eyes. “You want to switch tickets? Why’d you pick me? Why didn’t you switch with your friend, Narcissus?”
I sigh. “I asked, but he said ‘no’ because he was already holding his lucky numbers.” I up the ‘oomph’ of my love juices and smile. “Plus, you’re the most attractive man here. Duh!”
Helveticus crosses his arms at his chest. His pectoral muscles flex in an appealing manner, subduing my irritation. “I wasn’t born last century, you know. Nearly everyone here is attractive. Most of us are demi-gods; it goes with the territory.”
My head falls forward with the weight of his petulance. Why are some men so difficult? Time to get serious. I step closer and reach out a hand to touch his beefy bicep. “True, but you struck my fancy. I can’t explain why, but you did. I asked Narcissus who you were, he told me, and here I am.”
The wry set of his mouth is not encouraging.
With a groan, I lean in. “Okay. What’ll it take to get you to switch tickets with me with no further questions asked?”
A laugh bubbles from those succulent lips of his, lips begging to be kissed. He leans in. “Whatcha got to offer?”
I smile my most seductive grin. “What you see is what I’ve got. I’m told I’m the best you’ll ever have.”
Gentle male fingers curl against the curve of my waist leaving glowing embers in their tracks. In a hushed voice he says, “Funny, I’m told the same thing.”
Clearly this man woke up with the solitary mission of tousling my world. I should walk away and find someone else. There are 498 other possible candidates, after all, but with only an hour left, my chances of finding one without rousing suspicion are dwindling fast.
I’m stumped at what to do next when Helveticus huffs. “Fine. Show me what you got.”
“Oh! So you’ll switch tickets with me?”
“No, I’ll sell you my ticket for yours in exchange for four hours in my bed—a half hour now and the rest after the drawing.”
Helveticus is dealing in my kind of currency. Advantage mine, but I can’t seem too eager. “Two hours,” I counter.
“Three and a half.”
“Three.”
He shakes his head and tucks his ticket inside his toga. “Pleasure chatting with you, Willow. Good luck in the drawing.” He’s nearly ten paces away from me when I catch him.
“Fine. Three and a half hours in your bed.” I raise my finger in warning. “But not a single minute until after the drawing.”
He eyes me sidelong. “Can I trust you?”
“How do you expect me to answer other than with ‘of course you can’, which you may or may not believe?”
“Point well made.” Out comes his ticket, number 403, just as Narce said, but he holds it against his chest.
I am forced to take a step closer to accept his half of the exchange and to hand him my 1811 ticket.
His eyes make a lazy round-trip of my body, from my sandaled feet to the headband in my hair, before returning to bore into mine.“17 Pegasus Lane
. Meet you there ten minutes after the drawing. Wear something sexy, and I might go easier on you.”
I give him a smirk. He won’t know what hit him after I bed him. He won’t last thirty minutes let alone seven times that and in the arena he’ll be as formidable as a pigeon feather. “17 Pegasus Lane
. Got it.”
“And Willow?”
“Yes?”
“If you don’t show up, I will find you. There’s a reason I’m in this place, and it has nothing to do with looking cross-eyed at the wrong goddess when she was PMS’ing.”
I tilt my head and say, “I said I’d be there, and I will.” With a theatrical spin on my heel and a swing of my hips, I go in search of Narce, confident my ass has a new worshipper.
Chapter Two
Narcissus claps when he sees me waving my new ticket in front of my face.
“Oh, hey girl, you are the woman! How did you do it?”
“Once I set my mind to something, I never give up until I get it. Plus, I finagled three hours and change worth of play time.” I nudge Narce with my elbow and wink at him.
He laughs, and we gossip for the remainder of the hour about the others gathering closer to the podium where Tyche will ascend and do her thing. Her co-host as usual is Aphrodite.
Narce puts a finger to his lips and points with his other hand. “Shh, shh, here she comes!”
The crowd stills.
Tyche clears her throat. “I’ll be brief. As is our tradition, we shall pick two champions, two warriors to fight for the amusement of the gods, yada, yada. You all know this by now, right?”
Murmurs confirming her assumption arise from the crowd.
“It’s mostly the same, only I have a new gadget this year. Many thanks to Prometheus for his lovely invention.” She moves to a large spinning chamber flanked by two Adonis-like men.
“What’s with the invention,” I whisper to Narce. “Did Nemesis mention it?”
He shakes his head, eyes wide, mouth parted slightly, and turns back to the stage.
“We’ve got over two thousand of you represented in there, so let’s give it spin shall we boys?” Tyche motions for the twins, who wear nothing but fig leaves over their twigs and berries for a pleasingly full foliage effect. The men turn a crank and the mesh drum rotates.
Inside the see-through chamber, a lot more than five hundred coins tumble and fall, clanking and tinkling against each other.
I shoot a pissed off glare at Narce.
He shrugs. “What can I say? Technology’s a bitch.”
Tyche scans the crowd, her attention fixed on a man in front. “On each coin is a number. If I pull the coin bearing your number, you are my champion. My co-host, Aphrodite will pull the second coin for her champion.”
The man she addresses her words to is Helveticus. He returns her smile. Oh no. Please tell me I’ve not just bargained with Tyche’s consort for an afternoon of stamina-leeching sex.
The bin stops spinning, and the twins unlatch the door. Tyche raises a slender arm and extends it into the sea of golden coins. She digs deeply into its depths, and when a smile settles into place, she withdraws the first winning coin. All murmuring ceases as she turns the coin to read the number engraved on its side.
“The first champion of this year’s Games of Sisyphus is…” The pause she inserts is brilliantly played judging from the expectant expressions on the faces of those near me, including Narce. “Number 1811!”
Mingled cries of despair and claps for the victor rise up and swallow us. That’s my number! I think I’m going to faint. I spin to grin at Narce, but he is mouthing, “I’m so sorry.”
I glance at the ticket in my hand and remember. I hold 403, not 1811. “Pan’s poop! Damn, damn and triple damn!”
Tyche motions for Helveticus to stand beside her on stage. He draws gasps from the maidens, throaty grunts from the older females and admiring glances from a few flamboyant males. Narce appears unfazed, though he checks his mirror. I guess seeking reassurance he is still the fairest in the land is as much of a compliment as another creature can expect from Narce.
“My champion, Helveticus!” Tyche crows.
“This is so rigged,” I whisper to Narce.
“It’s always rigged,” he whispers back.
Helveticus smiles and surveys the crowd. He is a fine specimen of manhood, and despite my irritation at how cruelly the Fates have treated me, I look forward to our session. When our gazes lock, a lightning bolt of sexual awareness travels the few feet separating us and threatens to ignite me. Oh baby! A thunderclap of excitement shudders through me in its wake.
“And now for his opponent,” Tyche begins, but she pauses to focus her attention on Helveticus. Her gaze follows his and zeroes in on me, eyes narrowed. �
��If my co-hostess would kindly join me on stage.” She clears her throat, and after glancing at Helveticus, angles to her left where my patroness Aphrodite sits buffing her nails.
I have often appealed to Aphrodite seeking my release, but without success. Despite her displays of contrition, I think she wrote me off within a few years of my landing here. She is the reason I’m here, but grudges grow heavy after a while, and I’ve since offloaded mine. Aph’s not a bad gal; she just tends to follow her heart a bit too much.
“My lovely colleague, Aphrodite, will choose the second competitor as her champion.” Tyche steps back, clapping and waving Aphrodite on to the stage.
Aph splays her fingers across her chest and shakes her head like she’s surprised to be called upon but soon acquiesces. A few steps later, and she’s at the drum. She gives each of the fig leaf boys a rather lingering kiss before they set the bin to spinning again.
I don’t think anyone in the crowd except the very foolish wish to fight Helveticus, not unless they want to play master and servant with Hades. Helveticus is too large and powerful, with a mean glint in his eye. I’d be frightened, but I do enjoy a spicy alpha male.
Tyche and Aph converse while we wait for the coins to cease their tumbling. Aph’s beautiful lashes flutter, and the hairs on my neck rise. Whatever the goddesses are discussing, my instincts tell me I should worry.
The spinning ends. Aph moves forward to execute her conscripted task. She removes all her rings before daintily selecting a coin from the surface of the heap.
“Number four—” She leans over to show the coin to Tyche. “Is this an ‘O’ or a zero?”
Tyche rolls her eyes and declares it to be a zero. Aph’s beauty is unparalleled, but she’s not the brightest star in the heavens, yet another reason why I’m here.
“Four, oh, I mean zero, three! Four hundred and three!”
Oh my gods, that’s me!
Oh shit, that’s me.
How the hell am I going to beat Helveticus? So much for winning my freedom. Hades, here I come. Maybe I can just concede so I won’t show up on the underlord’s doorstep looking like death. Not the best way to make an entrance as a concubine.