Natural Beauty

by Meraki P. Lyhne

  And he was totally procrastinating instead of just going over there to see whether the club was really for Cubi or if it was just themed on the latest spike in erotic literature.

  And then he saw it—the mark of Grand Lord Ildon worked into the design of the club’s logo.

  Suddenly, Alex felt very self-conscious. He looked down himself to see if he was presentable. Jeans hugging his ass, a button-down shirt, a leather jacket, boots, his dark hair worked to perfection, and a necklace that brought out his very blue eyes. He wondered if he was still beautiful enough because that was probably what the line was for—for the Cubi to pick their dinner among the most beautiful of guests.

  Now or never. Alex drew a deep shuddering breath and crossed the street before his nerves got the better of him. He got in line and ignored the people around him as they tried to engage in small-talk. From listening in, he learned that some had tried coming there a few times but so far hadn’t made it inside. A glance in their direction made Alex think that some of them were there because they couldn’t get any on their own.

  Again, the insecurity about whether he should now count himself among those unworthy slithered in. The race was vain and picky, and he was aging and sagging because of stress.

  One of the doormen walked the line, inspecting the waiting people. He was big and gorgeous and wore sunglasses even though the sun had set more than an hour earlier. He had to be an Incubus, hiding his eyes.

  Once the guy was close enough, Alex scratched his neck and thus discreetly revealed his classification tattoo. The doorman stopped short, and Alex could only guess whether he was staring from behind the dark glasses. The man stepped closer and put a hand on Alex’s shoulder, and he could feel the man’s finger brush his neck under the collar of his jacket.

  “Come on.” The doorman motioned for Alex to follow while some of the other waiting people began asking if they could get in, too. The man ignored them and took Alex to the door where he turned to face him while he looked around as if checking if anyone was watching.

  “How did you get out?”

  “A Lady led us through the woods,” Alex said.

  The doorman nodded, looking thoughtful. “Why are you here?”

  And there it was. He’d grown too old and was no longer attractive to them. Alex looked away.

  “Hey, hey, I’m just asking…what’s your name?”

  “Alex,” he whispered.

  The doorman pulled his sunglasses down enough for Alex to see his red eyes. “We take care of our own, Alex.” The Incubus pushed his glasses back up and put his hands on Alex’s shoulders. “You get the shakes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you feed us?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Good. Come on, you go see the barman.” The red-eye took Alex to the door and let him enter. “This one doesn’t pay.” The red-eye motioned to his own neck as if pointing out that Alex was a classified breeder.

  A woman, also wearing sunglasses, nodded before turning to eye Alex. “Can I take your coat?”

  Alex pulled it off, and a smile spread on the woman’s face.

  “Welcome back,” she said, taking his jacket and caressing his classification tattoo. She left with his jacket and hung it on a coat hanger in the open wardrobe. She then took him through to a dance club.

  The sight and smell brought Alex back to the compound. Open feeding stalls and wider cubicles with curtains. The scents and sounds of doses and sex coming from everywhere mingled with the music which was the only new touch.

  “Home sweet home,” he muttered as he followed her through to the bar. His whole body tingled, and a now old fantasy crept into his mind. He wanted to go back to Daniel, but that was just half the truth. He’d been proud when Sire Seldon had claimed him and ecstatic when he found out that it was, in reality, the new Prince who had claimed him—a Prince who even took the abuse, Alex had suffered at the hands of Elias, serious enough to have the guy caned in public. Who wouldn’t be proud of living with and serving a Prince?

  As Alex’s body fought to adjust to a life without doses, dreams of four Incubi haunted him. Sire Seldon and his son Marcadon were the two who most often popped into his dreams and power fucked him to rapture. Especially Marcadon. Oh, just the thought of him could make Alex’s body react, and his dick rise to the occasion.

  But he still didn’t think he could do it without a dose. He just knew his body craved to be fucked hard, and his mind needed to let go of the guilt of finding such pleasure in submitting to a man.

  The Succubus waved someone closer, and Alex gaped when he recognized the human coming toward them. They’d been at several dinner parties together. “Jeff?”

  “Alex!” Jeff spread his arms before clearing the worktop behind the bar to climb onto it and hug Alex across the bar. Alex held on tightly, feeling less alone than he had since the military attacked. He hadn’t even heard any news about who’d made it or what had happened. A fight between fear and relief erupted inside him. He lost control of his feelings and sobbed against Jeff’s shoulder.

  “Hush, my friend, I got you,” Jeff whispered, stroking the back of Alex’s head, soothingly. “Come on, let’s go out back and have a chat. I’ll grab us a beer.” Jeff let go and climbed off the bar while Alex made his way to the end. His eyes scanned the many faces with sunglasses, hoping he’d recognize one of the Incubi he kept dreaming about. He already knew Seldon wouldn’t be among them because he was with Daniel, and Daniel was protected.

  Jeff made his way past the others behind the bar and held up two beers as he waved Alex around the counter for them to leave through a back door. He let Alex all the way through a storage room to a cozy room with couches, a huge TV, and a mini bar.

  Dispensers with lube, shelves with sheets, an open closet full of clean towels…it was a feeding room. Hell, maybe they even had dinner parties in there. Alex’s stomach fluttered at the thought of participating in one again. Once again, the idea that he had either completely lost his mind or suffered from Stockholm-syndrome registered.

  “Have a seat.” Jeff plopped down on a couch and half-turned so that he’d be facing Alex if he took a seat at the other end. Alex did. Jeff smiled and popped the beers before handing Alex one. They clanked the bottles, and Alex took a long drink from his, feeling like he needed something to steady his nerves. He’d drained half the bottle by the time he pulled it from his lips.

  “Sorry.” Alex tried to disarm the awkwardness with a smile, but it didn’t ease the concern etched on Jeff’s face.

  “Don’t be. But talk to me. You obviously need someone who’ll listen. Or, more importantly, someone who understands?”

  Alex’s memories took him back to when he’d turned up at his parents’ doorstep after the bus ride. Years of no contact at all, a tattoo covering almost the entirety of the circumference of his neck, and no explanation. What did you tell the guy who had drilled into your head since childhood that men touching men was the elevator to Hell? That he’d been kidnapped and made a sex slave of Incubi? Nope. The tattoo was bad enough, and his dad still demanded that Alex wore turtlenecks to hide it.

  He couldn’t talk to them. And once again, the embarrassment of how he’d ended up with the Cubi in the first place took front row in his head—just like it had all the years he’d been at the compound and blamed himself for ending up there.

  “Maybe I should find you something stronger than a beer.” Jeff got up.

  Alex was about to stop him, but he could really use something stronger.

  Jeff returned with a shot of something and placed it on the table. “Down that, and spill.”

  Alex took the shot and tossed it back. As the amber liquid burned its way through his chest, a single memory stood clearly in his mind.

  “Mom and Dad and their church group certainly never understood.” Alex coughed and glanced up, finding more understanding in Jeff’s eyes than he’d have thought.

  “My dad’s a pastor,” Jeff said. “Didn�
��t invite him when I married Jaydon a week ago.” Alex gaped. “Didn’t even go see them once the House of Dahlidin fell.”

  “You’re straight, right?”

  “Yeah, and I fuck women, too. But I feed my husband first.” Jeff looked choked up as he twirled the bottle and stared at it. “Once the Houses fell,” he said in a thick voice. “I once felt like the majority of the Cubi didn’t give a rat’s ass about us breeders.” Jeff looked out the window with glassy eyes. “They threw themselves into the line of fire to protect us, yelling and screaming for the military to stop because they were putting humans in harm’s way. I was so wrong.”

  Alex’s eyes stung because that’s how he remembered the confusion. Being the house slave of Nol he’d been one of the first to be evacuated along with the Grand House. What little action he’d seen must have been far from what Jeff had witnessed, and he could only imagine.

  “And Jaydon?”

  Jeff looked at Alex, his eyes welling up just shy of tears tipping over. “I thought he died. Protecting me. That’s why I married him. Out here, I protect him. Out here, I help the Cubi. We’re called feeders now, not breeders, but the Cubi’s understanding of us never changed. Even out here, they take care of us. What I never got was that we took care of them, too, and for that, they took care of us. Or do you ever remember needing anything?”

  Alex remembered the doorman’s comment—we take care of our own. Maybe Alex didn’t misremember. Maybe all he thought he knew was the lie. Maybe it had nothing to do with Stockholm-syndrome at all. All he knew was that his mind craved being set free by the dose and that his body craved for an Incubus to fuck him hard.

  “Why did you seek them out?” Jeff asked, but something in his voice made Alex believe that Jeff already knew the answer. The question was if Alex did. Was it just to no longer wake up from unfulfilled fantasies? No, it was deeper than that.

  “To find the answer to that question,” Alex finally said. Jeff smiled, nodding. “You wanna know what really fries my noggin’?”

  Jeff snorted. “Sure, give it to me.”

  “I was straight. Told myself that all through high school.”

  “Didn’t we all?”

  Alex shrugged, thinking the comment had made less sense if Jeff hadn’t told him his dad was a pastor. “Maybe. But I had this thing for a bad-boy kinda type in school. Oh, I wanted to kiss him so bad, but it wasn’t a sex thing. I wanted…to feel his strength, I guess. And this wasn’t something to bring up at church group, so I kept my bi-tendencies to myself. When they finally became too much, I tried my luck on the internet. Met up with someone in secret. I even told him it was a secret. Had a few drinks and hit it off enough to make out. Went to his place to fool around. Had another drink, and I woke up in a cell.”

  Jeff scoffed. “Sounds like how I got to House Three.”

  “What’s your story?”

  “Well, I knew of the internet, but I’m a mechanic and didn’t spend a lot of time on the computer. I went to the parks. Sweet talk and good looks and the wife knew nothing.”

  “You were married?”

  “Yeah. By the time we reemerged in society, I was long legally dead, and she’d remarried. She was told. We met. It was fucking awkward, and I got to explain how Jay saved me from having been kidnapped. Police got a lot of those stories in the past weeks.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” Alex muttered, having told one of his own lacking so many details the officers had permanent frowns etched into their foreheads by the time they gave up and left him alone.

  “But times are changing, Alex. You know Cubi is more than a dime novel fantasy out there now. You followed it too, right?”

  “I haven’t been able to until a week ago, but that’s how I found this place. It’s a four-hour drive from my parents’ place.”

  “You live with them?”

  Alex sighed and looked at the empty shot glass. He nodded and placed it on the table.

  “How are things?” Jeff asked.

  “They’re—” Alex cut himself off before uttering the usual lie. Things are fine. One day at a time. It’s gonna be all right. He’d told himself those lines enough times to almost believe them. At least until the next night tremor took over, and he woke up almost high on the memory of a dose and his sheets coated in spunk. But this was Jeff—a fellow breeder who understood. The relief of finally being with someone who understood washed over him, and Alex squeezed his eyes shut. “I hate my life,” he whispered as if he was betraying someone or something by admitting it.

  “Why?” Jeff asked softly.

  “I’m worthless!”

  Jeff just watched him with a world of understanding behind his gaze. “You don’t have to be,” he finally said, and even though Alex didn’t know the terms, he wanted to ask where he signed up. And that alone made him feel inefficient and less of a man because men were supposed to provide for not just themselves but a wife and two-point-four kids as well. Man up, his dad always said, yet all Alex wanted to do was run around naked in a palace with a collar of ownership around his neck and keep house until someone told him to bend over so they could stuff his ass full of a hard cock.

  Not exactly the ideal male image he’d been groomed to become while growing up.

  “How?” Alex asked.

  “With an official classification tat, I’ll hire you on the spot. Tend bar, take care of the feeding cubicles, and so on. Room and board. Oh, and feeding Cubi is part of the job description.”

  “Hire me?”

  “This is me and Jay’s place. Approved under Grand Lord Ildon’s district. I wasn’t kidding when I said that things changed for the Cubi. Nol-Beaudon worked fast.”

  That was the name of the clothing brand he’d seen in the newspaper. “His name is Beaudon?”

  “Yeah. Grand Lord Ildon told us about him when he ordered us to buy this building and open a nightclub. I think the Cubi are going to go public at some point. This is one of the gateways.”

  “Won’t that bring trouble?”

  “African Americans had trouble when they wanted to drink from the same fountain as the white, women had trouble when wanting the right to vote, workers wanting union wages had trouble. Every change brings trouble, so yeah, it’ll bring trouble. But our Prince isn’t stupid, believe that. He’s given us much in a short time.”

  Alex remembered the insecure boy shackled to a bed and the huge change in him when he walked into a room with golden eyes. All that had happened in just a matter of a month and a half.

  “He certainly surprised me.”

  “You? You’ve met the Prince?” Jeff shot up from his reclined position, his eyes huge with curiosity.

  Alex smiled. “So have you. But if you don’t know who he is, I won’t tell you.”

  “Fair enough. You lucky bastard. He’s a verse, right?”

  Alex nodded and sipped his beer.

  “Ever serve him?”

  “Not in a feeding. He’s pretty particular with who he takes to his bed. He empowered daily, but I don’t think I ever saw him take a human to bed.”

  “Ever saw? Jesus, Alex, just how many times did you meet him?”

  “He had Elias punished for beating me.”

  Something seemed to dawn on Jeff, and he sat back again. “I remember. Sire Seldon delivered that punishment after claiming you.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Alex squeezed his pocket where the white collar with Seldon’s logo lay. He wanted to wear it, but he wanted the metal one Daniel had designed even more. The weight of it had made Alex feel safe, and the beautiful motif that Daniel had designed himself made him feel appreciated and special.

  “Damn.” Jeff snorted, shaking his head at the memory. “I felt so bad for Daniel that night. You remember the Untouchable Seldon had? He sat silent and tried to keep a stone face during that and blood sprayed on him. Guess he learned to keep a straight face from watching a new breeder have his fingernails removed. Seldon was so hard on him, and the boy was scared shitless of him. Wonder what became of him. I
just know he’s a Changeling.”

  “I know, I was there. Daniel made a casserole.”

  Jeff laughed. “Oh, yeah. Good casserole.”

  Alex smiled at how much Daniel’s rise had remained a secret, and with all that had happened after that, Alex was sure it was for the best that no one knew the identity or the age of the Prince.

  His brain kicked back in gear. “You said something about hiring me?”

  “Hmm? Sorry!” Jeff waved a hand as if Alex had caught him dozing off. “Yeah, we’ll hire you. You wanna feed them, right?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Okay. You get an apartment up here.” Jeff pointed to the ceiling. “Room and board are included for feeders and feeding an Incubus is part of your job description.” Room and board? That sounded too good to be true. “Oh, there’s a downside.” Jeff pointed at Alex as if he saw the if it’s too good to be true, it probably is on his face.

  “Which is?”

  “You have every Incubus fitting your description through that front door feeling you up and not just your regulars.”

  “Yeah, getting to be friendly with them too was a plus,” Alex said, wondering if he could even do it.

  “You’re allowed to turn one down once in a while. But like in House Three you have a quota. If it’s because you weren’t asked because there wasn’t enough Cubi fitting your description, it doesn’t count. If you’re sick, it doesn’t count. The House of Beaudon pays the bills of the housing. The bar is a secondary income and what we use to have fun and decorate and stuff. Feeders are hired by Grand Lord Ildon, housed by Grand Lord Ildon, and provided for by Grand Lord Ildon, but all through a shell corporation to stay anonymous.”

  “So this bar doesn’t go under pimping laws.”

  Jeff laughed loudly. “No. As I said, our Prince isn’t stupid.”

  “Oh, shit,” Alex muttered, thinking the Cubi had to have a ton of resources if they could set up shell corporations and businesses within weeks of an attack.

  “You wanna feed someone now?”

  Alex’s stomach dropped while his heart sped up in anticipation. “You have a hard fucker needing that?”