Her Demon Harem: Reverse Harem Duology 1 (The Succubus Chronicles)

by Savannah Skye

  I waved off their concerns for my health and insisted that I was well enough for us to focus on getting ready for Luci’s next attack.

  “She’s clearly ready for us, gentlemen,” I said with a grim smile. “We need to return the favor. She could come at us at any time,” I reminded them as we gathered around the kitchen table.

  Damon ran his hand over me in a caress while Matteo and Rex scoped out the backyard.

  Finally, Lach broke the silence. “Alright, you can help us set the traps and cameras, but you’re also going to have to work with each of us today to learn how to use new weapons.”

  “Deal,” I said. I was willing to do anything and everything in my power to help them to protect our home.

  “Let’s just think about this logically,” Matteo started. “We start setting the traps while Stevie trains with different people. That buys us time to get the house ready at the same time that we get Stevie ready. When we’re done for the day, we can meet back here and set the rest of the traps.”

  “That’s your thing, man, if you think that’s what’s best, that’s what we’ll do,” Damon said.

  I was wondering earlier whether things would be weird between the three of us, or between the two of them, but it was like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. They were the same as always. It was strangely comforting.

  “Right. I’ll need you and Lach with me for the beginning. Rex, you wanna show Stevie how you set shit on fire?”

  Matteo was really good at delegating.

  “Sure thing,” Rex smirked. “I’ll try not to bring her back as a pyro, but no promises.”

  “Turn our girl into one of your pyromaniac hothead friends and I’ll skewer you,” Lachlan joked. Or at least I thought he was joking.

  A small fire erupted in Rex’s hand and he held it out before extinguishing it with a snap. “You’re with me then, love,” Rex murmured, taking my hand as the others started discussing their booby traps. Magical terms were flung around like candy at a kid’s birthday party as Rex dragged me from the room.

  The training room floor had been transformed overnight. Protective covering had been tacked to the walls and several targets dotted the perimeter of the space. They were shaped like wraiths and seemed to float above the ground in a way that made me shudder.

  “So our first training session will be focused on just letting you get used to producing fire. We’ll see if it goes well, then we can practice aiming small balls at the targets,” Rex told me.

  I’d been looking forward to this part of training, but I was apprehensive when Rex fired off a few test shots. The fire came to him as if he’d done nothing but willed it to be there.

  “First things first,” he said. “Think of the light you feel when you’re feeding.”

  I had to fight back my embarrassment at his nonchalant use of the word feeding.

  “You with me?” he asked, fixing me with his obsidian eyes.

  I tried not to think about what they’d looked like hooded and filled with lust, or how they grew darker when he came. “Yup.”

  “Good, I want you to recall that light. That heat. Form it, work with it until it ignites. Your concentration is the only match it needs.” His voice was calm, patient, as he spoke.

  “Okay, I’ll give it a go,” I agreed.

  “Close your eyes,” he urged, and I complied.

  I thought back to the feelings that Matteo and Damon had stirred in me the night before. Lachlan’s ball of light. Rex’s power coursing through my veins. I used each of those memories to fuel the fire that was licking my palms. Suddenly, I felt a pop as a spark ignited but then died out almost immediately.

  Rex lit up like I’d given him a precious gift. “That was amazing for a first try. Keep going, Stevie.”

  “Okay.” My voice was hesitant. I tried my hardest, screwing my eyes shut and replaying every moment since I’d met them. Every hot, heartrending, sexy, powerful moment. I was surprised by the amount of images that flashed behind my eyelids.

  “Fuck yeah,” Rex cheered.

  I opened my eyes to find two tiny flames burning in my palms. I held as still as I could. “Now what?”

  “Nurture them, cherish them. They want to work with you, love, all you have to do is let them.” My concentration was broken by his use of the word love again.

  The flames on my palms flickered and then extinguished.

  Damn it.

  “That’s okay, you’re doing great,” Rex assured me.

  We worked for at least an hour before Lachlan came striding in, leaning in the doorway before crossing the threshold.

  “Attagirl,” he called. “Rexy, the boys need you. I got our girl.”

  “You did incredibly well,” Rex assured me before he left, handing me off to Lach. I didn’t see how a couple of small fireballs equated to incredible, but I was still damn proud of myself at the compliment.

  “Now that the resident brute has departed, care to use some weapons that actually require a special touch and some finesse?” Lach smirked at me. He crossed the floor to the variety of bows on the wall.

  He flicked his hand and, with a few motions, things began to shift around me.

  “Oh my god, so cool,” I whispered, feeling both impressed and envious, like the only muggle at the Triwizard Tournament. “Can you show me that?”

  The training room was transforming around me. The targets turned into bull’s-eyes and the protective covering disappeared, a cluster of cameras taking up each wooden panel instead.

  “I can, but those are just…what did you and Brie call them? Parlor tricks?” Lach said with a grin. “I can promise you that, in a fight, the crossbow will be more helpful and take less time to get proficient with.”

  Lach placed the weapon in my hands and the feel of it was all wrong.

  He must have sensed my hesitation because he stopped. “You don't have to like it, but you never know what you’ll have at hand and you need to be well versed in each one, so you have to at least do it,” he said.

  It was one of the many reasons why I loved Lach. He was always brutally honest with me. He left nothing unsaid and laid out the facts for me to make up my own mind.

  “Okay, where do you want me?” I asked, raising the ridiculous bow.

  “Right over there.” He pointed to the back corner of the gym.

  I tried to protest that it was too far, but he cut me short. “You can do it. Now go, aim for that target over there.”

  My objections fell on deaf ears. Lach wasn’t having any of it. The most I got was a muttered, “Sorry, love, no time to ease you in this time.”

  Following him to the corner he’d pointed to, I found a dug out already waiting for me. The bow felt heavy in my hands, but he told me to take a few minutes, to feel the strings and measure their elasticity with my fingertips. What he was asking sounded as impossible as me being a succubus with four demon protectors, but it was every bit as true.

  The bow seemed to come alive in my hands, as trembling and ready as I was. I fired off my first shot and mortally injured the cushion on a rowing machine. I cursed, but Lach just laughed. “That wasn’t too far off base.”

  “Only if you mean that the target was also on the same side of the gym,” I groaned.

  “Nothing great happens your first time off the bat,” he told me.

  “It probably did for you,” I countered miserably.

  “True,” he smirked. “But I’m special. And I wasn’t trying to learn so many new skills with all new weapons at the same time.”

  “Just say it,” I told him. “I suck.”

  “In my dreams, yes. Out here? No way.” His eyes crinkled and the corners of his mouth jerked upwards.

  “You dream about me?” I asked incredulously.

  “Sucking? Absolutely.” My real life really was gone if guys like Lach were dreaming about me.

  A part of me clung to old, plain Stevie. “You’re joking.”

  “Not in the least,” he promised. “If we had
time, I’d prove it to you, but Damon will be here soon.”

  He glanced at his watch, then his grin turned wicked. “Unless...”

  Damon appeared a moment later and waved off his companion. “See ya, Lach.”

  Lachlan shrugged. “Fine, if you say so.”

  I blushed so hard they’d be able to make tomato commercials from the color of my face. Lach’s eyes glinted with mischief, but Damon shooed him from the training room, citing a need to get some actual work done. Lachlan left—under protest—to go help out with the traps being laid upstairs.

  As soon as he was gone, Damon tucked his thumbs into my belt loops and drew me towards him roughly. His mouth slanted over mine for a blissful moment before he pulled away, breathing hard.

  “I needed that.”

  It was the last thing I’d expected from him. “Why?”

  “You taste awesome,” Damon said, grinning devilishly. “You scared the shit out of me last night when I thought she’d gotten to you. I thought I’d lost you when I’ve only just found you and it was killing me.”

  I swallowed hard, not ashamed to admit I felt the same. How strange, so quickly they’d become integral to my happiness.

  “I was mad about you the second I saw you,” he admitted gruffly. “If it were up to me, I would’ve fucked you up against the wall in that alley after I pulled you off of Abercrombie.”

  He surprised me by using the exact nickname for the guy from the night of my twenty-first birthday that I used, reminding me yet again of how perfect he was for me.

  “I would’ve puked all over you,” I confessed with a chuckle.

  “The transition can be confusing.” A dark look crossed his features.

  “That’s for sure,” I agreed. He was silent and I cleared my throat, wondering at his now-serious demeanor. “How’re things up there?”

  “Coming along. Matty’s got some crazy shit brewing,” Damon assured me. “You wanna get started?”

  I nodded. “Don’t kill me.”

  “That’s the exact opposite of my job description.”

  “You never know when someone’s going to go off script,” I teased, knowing that none of them ever would.

  Damon’s hands shot to his heart in a gesture of mocking hurt. “She shoots, she scores. Ouch.”

  I laughed. It was amazing how lighthearted Dark and Dangerous could be when he wanted to be. “I thought we were training?”

  “We are.” His face grew serious as he produced a dagger with strange markings on it from behind his back. “Now try to bury this into my heart.”

  Hours later, I trudged into my bathroom, exhausted and sort of shell-shocked. Sweat was dripping down my forehead and clinging to my hair despite the fact that snow had started falling outside again. At that moment, the house felt like a furnace.

  My training had been brutal. The guys kept rotating, each session becoming more intense than the last.

  After a dinner that consisted of seafood paella, courtesy of Matteo, I’d helped them set the last of the traps. The house and grounds were fortified to the max and extra wards had been added. There was nothing we could do but wait now.

  Steam billowed from the shower when I stepped in, letting the warm water cascade over my aching muscles until my skin started pruning up. I dressed quickly in my favorite hoodie and pajama pants, heading back to my empty room.

  They’d wanted to guard me all night, so we’d agreed we’d all pile into Damon’s room, which was apparently the hub of the security operations. Their plan was that we would all sleep in there for the time being. Safety in numbers and all. The room was also kitted out to be a safe room, though I didn’t know how much use that would be since I knew that they would all go charging out at the first sign of trouble.

  Be that as it was, I was glad that I wasn’t sleeping alone that night. The previous night I’d collapsed in orgasmic bliss after Matteo and Damon had had their way with me, Damon several times—but when I closed my eyes, I still felt helpless and terrified.

  We’d all had a long day and soon after I padded into Damon’s bedroom, someone hit the lights and I sank into one of the mattresses they’d placed on the floor. I was falling into an exhausted sleep between Lach and Damon when an alarm went off.

  Shrieking noise pierced the peaceful silence, the alarm blaring in warning, and a red light lit up the room.

  I shot upright, my heart pounding, as my companions leapt to their feet. Lach met my gaze, his expression grim.

  “She’s here.”

  Chapter 19

  Already.

  Damn it, I’d just healed and she was already striking again.

  The guys mobilized in a blur of movement and sound. Within seconds they were fully dressed and running to the armory, dragging me behind them. We knew we had approximately ten minutes from the time that the first alarm sounded until Luci would breach the wards and make it to the house.

  Thankfully, the guys had prepared a plan of action in advance and everyone knew what would be expected of them and where their weapons were. By the time the two-minute alarm sounded, we were at our battle stations.

  Well, the guys were at their battle stations.

  Me? I was expected to stay out of sight and launch whatever fireballs I could into the fray. For that reason, I was standing behind Rex, hidden by an alcove in the grotto.

  “Get ready, Stevie,” he growled. “In three, two, one...”

  All hell broke loose around me as soon as Rex finished his count. What looked like bony, winged horses with the same glowing red eyes as the crow descended from the sky with a roar that reverberated through my bones.

  The temperature of the air dropped so much that my teeth started chattering and breathing felt like it was enough to freeze my lungs.

  A horde of wraith-like soldiers ran at us, piling into the yard one after the other from a shimmering pool of light that had appeared out of thin air. They wore armor with strange insignia on it and moved with lethal determination.

  The sounds of fighting broke out all around me and I froze, dragged back to my nightmare all that time ago. The scene that was playing out in front of me was almost exactly the same, except that I could now see it with frightening clarity and smell smoke from the fires that were licking the air at several points around the perimeter.

  And this time? We weren’t running.

  Lachlan’s arrows sliced through the air from where he was perched on the roof and each found their mark as bodies of the invading soldiers started dropping. Damon leaped forward with a roar as soon as the first warrior came at him.

  Their swords clashed with a vicious clamor and Damon pierced through the soldier, his sword sliding through flesh like a knife through hot butter seconds later. He whirled around and attacked the next one.

  Matteo was moving so fast I could barely see him, whirling around the traps he’d set earlier and luring soldiers to him. He grinned like a maniac when his traps exploded or impaired or ensnared. It actually kind of looked like he was enjoying himself.

  Although, it shouldn’t have surprised me. This, the fight, this was where they were in their element. Their natural habitat. Matteo ducked a beam of light that burned a hole in the wall behind him soon after, rolling through a puddle of mud that didn’t make any sense. It was snowing all day, yet there it was. I assumed Matteo had something to do with it.

  Rex stood like a wall in front of me, unyielding and unforgiving as his fireballs incinerated demon after invading demon. His legs were spread apart in a defensive stance and his brow was furrowed in concentration.

  His forearms were glowing dully. Not a second passed without flames licking his palms, forming into spears or balls or exploding like fireworks raining down the wrath of hell over the opposing force.

  The same white-haired, ethereal figure from my dream suddenly appeared right in the center of the chaos.

  “You imbeciles! They’re four boys. You’re useless, every damned one of you.” Her voice was as shrill and terrifying as it
had been in my dream. Worse even. It brought a chill to my bones and my heart to a stop.

  “Luci,” I breathed. An unmistakable power radiated from her, almost as black as the smoke that was billowing around her.

  A laugh cackled through the air. She was the villain from every book personified, every antagonist that I’d ever wanted to rip limb from limb. Worse than Voldemort and Sauron and Darth Vader combined.

  Hell, she’d probably given birth to the idea of them.

  With a lazy flick of her wrist, half of her own soldiers dropped dead. The guys fired every weapon in our arsenal at her, but even the truest of shots were deflected by some sort of force field around her.

  She seemed untouchable.

  “Give up, girl. This realm is mine and mine alone. I will hunt you to the ends of the earth, I will find you in the darkest of the night. Nowhere is safe for you, nowhere ever will be.” Luci’s chilling voice speaking directly to me hurt my ears and made my blood freeze in my veins.

  Damon growled at her words, “Why? Why can’t you leave her in peace? No one wants your shitty throne, Luci.”

  “That’s what they all say…until they do.” She turned her blood-red eyes on my protectors, her gaze raking their bodies. My fists clenched at my sides and my stomach lurched. “And once I have her, I will not only hurt her. I will torture her, and I will make you watch. Unless…”

  The fighting ceased as the last of her soldiers fell.

  “You want to negotiate with us?” Rex asked incredulously.

  “It’s not a negotiation,” she purred. Her voice changed, its razor sharpness became more of a caress. A caress by steel wool, but a caress nonetheless. “You will either accept or reject my proposal. On my terms. That’s all there is.”

  “Speak, then,” Lach said, his tone cautious.

  “My soldiers of late have been such a disappointment. They have been weak and pathetic. Uninspired. I shouldn’t even have to be here doing this right now, but alas, they can’t get the job done without me. You four, though,” she let her eyes wander slowly over each of them, “you’re different than all the rest. They were so easy, but this has been a bit of a challenge. You’re decent in a fight, under my tutelage you could become excellent warriors—”