What was going on? I didn’t want to have sex with this woman. I mean, I wanted to, but I was going to be late for my date and I wasn’t big on casual sex. Even casual sex with one of the most amazing-looking women I had ever seen.
She walked behind my chair and reached around, unbuttoning a few more buttons on my shirt. The cool air felt nice as she used her long, purple fingernails to scratch my chest and trace over my nipples. I needed to put a stop to this right now. But I couldn’t.
I reached into the oceans of my brain and dove down for the oyster. I cracked that sucker open and plucked out the pearl of wisdom. It hit me. She was using mind magic on me and it was working like a charm. She had used her employees to get my mind unfocused. That’s why I hadn’t detected her magic when I entered the office. She was good.
Why hadn’t she killed me? I was just sitting here, waiting for anything. She seemed more interested in something else as she opened two more buttons, ripped my shirt open, and laid seven sweet kisses on my belly, leaving sparkly black lip prints. She ran her fingernails up and down my chest.
The temptress moaned in pleasure and bit down on my shirt. She wiggled her jaw back and forth and ripped a small piece from the shirt. What the? She kissed her way up, blew a soft, sensual breeze into my ear and playfully bit my earlobe. She leaned down and her tongue traced up the side of my neck and touched my ear.
My body had never felt better. I’d forgotten about the pain in my testicles, head and body and enjoyed the intoxicating moment. My brain was screaming to make this woman stop, but my body didn’t want to hear any of it.
She stood over me and leaned down, moving her head back and forth, rubbing foreheads with me. Her long curls tickled my chest and stomach. She brushed her full lips over mine and I extended my neck to meet her kiss. She backed away and shook her head as she purred like a kitten. I suddenly started taking a liking to cats.
She stood up straight, took two steps back and unbuckled the belt that dropped to the floor. She reached behind her back. I was glued to the chair as my brain waited for her to pull out a gun and shoot me. My body impatiently waited for something else. I’d allowed myself to be manipulated, even leaving the door to my soul slightly ajar. What a fool I had been.
Must. Fight. It.
I heard a zipper sound and her dress seductively slid down her figure and hit the floor. She glided up to me and brushed her silky fingertips over my face. Glenn walked sexily behind her desk and her hips bobbed up and down in a tantalizing manner. She pressed a few buttons on the stereo system and slow jazz music came to life.
She danced around as my brain tried to wake up the rest of my body. It sounded the alarm, but I couldn’t stop staring, willing to let her do anything. She slowly approached me and tugged on the cuffs of my shirt. She pulled my sleeves off and unbuttoned the rest of the shirt before tossing it over her shoulder.
She grabbed my dragon’s head belt buckle and held it, rubbing her thumb around the dragon’s mouth and further increasing my excitement. She moved both hands to my knees and raked her long nails over the top of my thighs and up toward my midsection. She unbuckled the belt and licked the dragon’s face a couple of times before opening her mouth and biting the buckle.
She whipped her head back and ripped my belt off in one smooth motion. The Faberge Eggs started to make more sense. She had the moves of a high-class hooker who could demand a hefty sum. If I had any money, I would probably be throwing it at her right now.
She unbuttoned my pants as she made out with my belly button. I almost lost it. My right thigh started to buzz. It buzzed again. I thought it was part of the ecstasy until I realized it was my phone.
The signal had taken some of her magic away. I didn’t want her as much. She still had hold of me. I didn’t resist as she pulled my pants off and stood up. She turned around, sat on my lap and started grinding back and forth. I felt the fiery moisture and had to fight against it with all the power my distracted mind could muster.
I pushed her off and jumped to my feet. “I just need to check my phone. Real quick.”
She unhooked her bra, twirled it on her fingertip, allowing it to fall on her carpet. She rubbed her breasts, tracing around her tight nipples. “But I’m aching for you, baby doll. Stop teasing me and let me have that.” She pointed to my boxers, which resembled a pitched tent currently.
I was teasing her? Hardly. I grabbed my phone out of the pocket of my pants. I checked the messages and her magic faded more. It must have been the electronic signals screwing up her game. But why hadn’t the music affected it?
She reached out and grabbed me in the most seductive manner possible. I called a random number to cause more interference and regain control. My mind and body worked in tandem finally as I manipulated the air in the room.
I whispered, pretending I was talking into the phone, “Aer sit potentia. Praebueris fortitudinem. Aer sit potentia. Praebueris fortitudinem.” I thickened the air and concentrated it into a ball the size of a bowling ball. Get ready to suck on this, succubus.
She was too caught up in her sexual game to notice as she stroked away at my excitement. I stared at her exquisite breasts and released.
The power ball of air, of course. It hit her huge breasts with such force I heard it crack her sternum as the chair flipped over and she flew into the door.
She looked up at me, scared. She had underestimated me. She wheezed and clutched at her chest, seemingly in shock.
I smirked, realizing I might finally get what I’d really come for. “Are you ready to talk now?”
“What do you want to talk about, Woody? That guy behind you?”
I whirled around and nobody was there. By the time I turned back around, Glenn had made it to her feet, opened the door, and taken off toward the front of her hair salon. I chased after her in my boxers, shoes and socks and quickly caught up to her.
I kicked the side of her foot, causing her to trip and tumble into the curtain that separated the two areas. I dove on top of her. We wrestled around in complete darkness, fighting each other and the curtain. Screams came from the front of the shop, and Tara yelled, “Glenn, are you okay?”
No. She wasn’t okay. I bearhugged her with all my might, trying to get her to pass out. I didn’t see it, but she reached out and grabbed an area of my body that left me rather compromised. I released the bearhug and tried to rip her vise grip off my crotch.
We tumbled out of the curtain and spilled onto the floor of the shop with about a dozen screaming spectators. Glenn got to her feet first and took off for the front door. I jumped up, took six long steps and leaped through the air.
I tackled Glenn near the door and some of the employees tried to drag me off the owner. I bellowed, “You don’t understand who she is.”
The women clawed at my almost naked body, nearly drawing blood in a few areas. Someone jammed a scarlet fingernail into my left eye and I let go. Glenn scrambled out of the shop in just her shimmering purple thong, as I shook the women away and ran for the door.
I cracked my shoulder into the side of the doorframe due to only one working eye. I rubbed my left eye and chased Glenn across the street, dodging traffic in my boxers, shoes and socks. At least I was wearing nice shoes and socks. And clean underwear.
The busty woman rushed down Penn Avenue pushing people out of her way in the process. I weaved in and out of the crowd and spotted her again. She hooked a right on a side street and when I turned the corner she was gone.
Then I noticed why. The portal. It looked like the rippling heat just above the street on a really hot day. The portal was as big as a normal sized front door, inviting me to come in. I thought about the possible problems.
You never knew where you would end up. She could be luring me into some demonic world where all her friends were waiting to kill me. I let her have this round. I knew where she worked after all. She wasn’t just going to shut down her shop and disappear over a little fight.
Did I mention I was more of a dog p
erson? My recent affinity to felines faded along with the exhaust coming from the bus crossing the street in front of me. I lowered my head and jogged back toward the shop to retrieve my clothes. I crossed Penn Avenue and heard a familiar voice. “Oh, my God. Mike, is that you?”
Chapter 24
I LOOKED UP WITH A stupid smile on my face. I cleared my throat and fired up my Bogart accent since she had heard me talking that way at her house. “Oh, hey, Suzette. My clothes weren’t quite done in the dryer. I will be right back.”
She studied every scratch on my body like she would be tested on it at a later time. “Damn, you’re a freak too. Hey now.” She laughed her hideous laugh.
Was I wearing some unknown aphrodisiac? Women had never come onto me like this. “I’ll meet you at the restaurant in just a few minutes.”
I ducked my head again and sprinted for Glenn’s shop. I rushed through the front door and all the women started yelling at me and asking me what had happened to Glenn. I didn’t have time to stop and fought through the curtain to get to the back. Emergency exit. Sweet.
I ran into her office and threw my clothes on. My vengeful side wanted to send a fireball into her Faberge Eggs, but I couldn’t destroy the classic art. I turned around and saw that Tara was blocking the doorway. She said, “You’re not going anywhere until you tell us what you did with Glenn.”
“I didn’t do anything. I was chasing her. Did you notice that? And now I showed back up without her because she ran away from me. I don’t know anything.”
“Well the cops are gonna be here any time now. Maybe you’ll remember when they get here.”
Please forgive me, Mama. I calmly buttoned my cuffs and charged Tara, who squeaked like a mouse and moved out of the way. The rest of the employees made a wall along the curtain trapping me in the back. I smiled, turned around, took ten steps, and kicked the silver bar to the emergency door.
The door burst open and the alarm went off. I took off down the street and the sirens from the shop and the flashing lights faded. I covered my face and looked down as two cop cars raced by.
I hadn’t gotten any verbal answers out of Glenn, but she had to be part of this puzzle. I theorized that she was working for the demons too. It appeared to be a two-fold plan in which Glenn supplied the demons with her clients’ hair and recruited for the sex clubs.
Was she trying to recruit me too? If my phone hadn’t saved me, I would have fallen into her trap. It wasn’t hard to imagine Glenn could seduce just about anyone. Not looking forward to this date, I decided to bide my time, then ask Suzette about the sex club near her house so I could connect all this together.
I ducked into the restaurant, hoping they would let me stay with a hole in the visible midsection of my shirt.
The disinterested hostess didn’t care one bit and threw two menus on the booth as I slid onto one of the soft bench seats. Much to my surprise, Suzette and her cloying Sunday Church perfume snuggled up right next to me. I’d never been a same side of the table kind of guy because it made for awkward, neck-straining conversation.
She said, “Oh, my God. So, like, what happened before?” She spoke with long pauses, which I believe she thought created dramatic effect. It did not.
“My job can get pretty crazy. You never know what can happen.”
She twirled her hair with her index finger and I noticed she had hit the tanning bed hard today. Coupled with the quarter inch of makeup, she looked different. Orangish. She said, “Tell me about it. I’ve been finding out lately—that modeling is like, literally, a ton of work actually. No offense,” she said, as she checked out her nail polish.
Literally? And why would I take offense? “Oh, you’re a model?”
“Well, not yet. I don’t know what they’re waiting for, right?” She released a hideous laugh again and rubbed her breast on my left arm.
I didn’t know what to say. “Who knows in this crazy, mixed up world?”
“That’s what I say, right? It’s like, get it in, no? Cuz we’re all gonna die anyway, right? We need to have fun while we can. You know, get crazy. Get wild. At least that’s what I live by. YOLO, you know. Okay, let’s get to really know each other.”
I faded out for a while, waiting for a good time to press her about the stuff happening near her house.
The terrible date went on and I really did get to know Suzette. I got to know that she was the most superficial person I had ever met in my entire life. She was waiting for someone to run up to her front door with a modeling contract in his or her hand, begging her to accept the deal. I felt bad for Patty Elmhurst because this girl wasn’t moving out of momma’s house any time soon.
She talked while texting most of the time so I followed her lead and started to read up on some information Gretchen had sent me.
Time to get down to business. “So do you know anything about what your mom was talking about the other day? Some sex ring up near the basketball court?”
She stopped texting and put her phone on the table. “She’s gone up there. I haven’t. I get spooked out real easy. I tried a couple times, but I ran back inside before I made it off my sidewalk. Whatever they’re doing up there, it stinks.”
“In an olfactory sense, right?”
“What?” She checked her phone.
I clarified, “Like, it smelled bad?”
“Real bad. Like choking me out bad. I’ve seen like, vanfulls of people headed up there, but I don’t know what they’re doing. I could hear them like, chanting a couple of times, too. But that’s it.”
She had been talking a lot faster without the dramatic pauses and I wanted to know how she knew the vans were full of people if she had only seen them from the outside.
I pressed her a bit. “What do you think they do up there?”
“Probably have weird, crazy sex, which is what we should be talking about right now. YOLO.” She hooked her leg over mine.
I assumed she kept referring to the contraction for You Only Live Once, but with this girl, who knew? “Look. I am really flattered. Honestly.” How could I turn her down easily? “It’s just your mother is kind of a client of mine, so there’s that client-detective privilege that I have to worry about.” I was talking out of my ass and hoping she wouldn’t notice.
I caught a strange vibe in the air and tried to figure it out as she talked. “What? She was the one that suggested this. If you don’t like me, just say so. Like, man up or something.”
Suzette was emanating vines of magic and she didn’t even know it. Vines of magic were invisible to the normal eye, but practitioners could see them. It helped gauge how powerful a person or demon was. They ranged from frail twigs that could be easily broken, to the circumference of a telephone pole with electricity flashing on the inside and rune markings on the outside. Stay away from those ones.
Was she under the control of someone else? Her vines were weak and didn’t feel like dark magic, but I should get a sample to check it out. If Alayna would stop hating me, we could test all these samples I’ve been collecting.
I had to do it. I knew this would complicate matters greatly but something wasn’t right about this young lady. I leaned in and kissed her. It took her by surprise and she shifted around in the booth to completely face me. I ran my fingers up her cheek, over her ears and scratched the back of her scalp.
She arched her back and moaned as most of the other diners checked out the show. One person even clapped for us and I heard several whispers of “get a room.” I rubbed my short fingernails around the back of her skull and abruptly pulled them out and stopped kissing her.
Suzette adjusted her bunched up pants. “That’s what I’m talking about. Let’s go back to your house and like, watch a movie and like, I don’t know, see what happens.”
“I really have a lot of work to do on this case. I could barely squeeze this date in. Is it alright if you just drop me off at home and maybe we do this again sometime?” I wiped off my lips.
She applied more lipstick as she s
tared into her compact mirror. “Why you trying to tease me? You get me all hot in the restaurant and like, just want me to go home? What’s up with that?”
I knew she was going to play hardball after the make-out session. “How about we talk about it along the way?”
She leaned in and kissed me, marking me with her fresh lipstick. “Deal.”
She slid out of the booth and I tucked a few strands of her hair into my back pocket. A wizard had to do what a wizard had to do. I followed her out of the restaurant and used the inside of my shirt collar to wipe away her lipstick. She held out her hand as I approached her.
I reluctantly took her hand in mine and we started down the street. We took two steps, and someone said, “Mike? Hey, Mike, is that you?”
No way. I knew about fourteen people in the city of Pittsburgh. I turned around and wanted to die. My face ran flush and my palms started to sweat, although Suzette didn’t seem to mind as she squeezed my hand tighter.
“Hey, Satoku. How are you?” I asked, ditching the Bogart accent, as Suzette pulled me closer and kissed me on the cheek.
Satoku’s face contorted, creating a confused look. “I’m doing just fine. I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”
I put my free hand up. “No, I don’t. This isn’t what it looks like.”
Suzette slapped my chest. “What, are you ashamed of me or something?”
I turned to Suzette. “No. It’s nothing like that but you know what’s going on here.”
She slapped me across the face and started to walk away. I turned to Satoku. “Really. I can explain what is going on here and believe me, it is not at all what it looks like.”
“Never is, huh? Mike, I don’t care that you have a girlfriend. I care that you lied to me about it. I mean, it makes perfect sense now why you were acting like you were. It’s no big deal. We can still be support beams.” She forced a smile and it broke my heart. I realized right then and there that this was the woman I wanted.
I didn’t want Suzette or Glenn. I wanted Satoku.
Bloodline Awakened Supernatural Thriller Series: Books 1-3 Page 12