A forbidden heat shivered through my body, and my thighs clenched under my bathrobe.
Oh, fuck.
As long as I was near Orion, I was in trouble.
Chapter 12
I couldn’t tell if he was hitting on me or trying to get a rise out of me. But if he was flirting, it was with the utmost condescension, so I wasn’t going to reciprocate. The man’s sense of superiority burned hot enough to suck the oxygen out of the room.
“Do you know the mortal expression ‘beer goggles’? I had that when I first saw you, except with mojitos.” I wondered if he could tell when I was lying. “You do nothing for me. Now that I’m sober, I view you as a kind of grotesque alien species. Freakish, really.”
He leaned back, then went very still again, staring at me, and I felt like he was using one of Dr. Omer’s tricks—waiting for me to admit that I’d said something stupid. His face was a mask of indifference.
Well, he could wait all day, because I could live with my obvious lies. I raised my eyebrows. “Were you going to teach me about something beyond the staggering dimensions of your ego?”
He spread out his arms over the back of the sofa, ignoring my jab. “Let’s begin with the Lilu, the incubi and succubi. They are the lust demons, the seducers of our world. They feed off desire. Before demons were locked here in the City of Thorns, the Lilu would roam freely among the Puritan cities, seducing uptight mortals. They seduced demons, too. But for a mortal, sex with a Lilu means death. It was one of the major reasons for the war in the 1680s, the lusty Puritans dying of pleasure in their beds.”
What a way to go. “So Mortana—wherever she is—would be trying to seduce mortals at any chance she got?”
He shook his head. “Mostly demons these days. We’re no longer allowed to kill mortals without repercussions. She can draw power from demons just as easily without starting a war.”
I still gripped my bathrobe like a chastity belt. “So I need to seem seductive.”
“Flirtatious. Sensual. Seductive. Comfortable in your own body.” He pinned me with his gaze. “Clearly, we will have to work on those things.”
“When were the Lilu executed? After the war?”
He shook his head. “Not right away. For about ten years, they lived in the Asmodean Ward. Each ward worships a demonic god, and for the Lilu, it was Asmodeus, god of lust.”
“Which ward are we in now?”
“Luciferian. He is the god of pride.”
So Orion lived in the ward for the most arrogant demons. “Yeah, that checks out.”
“In a densely populated city, it was harder for the other demons to tolerate the Lilu. They ruined marriages, manipulated people. Other demon females loathed the succubi, and demon males hated the incubi. Their mind control powers were forbidden, but they used them anyway. And that was a threat to King Nergal’s rule over the populace. What if they controlled his mind? So in the 1690s, when Cotton Mather asked for sacrifices from the City of Thorns, King Nergal was happy to oblige. The other demons were happy to rid the city of the Lilu, and Nergal sacrificed them in the dungeons. They were hanged and their hearts cut out.”
A shudder rippled over me. I’d just been in that dungeon, not realizing it was a place of unimaginable horror. “And Mortana was able to survive because of her blood oath.”
“Exactly. She’s always been impressively cunning. But she disappeared a few hundred years ago, and no one has seen her since.”
I bit my lip. “Is it going to be a problem that I don’t actually have any magic? I can’t control anyone’s mind.”
He shook his head. “No, you’ll just tell people you had a change of heart over the centuries. You won’t do anything forbidden by King Cambriel. But the sexual magic…you’ll need to make people think that you’ve been feeding off desire.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Sorry, exactly how do I do that?”
“That’s simple, Rowan.” His low, husky voice dripped with a seductive promise. “You and I will use our body language to make people think we’re fucking.” He quirked a smile. “Assuming you can feign attraction to a grotesque alien species.”
I folded my arms in front of my chest. “I’ll do my best to fake it, but if I’m supposed to be getting close to the king, won’t it be a problem if he thinks I’m with you?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. Cambriel always wants what someone else has.”
“I suppose that’s why he killed his own father.”
“He’s from the Beelzebean Line. Envy. He already envies the attention I’ve received for killing so many in the Infernal Trial. And if you seem to want me, he’ll use his position as king to take you. We’ll just have to make it look real.”
A hot electrical tension buzzed in the air. “So you’ll be playing along with this charade, too. Pretending to want me.”
He shrugged. “I’ll do my best to fake it.”
“Is there anyone here who knows Mortana well?”
A sly smile. “Everyone hated Mortana. They called her the king’s whore. Her only ally was Nergal himself. I suspect she left here when he finally grew bored and refused to marry her, and she realized she no longer had a protector.”
“Do you feel any empathy for her at all? Maybe she was just trying to survive while her kind was being slaughtered.”
His brows knitted like I’d just said something insane. “No. I don’t have empathy. And if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be for Mortana.”
“Right.”
The door opened, and I turned to see Morgan striding into the room with bulging bags of clothes. He looked between the two of us nervously and dropped the loot. “Everything you need is in here. I have to run, I’m afraid.” He backed away, staring at me. “Please be careful with her, sir, would you? No offense, darling,” he added, glancing at me, “but I don’t want you twisting his mind all up.”
No one had ever been scared of me before. Was it…was it bad that I liked it? He saw me as fearsome.
I dropped the grip on my bathrobe and glared at him, then flashed a smug smile—the kind Orion had been giving me since I’d met him. “I’ll try to be gentle with him, Morgan, but I make no promises.” My voice sounded icy, cruel.
His face paled, and he pointed at me as if to say, I’m watching you. With that, he backed out the door, then let it slam behind him.
I turned to see Orion staring at me, his eyes a pale, heavenly blue. “That was disturbingly convincing. It was like I was watching the real Mortana come to life before me.”
The thing was, it was easy to act in the ways that were expected of you. When people thought I was crazy during my presentation, I became flustered and desperate—I started to act crazy. When I was treated like an outcast at Osborn High, I couldn’t help acting weird.
And if people thought I was terrifying—maybe I could rise to the occasion.
But instead of explaining all that, I just shrugged and said, “I contain multitudes.”
His gaze pierced me, and he waited for me to give a better explanation.
I sighed, and my mind started turning academic, as it often did when I was unnerved. “In the world of social psychology, there’s something called a self-fulfilling prophecy, or a behavioral confirmation. It means that people’s behavior changes depending on what’s expected of them. A person’s expectations actually elicit certain behaviors.”
“Right…” He ran his finger over his lower lip, studying me. “You’re a bit of a nerd, you know that?”
I nodded. “Oh, believe me, I’m aware.”
“Does this mean that if I treat you as if you’re seductive, you’ll suddenly be able to act like a succubus?”
I swallowed hard. “Well, we can certainly try.”
Chapter 13
I lay naked on the bed in Orion’s guest room. While I was supposed to be practicing not being self-conscious, even alone, I felt deeply uncomfortable as the breeze rushed over my bare skin. The fact that it was dark outside and I was lying beneath a
ceiling fixture that glowed like a spotlight wasn’t helping my mood.
I’d be staying here for another week, in a guest room overlooking the sea. While the place was gorgeous, between a floor-to-ceiling window and the missing wall beside it—shielded from rain by a balcony, but still a nasty spot to trip—the room seemed to lack a certain degree of privacy. I didn’t see anyone out in the ocean, but I still felt like I was naked in front of the world.
Plus, I couldn’t help but wonder if Orion was thinking of me naked in here. We’d spent the day trying to work on my seduction skills—the walk, the flirt, the eyes that flicked down and up again, the dirty jokes.
I was shit at all of it. Problem was, Orion was hot as hell. If I let myself fall under his seductive spell, I’d burn up. When his fingers had brushed against mine at breakfast as we’d reached for the cream, I’d felt an indecent jolt of excitement. Unfortunately, I was a blusher, and as succubi did not blush, Orion had come to the conclusion that I was uptight and uncomfortable in my body. Hence, I was lying here, trying to get comfortable.
And it was true that I was uptight, but my unease was far worse around him. He was as dangerous as a forest fire.
When I closed my eyes, I could see his sensual, curved lips.
I glanced at the sea in the moonlight and pulled the blanket over myself, wondering if I could actually pose as a succubus.
With a deep breath, I surveyed the room, trying to ground myself. I needed to get out of my own head.
The decorations in here were simple—a white bed, a bare hardwood floor. The beauty of the place wasn’t in the decor, but rather in the blue of the sea and sky, or the glittering of the stars. A warm, briny breeze rushed over the room. Feeling slightly less self-conscious with the beauty of nature all around me, I dropped the blanket and rose to my knees.
Except I could hear Orion’s deep, seductive words playing in my mind. You said I’m the only man you’d ever suspected was up to the task. And I do think you’re right about that, Rowan.
My eyes snapped open again, and I ran to the light switch. Darkness fell, and I crawled into bed and pulled the covers over myself.
Maybe I couldn’t lie around in the nude, but I could sleep naked.
“How did you sleep?” Orion asked me over coffee.
He had a book spread out before him, and his eyes were on the pages.
I cleared my throat. I didn’t want to tell him about the filthy dream I’d had in which he’d kept me as his prisoner, tied to his bed. “Fine. I slept fine.”
His gaze darted up to meet mine. “Why did you say it like that?”
“Like what?”
A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “Like you wanted to climb over the table and throttle me.”
Damn it. He could see right through me. I could feel myself blushing, and I shook my head. “There’s nothing wrong. I slept fine, just had some weird dreams.”
“About what?”
You, kissing me all over. “Just, um, monsters. What are you reading?” I took a sip of my coffee.
Orion’s eyes gleamed, and he lifted the book so I could see the cover.
Fifty Shades of Grey.
I choked and spat out my coffee, then wiped the back of my hand across my mouth.
He sat across from me in his living room, arms folded. I was getting the impression that he was losing patience. “You meet the king tomorrow, and your body is still full of tension and nerves. Do you see how you grimace when you’re nervous? How your neck muscles are tight and strained?”
I sighed, trying to focus on relaxing the muscles around my mouth. I took a deep breath. I couldn’t help but wonder where Orion had spent the last two nights, and where he’d been at dinner.
“Let’s see the Mortana walk you’ve been practicing,” he said.
I rose from the chair.
It wasn’t any of my business where he went when he wasn’t here. But I’d been learning his patterns—a very early wakeup, as soon as dawn broke. Coffee, fruit in the mornings. Sometimes he dove off his balcony straight into the sea for a morning swim. He spent half the day trying to teach me how to act like Mortana—how she spoke, how she held herself, the kind of jokes she’d make. One afternoon, he’d told me to swim naked by myself, and I was supposed to think about how it felt to undulate under the water, how beautiful I was.
The other half of the time, he’d leave me by myself. I ate all my meals, delivered by Morgan, alone on his balcony. Once I’d eaten, I’d pull out Orion’s smutty romance novels. The books that filled his shelves ranged from literary classics and Greek epic poems to full-blown modern fuck-fests with whips and spanking and lots of mind-shattering orgasms. Which, let’s face it, couldn’t be that good in real life. In the interest of learning, I chose the fuck-fest books to read over my dinners of scallops or salmon. And they were educational.
I did wonder, though—who was he eating with when he wasn’t with me? And where was he sleeping?
Not that it was my business.
From the sofa, he arched an eyebrow. “You don’t seem like you’re focusing.”
I straightened the way he’d taught me, then flicked my hair over my shoulder. I curled my lips in a smug smile.
He cocked his head. “Good. You’ve got the facial expression.”
“I’m mimicking that smug ‘I think I’m better than everyone’ facial expression you always have.”
He shrugged. “And now you need to believe it, too. You need to believe that you’re the most beautiful person in the city, that others are privileged to be around you. That’s what Mortana would think, that she blessed others with her presence. That she’s a gift to the world.”
I lifted my chin a little higher, just as Mortana would. A gift to the world.
“Let me see how you walk. This time, try keeping your footsteps in a single line, like a cat. Shoulders back, hips forward.”
I straightened my back and lengthened my neck, and then I started to move the way he’d told me to, one foot directly in front of the other. I found that my hips swayed as I walked, and I strutted around the room in my new little black sundress. I could feel his eyes on me, watching the way I moved—or rather, the way Mortana moved.
“Shoulders back,” he said quietly. “You need to look and act like you’re thinking about sex at all times.”
I pivoted, walking across the room again.
With his instructions, I found myself walking like a total sexpot—tits out, hips swaying from side to side. Maybe I was uncomfortable in my body, but Mortana was not. Mortana had done all the things I read about in those books—fucking men against walls, dragging her nails down their backs, biting the headboard while someone banged her from behind.
I twirled, thinking of how Mortana would feel swimming naked in the sea, or how she would feel with Orion watching her. Mortana would want his eyes all over her naked body. She’d get turned on, and she’d want him to know exactly how turned on she was. She’d want to torture him, tease him.
I spun again and decided that Mortana wanted to sit in Orion’s lap. So I did that, wrapped my legs around his waist, my hem riding up to my hips. Instantly, his eyes turned dark as night. With a low, appreciative growl, his hand moved from my lower back all the way up to my hair. He threaded his fingers into my curls, pulling my head back a little. “Good girl,” he said quietly. “Very good.” His low voice rumbled over my skin.
But this was going too far, wasn’t it?
I cleared my throat and jumped up from his lap, smoothing out my dress, tugging down the hem. “There.” I exhaled slowly. “See? I can be Mortana. I don’t have to do it all the time.”
Orion’s eyes were still pinned on me, filled with primal shadows. “Of course not.”
Tomorrow night, I would meet the king, and that should be the scariest thing in my life right now. But truthfully, what scared me most was Orion.
Chapter 14
Today was D-Day.
I wasn’t actually clear what the D stood for in
the World War II version, but for me, it stood for demon, and possibly disaster. It was the day I’d be entering the demon world for real, leaving the safety of Orion’s apartment. Most terrifying of all, it was the day I’d meet the demon king who’d severed his father’s head and stuck it on a gate.
What kind of outfit did one wear for an introduction to a regicidal, patricidal demon king?
I frowned at my new underwear, which looked barely large enough to cover my nipples and ass. But I was, after all, a succubus now. Might as well get used to it. And with a little jolt of satisfaction, I realized I was actually quite comfortable standing stark naked in this glass-walled room.
Among the dresses, there were some more casual clothes, too. Black leather leggings, sleek pantsuits, little skirts and tops. But Orion had suggested that for my grand entrance back into the city today, I was supposed to dazzle people. Apparently, all eyes would be on me.
I plucked a camisole from the bed, one with sheer black lace and embroidered snakes. Its neckline plunged below the breasts at the center. Dark, sexy, demonic. I slid it on, and just as I’d expected, it barely covered my nipples.
I picked up the tiny matching panties and slipped into them.
Then I scanned the dresses. Lots of black, gray, gold. All of them were revealing in some way—tight bodices, slits all the way up to the hips, plunging backlines, short hemlines. First, I picked up a pale silver gown in a Grecian style, with a high waistline and delicate crisscrossing ropes around it. But the neckline went right down to the waist, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
Instead, I chose a short, silky red dress with a fitted top and long sleeves, and I wriggled it over my hips. It had a looser skirt, but the fact that the hem stopped just below my ass was definitely new to me. Then I slipped into a pair of thigh-high boots, which had small enough heels that I should be able to walk in them reasonably well.
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