Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5

by Jennifer Stevenson

  “While we,” I said, spreading my hands to show off my body, “have this. And we always will.”

  “And when we’re bored, we change it,” Jee said, grabbing her face and pulling it around into different shapes, long nose, short nose, crazybig manga eyes, round face, pointy chin, thin face.

  Beth giggled, but she sounded hysterical.

  Jee snapped her fingers and her features bounced back into their usual position.

  “Forget the pain. You’ve left all that behind you,” I said. “All that good girl crap, and worrying about getting older or finding a job or being wanted. That’s over.”

  The new kid was hyperventilating.

  “It’s over when she feels it’s over. Don’t rush her,” Amanda said.

  Beth covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

  I felt like I’d kicked a puppy. I hate girl talk.

  Jee got up. “What the fuck time is it and when did we last eat? I’m starving here.”

  “I’m not cooking,” I said mutinously.

  “Fuck cooking. Let’s go out,” Amanda said.

  Jee opened the kitchen door and howled down the hall, “Reg, get some clothes on! You’ve been a good boy today. Time to score some rewards.”

  Beth

  Beth felt bombed out inside, but the succubi wouldn’t let her stay behind in her room.

  “C’mon,” Pog said. “Reg gets rewarded this evening.”

  “Orgy?” Reg said hopefully.

  “Forget it,” Jee said. “No, you get something better. You get to dine in a fancy restaurant with four unbelievably hot women, and every guy who sees you will piss blood with jealousy.”

  Reg’s eyes got round. “Works for me.”

  Pog took charge of dressing Beth, and Beth let her. A numb yet blissed-out feeling overtook her sense of shell shock. She was back in high school, and her squad was on the prowl, and they would dress each other up like paper dolls and go be fabulous together.

  Pog seemed extra kind and supportive. She chose for Beth a strapless red thing all horizontal shirring, black patent leather stilts, and the diamond bracelet Jee had bought them.

  Beth returned the favor by dressing Pog in a tarty version of a navy newscaster suit. The mid-thigh skirt had a demure slit halfway up the back. The suit jacket wasn’t particularly wasp-waisted, but Pog’s small bones and slender proportions made her look lethally slim. White pumps, the same bracelet, and a white alligator Dior clutch on a narrow leather strap made her look as if she was pretending to be the den mother of this group...until you realized there was no blouse or bra under the jacket, and a single 24-carat gold button closed the jacket at her navel.

  Amanda had thrown on a tweed sheath that said, oh, this old rag, but she still looked like an athlete, and her sashay said, you’d better have something going on before you bother me. When she saw the diamond bracelets on Beth and Pog, she went back to her room and got hers.

  Jee had put most of her effort into her makeup and jewelry. A loose coral suede top hung asymmetrically from her wide, thin shoulders. The tatter-cut suede ends were hung with heavy glass beads in scarlet, jade, teal, black, and gold. Her tan pencil tights made her legs look five feet long. The hot pink heels put her way over six feet. But it was her makeup that looked like four hours of Vogue-shoot prep, and she wore a blinding quantity of diamonds, including her own copy of the bracelet.

  Jee had sent Reg to his room to dress. Now she howled, “C’mon, c’mon, we’re ready!”

  He came out in a dark red Armani jacket over a plain white silk crew-neck tee and unobtrusive black jeans...and those patent-leather biker boots. Jee made him stand still while she inspected him top to toe. She even sniffed his armpits and the fly of his jeans.

  Beth was disturbed to note that he visibly wriggled with pleasure under Jee’s scrutiny. Even more disturbing, she wondered what he smelled like that made Jee want to do that.

  Finally Jee pronounced judgment. “Lose the boots. Don’t you have loafers? No socks.”

  Reg groaned, but he went back into his room.

  “How we doing here?” Jee said, glancing around at the five of them.

  “These shoes okay?” Reg said. Cordovan loafers, no socks.

  “Perfect.” Jee said to the other women, “Under the circumstances, I think we slut up the hair. For Reg.”

  Beth’s roommates put up their hands and ruthlessly mussed their hair, while Beth looked on, her mouth hanging open.

  “Get with it,” Pog said. She reached over and tousled Beth’s head. “Perfect. Let’s go eat.”

  “I don’t know why he has to lie on that dog bed in the kitchen when he has his own room,” Beth said to Jee the next afternoon, as she paid for her Bloomingdale’s shoe purchases with “Blake Shanley’s” black AmEx. With Jee’s encouragement she’d bought four pairs of shoes to go with her current outfit: black open-toed heels to match her capri pants, red flat sandals to go with the red stripes in her demure red-and-white striped shell, and two pairs of gold slippers, structured and unstructured. Bottom line: fifteen hundred dollars. She’d already bought a range of gold metallic lace tops to go over a gold bra, and some jewelry to match.

  “The dog bed is a privilege, not a punishment,” Jee said. Jee was dressed in flagrant too-rich-for-you yellow leather pants with Cuban heels and a teeny floral bandeau. “You have to think like a sub. If I banished him to his room, he’d feel terrible. He wouldn’t be part of the group. He wouldn’t be in on things. This way, he gets to know everything that’s going on—that we want him to know—and he’s also secure in his place.”

  “You didn’t want him to listen in yesterday while you—while we were talking about, uh, the past.” Beth said. “But he got to come with us to Vermilion last night.”

  Jee was silent, picking up her own shopping bags and leading the way to the lingerie department. “That was a test. He passed. He got his reward.”

  Beth couldn’t help smiling, remembering Reg’s reward evening at Vermilion. The dinner crowd had almost gone, so the kitchen was able to deal almost exclusively with the massive orders streaming from Reg’s table. Yes, Reg’s. Because, with Jee’s permission, Reg had assumed a role...host? Hollywood producer? pimp?...and ordered for everyone, right down to the dozens of excruciatingly expensive cocktails, and paid with a credit card Jee slipped him under the table. And their audience had lapped it up. The post-dinner crowd consisted almost entirely of wealthy, attractive, vain young people, but Reg’s table had been the focus of all eyes.

  Beth herself hadn’t minded the looks she got.

  Her roommates had given her a lot to think about. As they dined, she became aware of moments when she judged the clothes of their audience the way a well-bred North Shore socialite of fifty would judge them. More, she recognized the anger, jealousy, and despair that she felt underneath her haughty thoughts. Every time she caught herself criticizing them with cranky mother-of-two-adult-kids thoughts, she reminded herself, They’re young. They can afford to dress foolishly. Extreme fashion is supposed to be ugly, because it sets off the beauty that is youth. And every time, when she felt that plunge of despair knowing she would never be young enough to wear such clothes, she looked around the table and reminded herself, But I can wear them. I look as good as they do.

  Last night, as the cocktail glasses came and went and everyone else in the room hushed whenever her table burst into a roar of laughter, Beth had felt herself beginning to relax. She was with her squad.

  Today, she felt as if she were splitting in half. Part of her, the old Blake’s-Beth part, was appalled at the amount of money she was spending on her own adornment. That money should go into Jeff’s startup fund. It should pay for Darleen’s kids’ daycare. Blake needed a new car. He always needed a new car.

  The other part of her was scoffing at the top of her lungs. Blake had owned four Mercedes vehicles at the time of the divorce. One had been brand new. He’d had to have it, because the other partners must never know that his financ
ials were rocky. Darleen’s husband pulled down six figures. He could have paid for their wedding himself, if Blake had let him. Everyone spent freely on themselves except her.

  She didn’t bring any of this up to Jee. It seemed too selfish.

  “Will Reg get more privileges, now that he’s passed the test?” she said instead, picking out bras by how pretty they were, not by size. She could fit any bra she liked now.

  “Nah, he’ll fuck up again soon.”

  Beth suppressed a gasp. “You don’t know that!”

  He will,” Jee said confidently. “The convenient thing about having a dickhead like Reg for a sub is that you can’t give him anything without having to slap him down ten minutes later. He can’t help himself. It’s like he has Tourette’s of the soul.”

  “But it’s so mean. First you reward him, then you punish him, then you reward him, then you punish him.”

  “He thrives on the drama,” Jee said.

  “Are you sure it isn’t you who love the drama?” Beth said drily.

  Jee swung around to stare at her. “My, my. You’re unfurling fragrant new petals of assertiveness.”

  Beth stood her ground. “I call it like I see it.”

  Jee’s eyes narrowed. “Got any other ideas for how to reform him, then? Because if we don’t boss him, he’ll boss us. You really want him telling you how to dress, deciding who and when you’ll fuck, and demanding a blow job from you before breakfast every day?”

  Remembering Reg as nature had brought him to them, Beth shuddered. “Well, no.”

  This made no peace with Jee. “You still think you’re a whore. Or you will be, if you ever make your quota.”

  “Ouch. At least I started, right?” Beth said placatingly. She caught the hot, speculative eye of a rich-looking man in a suit who was buying thong undies, and suppressed a smile. All she had to do to score was tempt him. Nine-tenths of her work was already happening in his head. It was counter-productive for her to be nice, too.

  “Don’t weasel around.” Jee looked serious but not dangerous yet. “You won’t make friends by feeling morally superior. Plus, if you bring a load of self-hatred into this job, it’s gonna start to smell, and we’ll notice that.” For Jee that was almost sensitive.

  Not for the first time, Beth realized that when she said yes to Delilah, she had bought into more complications than she’d expected. She had expected to despise herself for committing what had seemed at the time to be an entertaining form of suicide. She hadn’t bargained for the team’s weird esprit. She’d never dreamed that her own issues might have a deleterious effect on the other succubi.

  “I don’t know how else to feel about it,” she confessed.

  Jee looked at her speculatively in a way that made her nervous. “Maybe you should work for Reg for a while. I have an idea that the way he thinks our job should go is a lot like how you think it should go.”

  Beth drew back in horror against a mannequin in a peach silk teddy. “That’s not nice.”

  “No, I’m serious. Reg would treat you like a real whore. And then when we put him back in his dog bed, you’ll be in a position to see the difference.”

  Prickles ran over Beth’s skin. “Uh, no thanks.” She paid for her bras with Blake Shanley’s AmEx, disturbed at the bubbling, plunging emotions and, yes, physical lust that Jee’s suggestion caused.

  They gathered up their bags and moved toward the escalator. Beth hoped the conversation was over.

  No such luck. “So what would be the difference between you working for Reg and you working with us?” Boy, Jee just wouldn’t leave it alone.

  Beth hunched a shoulder, feeling dirty just thinking about it. “He’s—he’s disrespectful. Even when he’s, well, living on a dog bed.”

  “Good observation.”

  Beth rode the up escalator, thinking. “I don’t think he’s an awful person inside. But the most awful things come out of his mouth.”

  “Probably why Ish sent him to us.”

  “But you work for Ish! Why would you want to deal with someone who—why would they send you a manager who—”

  “They don’t trust women down there. They really aren’t that different from the Home Office. They’re afraid we’re smarter than they are, and they feel more secure if they have us under male control.”

  “But don’t they?” Beth felt completely befuddled. “I mean, you—we—have a male supervisor. In the Regional Office.”

  “Look around you,” Jee said, stepping off the escalator. “Do you see any men telling us what to do?”

  At that moment Beth heard a male voice behind and below her say, “Mrs. Saunders?” She turned instinctively.

  Detective Doyle stood below her on the escalator.

  Her skin rippled with panic. She stumbled at the end of the escalator. Detective Doyle stepped forward and caught her under the elbow, and a rush of shock at his nearness washed over her. As she backed away from him, she saw Jee walking briskly away and into a cosmetics store.

  Beth made a tiny squeak of protest.

  Jee never looked back.

  “You okay, Mrs. Saunders?” Doyle said.

  Beth stood there staring at him, feeling frozen. “I’m—I’m not Mrs. Saunders. I’m Beth.” For a dreadful moment she forgot her new alias. Then it came back to her. “Beth Asucar.”

  “In that case,” Detective Doyle said, coming closer and gripping her arm firmly above the elbow, “maybe you can explain why you’re using her husband’s credit card.” She felt her mouth flapping stupidly. He checked her out deliberately, head to toe, his grip still uncomfortably tight on her arm. She was glad she was wearing a modest shell and capris for once. “Let’s go sit down somewhere.”

  She nodded convulsively, and they turned and moved down the escalator again.

  He wouldn’t let go of her arm. Panic filled her. His body was like a furnace beside hers on the escalator. Where was Jee? Could anybody save her? She felt his grip deep inside her body, as if her blood were thickening and growing stupid at his touch.

  He steered her into a restaurant and all the way to the back, to a table in a corner. There he tenderly parked her in a chair and arranged her shopping bags around her where she would trip over them if she sprang up and tried to flee.

  She was thinking like prey. She needed to clear her head. Think like a predator. What would Jee do?

  The waitress brought them iced tea.

  The whole time, he hadn’t said a word. He just smiled.

  By now Beth had had time to come up with answers to his first question and a couple more she could imagine.

  His brown eyes were gentle, with lovely smiling crow’s feet.

  Her heart wouldn’t stop thundering.

  Oh boy, was she in trouble.

  “The credit card, Beth?”

  She sipped iced tea. “He gave it to me. Blake Shanley.”

  “When did he give it to you?”

  “Let me think.” How long ago was that fateful meal at Barclay’s, with the interminable Blake-a-thon that followed, and the humiliating aftermath as she scrambled through a bathroom window? “Monday?” Less than a week. How was that possible?

  “And when did you meet him?”

  She swallowed. “That night. I never saw him before in my life. He came up to our—my table and we hit it off.”

  “I guess so. If he gave you his credit card that night.”

  Under the table, his knee touched hers, sending heat up her thigh so fast that her eyelids fluttered.

  “Does he want it back?” she said boldly. Stop. Stop feeling like this.

  Detective Doyle pushed his lips together. “I wouldn’t know. He skipped town.”

  Her jaw dropped. She hadn’t heard this from Darleen. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Why wouldn’t he vanish?” He shrugged. “His ex-wife disappears before she can collect a settlement, we bring him in for questioning, and the same day he makes bail, we find her blood and her phone in a bachelor pad he’s been keeping f
or nine years. Oh, and his employer has suspended him. But that happened after you saw him last—right?”

  Beth shook her head numbly. Nine years? The kids were still in ballet and lacrosse. That was back when his bonuses stopped. The bottom had dropped out of commercial real estate. Her breath caught. The bonuses did stop, didn’t they? Then she remembered Blake telling her that he’d had to hide his bonuses from his wife, because she was so money-greedy. “Suspended?”

  “My guess, he’d been pulling some raw stuff at his company for a while and they used this flap about his ex-wife to dump him. I don’t have to tell you what bastards these real estate guys can be.”

  She felt herself nodding absently as she remembered those years, which she was beginning to think of as the middle years of her marriage, a finite thing with a beginning, middle, and end. The kids ten and thirteen. The enormous house in Glencoe. Her suddenly-added socialite duties, charities, business entertaining, all of them Blake’s idea. She would rather have spent the time with the kids. She’d done it all because she had to. Because she wouldn’t give up. Now she was beginning to realize that those were the signs that it was time to give up on Blake.

  “I don’t want to offend you,” Detective Doyle said, breaking in on her thoughts. “But there were some photographs in his apartment I’d like you to look at. Whoever they are, they’re wearing masks. But you might be able to identify them from, uh, other clues.” He reached into his coat and pulled out an envelope.

  Beth took it with trembling hands. The photos were worse than she remembered. “Oh!” She winced and looked away. “Really, Detective!”

  “Please, Mrs. S—Beth. For me? I got nothin’ here, and a woman may have been murdered. Take a look.”

  Swallowing again, Beth flipped quickly through the pictures. She must have been drunk. Hot blushes of humiliation rolled over her in waves. She and Jee, wearing the skimpiest paper masks, had tangled their long limbs on the bed, pretending to do things Beth preferred not to remember. Oh, dear God. But here it was in lurid color. She noticed the fancy blonde streaking on the fair-haired girl’s head, just like the streaks in her own hair now. Nervously, she lifted a hand and ran it over her head, thinking of making the streaks go away, and tossed the photos on the table with the other hand. How young she looked! She would never have recognized herself, if she didn’t remember, more vividly by the minute, doing those disgusting things. I’m not that tall, she thought foolishly. Nobody is.