The next round of poncho-wearing waiters appeared at our table, their sword-like skewers steaming with fragrant chunks of seared and seasoned meat.
The drinks waiter shoved between them. “May I open the next bottle for you?”
Beth looked up at him. “I think it’s time for dessert.”
Beth
Jeff spent the night at the Lair in Amanda’s room. Beth had braced herself for some such eventuality. She tried to be relieved. It could have been Jee.
She couldn’t help being grateful for Jeff’s easygoing acceptance of her new job, even if that acceptance came because marijuana had fried his grip on reality and his moral sense.
His only freak-out, in fact, had been over the new bathroom. The upstairs bathroom had been completed on time, which had earned Carl and his team the promised extra cash and incentives. Nestled in the old slacker demon team’s industrial grunge hallway, it looked like a plate of sushi in a pig trough. “Wow, Mom, what is this, the bathroom of the Casbah?”
Reg lent Jeff a bathrobe, and Jeff disappeared into the new bathroom for a while.
“It’s funny,” Beth said to Pog and Jee, after Amanda had turned in for the night, leading a frankly too-drunk-to-fuck Jeff by the hand. “I feel fine about what I do when it’s just me, myself, and I looking into the mirror. But where my son is concerned, suddenly all those rules come back into my head.”
“You don’t get over it overnight,” Pog said.
“You don’t get over it at all,” Jee said. “But eventually you can sort out which voices in your head are you, and which ones are everyone else who’s trying to stand on your face for fun and profit.”
“Or to protect their sons,” Beth said.
“Or protect their marriages,” Reg said. In honor of the day, Jee had allowed him to drag his dog bed up next to the row of La-Z-Boys and watch late-night poker coverage on ESPN.
“I’m surprised you didn’t grab him,” Pog said with a sidelong glance at Jee. “Not enough of a challenge?”
Beth’s eyes widened nervously.
Jee sent Pog a nasty look. “That’s right,” she mumbled. She noticed Beth glancing at Reg, whose whole body seemed to have gone rigid. “Get me another beer,” Jee said, nudging him with her foot.
Reg scampered off and fetched the beer.
Beth was contemplating the many-sided oddities of Jee’s relationship to Reg, or possibly with Reg, when her cell phone, sitting in her purse on the kitchen table, rang, dummmm-da-dump-dump.
Pog grinned incredulously at Beth, who got up quickly and grabbed the phone. “Do I hear the theme from ‘Dragnet?’ Wonder who that is.”
“Shut up,” Beth said, and walked out of the kitchen with the phone at her ear. “What do you want?”
“Checking up on my favorite working girl,” Detective Doyle said.
Beth looked over her shoulder as the kitchen door swung shut. “Don’t let Reg hear you. It took hours to calm him down.”
“So he’s just a friend.”
“Not even that. Friend of a friend.” Beth felt more relaxed than she had in years, at least, without the aid of adult beverages. “Why, are you jealous, cradle robber?”
“I thought you were a middle-aged ex-socialite,” Doyle said, and Beth gasped. “Are you sure you want to give up those years of experience and wisdom, such as they were?”
“Oh, now I was a dumb old socialite? Thanks so much. If that’s my alternative, I’ll take smart young whore.”
“The years were dumb. The socialite was not. Besides, I knew you weren’t a whore.”
She roused herself to complain, “You jerk, you’ve been calling me a professional off and on since we met!” Silence. She gave in, as she’d known she would. “How did you know?”
“You kissed me. Whores don’t kiss.”
“And I suppose you know this first-hand.”
“Of course.”
“You are the most annoying man I have ever met,” she informed him.
His quiet, rough-edged voice had a smile in it. “I know. Let’s have coffee.”
Beth heaved a sigh that was forty-nine-percent annoyance, fifty-one-percent relief. “Oh, all right.”
Pog’s Tump Recipe For Chorizo Sloppy Joes
“Tump” is a technical term out of my white trash cooking roots, meaning, you open the can and tump it all together. Like most of Pog’s favorite recipes it takes about fifteen minutes to prepare, not counting “forget it while it simmers” time.
1 cans kidney beans w/liquid
1 can cream corn
1 can corn niblets
and 2 cans chosen from among the following:
black beans
pinto beans
gandules verdes (large pigeon peas)
jibaritos (small gandules)
blackeyed peas (fresh ones taste better and are creamier)
1 lb. uncooked chorizo
2 T brown sugar
1 T ground allspice
1 t ground ginger
Tump all this stuff into the pot and cook it on high until it boils. Do not drain off the chorizo grease. Once it’s boiling, use your whisk to stir in:
1/4 to 1/2 c fine yellow cornmeal
and boil for another ten minutes until the cornmeal softens and the joe thickens. Before serving, add:
1 large sweet or red onion, chopped fine
Serve on soft buns with sour cream on top, some hot buttery cornbread on the side, and maybe sprinkle on some chopped cilantro or green onion tops. Also makes a great filling for tacos.
Timesaver tip: Cook the chorizo in the microwave while the rest of the chili is simmering, and tump it in once the beans and corn are bubbling.
Acknowledgments
Many people have made these books possible. I want to express deep appreciation to my publishing team, Mark Collins and Chaz Brenchley, and for advice from Vonda N. McIntyre, Jeffrey Carver, and Dave Smeds. My heartfelt thanks go out to all my beta readers and supporters, Kate Early, Pat Rice, Mindy Klasky, Sherwood Smith, Angela Johnston, Michelle Hoffman, Kristine Davis, MJ Reynolds, Kimmie Nelson, Roger Jean Fauble, Anne G. Kasaba, Karen Kumprey, Brandee Heller, Shirley K. Lohrricci, Cheryl Liacos-Halstead, Beverlee Smith, the enigmatic lrap1230, Jennifer Hill, Mary Szigeti, Julia Wallace, Linda and Rob Williams, Bari Silver, Loralei Moir, Sue Heneghan, Shirley Márquez Dúlcey, Emily Pennington, Cheryl L., Tammy Brazeau, Evonne Hutton, Anna Trombley, Mary Nickell, Pamela Gramlisch, Silva Presler, Peggy Fowler, Mrs L J Williams, Julianne H., Beth L. Rodriguez, Aimee Bowyer, and Sandra Spilecki.
If I have omitted someone from this list, it is because my sieve-like brain cannot contain the immensity of the world’s kindness and generosity. If I have erred, it is not their fault, but mine alone. If I have offended, then I guess I’m doing my job. If I have entertained, thank goodness.
Copyright
COED DEMON SLUTS: BETH
Jennifer Stevenson
Published by Book View Café
www.bookviewcafe.com
Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Stevenson
ISBN 978 1 61138 626 4
All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
Cover design by Mark Collins
Horns headband logo design by Mark Collins
Copyedit by Chaz Brenchley
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary manner to entertain, and any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.
COED DEMON SLUTS: JEE
Jennifer Stevenson
www.bookviewcafe.com
Book View Café 2017
Copyright © 2017 Jennifer Stevenson
For my babe, Rich
Pog
My name is Pog. I’m team leader of a succubus training facility on the north side of Chicago. I run a team of four right now, five I guess if you include our houseboy.
Oh. Yeah. On day one, the Regional Off
ice sent us a pimp, excuse me, onsite manager, but we weren’t having any of that. My best friend Jee did the necessary training and orientation. Within two days we had us a houseboy, Reg.
Then Jee started losing her mind.
We are not guaranteed perfect sanity on this job. In fact, the recruiter warned me specifically about that two years ago, when I became a succubus. We get the perfect body, a fat salary, a credit card, and a place to live. If we have issues, that’s what money is for—to pay for a shrink if we need one.
Yeah, I can just see that first session. Hi, I work for hell, do you take Visa?
The body’s totally worth it, though. You can make it any size, shape, color, or configuration you like, minute to minute. Think about it. You never have to try on a pair of jeans again. You see a pair you like, you buy it, you take it home, and you fit your body to the jeans. You never age or die. You can heal from an unbelievable amount of damage, but, unlike mortal whores, you don’t take any abuse from anybody. Jee and I can relate to that, since we were both in the trade long before we were recruited.
The pay is crazy too. Thirty antique silver coins for meeting your quota, a ridiculously low three temptations per month. (Google current prices for an 1859 Victoria florin or a Caligula denarius.) That’s just for raising a boner on somebody. Go the distance and you get into bonus territory. The bonuses are really sweet. We have a nice relationship with every coin collector in the world, as you might imagine.
My favorite part? You have to eat forty-five hundred calories a day to keep the body skinny.
Oh, come on. You never have to try on a bra again.
Yes, we live in kind of a shit hole, aptly named the Lair by the male sex demons we inherited it from. But we’re making it comfortable. We can afford to.
Sounds like heaven, eh? Compared to the lives we all led before, it is.
Beth was dumped by her ex without so much as a toothbrush after twenty-eight years. Now she looks like a very upmarket bar skank. I was a fat whore. My new looks are either news anchor slut or available goth princess. Amanda fled her beehive monitor in the Regional Office in the Sixth Circle, Heresy, hoping to find a few other female demons to get together a women’s softball team. Amanda’s look is big, blonde, and burly. Jee was aging out in the child brothels of Bangkok. Her demon body is supermodel tall, reddish-brown, polished and manicured to perfection.
Jee and I trained as succubi together for two years, on our own, before the team came together at the Lair. We discovered the benefits of our demon bodies, dealt with my ex-pimp, made fabulous money together, and bonded over our sex work histories. We shopped, cried, raged, and experienced that sweetest form of revenge, living well. We had a similar outlook on survival.
And now Jee was losing it.
I suppose because of that outlook on survival, she wouldn’t talk about it, either.
At one in the morning, she woke us all up with some of the fastest, tightest, most desperate screams I’d ever heard. In thirty seconds, Beth, Amanda, and I stood outside her door, calling her name. That didn’t stop her. Beth went in and she still kept screaming. Amanda helped Beth hold her by her arms. Good thing they’re demons with super demon strength, or she’d have tossed them across the room. Finally I turned the light on and called her name, over and over, until she woke up.
Then, in the teeth of our testimony, she wouldn’t believe it had happened. She just stared at us standing around her bed in the middle of the night, like, What’s your fucking problem? I was sleeping.
That’s the attitude to which I referred.
I had this attitude myself, so I could understand. But where was it going to lead? And would any of us get any sleep from now on?
Reg
Jee’s my succubus. Technically they’re all mine. But who am I kidding? Jee owns me and I love it.
Being their houseboy was not the original plan. I was hired by the Regional Office meaning hell to be their onsite manager, hur hur, like a pimp only magical and everything. The thing is, I’m not managerial material. More of a bat boy. Hur, hur.
Pog is our real team leader. It was her idea to throw me off that balcony my first day, when I din’t know any better and come in acting like I owned the place. Jee set me straight.
They thought I din’t remember that. I admit, I woke up next morning in my bed back in my ma’s basement thinking it was all a dream—the interview with Ish Qbybbl, our demon supervisor, and him giving me the key and the address, and me going over there, walking in, grabbing Beth by the titty and making remarks, and all them hot babes grabbing me by the arms and legs and whoosh! Felt like I broke both legs and an arm when I landed. I lay there and felt horrible until I passed out. And then I woke up next morning in bed, good as new.
That second morning, I got a FedEx from Ish, fulla cash. I never seen so much money in my life before. I spent it all on clothes, so my Ma couldn’t get it away from me. Then I come back over here.
Best thing ever happened to me.
Remembering how I talked that first morning, and knowing the girls like I know them now, I’m not surprised they throwed me off a balcony. No wonder Jee took a firm line with me when I come back next day. I’m just grateful she din’t punched me in the throat. Because I woulda missed all this.
We live in the Lair of the Succubi, which is this old factory space on Ravenswood Avenue on the north side. (Who knew I would ever live on the north side? White Sox forever, no matter where I live!) We get our own rooms and our own fridge and a fancy massage chair and our own video game monitor and all the beer we can drink, and the food! Holy cow, the food. And they treat me nice.
And Jee. She makes everything worthwhile. She even gave me my very own dog bed in the kitchen, so I can be in the center of things.
I come outa some bad stuff. So I wasn’t surprised when I found out it was going sour.
Seems like everything started to fall apart when I went back to my ma’s place to get some stuff from the basement. Jee said I could go. That’s how I missed the start.
This morning I come home early from my ma’s to the Lair. I stood by while Jee took her shower, to give her her shampoo and things. She din’t wanna you-know. She din’t even want me to scrub her back.
Instead she sent me to the kitchen to help out with breakfast. Lately Pog lets me do that.
So here I was cooking. But I knew I hadda help Jee.
“She’s upset,” I blurted when I come into the kitchen.
Pog was already in there drinking expresso. She pointed at the machine.
“I’m worried about her.” I started wiping it down and getting the next shot ready for her. “Something’s wrong. What am I doing wrong?” It come out like a wail.
“It’s probably not you, Reg,” Pog said. “There’s a lot you don’t know about Jee.”
My stomach was churned up. I wanted to be in there, helping Jee dress.
Pog watched me make her another shot and pour it into a fresh cup and wash out her old cup. “It’s not you,” she said again. Pog don’t like to talk much in the morning.
The kitchen looked good. Pog keeps a tight ship. I went to my dog bed in the corner and waited for orders.
The kitchen is a long, wide concrete room in the middle of the second floor of an old factory that the sluts took over. Technically some incuboys remodeled it before we got the place, only they left, and our team moved in. The porn posters high up on the walls, the six video game screens, the six big side-by-side refrigerator-freezers, the margaritaville machines, alla that stuff was theirs. Also the cappuccino machine. I want to buy them another one. Pog says no, this one works. Since I clean it, she don’t care that it’s kinda old.
I listened for sounds from Jee’s room, which is right next to the bathroom, which is right across the hall from the kitchen. It can take her forty-five minutes to put on her makeup.
No noise was good noise, I guessed.
I guess Pog was thinking about that too. She sighed and got up and went to her fridge. We all got
one, even me. She pulled out four dozen eggs, a gallon of half’n’half, a half gallon of whipping cream, two pounds of butter, two half gallons of orange juice, one high-pulp one no-pulp, and five bottles of champagne. She put all that on the counter and pointed. “Get to work.”
Mimosas and waffles, my favorite!
I’m Pog’s sous chef. She may be a sex demon but she cooks like an angel for the five of us, Jee, me, Pog, Beth, and Amanda. We gotta eat a lot or else we get fat. I never ate like this before in my life. They feed me same as everybody. I love it here.
I got a big bowl out and put the eggs in and started warming them in warm water. Then I warmed the half’n’half a cup at a time in the nuke and tested it on my wrist like Pog taught me. Then I pulled out the four waffle irons and plugged them in, and started the oven up to warm. Meanwhile Pog opened champagne and got her first mimosa going. I put the rest of the bottles on ice.
The kitchen filled up with the smell of hot iron and melted butter. My stomach started growling like a Rottweiler.
While I set the table, I listened for sounds coming from the bedroom next door to the bathroom. Not a peep. I hoped Jee got some sleep last night. I hoped she maybe went back to sleep now, after her shower. Probably not. Usually not. I wanted to go help her with her makeup.
“I’m ready for those eggs in two minutes,” Pog warned. She started measuring flour and sugar and baking powder and corn meal. I stopped setting the table for four and started cracking and beating eggs—with a whisk, like she taught me, not some old rotary egg beater. That’s for amateurs. She pointed at the butter and I throwed a couple sticks into a cup and nuked them. Then I put a fresh pound on the butter dish and nuked it just a hair for to get it soft. Jee likes a lot of butter on her waffles.
Pretty soon the batter was ready and the first batch was on the waffle irons. I stood by with a long fork to take them out and pop them in the oven so’s they’d stay warm.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 27