The whole time, he just stood there, looking at me with that one big puppy eye. As the heat in my hand began to flow into him, that eye closed. His face seemed to soften. I realized then that he had been expecting me to clobber him again. He sank to the floor slowly—my grip on his head couldn’t hold him up, he’s not a short guy—and he wrapped his arms around my lower legs and pressed his cheek to my thigh.
I waited for him to apologize. Usually he apologizes for pissing me off enough to make me hit him.
But he didn’t.
I waited to hear myself warn him to stay out of my room if I screamed in my sleep.
But I didn’t.
He was trying to tell me something. This was Reg, whose mouth generally couldn’t help opening and letting out something stupid and tasteless and crude. He knew what he’d done to get clobbered, but he didn’t want to promise not to do it again. That left him with nothing to say.
And I realized that I didn’t want him to stay out of my room when I was screaming in my sleep.
My god, I’m fucked up, I thought despairingly. “Get up.”
He stood and looked at me with two eyes, shining adoration in his face. There was no sign of injury now.
And you, my lad, are even more fucked up than I am. “Don’t look at me,” I said sharply.” Immediately he cast down his gaze. Lightly, I touched the formerly-bruised eyelid. His eyes closed as if in bliss. Yup. Fucked up.
I said abruptly, “You can sleep in my room if you want.”
Then I went back into the kitchen. I was a huge mess inside. I didn’t think I could talk to the others yet. But I couldn’t look at Reg anymore either, not until I settled down. I kept my eyes on my coffee and the mountain of pancakes and melted butter Pog put on my plate.
Some calories helped. The turmoil inside began to settle. By the time Reg came back into the kitchen, I felt in control of myself.
I could just tell Beth was going to say something. Newbie. No tact at all. I got up and left, after only one plate of pancakes. I had to know more, but I couldn’t just sit there and ask.
“What was that about?” Beth said when the door had closed behind me. Knew she wouldn’t let it alone. I leaned against the door frame and put my ear to the crack. “I didn’t hear any screaming last night.” Nobody said anything. “Reg, why did she hit you?”
“Ah, she had another night terror and I tried to wake her up.” I hear forks and knives clinking into the sink. He sounded unconcerned. Good boy.
But inside me a bell gonged like a funeral. Night terror?
“What’s a night terror?” Pog said conveniently.
“’At’s when you wake up in your sleep afraid of something’s gonna happen, only you’re not really awake. I looked it up.” he added proudly.
I turned away from the door and slumped against the wall, my legs going boneless again. What? What could I have been dreaming about that I’d be scared would happen again?
Well, a lot of things. Spoiled for choice, really.
I didn’t need to lay my ear to the door to hear. I have succubus hearing. I can hear a man’s dick get hard in his pants from across the room. I heard Beth as clearly as if I were still in the kitchen.
“What’s she thinking is about to happen again?” She always asked the question I didn’t want asked.
“I dunno,” Reg said simply.
Beth didn’t answer right away, and I couldn’t listen anymore. I fled to my room, got dressed, and went shopping the second day in a row.
When I got back, I felt better. I had bought a third of the Versace summer collection and shoes and handbags to match. Reg was tickled to death with his new diamond Rolex watch and his squeaky bear toy from FAO Schwartz.
Pog
When Jee returned to the Lair from retail therapy, I issued a work call. “Dunno about you ladies, but I need money.”
“Good grief, what for?” Jee said. “I’m the one needs money. I just blew six thousand dollars at Sak’s.”
“What, is your hedge fund running skinny?” We kidded back and forth about our nest eggs, which were each swollen like toddlers with the mumps. She seemed like her old self. Whew.
“Can I drive?” Reg said from his dog bed in the corner.
“Stay home and sort my shoes,” Jee said.
“You might need me,” he protested.
“Don’t talk back,” she snapped.
“You can clean the skylight over the marijuana plants,” Amanda said.
Reg sent Jee a pathetic look. She shook her head.
“I’m ready,” Beth said, coming into the kitchen.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Reg squeezed his new squeaky toy just once, a sad little wheezy protest. Jee ignored him. We trooped down to the van.
Beth had had a new idea that did not, upon examination, suck. Apparently, when she turned fifty, a few months before her ex-husband divorced her, she went for an eye checkup and discovered that the eye doctor’s waiting room was crammed full of senior citizens. The wait time was horrendous, three hours. Next day when she looked at her insurance card she noticed a new code by her name. She called her insurance company and discovered that the code meant she was over sixty-five.
Reporting the incident to us, she ranted, “I was livid! So this was what kind of health care I have to—I had to look forward to! They treated those people like cattle! As if their time meant nothing! After three hours, I spent ninety seconds with the ophthalmologist. He acted weird, too. He seemed so jittery, he had to be on drugs. Those poor people!” Beth in outraged-mom mode.
But it gave her the new idea.
At first I was skeptical. How much tempting can you do with someone who’s that far over the hill? On the other hand, it was a new client base, they’d be trapped and sitting down, and there would be a lot of them.
She talked me into it. Worst case scenario, we’d hit on the cab drivers waiting for the old people to come out.
We dressed fairly conservatively, that is, covering most of our thighs and both nipples and both shoulders. Slut-taking-mom-to-the-eye-doctor clothes.
Then we paid a visit to Beth’s obviously-former ophthalmologist.
At two in the afternoon, the place was mobbed. The venetian blinds kept most of the sun out. In that dim light, I had to dial up my demon eyes. Yep. Fifty-five chairs out of sixty were occupied by Medicare patients. Most weren’t even reading. They sat slumped in chairs too big for them, staring at nothing, or with eyes closed.
“Their pupils are dilated,” Beth whispered to me, nearly deafening me. Guess I’d also dialed up my hearing.
I whispered to the team, “Okay, spread out. Get names, ages, marks and moles, yadda yadda, anything you can enter on the monthly report. You’ve got until closing time.” Which could be forever at the rate people were being called out of this holding tank to see the eye doctor.
There were just enough empty chairs here and there that we could all find someone to sit next to.
The guy next to me seemed alert. He had a huge nose, good sign, and a walker in front of his chair. I hoped he could still feel his dick. “Does it always take this long?” I asked him.
He looked up at me and gave me a big smile. “I’ve been here since noon.”
We talked for maybe five minutes. His name was Virgil, and he had cataracts. “Second time!” he said. “Imagine that!” I got his name, his wife’s name, where he had served in Viet Nam, and what was wrong with hot dogs these days—was that an innuendo? I touched his arm playfully and sent him a little shot of succubus juice. His smile got bigger. So did something else. Goodness. Never say die.
A succubus always knows.
I had enough for my report. I gave him another succubus jolt for luck, patted his arm, and turned to the guy seated on my other side.
This was somebody’s son, waiting with his mom. He was only fifty or so. Piece of cake.
I hadn’t quite finished with him when Virgil got up and pushed away with his walker, passing me a third big smil
e.
Forty-five minutes later, I’d scored seven times.
I checked out my team. Beth was deep in earnest conversation with one of the patients. Amanda was booping into her phone—probably logging her stats on the spot, the geek. Jee looked to be in difficulties.
What?
I squinted at her. She sat in a corner between a fake potted plant and some old guy whose hands shook. He looked totally helpless.
But my succubus eyes could see she was radiating tension. Her shoulders were tight. The cords on her throat looked taut. She looked crouched for flight, yet trapped. Weird.
What’s more, I would have bet the old guy talking to her could tell she felt trapped. He seemed to be having a grand time.
He reached for her hand. She stood up fast.
Beth was next to her by then. I crossed the room, threading my way between big chairs and shrunken people and walkers and canes and wheel chairs.
Beth said, “Gramma’s finished.”
“Time to go,” I said, arriving seconds later. I turned my head to tell Amanda to get the van, but she was already at the door, waggling her keys at me. “You ready, Jee?”
Jee panted, “Ready.” Her pupils were dilated as much as the eye-patients’. I could hear her heart thundering.
Holy shit. I led the way out of there. Beth towed Jee by the hand, which would ordinarily have cost Beth an arm. Jee stumbled in her wake.
Amanda pulled the van up to the door as we made our escape.
“What the fuck?” I said, as Jee yanked her hand out of Beth’s grasp. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Jee said. She shook all over. What the fuck?
Beth clicked her seatbelt shut. “He told her how pretty and exotic she looks, and he went on and on about a whorehouse he visited in Singapore.”
“Beth,” I said in a warning tone.
“I thought he was being highly inappropriate,” Beth said primly.
“Beth,” I said again.
But nothing shuts Beth up when her mom engine is running.
Amanda and I started to talk loudly about our scores. Amanda had racked up nine hits in forty-five minutes. She’s the efficient one. I had made my quota and my bonus. Beth got interested in the conversation finally, and revealed that she had scored six times and then got distracted by this woman’s story about her kids. I shook my head.
“And did you notice, some of the people we talked to actually left the office?” Beth said. “One of mine actually forgot his cane. He just sailed out.”
“I saw my first guy leave,” I admitted. “What? You think we—you think they—I mean, I could see their sex drive getting a boost, but their vision?”
“Makes sense,” Amanda said from the driver’s seat.
“How?” I said helplessly. “It was just sex.”
“Sex isn’t just sex,” Amanda said. “It’s prana. Life force. We may have reactivated their kundalini.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re such a geek.”
“We didn’t heal their vision,” Amanda corrected. “They did. With energy we woke up in them.”
“Wow.” Beth’s glowed. “We could do so much good!” Such a mom.
“Aren’t you forgetting who you work for?” I said drily.
She pshawed. “Like the Regional Office cares. They’ll never know.”
Jee didn’t say a word the whole way home.
Reg
It happened again the very next night. I was getting worried bad. I could see Jee was still stretched tight. I waited, but she din’t say I could come into her room and undress her.
“Not tonight,” she just said, and shut the door in my face. I din’t know if that meant no sex, or no I couldn’t come in. I decided I’d weasel that one. I waited an hour and sneaked in anyway.
There’s always room on that big bed. I curled up at the bottom and fell asleep.
I woke up when I heard her suck in a deep, horrified breath.
I done some more research on the internet during the day and this time I was ready.
“Upiak,” I was right by her head whispering before that big breath could turn around in her lungs and come out screaming. “Upiak, adindaku baby, shsshh.” Her eyes flew open, but I din’t think she was awake yet. She looked scared and blind. Little kid in the dark. I tried again. “Adindaku,” I crooned, “baby, I’m here.”
I slid under the covers next to her and wrapped my arms around her. She breathed in again deep, but this time, it come out in a long sigh. She snuggled her face against my bare chest. “Baby,” I whispered. I patted her careful in the middle of her shoulders. One time I seen a lady do that in the store with her baby that was crying. Right on the kid’s back. Over the heart, I guess. I wanted to touch her heart.
She snuggled closer with her eyes shut. I felt something warm and wet on my chest. She was sucking on my nipple!
Holy shit. My whole body went electerrific. I felt like lightning was sticking me in the heart from where her mouth was on my nipple. My dick got hard. I felt like curling around her and cracking myself open and pouring everything over her like a blanket.
I wished I had some milk in my little man titty.
I had a pretty good idea what she’d feel like if she woke up and found me in bed with her, I mean, in the bed like next to her like I was her boyfriend or something. I figured I better go back to the other end and curl up by her feet like I normally did.
Normally. Listen to me. Two and a half weeks and I felt like this was normal.
I wanted to pet her pretty fluffy black hair, but I was afraid I’d wake her. I sniffed it instead. She smelled like coconut and musk and baby powder.
Man, I wanted this to be my new normal. This was the life. Nobody ragging on me, and my ma din’t even call. Not that she would. She wouldn’t care if I jumped in front of a bus, long as I din’t do it when I was carrying her groceries.
Sure, Jee hit me now and then, but at least I knew what I done. And then she was sorry. She healed me last time. That really happened. One minute I can’t look outa one eye, next, not a sign of it. Tell you one thing, I found out who done this to her, he was gonna have a black eye. And maybe a bullet hole in his head.
I really din’t want to stop lying next to her.
But better safe than sorry. I start pulling away from her
I heard a little snort outa her and then that sucking-in breath again. Oh, shit.
This time she growled a deep growl.
The hairs stood up all over my body.
I kinda squinted down at her where she was snuggled against my chest. The covers was sliding off. Her back—her back was all stripey. I don’t mean like referee stripes or jailhouse stripes or candycane stripes, I mean tiger stripes. In the orange streetlight coming through the window, she looked black-and-white tiger-stripey.
I breathed one of them words I found on the internet. “Adindaku.”
Then I felt her fingers tighten on my sides.
Only they wasn’t fingers. They felt like claws.
Using her claws, she climbed up my body until her mouth was on my shoulder. She was slick against me. Tears. Aw, shit. Crying in her sleep again.
Well, what could I do? I couldn’t leave her like this. I was scared to try anyhow.
She started gnawing on my shoulder, and her teeth was getting long and sharp, and I said as quiet as I could, “Adindaku, baby, sh, sh, you’re having a nightmare baby, sh, baby, upiak adindaku, it’s okay I’m here.”
She gnawed and growled and sank those claws into my back.
Funny thing. It hurt, but all I could think was, Oh Jee, what did they do to you? “’At’s okay, adindaku, baby, bite those bad guys. Bite ’em. Bite back, baby.”
She sucked in another one of them breaths and shuddered all over. She shuddered for a long time. She stopped biting me too. I held on for dear life, because it was me getting outa bed that started her off, and okay because we was naked and damn that felt good. The shuddering started to slow down. She stopped squeezing me so hard an
d after a while she was just laying in my arms, crying on my bit-up shoulder.
I think I fell asleep again. Just a little bit. I woke up fast when I heard her suck in some more air.
“I smell blood,” she said. Light was coming in through the window blinds by now. She pushed me back and looked me over. She had blood on her mouth, all dried on, and her face was smeared with it.
When she saw me, she gave another gasp. Then she jumped out of bed and ran out.
Well, I din’t have no orders otherwise and I wasn’t about to move. I waited right there. When she come back her face and hands was clean and she had a hot wet washrag with her and she wiped all the blood off me and looked at the marks on me and she was muttering “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.”
I kept my eye on her. She finished up with the rag and then she threw it on the floor and put her hands over my back and my shoulder, which was stinging like blazes, let me tell you. I could feel her hands get all hot. I could feel my skin getting hot too. This was like the other day when she touched my head and made my black eye go away. It felt pretty weird. Weird, but good.
When she took her hand away, I felt so good all over, I din’t wanna move.
“Reg,” she says, “what happened? I—I was asl—asl—” she caught her breath like, and I thought she was gonna go off again, but then she jerked away from me and rolled on her side and curled up in a ball with her arms over her face. Next thing I know, she was sobbing.
I wrapped myself around her. I sang that song I found on YouTube, low and slow, hoping I wasn’t messing up words in a language I din’t understand. I listened to it about fifty times yesterday.
A couple seconds she stopped crying. “Where in the world did you get that?”
I rubbed my chin on her hair. “Looked it up on the internet.”
“You don’t hate me?”
“Do I look like I hate you?”
She uncurled herself and turned over and looked into my eyes like she was checking for bedbugs. Guess she stopped worrying. Because then she passed her hand over my shoulder one more time, like, was there any more bite marks. Then she spilled it.
“It was after the wave. Everyone was dead. I found two of the bodies. They were all bloated up and their faces were horrible colors. But they wore the clothes of my tribe. I ran away before I could figure out who they must have been. I had nothing to eat or drink for two days. These men came. They said they would take care of me. I didn’t—I didn’t know what I was doing!” she said, like she done something wrong.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 29