by Olivia Waite
Virginia blinked.
James half smiled, a shy expression she’d never seen him use before. “No one but you,” he repeated. “I’ll show you. Come back and see. Please.”
Then he simply waited.
After several deep breaths, Virginia decided she wanted to trust him. She made that strange, unmoving movement forward again—and again found herself in a sea of other women’s faces and flesh.
One by one, they began to change.
The ladies past drifted into the distance while other images drifted forward. Virginia saw herself as James had first seen her, lonely on the edge of a ballroom, then the look on her face as he’d made her come for the first time. She saw herself endlessly repeated—naked, gowned, half dressed—laughing, touching, talking. She felt, too, all the pleasure James felt at the memories they’d made together. The feel of his cock sliding inside her that first night, the anxious tension while he waited for her signal that it was safe to approach the bedroom window, the slow unfolding satisfaction of learning her heart and her mind as they talked and laughed and touched.
And now the tears that had threatened did fall, but she was too busy kissing him to mark them.
He kissed her back, his relief palpable as their thoughts entwined again and the madness seized them. James began to move inside her—slowly out, then back in with no pause between, a steady buildup of friction that left her no recourse from sensation.
One image drifted forward in the tangle of their minds, a picture of her legs wrapped around his waist and her hips twisting slightly in counterpoint to his thrusts.
Virginia echoed the movement at once and was rewarded with a devastating rush of pleasure—hers and his, mixed, inseparable. His strokes became rougher and more demanding, pushing them both higher on a spike of pure physical need. The silk that bound her dug into her wrists as she strained against her bonds, using that pressure as an anchor while she worked her hips desperately in time with his. He shifted slightly, resting his weight on his forearms to either side while his hands came up to twine with hers, even as his mounting pleasures twined with hers. Virginia clenched her hands and clenched her thighs and came so hard that she saw sparks against the backs of her own closed eyelids.
James cursed and came after...or before...or at the same time. Virginia couldn’t precisely tell. All she was presently capable of was taking long breaths, one after another, as James rested his head on her shoulder and she slowly came back to being the only person inside her own head. It felt quiet, but pleasantly so, like being in a large room when the dancing was over and the candles extinguished. Mustering words to speak seemed to take an unusual amount of effort, but she tried. “That was...” she said.
James raised his head and grinned at her. “Incredible?”
Virginia laughed. “Precisely what I was going to say.” She slid one foot along the back of his leg and he shuddered against her. She started to grin but surprised herself when it turned into a yawn. James chuckled and began untying her wrists. Once they were free, she saw that the silk had left red marks where she’d pulled too hard against it.
His fingers traced those marks, gently. “Did I hurt you?” he asked.
She smiled up at him and traced her fingertips along the long line of his jaw. “It was a little terrifying,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t you I feared. It was just that...I’d never met that part of myself before.”
James bundled the coverlet around them both and Virginia happily curled into his warmth. “I quite liked that part of yourself,” he rumbled, his lips resting against the skin of her temple. “Do you think we might meet her again sometime?”
“Oh,” said Virginia, with a small kiss to the valley between his shoulder and his collarbone, “I think that’s more than likely.”
* * * * *
Slowly, because he was new at it, James woke up.
It was awful. He didn’t know where he was or what was happening. There were blurry half memories in his head, things that made no sense—a herd of silvered horses thundering by, tall trees hung with fairy lights, strange buildings that were bigger inside than they looked from the outside. Something disgusting seemed to have grown on his tongue, then died and left behind a layer of warmed slime.
There was a weight on his arm that his foggy brain slowly recognized as being Virginia. That was reassuring, an anchor in the swell of his perplexity. Other pieces gradually came into focus—a strand of her hair tickling beneath his nose, his arms around her shoulders, her legs tangled with his. He opened his eyes and was appalled to find that there was some resistance to the attempt, some peculiar grittiness that he had to rub away with one hand. It was only when he could finally look around the bedroom and saw the unmistakable color of morning light that he fully comprehended what had happened.
He’d fallen asleep. That was a problem.
Incubi never slept.
But that was the only explanation for how he felt and for all the hours he’d lost between night’s darkness and now. He’d spent enough time with mortals—and specifically in mortal bedrooms—to know what sleeping was. And the thought that he’d just spent about six hours lying flat on his back and unconscious while the world kept turning without him was utterly, deeply terrifying.
It was as though he’d briefly died and then, for no apparent reason, been brought back to life.
The horror of this put an edge on everything in the room—the light coming in through the gap between curtains looked diamond clear and just as dazzling, the dust motes that hung lazily in the air seemed to glitter, and it seemed to James as though he could feel the pressure of every individual thread in the sheets and blankets that bound him. His pulse hammered and every inch of his green skin seemed to prickle.
There also appeared to be something the matter with his belly. It let out a rumble and then—oh damn—it twisted in a manner that was alarming to a creature not accustomed to any form of inner physical torment.
The rumble caused Virginia to stir and mutter, “Good morning.” He could feel her smile against his newly sensitized flesh. “You sound hungry,” she laughed.
With another shock, James realized she was right, though hungry was an understatement. He was ravenous.
But he shouldn’t be. The kind of intimacy they’d shared last night was usually enough to last him at least a week—and that was without taking into account everything they’d done in the month leading up to it.
What’s wrong with me?
Before he could begin to formulate an answer even in thought, a soft knock sounded at the door. He didn’t need Virginia’s quick hiss of warning to know that it was the maid, come to wake her mistress with a breakfast tray and assistance in dressing.
At that point, the incubus realized several things in quick succession.
One: his body was not working quite the way he was used to, in all his centuries of wandering the earth. If he was hungry when he’d so recently fed, and if he’d fallen asleep against the laws of all his kind, the intelligent assumption was that his powers of making himself unseen at will were not necessarily to be trusted at present either.
Two: if he was not invisible, then he was by definition visible.
Three: he was instantly and entirely appalled by the thought of being seen when he didn’t want to be, by a complete stranger, in the nude.
Clumsy with panic, James rolled off the far side of the bed and hid himself in the tangle of fallen blankets, hoping with all his unholy might that the maid would stay near the door and the front of the room and not come walking around to see him sprawled out on her mistress’s bedroom floor.
As Virginia greeted her maid and instructed her to leave the tray on the table by the fireplace, James held as still as he possibly could and tried not even to breathe loudly into the soft sheets. It was hard—his body wanted to tremble and shake with horror at whatever mysterious ailment had him in its grip—but he clenched his jaws and screwed shut his eyes and tried to think small and invisible thoughts. There
was time for several generations of those small thoughts to be born, flourish and die between the rattling sound of the tray being set down and the murmured “Yes, miss,” when Virginia dismissed the girl. Another several generations passed before the door opened and then, to James’ infinite relief, clicked shut.
James peeked cautiously over the bed to see Virginia wrapped in her orange silk dressing gown again, regarding him with eyebrows lifted. “Are you quite all right?” she asked as he rose awkwardly to his feet.
“It’s just—sleeping. I’ve never done that before.” He shrugged, trying to radiate an air of casual interest, as though he were remarking on a change in the weather rather than a sudden shift in his immortal constitution.
Before she could respond, however, his stomach growled again. James clapped two hands to his abdomen in a futile effort to keep everything in the same place it normally was, while his stomach horribly attempted to crawl around underneath his skin.
Virginia merely snorted and sat on the bed, beside the small table with its loaded breakfast tray. “Come on, then,” she said.
James sat down automatically and she handed him a small plate with a slice of dark-brown bread on it. It was unevenly spread with something golden and viscous. “What is this?” he asked.
“It’s toast,” she said, “and you are going to eat it.”
She might as well have asked him to pull the sun out of the sky. “Why?” he asked, blushing faintly greener at the naked bewilderment he couldn’t keep from his voice.
She tilted her head to one side. “Because you’re hungry,” she said. “Go on. It won’t bite back, you know.”
James didn’t know. He’d never eaten before. It seemed such a messy, awkward thing to do. He waited until she turned her face away and gave her attention to her own plate and teacup, then raised one slice with careful fingers.
It didn’t look any better up close. Now he could see the roughness on the edges of the bread and the gleam on the surface of what mortals called butter. But he could smell it now too—a warm, lush scent that blotted out every other thing in the world.
Before he really knew what he was doing, he’d opened his mouth and taken a bite from one corner.
The world dissolved.
Undreamed-of flavor filled his mouth and nose—the sweet, salty richness of the butter and the dark, earthy tones of the bread beneath. A hint of bitterness from the slightly burned surface. Roughness scraped the top of his mouth and was soothed by the butter’s warmth. He chewed twice, noticing the way this action mixed the bread and butter even more closely together, then swallowed.
He opened his eyes to see Virginia watching him, plainly delighted by his reaction. “So you like toast?” she asked.
James was too astonished to be less than honest. “It was amazing,” he said.
Her smile widened, and she held out her teacup. “Then you’re going to love this,” she said. “It’s called chocolate.”
* * * * *
While James devoured the rest of her breakfast down to the least little crumb, Virginia pulled the grimoire from its hiding place and began to search for answers, something she’d missed the first time through the text.
But answers were not to be found.
The section on incubi and succubi was as detailed and thorough as Virginia could ever have expected from a mortal text—she was interested to note again that succubi had a tendency toward left-handedness—but the grimoire offered not a word about maladies, injuries or complaints. Incubi would be banished to Hell if they went too long without sexual nourishment, as she knew, but once refreshed they could easily return to the mortal world and their usual prey. The species appeared to be indestructible.
She could only hope that was still true of James. But it was clearly odd, this sudden need for sleep and sustenance. Not to mention that ridiculous leap he’d made when the maid knocked, as though—Virginia repressed a gasp as realization struck—as though for the first time he were worried about being seen.
She studied him covertly. At present, her incubus was sitting on the bed, legs crossed, shoulders hunched over, running his index finger around the inside of the chocolate cup to get every last little atom of flavor. He put the finger in his mouth and closed his eyes in bliss—an expression Virginia had seen on his face a number of times the evening before. It looked peculiarly innocent now, in the morning light.
He opened his dark eyes and caught her staring, which prompted a sheepish grin. “You were right,” he said. “That was unbelievable.” He put the chocolate cup aside on the now-empty tray and leaned back happily on his hands.
“And now we’re going to have to arrange ways to sneak food to you.” Virginia shook her head and put the book back under the chair cushion. She glared at the dirty china as though it alone were responsible for this new complication in her life.
James sighed. “You’ll forgive me for thinking that sounds wonderful.”
Virginia cast her eye over his naked form. “And you’ll need some clothes.”
He sat up straight, blinking at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“You can’t spend eternity hiding underneath my bed to avoid the maids,” she pointed out.
“I’d be willing to try,” he said.
Virginia did not consider this worthy of a response. She cocked her head, considering his size—not to mention certain other physical considerations. “Where do the wings go when you’re not using them?” she asked.
He frowned. “Away,” he replied. “They go away.”
“That’s not particularly helpful,” she said.
“It’s the way it works,” he said. “They appear when I need them and disappear when I don’t.” He put a hand on his belly and regarded her with worry. “The tasting part was wonderful, but is it supposed to make me feel as if I am going to break something internal?” He gave a very small burp and looked appalled.
Virginia laughed. “You ate a little too much, that’s all. You’ll be fine.”
But the worry still lurked in his eyes and the tightness of his mouth. “Will I?” Fear trembled in his voice. Virginia’s amusement died and she went to sit beside him on the bed. James turned his face away, but when she took his hand his fingers tightened almost painfully around hers. “I have always taken my physical form for granted,” he admitted. “It’s always just done what I’ve asked of it. But now the whole apparatus appears to have gone mad.”
“You slept for one night and ate one meal,” Virginia said gently.
“My body has entirely changed its needs without asking my opinion,” he went on. “What if it just decides to give up altogether? How on earth am I supposed to convince it to keep going?”
“Worrying about it won’t change anything,” she said. “Believe me.”
“What are we going to do?” he asked. It was a soft question, fragile—as though even speaking it aloud was a risk.
Virginia gathered up all her determination. “We’re going to find someone who can help.”
His mouth twisted in disappointment. “With the clothes, you mean,” he said.
“With everything,” she insisted. He didn’t look convinced, but Virginia didn’t have time to press him further. Her maid would return before too long to help her to dress. “You need to go,” she said gently, dropping an apologetic kiss on his bare shoulder.
He smiled at her, a faded echo of his usual good cheer. “I know,” he said. “I’ll keep watch for you, like last night.”
That was far too long to go without food, now that he appeared to need to eat. “We’ll be at the Gibsons’ for dinner this evening,” she said. “They have a terrace just off the sitting room. Can you find me there?”
“I can,” he said and rose to his feet. His wings appeared—she noticed he didn’t seem to have any difficulty with them, but didn’t know what to think about that—and with a slight squeak he’d opened the window and vanished into the cold morning sunlight.
Virginia closed the window after James had lef
t—and none too soon, for Jane was at the door less than two breaths later. As soon as she was dressed, Virginia went downstairs to the library and wrote a very difficult note, to the one person she knew who could possibly understand.
Chapter Four
Night had fallen and James was starving.
He stood in the shadows of the garden, near enough to see the terrace and a hint of color through the windows but not so near that a mortal who happened to wander by would overhear his stomach and its incessant growling.
He felt like a monster, lurksome and ravenous.
It didn’t help that he was tormented by the occasional clink of silverware and chime of crystal glasses issuing through the open windows of the dining room to his left. People were chewing as they talked too—he could hear it in the slightly rounded consonants and garbled vowels. Those who spoke the loudest also seemed the most prone to speaking through their food, in a coincidence so perverse that James was tempted to blame it on the universe’s original Creator. Eventually there was a swell of sound and a swirl of color: the gentlemen had sallied portward while the ladies had fluttered into the sitting room James could just make out between the trees and the tall mullioned windows.
He wondered what was happening to the remains of their meal. How many courses had been served, with how many wines? He’d never tasted wine and this seemed suddenly criminal, or at least not up to his debaucherous credit as an incubus. He wondered if he would prefer white or red or the seductive sizzle of champagne...
So caught up was he in his visions of eating that James failed to immediately notice when someone slipped out onto the balcony. “Hallo?” came a voice, playful and malicious. Then, “I know you’re out here.”
It was a demoness.
For a moment James was tempted to sink deeper into the shadows, ignore the demoness and let her grow bored with her game—but then he might miss seeing Virginia.
He steeled himself and stepped forward, just enough that the demoness could see him but not so far that he left the safety of the greenery. “What do you want?” he asked.