“Thank y-”
“Don’t take the compliment to heart too much,” Red swiftly added, “it takes an even bigger man to admit that they have no idea where they’re going in the first place.”
I let out another sigh at that along with a weak chuckle, “Guess I’ll just have to accept I’m not a ‘bigger’ man yet.” I said before lifting up my hand and pulling up my map of the island.
“And here I thought I was going to have to bail us out,” Red remarked as she came closer to me so she could get a better look at the map, “you couldn’t have pulled this out sooner?”
“I could’ve,” I replied after roughly figuring out where the elves were and closing the map, “but that would’ve been as good as admitting we were lost. C’mon, they’re not that far off.”
“You’re sure?” Red lightheartedly jabbed, “You seemed rather positive you knew where they were when we initially set off.”
“I’m sure,” I said before pointing myself in the right direction and moving again, “and like you haven’t been lost before.”
“Can honestly say I haven’t,” Red said proudly, “whenever I get a bit turned around I just fly up and regain my bearings. Or, you know, don’t go hiking through the unknown jungles.”
I went ahead and decided that Red was way better at the whole speaking and being witty thing and, as a result, accepted that there wasn’t really much of a point in pursuing any more conversations that could be flipped on me.
Don’t get me wrong, she was fun to talk to, but there was still some residual grumpiness in me about not getting a full night’s, well, day’s rest, and I didn’t really feel like being treated like an idiot.
“So,” Red sighed with a surprising level of boredom considering it had been all of three seconds, “how far are we away from this elf place?”
“Don’t know, five minutes?” I replied, silently hoping that the trip there wasn’t going to be filled with a million ‘Are we there yet?’s.
“Right then, come here.”
Before I knew what was happening, Red had zipped around me, stopped me by putting her hands on my chest, and dropped down to her knees.
“Um…” I trailed off as Red went to work on getting my pants most of the way down, “what are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Red replied before running her fingers up my legs like I was a piano, “I’m giving you a blowjob.”
Unsurprisingly, that confused me.
“Why?” I asked, remembering how the last time she’d done something sexual with me I’d ended up getting kicked in the head.
“Do I really need a reason?” Red asked with a smile before turning her attention to my mostly flaccid cock, “Now, that simply won’t do.”
I went to ask her what she meant, but then she snapped her fingers and my dick damn near shot off with how quick it got hard.
“Whoa…” I let out woozily, my head swimming at the sudden and unexpected flow of blood.
“Don’t worry,” Red giggled as she used one of her fingers to swirl around the head of my already incredibly sensitive cock, “you’ll get used to it.”
“What do you mean I’ll-”
Red didn’t give me the chance to finish my question and instead decided to take it upon herself to take almost the entire length of me in one go, her lips coming to rest a mere inch from the base.
And then she started to use her tongue.
At first it wasn’t much, she just sort of ran it along the bottom of my cock while keeping all of me in her mouth at the same time, but then she started to pull back and, with an almost professional level of skill, rolled it around the length of me.
“Fuckin’ Hell…” I practically chuckled, earning me an amused look from Red before she took me all the way in again.
Everything she was doing felt perfect.
Her lips tightening and loosening, her tongue rolling and licking, and the occasional glance up at me were all mixing into something almost unbearably amazing.
So it should come as no surprise that, after a mere twenty seconds, I was getting close, and even though I was nowhere near the stage of showing physical signs, Red somehow knew based on the smirk she was giving me with her eyes.
She didn’t slow down though, no, in fact she sped up, and didn’t fail to hit the exact same spot with her lips each time she took me in despite the added haste.
There was a part of me that wanted to pull out at the absolute last second and cum on her amazingly perky red tits, but almost as soon as I had the thought she’d grabbed my hips and started pulling me towards her as she went forward.
And then, with so much force that I actually had to grab Red’s shoulders to stop me from falling over, I came, eliciting a delighted whimper from the succubus who seemed intent on sucking up every last drop from me.
That’s when the problem started.
“O-okay, you can stop now.” I stuttered with a smile as almost electrical shocks ran through my body with each suck.
Red went on sucking and moaning, showing absolutely no indication that she could even hear me.
“Red, I appreciate the-ow!” I yelped as I felt the smallest amount of teeth, causing Red to sort of jolt awake, realize what she was doing, and pull away.
Granted, she hadn’t bitten me hard or anything, my yelp had mostly been to alert her, but I still felt the need to cradle my threatened dick and balls.
“I-I…” Red stammered out with an expression of embarrassment and shock as she fell back on her ass and looked between my cupped hands and my face, “I’m s-so sorry, I don’t… I don’t…”
“It’s alright,” I interjected after sneaking a look on my still semi-hard but healthy cock, “I was just shocked was all.”
“It’s really not,” Red replied, shaking her head, “I need to be able to control myself…”
“Seriously, Red, it’s okay.” I said before walking towards her with my hand outstretched, “No harm, no foul.”
“But it could’ve been bad,” Red muttered as she took a hold of my hand and let me pull her onto her feet, “that’s what happened last time.”
“What do you mean ‘last time’?” I asked after finding my pants and pulling them on.
“Let’s just say that there was a reason I was on that ship and leave it at that.” Red sighed before dusting herself off.
“Okay, but how about we don’t leave it at that?” I suggested with a grin.
Red went to shake her head at that, looked at me, then let a mildly amused smile play across her lips, “Alright, fine, but it’s a long story.”
“Eh,” I said with a shrug, “we’ve got plenty of time.”
“I thought you said we were five minutes away?”
“Yeah, but I reckon I’ll get us lost again.” I joked, earning me a proper smile from Red.
I have to say, Red was probably the most compelling character… person I’d met up until that point.
It wasn’t just that she’d rocked up on a penal vessel, and it wasn’t just that she was a succubus, it was that she clearly had something behind her smirks and her witty remarks.
Don’t get me wrong, the girls were great, and they had deep, believable personalities, but I honestly felt that their backstories were a bit lacking.
Heh, guess it was a given that I’d be pulled towards the most ‘damaged’ one of the group, that’s how I was in real life too.
But hey, Courtney wasn’t a succubus, and I had the strangest feeling that Red wasn’t going to set a bunch of my clothes and collectibles on fire.
Ah, memories.
CHAPTER 17
“So, what do you want to know?” Red asked as we restarted our trek through the jungle.
That was actually a surprisingly difficult question for me to answer, not least because there was so much about her that I wanted to know, but also because I didn’t really know what I could ask about.
It’s awkward enough to ask someone why they were in prison without the added c
omplication of them being someone you know you want to keep around.
“How about I just start with why I was on the ship?” Red suggested with a little smile after a few seconds of watching me struggle to find the words.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” I replied with a nod, “like, do all succubus get arrested on sight or..?”
Red shook her head at that, “No, it isn’t illegal to be a succubus. In fact, most of us live completely normal lives. Hell, I was working quite happily as a legal representative for a… well, I’m not sure he’d like his business discussed.”
“I thought that succubi absorbed life force or something,” I said, tilting my head curiously, “not trying to sound like an idiot or anything, but I don’t see how a succubus could live within the confines of the law on the basis of your diet alone.”
Red chuckled a little and smiled, “You don’t sound like an idiot, but that whole ‘sucking out the life force’ thing hasn’t been done for a long time on account of the fact that it made us rather dangerous. Hell, most of us can’t even do it anymore. A lot of us actually live off a mix of regular food, blood, and semen.”
“Semen?” I laughed, “Really?”
“Why’s that so surprising?” Red asked with a mildly annoyed expression.
“It’s n-I mean it’s… I don’t know, it just seems kind of odd to me, you know?” I said, struggling to get rid of the amused tone in my voice.
“And I suppose you have a problem with vamps and blood then?”
“That’s a bit different, isn’t it?” I asked while at the same time trying to come up with a reason why they were actually different and silently hoping Red wouldn’t ask what I meant.
“How so?”
“Well, the lore’s a bit more solid, isn’t it?” I said as I internally cursed myself out for not having a better answer.
Unsurprisingly, Red wasn’t all that happy with that response, “You do realize how that sounds, right?” she asked disappointedly, “Why must humans be so… childish?”
“It’s not childish,” I replied, accepting that it was childish but not wanting to share that acceptance, “it’s just…”
“It’s just what?” Red asked, her voice taking on a more bitter tone, “Go on, I’ve heard them all. It’s weird, strange, odd, creepy, perverted. Go on, tell me what’s wrong with my primary source of sustenance.”
Not going to lie, I felt a bit backed into a corner, and the worst part was I couldn’t decide between sticking to my guns or validating her feelings.
On one hand, I had my oh so very important pride to think about.
On the other, I didn’t just want to be a complete and utter douche.
“Alright,” I sighed with more defeat than I’d intended, “I’m sorry. I guess it isn’t that weird.”
Red didn’t seem altogether convinced with my apology at first, but after a few seconds of staring at my face she eventually saw I was being sincere, “Apology accepted,” she said proudly, “anyway, yes, we live off… that, which is what led to me getting in trouble.”
“So what happened?” I asked, grateful for the subject change, “Was it something to do with the work you were doing?”
Red shook her head, “I suffer from something called ‘Ryger’s Syndrome’, which is a sort of side effect from the way I was created.”
“The way you were created?” I said, tilting my head once more, “You mean in Hell?”
“No, not in Hell.” Red chuckled clearly not realizing that I needed a better explanation.
“So why are you guys called demons then?”
“Because that’s what succubi are,” Red clarified, “as much as most of the world doesn’t like to admit it, there are classes to each race. For demons, who do originate from Hell, there are three classes. There’s the middle, where the succubi and such sit, there’s the lower, which covers imps and whatnot, and then there’s the upper, which is pretty much anything above a Hell Knight.”
There was a part of me that really wanted to try and track down a book or something so I could go through all the lore of Hell and stuff at my own pace, but I decided instead to turn the conversation back on course.
“Alright, so where do succubi come from if not from Hell?” I asked, picturing little red babies with wings running around brimstone and lava lakes, “I get that you originate from Hell, but I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say that there isn’t a finite amount of succubi from when they first came up.”
“You would be right,” Red replied with a nod, “Okay, so, there are two known ways to get a succubus. One, the ‘cleaner’ way, is to have another succubus take her under her wing.”
“And the other way?” I asked after a few seconds of silence, to which Red let out a prolonged sigh.
“The other way, which is how I was created, is to use some nasty black magic.” Red replied dejectedly as she took a depressing walk down memory lane.
“Are you okay?”
Red didn’t respond for a moment, but she eventually managed to look up at me, force a smile, and nod, “Usually it’s a couple of wizards, or sometimes a few drunks get their hands on a spell, and they decide that they want to change a person, which is where the Ryger’s comes from. Without anyone to teach us how to control ourselves we can get a bit… overeager.”
“Which is how you ended up going away, yeah?”
Red nodded, “I was fine for ages and then I relapsed, ended up killing something like twenty people in a bathhouse. Don’t remember a second of it though.”
Understandably, finding out that I was walking around with a mass murderer concerned me somewhat, but I was able to push that to the back of my mind and cap it with a ‘They must’ve done something, right?’ plug.
“What about before you changed?” I asked in the hopes of steering the conversation in a less dark direction, “Do you remember who you were before you became ‘Red’?”
Red regarded me with a face that in no small way said ‘Of course not’, but within a few seconds that façade had slipped away and been replaced with the dejected semi-smile she’d been donning for most of our walk, “Barmaid, around fifteen.”
“You have any family?”
“No,” Red replied with a shake of her head, “mother died when I was young, father and brothers got killed in some war or another.”
“That must’ve been hard.” I said, acting like I wasn’t curious about all the wars that happened in the world I was in.
What? They’re one of my special interests.
Imagine WWII with magic and dinosaurs then tell me I was being insensitive.
“Not really,” Red finally replied after a few seconds of thinking it over, “I mean, it was hard, but it was also just part of life. Some people came home, others didn’t.”
“And I’m guessing the ones who came home were the problem?” I asked as remembered her specific example about drunks getting their hands on a spell.
“No, no the veterans were for the most part good people,” Red replied defensively, “it was the people who stayed behind who were the problem. They were cowards, and with what few guards we had around town courtesy of the war they could pretty much do as they pleased.”
“There wasn’t a legal system?”
“Oh no, there was,” Red clarified, “but we went from having a barracks of fifty guards to less than ten, so they had trouble keeping their eyes on all places at once.”
“So, what? You were just left to fend for yourself?” I asked, trying my best to stay focused on Red as I tried to figure out if the town she was from was medieval or modern.
“I wouldn’t say that, it took some planning for them to nab me,” Red sighed before growing a little smile, “didn’t go well for them though. After they got me somewhere dark and quiet after my shift and worked their evil magic they met a rather untimely and gruesome demise.”
“I guessed as much,” I said, reflecting her smile, “what made them think that that was a good idea?”
“Eh,
hubris? They tried to pull off a binding spell, but it didn’t go to plan.” Red explained then shrugged, “Not that it matters much, summoning doesn’t really happen all that often anymore, you hear of maybe one or two cases a year.”
“That still sounds like one or two too many.” I chuckled before turning somewhat serious, “Hey, why are you telling me all this?”
“You wanted to know.”
“Yeah, but you could’ve just as easily told me to go stuff myself instead of letting me in on your story.” I said with an amused huff, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you told me, but…”
“I get what you’re saying,” Red said when it became clear I couldn’t finish my sentence properly, “the truth is that I want this to be a long and fruitful venture, and that’s only going to work if we’re honest with each other. The best way for you to know me is to know what I am and where I come from.”
And that’s when I hit something of a dilemma.
I wanted to be straight with her, I really did, but I had the feeling that if I let her in on the whole thing about her reality being a game I’d somehow rip a hole in the game’s equivalent of space-time.
“Don’t worry,” Red chuckled after a few seconds of watching me open and close my mouth, “Creators have their secrets for a reason, everyone knows that.”
Honestly, I wasn’t actually happy with being given a way out of telling her, but I smiled and nodded, “Thanks for understanding.”
“It’s really no problem,” Red replied, “I figured we’d just go ahead and stick with honesty from here on out.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said, wondering if I should tell her that I probably would’ve ended up killing her if I knew how to load a flintlock, “anyway, we should be getting close.”
“I should hope so,” Red laughed before pointing her head towards a hideously warped tree, “we’ve passed that ugly thing a good dozen times now.”
“Oh, good,” I sighed disappointedly as I pulled up the map, “nothing gets you where you want to go quite like wandering in circles.”
Build-A-Harem- The Island Collection Page 21