Master Juggler (Untraceable Succubus Book 3)

by Erin R Flynn

  “All I want is not to have another slimy director try to put his hands on me and a safe place to stay.”

  “Yeah, I bet you could use that,” he muttered, clearly knowing the way things went. “She’s known for talking soft, so you whisper when you’re her. You’re only her when I’m with you, as only she and I will know about this. N is supposed to be at a fundraiser tomorrow night, but her shooting schedule has been too rough and could honestly use the night off. You’ll give it to her.”

  “Okay, I can do it,” I promised.

  And it turned out I could. He had me take off the wig and brought me to his place, promising there was a guest room and I would be safe, as I was the answer to his prayers. More and more people wanted a piece of N, and she was running on empty. He gave me a chance to clean up, and even if I was using his too big pajamas, the shower was hot, the bed was soft, and he even brought me dinner.

  He promised to get my suitcase from the shelter tomorrow and sent me to bed early. The next day I went to meet N, and she was thrilled at finding me.

  “Nothing to say for yourself?” she asked me with an amused look.

  “Sorry, star struck,” I admitted. “Haven’t been in LA too long and haven’t really met anyone yet. I just came to be a dancer, and someone said I looked a lot like you.”

  “You do, but we need to work on how you speak. You’re too harsh. Were you a cheerleader or something?”

  “No, we yelled a lot in martial arts lessons,” I muttered, shrugging when they shot me shocked looks. They didn’t push it, but they spent the rest of the day getting me closer to sounding like her, working with me on how to walk like her a bit better, but I could walk in heels well as a dancer so that was good.

  “You’re a fast learner, kid,” she praised. “You take some times off my plate so maybe I can get a real damn break now and again, and I’ll take care of you.” She studied me suspiciously like she wasn’t sure I was really worth the trouble yet. “What do you like to do for fun?”

  I wasn’t sure of the right answer, so I answered honestly. “I love dancing, it’s my outlet. I used to love the library and there was only a small one in town. I loved going to the pictures, but I’ve only seen a few.”

  “Well, you’ll need to see all of mine for sure, and we can set that up,” she said before glancing at her manager. “Everyone thinks I’m an idiot, so some outings with her to the library might be smart. Research some roles or whatever they eat up.”

  “Yeah, good call for sure,” he agreed. “Let’s see how she looks in the dress you were supposed to wear tonight, and then we can get her makeup done.”

  “If we keep her, she gets a better wig,” she added. “This looks like me on a bad hair day, and I can’t afford to have bad hair days.”

  “You never have a bad hair day,” he praised, but she simply snickered like she knew he was blowing smoke up her ass.

  And not my business to even pay attention to.

  I did well at the fundraiser, no one batting an eyelash that I wasn’t N. It was fun even, people gushing how great I was even if it wasn’t really meant for me. Growing up as a bastard and someone people looked down on or pitied, it was a complete one-eighty.

  “You did good,” he praised when we left and headed back to N’s. It worked out since she was currently living at a hotel, so he got me a room as well. It wasn’t nearly as nice of one, but it was mine and my suitcase was there when I arrived.

  Things went well the first few weeks. I played N really well at events, but I had trouble at photoshoots, which she wouldn’t have, but they worked with me and I even got comfortable in more revealing stuff.

  “It’s just skin, kid,” N told me time and time again. “The only one who can judge you for showing it is you and whatever god there is, and if he made us, he’s probably proud of his work.”

  That actually helped, and a few more months and I was doing better. It was a great gig, and I squirreled away some money even with donating to the shelter and they took the hotel room out. I would rather have rented a cheaper apartment, but that would have made it more difficult for them to contain and the hotel had security.

  Yeah, security was nice.

  “Use the kid,” N told her agent one day, and I wasn’t sure what the conversation was about. “She can more than handle it. She’s been me for six months now.”

  “Yeah, she’s being you a bit too much. You gotta earn your money too, N,” he said.

  “I earn all of our money, including yours, so maybe you should remember to be on my side,” she snapped. “Someone mentioned bags under my eyes from this new shoot, so we can’t have that, right? Use the kid.”

  “I got you, get some rest then,” he muttered with a sigh. He came out and found me there, flinching. “Sorry about that. She’s having some personal issues, so take this dinner for her tonight, yeah?”

  I nodded, glancing past him at the door, still not very good at reading desires, but even I could feel hers through the door that people would back off of her. “Yeah, whatever I can do to help. I can’t imagine the pressure she’s under.”

  He slapped on a smile and nodded, something off with it, but I figured he was stressed too.

  Or he was leading me into the one thing I said I wanted to be protected from.

  This dinner was different from others I’d pretended to be N at. They were flirtier, their desires a bit thicker. I’d played with my power, and the lust people felt for her helped me feed without having to touch them sexually or kissing, but it wasn’t much, so a lot of adoration and shaking hands helped. The manager let it go because it was good for her image.

  But something was off, and every hair on the back of my neck was standing up by dessert. I tried to flag the manager it was time to go, but he was very visibly ignoring me as he stood at the bar.

  “Let’s head in back for a private drink,” one of the men said, all of them the money behind lots of movies. N’s movies, and that was why she had dinner with them and others from the studio. I opened my mouth to object, and he smirked at me. “You wouldn’t want to make a scene, right? That would be bad for your career.”

  “And yours,” I warned, pulling away from his touch. “You may have the money, but I have the name and face they come to see.”

  “Only because we say so,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes at me. “Aren’t you just getting big for your britches. I think we should remind you how things work.”

  I swallowed a flinch when I felt their desires, the power of them stronger than I’d ever felt… Because they were fueled by memories. They were remembering things they’d already done to N and wanting it again. It was overwhelming and disorienting in a way I’d only felt when starving, locked in that room the wolves had trapped me in.

  I blinked, and I was in a back room of the restaurant with hands on me trying to take off my dress. I threw an elbow and backed away from them.

  “Are you nuts?” the guy seethed at me, holding his face.

  “No, you are to think you can treat women like this,” I whispered. “Men like you are disgusting.” I fled, fixing my zipper as I reached the door, not caring if I was moving too fast for a human. I headed right for the bar and grabbed the manager, dragging him with me before he could even object. A few people shouted behind us, but I didn’t stop.

  “What did you do?” he seethed when we reached his car. “You said you wouldn’t be trouble.”

  “And you said I’d be safe,” I snarled, scaring him from the way fear flashed in his eyes. “I am not losing my virginity to some group rape to get her a movie deal or whatever else you’d let them do to me!”

  “You’re a virgin?” he whispered, going pale.

  “You’re just as disgusting as them if you only care because I’m a virgin. No woman should ever have to endure that. Now drive us back to the hotel. I want the rest of my pay. I quit.” He glanced back at the restaurant, undoubtedly thinking of the mess there. “Or I could go to the police and papers and tell them what happened,
what I’ve been doing.”

  “Fine,” he grumbled, shaking his head as he got in the car. “Fucking dames.”

  Oh yeah, that was on us. Then again, there was also a woman I had a serious bone to pick with.

  The drive back to the hotel was quick and quiet, both of us slamming the doors when we got out. He was mad at the mess and probably me for not doing as they wanted, and that just upset me even more. I was the one who deserved to be angry.

  And it took everything I had not to pound his face in. He brought us up to N’s room, and it took several minutes for her to open, the alcohol thick around her.

  “You’re drinking again?” he grumbled but waved it off. “We have a problem. She screwed us.”

  “I did?” I seethed. “You mean you tried to sell me, pimp me out like I’m a whore.”

  N snickered and opened the door for us. “Welcome to life, kid.”

  I blew my lid. “Maybe you wouldn’t drink so much to drown out what you’ve sold yourself for.” She turned to me, rage in her eyes. “Those are your choices. Tonight, you were as horrible as them. You offered up another woman to experience the same. You were the monster this time. Tonight you became the pimp. How does it feel to have crossed that line?”

  She stormed over to me and shoved me but wasn’t sober enough to move me. “This is life, kid. You sell yourself or others will sell you. You will be sold, and the only choice you get is if you’re smart enough to get what you’re worth or not.”

  “I don’t know if I should pity you for being so beat down and what you’ve accepted or hate you for thinking so little of women. Others are fighting to get educated and change the world, and you’re here letting them abuse you. You’re a star. You could hire lots of girls and keep them safe, protect them from going through what you did, but instead you tried to sell me in your place.

  “Don’t lecture me about the world when you’ve given up fighting. That’s your weakness. Don’t put it on the rest of us. I’ve fought all my life to be more than the labels, to not let men own me. You sold yourself, and that’s your choice, but you sold your soul tonight offering me up as their next victim. Give me what you owe me because I agreed to double you, not whore myself out.”

  She went to slap me, but I blocked it. Her nostrils flared as I took off the fancy wig and threw it on the dresser. She nodded, went over to the nightstand, and pulled out an envelope, tossing it on the bed.

  “That’s the money I got for that ad shoot you just did. Take it and go. Take it and keep your mouth shut.”

  I nodded and took the money, muttering I’d leave the dress in my room when I cleaned out.

  “Good luck with your high ideals as you judge others from your perch,” she said as I headed for the door as she went for the sideboard.

  “The only thing I judge you for is being fine with throwing me to the wolves,” I replied as I glanced at her. “You do what you need to, and no one has any right to judge that. You dragged me into it tonight, and that’s what I judge you for. That makes you as bad as them. You did what you needed to so you could survive no different than the woman who marries a man of money to have a life and future.

  “But don’t go judging me and others who fight for something better, believe we deserve more. You looked down your nose at me as being a naive kid because I didn’t cave when you did. I haven’t and won’t cave. I will find another way and use my brain as well as my body, just not in the way you have. You have the power to fight back now, and instead you offered me up. That’s what I judge.”

  She snorted as she looked away from my gaze. “You’ll change your tune in a few years, probably less. Take the advice, kid, because you are naive. Sell yourself before others sell you. We’ve been selling you this whole time and you accepted that.”

  I left, unable to argue with that. She wasn’t wrong. I had done photoshoots with little clothes and it was my body… I simply glamoured as her. I thought about the difference as I packed.

  “I can’t become Mom,” I rasped as I sank to my knees. “I can’t be trapped.”

  Then it was time to lose some of the innocence before I caved to pressure.

  I finished packing and changed my glamour back to my papers the moment I dropped off the key at the front desk. Then I headed for the bar and found the man who I knew was staying for business and had one of the most expensive rooms.

  And most importantly, he wanted me. I let him buy me a drink, and then I sold my virginity to him for the cost of the plane tickets where I wanted to go as he was traveling to Europe tomorrow.

  I fed, my first real and true feed during sex, and when I looked in the mirror my eyes were two shades of purple now, the final change I’d heard about from a few lust demons. They didn’t have the same colors, but they had said their eyes fully changed once they fed fully during sex like other demons who fed when they were involved in the emotions as opposed to skimming off situations.

  “You really were a virgin,” he chuckled when we were done. “I thought for sure it was a con. Welcome to being a woman.” He reached for me, and I let him touch me. “I visit LA a lot, and I would love to have a gorgeous gal like you waiting for me. How about I get you an apartment and you become mine instead? I’ve always wanted to be the only man a woman’s with.”

  “I won’t be kept, but thanks,” I whispered, hating myself for doing this. “I just want to be free.”

  “Don’t we all,” he snickered. Horror filled me when he mentioned his wife and kids. I swallowed the need to vomit. He hadn’t been wearing a ring, and I hadn’t asked.

  Wow, people really were assholes.

  I shook it off as best as I could and slept, getting up and showering before we had to go. He was besotted with me and bought me a nice dress on the way to the airport. I knew he was trying to change my mind, but I just needed him to get me to where I needed to go like we’d agreed.

  “You into current events?” he chuckled when I bought the paper at the airport as if a woman paying attention to any of it was seriously amusing.

  “Yeah, I’m hoping to change the world one day,” I admitted, knowing he would laugh, and the jerk did.

  The joke was on him and N because I did.

  And I didn’t sell my soul to do it.

  And I could sleep just fine without drinking to find peace.

  And I never cheated anyone innocent to do it.

  So who was really the naïve one who should laugh out of us?

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