Tegan ripped his hand free of the female’s grip as they landed in a new location, cool air kissing his skin, the scent of salt hanging heavily in the moonlit darkness.
He snarled and backed off a step, his guard swift to rise as he quickly took in his new surroundings, preparing himself for an attack. His wings itched for freedom, his shoulders writhing beneath his tight black shirt as he turned in a fast circle, eyes scanning the darkness as they adjusted to it.
“Where are we?” he growled through his fangs, flashing them at her as he rounded on her, came to tower over her, breathing hard as he fought to keep himself from lashing out at her. “What are your intentions?”
Her hands were swift to rise between them, her palms facing him as she shook her head, causing the colourful waves of her hair to caress her creamy shoulders.
But it wasn’t fear that lit her enormous eyes.
It was desire.
Need that beckoned him, had him breathing faster still as his blood surged hot and heavy, an urge to drag her into his arms and kiss her flooding him and tearing at his control.
It hit him that she liked him like this. She liked his fangs. His rage.
“You wanted somewhere quiet and this is the quietest place I know,” she whispered, voice barely there, a hint of fear in it as it trembled in the still air. “I come here to think sometimes.”
He looked around, slower this time, taking in the details rather than scanning for warriors who were liable to attack him.
He was on a beach.
The moon was high, casting veins of silver over the rippling black water to his left. To his right, dunes rose to obscure the horizon, the moonlight reflecting off their faces. Heat drifted from the sand beneath his boots, the lingering warmth of a day long over.
His eyes roamed back to the sea.
Gods, he loved the ocean.
There was nothing like it in Hell.
His last memory of the mortal world was of a beach like this, a tropical shore where the sand had been snowy white and the water an enticing vivid turquoise. He had been there on business, had forgone watching the sunset so he could get on with meeting his contact.
He slowly turned towards the waves, watched them gently roll and lap against the shore, carrying a cool breeze and the scent of the water onto the land.
As fleeting as that memory was, he had come to cherish it and a few others over the years since his brother’s untimely death. They were all moments like that, sunrises and sunsets, crisp snow and verdant green forests. Things Hell lacked. Things he had taken for granted.
Things that made him feel the true depth of what he had lost.
He craved the peace he had felt in those times, a sensation he had thought he would never know again.
But here, in this place, he felt it.
And it was deep, comforting as he watched the waves breaking, their white foam bright in the moonlight.
But it wasn’t only because of the scenery.
It was because of his company too.
He found the sea relaxing and enchanting, but it was the succubus who enchanted him this time, kept pulling his focus back to her as if she was magnetic and he was powerless to resist.
She turned towards the sea and sat on the sand, her fingers playing in it as she stared at the waves.
“You can let it all out now.” Her words were casual, perhaps a little teasing.
He didn’t follow. His eyebrows dipped low when a meaning to her words came to him. She wanted him to get naked.
She glanced up at him and waved at his head. “Your horns. You don’t want to let them out?”
She did not mean for him to get naked.
Interesting little female.
She intrigued him at every turn.
He brushed his palm over the side of his head, tamping down the urge to unleash his horns. He wanted to let them out. Gods, did he want to let them out. It was so shameful to hide them, but it was necessary in this world. He couldn’t risk letting them out though. His sharp senses said they were alone, but he couldn’t be sure a human wouldn’t pass by or see him from a distance in the strong moonlight.
“Trust me,” she murmured, voice a husky and tempting whisper. “No one will see.”
“I cannot risk it.” He paused and looked at her. “Unless you mean to veil us with a glamour?”
He knew the tricks succubi could employ. They could charm a male if they wanted, luring them under their wicked spell, and they could teleport, but the most interesting skill at their disposal was their ability to cast a veil on themselves that rendered them invisible to all eyes.
Her fine eyebrows dipped and she lowered her gaze to the sand as she played with it, watching the grains slip through her fingers like a waterfall. It was as if all the light had suddenly flooded out of her. What had he said to cause such a drastic change in her mood?
She gave a small shrug that barely lifted her shoulders. “I’m not good with glamours. Seventy percent of the time, my veils fail and people can see me. I don’t even want to talk about the times I accidentally cast them. Being invisible for days on end isn’t exactly fun.”
Apparently, the topic of glamours caused her distress. He made a mental note to avoid talking about them. He didn’t want to upset her. He liked it when she smiled, when her striking eyes glittered like a tropical sea, warm and inviting.
She tipped her head right back, so her colourful hair fell from her bare shoulders, exposing her throat. “So many stars.”
As little as he wanted to take his eyes from her captivating beauty, he lifted them to the sky.
A backbone of diamonds stretched across the inky heavens, stealing his breath from him.
Another memory to cherish.
He had never seen anything so beautiful and mysterious.
He lowered his focus back to the succubus. Or perhaps he had.
Her eyes were on him again, heating his blood, quickening his pulse as they locked with his and pulled him back under her spell. What was it about this female that had him lost whenever he looked at her, but left him feeling as if he had been found too, as if this was where he belonged?
Normally, females fawned over him, but she was different. She looked at him with desire in her eyes at times, but it was tempered with other feelings. He had angered her more than once, had upset her too, and had made her turn cold towards him. She didn’t simper and coo, hadn’t paid him one compliment, false or true. She spoke her mind and cared little about how he might react.
And he liked it.
She held her phone up. The bright screen illuminated her face almost as easily as the moon did.
He sat beside her, the sand warm beneath his backside, and took the phone.
He wasn’t sure what to do with it so he stared at it, no doubt looking like a complete idiot to her and hating the thought she might view him in such a way.
She leaned close, her enticing sweet but warmly-spiced scent teasing his senses, and planted her left hand beside his hip. She reached over with her right and her fingers danced across the screen.
“This is an app.” She pointed to several small pictures on the screen and he growled when she made the entire lot of them shift to the left and he got a clearer view of the image that sat behind them.
A nude male.
Her cheeks darkened but she didn’t sound at all apologetic as she spoke.
“And that’s a hottie. A girl needs a hottie in her life.” She lowered her voice to a whisper so quiet he barely caught it. “Even if he’s just a picture.”
So that male wasn’t hers?
Relief swept through him, so startling in its intensity that he missed several things she pointed out about the device. He was glad she had no male?
He wanted to growl, barely managed to bite it back as the thought of her with another male crowded his mind, throwing images at him that stoked the fire in his blood, turning desire into rage.
“You’re not listening,” she snapped.
Chiding him?
He couldn’t remember the last time a female had dared to raise her voice at him. His mother had probably been the only one to do it. He fondly remembered her scolding him whenever he had run amok in the halls of the castle, causing pandemonium with a wooden sword.
“You’re not listening and now you’re smiling like you don’t give a fuck that I’m peeved.” She snatched the phone from him.
He scowled at her and tried to take it back, but she held it out to her right, away from him where he couldn’t reach it, and hit him with a glare that had her irises brightening. He stared at them as they swirled, the green and blue beginning to glow in the moonlight as gold flakes shimmered around her pupils.
Apparently, he had angered her again, but he couldn’t bring himself to care this time, was too fascinated by this change in her. He had thought her eyes striking before, but now they were incredible. He could look into them forever, watching the way the colours shifted against each other.
“My apologies,” he muttered, his voice distant in his ears as he fell deeper into her eyes, the world dropping away again, narrowing down to contain only her.
“My apologies,” she parroted, mocking him in a snide tone. “I can leave you here. I don’t have to play teach the dumb demon.”
He growled and flashed fangs, intending to put her in her place.
It only made the colours in her irises glow brighter and her pupils dilated, reminding him that she liked it when he revealed his fury to her.
“I’m sorry.” She shrugged and toyed with her phone, stealing the pleasure of her beautiful eyes from him. “I’m a bit hangry.”
“Hangry?” Her vernacular was a steep learning curve for him. He had studied the common tongue of English over the centuries, but her way of speaking it left him confused at every turn.
“Hungry angry.” Another little shrug.
He was beginning to find that habit of hers bewitching.
“You are hungry?” He resisted the urge to frown when she looked at him as if he was stupid for needing to ask that question.
“I went to the club to hunt. Lost my prey to my sister and ended up needing a drink. Which is where I met you, and you might have noticed I haven’t been sucking face with any guys since we started talking.”
Tegan thought he had the gist of what she had said. She had gone to feed and had lost her quarry to a fellow succubus, or sister as they liked to call each other, and had opted to drown her sorrows with brew. She had met him then.
He pondered what ‘sucking face’ could mean. The only thing that sprang to mind was kissing. He knew from his time at court celebrations that a succubus could happily feed from a host through kissing, not that he had experienced such a thing himself.
The thought of her kissing another male filled him with an urge to snap the neck of whatever male she chose.
He stilled, staring at the waves as that sank in. This female had utterly bewitched him, roused a side of him that had lain dormant for centuries. No. He wasn’t sure this side of him had ever existed before tonight.
Before he had met her.
She awoke something fierce in him, something possessive and vicious, that had him wanting to growl whenever she so much as mentioned a male, made him want to flash fangs and take hold of her to bend her to his will so she would feel his strength, his power, and know his prowess as a male and want no other.
His gaze drifted to her, to those rosy lips that tugged at him, pulled him towards her and had him drowsy with a need to claim them. He could kiss her. That kiss would feed her.
Would she welcome it though?
She had told him that she hadn’t brought him here to lay with him, had made it clear anything intimate wasn’t going to happen, but she was hungry. Surely, she would accept a kiss from him.
It had been centuries since he had actually wanted to kiss a female. What was it about her that had him aching for a taste of her lips? Was it just because she was a succubus and her natural ability to charm was affecting him? Or was it something more?
Because she resisted him at every turn, held him at arm’s length and wasn’t throwing herself at him?
No. It wasn’t that. There had been females in the past who had treated him in such a manner, and it hadn’t roused such a powerful need inside him.
He felt as if he might die if she didn’t let him sample her lips, or feel the softness of her skin beneath his fingers.
She pulled her knees up to her chest and fidgeted with her phone, a pout making her lips all the more alluring.
He was on the verge of offering a kiss to her when she did something on her phone that had his focus whipping to it.
It played music, a soft melodical piece that filled the night air with the warm sound of string instruments.
The succubus twisted the phone onto its side and the image on the screen flipped with it, growing to fill the entire space. No, it wasn’t an image. It was a series of images. They were moving, as if the device now contained a tiny orchestra trapped within it.
He leaned closer, unable to hold himself back as curiosity got the better of him.
“It’s a video.” She angled the phone so he could see it more clearly. “Not my sort of music but I figured I would break you in gently. Mortals and modern immortals love videos.”
When she held the device out to him, he took it from her and watched the video. The trapped orchestra disappeared, replaced by a soothing scene of a lake and birds, and then mountains. How was it doing this?
He risked a look at her.
She smiled. “No need to look so horrified. I can almost hear your thoughts. Oh no, what happened to the tiny people?”
She was mocking him again, but he didn’t frown at her for it this time, because she took the phone and the music stopped as another app filled the screen. His eyes widened and leaped between her and the phone as she held it out in front of her and swept it slowly side to side.
The image on the screen matched that of the scenery around them.
When she pointed it at him, a light burst from it and he squinted against the sudden brightness of it.
“Don’t be all frowny. Make love to the camera,” she said with a laugh in her voice. “Be a good demon and tell us more about yourself.”
He wasn’t sure what making love to the camera meant, but he had heard of cameras. Although, as far as he had known, they took still pictures and it sounded as if she was somehow capturing him in motion, much like the video of the musicians.
He cleared his throat and failed to find something to say.
She sighed and startled him by twisting to face away from him and leaning back. The moment her spine made contact with his arm, lightning struck hard inside him, shook every nerve and lit him up. She was warm against him, soft despite her corset, and she smelled divine. He leaned closer as she raised her arms, brushed his cheek against her green and blue waves and breathed her in.
“This is Solid Eleven. He’s a demon. I think he just scented me, but I’m cool with that.” She slightly turned her head and he wanted to groan when her cheek brushed his, her lips achingly close to his. “Tell the camera where you’re from.”
“Hell,” he grumbled, wanting to leave it at that so she didn’t probe any deeper into things he didn’t want her to know, not yet anyway.
He was enjoying being himself and the fact she found that enough for her, was interested in him as he was. All that would end if she discovered who he was.
“As you can see, Solid Eleven isn’t very talkative. He’s the strong silent type, but I’m not going to complain. He’s easy on the eye after all.” She pressed closer and he bit back a groan as her lips edged nearer to his.
“Why do you keep calling me Solid Eleven?” His gaze flickered between the phone she held pointed at him and her lips.
She twisted her head towards him and her lips brushed his jaw as she said, “Because you’re more than a ten?”
“I do not know what a ten is.” He hated admitting that, but he wanted to know what she meant by it and she wouldn’t tell him unless he confessed that he didn’t understand her.
“Most guys are maybe a four or five. Sometimes I meet a seven or an eight. Sometimes, I meet a solid seven or an eight. That means they’re well rounded. Ah, have all their qualities at that number I guess.”
So the number was a judgement of their quality as measured by her.
“Men can lose points for failing in different areas. So a guy who was a ten in looks might drop to an eight because he has a sucky personality.”
“And ten is the usual maximum?” He thought he might be starting to understand her, although he still wasn’t sure which attributes she judged males by other than looks and their personality.
She nodded and moved the phone, picking a higher angle.
“And I score eleven?” Which meant what exactly?
“A solid eleven.” She turned a dazzling smile on him. “Although, you were in danger of losing a couple points back at the club for being rude.”
He opened his mouth.
“My apologies,” she said before he could, a regal dip to her chin that grated on his nerves. Her smile returned, wider than before, her eyes glittering with it. She enjoyed mocking him.
He didn’t particularly enjoy it.
Although, he did enjoy the effect it had on her, brightening her mood.
“If I were to ask of your method of scoring, would you tell me about it?”
She shook her head, pushed up into a sitting position and turned the screen of the phone towards her. “It’s a secret scoring system.”
“Could I go higher than eleven?” He watched her fingers as she did something on the device and peered closer when an image of him appeared on the screen.
She pressed a button and the image moved, she spoke and then he did. It replayed everything that had just happened, and gods, the sight of her nestled close to him had his blood pounding faster, that hunger to pull her into his arms growing stronger.
Her lips had been so near to his.
“You probably could. I wouldn’t put it past you.” She stopped the video on an image of them pressed close together and stared at it, a crinkle forming between her eyebrows.
Meaning that no other male she had met could achieve a ranking past eleven. That pleased him greatly.
She shuffled closer to him and angled the phone so he could see it again. He tried to pay attention as she taught him more about apps, showed him that she could use the device to send messages to other people who also owned one, and could make a voice call to those people too, talking to them over an unbelievable distance, as if they were right next to each other. She introduced him to something she called ‘the interweb’, bringing up some of her favourite sites, many of which appeared to be focused on shopping.
Apparently, a person could by anything online.
She even admitted that plastic was king when it came to this form of shopping.
He lost track of time as he sat back and let her talk, soaked everything in and asked questions whenever he didn’t understand something. She always smiled when he found the courage to voice them, revealing that she was a kind soul. That pleased him too. Admitting he lacked knowledge left him feeling vulnerable for some reason.
He frowned. Because he didn’t want her to believe he was stupid?
“Is intelligence a quality you measure males by?” That question slipped from his lips and he regretted it when she looked at him, her incredible green-to-blue eyes bright in the dim light.
She stared deep into his, causing that unsettling sensation of the world dropping away again, stealing his awareness of his surroundings. He was vulnerable like this, his senses so focused on her that he wouldn’t notice any danger until it was too late. A small voice deep inside him roared at him to be more careful, to guard himself better, but he couldn’t bring himself to heed it.
She nodded slowly.
Intelligence. Personality. Looks. What other things did she measure a male by? Wealth? Skill? What sort of skills? Strength? Abilities?
He wanted to know.
A delicate sigh escaped her rosy lips as she turned her cheek to him.
“Gods, that’s beautiful.” She softly breathed the words, awe lacing each of them, pulling his focus away from her for a moment so he could see what she found so beautiful.
Warm light spilled over the ocean, turning the white caps of the waves gold and lacing the fingers of cloud in the lightening sky with that precious metal and shades of pink and orange.
A sunrise.
He had longed to see one for centuries, but now that it was right before him, he found his eyes drawn away from it, to the female on his right. She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them, her dazzling eyes sparkling and the colourful waves of her hair bright in the morning light as she watched the sun rise over the ocean.
Gods, she was beautiful.
With the first light of day warming her skin, she was breathtaking.
His heart beat harder. Beat for her. He was sure it was purely her charms as a succubus luring him under her spell and he wanted to tell her not to use them on him, because he felt as if he was on unstable ground when he was around her. He needed to know if this desire he felt for her, this pressing need to hold her close and bend her to his will, was real and not a product of a glamour.
A glamour she had admitted she wasn’t good at using.
Was it real?
Why did the thought it might be make the ground feel even less stable beneath him, had him afraid it would crumble and give way at any moment?
He stared at her.
Because for the first time in his life, he wanted a female. Truly wanted her, with every drop of blood in his body and every fibre of his being that roared at him that he had to make her belong to him, that he needed this delicate, seductive and teasing little female more than anything else in this world.
He swallowed hard at that.
“I must leave.” Those words rang hollowly in his ears, issued by his head even when his heart rebelled against them.
He had to stay. This was where he needed to be.
She smiled up at him as he shoved to his feet, pushing back against that alluring voice because if he didn’t return now, his aides would discover he was missing from the castle. He wanted to return to this world again, to explore it more, and that wouldn’t happen if the court learned he had left the kingdom without telling anyone.
Yet he still couldn’t bring himself to leave.
He wanted to stay.
He needed to stay.
That unsettled feeling that had been growing inside him from the moment he had set eyes on the succubus reached a crescendo and he stood there staring down at her, trying to put his finger on what it was about her that caused him to react in this way.
Because it troubled him.
She stood, brushed her backside down and then smiled. “Wait here.”
She disappeared before he could say anything and reappeared a heartbeat later, gripping something in her hand.
When she took hold of his right one, a hot jolt coursed up his arm, a hit of pleasure that filled him with a deeper ache to stay, to draw her into his arms and kiss her and forget about returning to his kingdom.
A dangerous way of thinking.
He tried to take his hand back, but she held firm, her strength surprising, and pulled his arm towards her. His heart thundered, beating loudly in his ears as his gaze fell to her lips and anticipation swirled through him, had his mind racing ahead to imagine how she would feel in his arms, her skin against his.
All softness against his hardness.
“Do not charm me,” he growled and tried again to take his arm back.
She lifted her eyes to his, a crinkle forming between her fine dark eyebrows. “I’m not. When I said I never perfected the basics, I meant it. Failure, I’m afraid. Practically dropped out of succubus school. My tutors are perpetually disappointed with me.”
His eyebrows dipped low. “You have no glamour?”
She shook her head, her green, blue and purple waves brushing across her bare shoulders. “Not a drop. Well… that’s a lie. I do have it, but it’s so unpredictable that I never use it on men… and it seems so dishonest.”
He canted his head and sought the truth in her eyes, and when he saw no trace of a lie in them, his frown deepened.
He had the feeling she was far more complicated than he had imagined and that only made him want to stay even more, because he wanted to unravel everything about her.
“You are not like other succubi,” he murmured, piecing together what he already knew about her.
She arched an eyebrow at him.
“Known a lot of them, have we?” She held her free hand up between them and shook her head. “Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. I can quite imagine and I don’t want to ruin what was a nice night with you.”
Tegan didn’t want to ruin it either. He enjoyed spending time with her, doing nothing but talking and learning from her.
Unfortunately, his mouth had different ideas.
“I have never known a succubus.”
“Known. Fancy way of saying sucked face or fucked?” She looked him up and down as he nodded. Surprise shone in her eyes as they finally locked with his again. “Never? Because I figured you’d had a heck of a lot of lovers.”
He wasn’t sure whether to be offended by that or not. He felt offended. Mildly. But still offended.
He tried to take his hand back again, but she had a strong grip on it, too firm for him to break without hurting her.
“It’s not my business.” She severed his line of thought as she unbuttoned the cuff of his black shirt and shoved the sleeve up his arm.
She used her teeth to open the slim black tube she held in her other hand and he frowned as she leaned over and scrawled on his skin with the offensive smelling pen.
When she recapped it and stepped back, finally releasing him, he stared at his forearm, his eyebrows rising.
She tiptoed and pressed a kiss to his cheek that had his ears going pointed and his claws curling. She had moved out of his reach by the time he had gathered his wits enough to attempt to take hold of her and steal a taste of her lips, leaving him grasping at thin air.
“It was nice meeting you, Solid Eleven. If you’re ever in the mortal world, dial my digits.”
She slid her fingers down his forearm in a maddening way, sending another bolt of lightning striking along it, and then she was gone.
Tegan stared at his arm.
There were eleven huge numbers inked on his flesh.
Her digits?
The sun broke the horizon, warming his skin, and he looked at it. Why did the sunrise seem dull and lifeless to him now when a moment ago it had been glorious?
Why did he feel so uneasy?
He looked back at his arm.
And why was he filled with a powerful urge to roar in rage?