Graham
I let Helena and Billie walk the house. No need for my opinions. This wasn’t my business. For me, houses had always just been a place to crash.
I was getting tons of calls from my campaign manager so I just went to the porch to talk.
“What the hell are you doing that you are so slow to return my calls?” Sandra yelled after one ring. “This is the worst possible time for you to be gone! This is about a woman, isn’t it? It has to be. I think she can survive until after the election. This is not the time for you to be thinking with your damn dick. If nothing else, Graham, you might lose the damn election if the female voters think you’re no longer eligible. You’re like the boy band member of the house of representatives.”
“Boy band? Sandra, at least afford me the dignity of being in a man band.”
She snorted. “You know what I mean.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“What? This is not the time to be afraid of anything.”
“I’m afraid I only win elections because women think I’m eye candy.”
She cackled. “Oh, Graham, who cares how you win them, as long as you do?”
Maybe she was right and it didn’t matter. Was magic cheating? Did cheating even matter if I planned to serve my country to the best of my ability? Was it still my country if I was from the demon realm? But talk about throwing integrity out the window on day one.
All of this was really starting to be the least of my concerns. I was still keeping a hand on my belt so my tail didn’t knock my pants off. I had just strangled a ghoul. And the woman all this was about seemed like she wasn’t completely opposed to pursuing Byron and me at once.
“I’m sending you a schedule of all the events I booked for you when you get here, and you need to hit the ground running. Sleep on the plane. And we need to tweet something about this new health care situation. Are you going to do it? Because I can get an intern.”
I was usually pretty hands-on with my social media but I didn’t even know what the ‘health care situation’ was. “Sure, I guess you can have Kate handle Twitter until I get back.”
“God. Promise me that when you get back you will be one thousand percent living and breathing this campaign until election day.”
“I will,” I said, but I felt completely fucked.
Byron walked through the wall next to me and it was a testament to how weird life had been that I barely jumped.
He glanced behind him. “Oh—sorry about that. I suppose I should use doors. But a ghost has a few pleasures and one of them is walking through walls.”
“I’m afraid to ask what the others are.” I grimaced. I didn’t know what to say to Byron. I wanted Helena to myself, but I also couldn’t help wanting to know more about Byron. He wasn’t my blood relation, but we had a tie, and we were the same race. Maybe I was the one who didn’t seem normal. He didn’t seem possessive of Helena.
“To walk into her dreams…that is my greatest pleasure.”
Oh, he actually answered. Good lord.
“But there is no guarantee I’ll ever have more than that,” Byron said. “So I want you to make her happy.”
“And if you do have more than that?”
“Then…we’ll figure it out.” He actually smiled at me, with a little mischief in his eyes. He really wasn’t jealous.
I’d grown up in the human world, where if another man checked out your girlfriend, you told him to back the hell off. And if your girlfriend was seeing another guy, you needed to have a talk. Maybe some people agreed on an open relationship, but I could never do that. I was afraid to have a serious relationship, but if I did, I knew I would want to be all-in. For the weeks I was back home working on my campaign, I was thinking of Helena.
“I’ll give you a tip as to how to change between demon form and human form,” Byron continued. “Don’t try to do it all at once. Just focus on the wings first. Then the tail. Then the horns, then the claws. And look in the mirror. For some reason, the visual helps. Once you do it a couple of times, it won’t be hard.”
I nodded thanks and looked at my reflection in the window glass. Might as well give it a try. I imagined the wings vanishing up into my back.
After all my struggling, the wings now vanished easily. I was surprised at how well the suggestion worked. Now I moved to the tail, and I could finally straighten out my torn clothes. “Thanks, man,” I said, still brusque with him.
“You remind me of Talin,” Byron said. “The thing about our race is that, despite our intense sex drive, we often have a lot of drive to do other things too. One leads to the other, I think. We have to have somewhere to put the energy since no one can have sex all day. In the magical world, we aren’t always given our due because we have that reputation for seducing the unwilling. But in fact, an incubus doesn’t prey on the unwilling, but the willing. And when we’re not doing that, we can be quite productive members of society. Talin was always trying to change the world.”
“I never met my grandmother…”
“No. Talin died before you were born. But you’re more like her than you were like your father.” Byron added, “Be proud.”
“Some have told me I’m a little too proud,” I said, laughing it off a little. My face must have shown my wariness. I wasn’t used to friendly conversations with romantic rivals. Sometimes other men picked fights with me just because their girlfriends were checking me out. “So I guess you’re just used to this. All the needs that come with being an incubus, and the attention.”
“It’s what we do,” Byron said. “Although I might be a little too proud myself.” He leaned on the window frame that he had just passed through moments earlier. “Let me remind you, the Sullivan brothers will be here soon and our girl—”
“Is she our girl now?”
“We might be in for a little competition.” Byron raised his brows. “They know how to work together. If we did the same, then we’ll win her.” He shrugged one shoulder.
“So you’re suggesting we agree to…because otherwise Jake and Jasper might win her heart and they don’t have any qualms about sharing?”
“Exactly. Anyway, you could use a little mentorship, just like I once showed Talin the ropes at the library.”
“You’re very old,” I commented.
“It doesn’t matter how old I am. My life has been frozen. We’re practically the same age.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, just like I wasn’t so sure about any of this. I saw no way to balance my old life with this new one, no way not to destroy my old dreams and replace them with…well, I wasn’t sure what that would be either.
“I know this is new to you,” Byron said. “But it is inherent in your nature, and I don’t think you’ll have any trouble accepting it. I’ll make it comfortable for both of you. As you can see, I don’t want to compete with you. In fact, the idea of Helena having sex with you is thrilling.”
“Thrilling?” I tried to ignore the throb of my own cock. It seemed like Byron did know what my body and my gut wanted, as if he knew what was buried inside me. I had been raised so strictly, and I had lived strictly, as much as I could stand. Despite how many women I’d slept with, I had a lot of rules I put on my own behavior, trying not to hurt them, nor to get too close. As if I knew I would unleash something inside me if I did.
“She’s even more beautiful when she’s spent and exhausted,” Byron said. “And when, despite that, you can still make her beg for more. And then there is the mystery of it all. When she comes to me, and I know you had her the night before…it makes me wonder. What did you do to her? And how can I exceed it? She will never be bored. We will compete…but only in the best sort of way.”
“What if she likes one of us more?”
“If you’re a good incubus, you’ll never have that problem.”
I wanted to say yes. And then I wanted to storm into the house, find Helena, and claim her as my own. Byron, curse him, knew what to say to excite every nerve in my body, to make me feel like this was my birthright.
“You’re getting hard,” Byron said.
“Are you checking me out!?”
“Well, it’s obvious.” I wished he would take his eyes off my crotch.
“Damnit.”
“If you didn’t like this idea, your face would show anger,” Byron said. I suppose I was just demonstrating how human I was by getting weirded out by any of this. He didn’t seem to care. “But instead your dick is hard. So I’ll take that as a yes.” He grinned. “We’ll win her yet.” And then he vanished.
I hoped there was a way to save his life and give him a body again just so he would stay put, use doorways, and maybe—at least once—I could punch him.