by E. M. Hardy
She glanced down at his groin with a scowl. “Besides, I don’t really think your magic dick is going to save you if they catch your scent.”
Glenn inclined his neck and shrugged, waggling the organ in question while his two tentacles waggled in sync.
“I’m trying to be serious here!” Kristina tried scowling even deeper, but her façade broke after a split second—her frown turning upside down into a barely-suppressed smirk. “Asshole. For serious though: I am really worried about you.”
He chuckled at that and shook his head. For some strange reason, Kristina’s concern alleviated his own fears and anxieties about being discovered. He moved in closer to Kristina, wrapping her up in a hug with all his appendages. She sighed as she melted into his hug, a tentacle rubbing at the blades of her shoulders.
“Thanks, Kris. That… I really appreciate your concern. And for what it’s worth, you’re not just a tool for me to replenish my life points. I… I like being around you. Your zest, your energy, your honesty, your intimacy… you make me feel… feel loved.”
The word sent a spike of pain shooting through his mind, through his chest. He paid it no mind as he hugged Kristina tighter to himself. She returned the gesture by slipping her arms under his tentacles and around his enlarged waist.
“With all the extra life points I get from Life Link, I’ll have more than enough opportunities to practice Shapeshifting. Given enough time and effort, I should be able to ‘wear’ a new human face and body. If I just lay low, I should be able to fly under the radar and let the Amarians and confeds handle the demon crisis.”
“And if you’re not lucky?” Kristina retorted, tightening her embrace.
“Then I can at least slip away without involving you and the others.”
“It’s not that simple, Glenn. If you don’t swap out your implant, it doesn’t matter what face you wear. They’ll track your implant down, find you in no time.”
Glenn nodded before resting his chin on Kristina’s head. “That’s a bit of a complication. Maybe I can wear a tinfoil hat? It seems to work for conspiracy nutjobs, and—”
Hazel: Better wrap up your fun-time because I’ll be there in five!
Glenn just stared at the alert on his HUD before dismissing it and turning to Kristina. She turned to him at the same time, obviously having received the same message on the shared chat window.
Kristina chuckled drily, shaking her head as she pushed herself off Glenn. “Right. Bitch must have been frustrated by her latest conquest for her to be this desperate for a good dicking. Probably a swaggering ass that was all bark but no bite in bed.”
Glenn matched her frustration with a sigh. “Yes. Haze only gets this antsy when she goes through a bad date. Will you be okay?”
She stared long and hard at him before dismissively shaking her head. “I will be.” Glenn couldn’t miss the tone of dejection, of disappointment in her voice and downcast expression. He didn’t need to activate Empathy to understand what was going through her mind.
“Kris, wait…”
“I know, Glenn. I came into this whole thing knowing what you are, what you need. Just… just give me some time to remember that.”
Kristina started walking out of Glenn’s bedroom, toward the shower. He wanted to call out to her, to tell her that he wanted her. He wanted to shout out that he would have eyes for her and only her—that he wanted to build a life with her, share everything with her, and grow old together.
And yet he knew, deep down inside, that he would be lying.
The broken part of himself, the part that he could not fully comprehend, told him that he could not give Kristina what she wanted from him. He could please her, endlessly bring her to the heights of ecstasy as many times as she wanted—as many times as her mind and body could bear without shattering into tiny pieces. He would bask in her pleasure, feel a sense of closeness and intimacy as they cuddled together.
But even after recognizing all this, he still couldn’t love her from the bottom of his soul.
Everything he did, every gesture of intimacy and care and concern, was borrowed from the guides and the manuals he studied. Nothing came spontaneously from his heart, from a place of love. It was all a smoothly practiced routine, each movement plucked from memory to make the people around him feel at ease.
The only honest thing he could do for Kristina was not lie to her, to promise her things he knew he couldn’t do for her. This was why he held his tongue, watched the sweat flick off Kristina’s naked body as she walked out of his room.
What bothered him more, however, was her behavior. Kristina had been very open with the idea of sharing him with other women. She had never seen him as partner material, and she had been vocal about her opinions on defining relationships for some time now. She saw him as a cute toy to play with, to make her feel good and blow off some steam.
So what changed?
Chapter 12
Hazel lay in the tender embrace of his arms and tentacles—a twitching, gasping mess still shivering violently from the ninety-third orgasm he had given her. Glenn really wanted to stay like this for a few more hours. He wanted nothing but to relax and blow off some steam, losing himself in carnal pleasure as a Lust Demon like himself should. Hazel was also far more willing to explore the more forceful applications of his phallic appendages, from bondage and asphyxiation to spit-roasting and triple-penetration.
The longer he used Link Life, however, the more he realized that it would not completely solve all his Life Point problems as he had hoped. He already suspected something was wrong after his prolonged session with Kris the day before. This latest session with Hazel supported those suspicions, especially in the latter parts where he began wrapping up the sex after Hazel’s most recent orgasm—along with the increasingly clingy attitude she displayed as they got further and further along.
And he developed a vague idea of why that was.
He believed his new skills all worked together to create a dependency, like a multi-stage euphoric drug. Link Life took away the psychic damage, the pain and hardship that his partners accumulated over their lives. It did, however, leave a gaping hole in its wake. The carnal ecstasy of Indulge coupled with the calming effect of Soothe came in, filling that void with pure physical pleasure. Toe-curling, eyeball-rolling, throat-clutching, thought-scrambling pleasure that wiped reality away and replaced it with a white curtain of ecstasy—one that would last as long as he was willing to maintain it.
Such extreme rapture seemed to take its own toll on a person’s resilience, as evidenced by the behavior of both Hazel and Kristina once he ended their sessions. One look at Hazel’s statistics screen supported his budding hypothesis:
Hazel Thompson
Life Points: 113/1,100* (approximate)
Sanity: 1,980/1980 (approximate)
Glenn grimaced, shaking his head softly even as Hazel finished the last of her post-orgasmic convulsions. When they started their session, her Sanity points clocked in at approximately 1,200 out of 2,900. After multiple Link Life connections and continuous orgasms from Indulge and Soothe, her Sanity points capped out at 1,980.
He was taking away their existing mental damage, true, but his new skill combination gradually ate away at her mental faculties as well. He shuddered to think about what would happen if he continuously repeated this cycle, trapping his partners in a never-ending loop of pleasure. Would they be reduced to drooling, mindless seedbeds that existed only for the high he gave them?
The thought did not please him—not one bit. He was still in the middle of his thoughts, worrying about the consequences of prolonged sessions, when an alert popped up in his HUD.
A.Rutledge: I’m in front of your door. Let me in.
Glenn scowled as he read the message. He really did not want to have to deal with Annie at that moment. He even considered ignoring the message when he remembered that she knew everything about him—including the f
act that he was a demon.
“Haze… I’m going to have to put you down now. I have a visitor. One that I can’t turn away. I’m going to leave you here in my bedroom to recover while I entertain this visitor. Is that okay with you?”
Hazel just nodded dumbly, her tongue lolling uselessly out of her drooling mouth. Glenn was both pleased and worried about how Life Link changed everything. He liked how he could bring forth so much ecstasy, yet found himself simultaneously worried that these sessions were slowly breaking their minds.
Glenn set aside his concerns for now, vowing to reduce his use of Link Life in their sessions, and left Hazel after pulling up a blanket over her naked form. He closed the door to the bedroom before inhaling deeply, requesting Ynnistoria to shift him back into his human form.
One ache-inducing transformation into his usual appearance later, and Glenn gingerly slipped into an old shirt and pair of shorts before opening the door to his apartment.
There stood Anastasia Rutledge, the professional, grown-up version of the girl he knew as Annie Rafters. She wore a gray power suit this time around, sparse but expensive jewelry highlighting her femininity while emphasizing her no-nonsense attitude. That no-nonsense attitude manifested itself fully as Annie shoved Glenn and made her way inside his apartment.
She immediately regretted her decision.
“Took you long enough. I was just about to threat—HURK!” She gagged then, immediately covering her mouth and nose with a palm. “Computer, open the windows and activate odor-neutralizing filters… maximum settings!”
Glenn just stood there, mouth pursed in a thin line as Annie crinkled her face in complete and utter distaste. It took a few seconds for her to realize that Glenn’s digital assistant wasn’t keyed in to her voice… or to anyone else’s voice, for that matter.
“Look, I get that you value your privacy as a demon and all that, but couldn’t you at least give your visitors the privilege to open windows? Your apartment absolutely reeks of sex!”
Her open and abrupt declaration of his nature sent chills up Glenn’s spine, his hairs standing on end with worry.
“Ynnie, please do as she says.”
Ynnistoria: Confirmed, Glenn. Would you like me to reactivate Shapeshift? Your incubus form may have lost most of its potentially debilitating abilities, but you can still shape your claws back into their original sharpness. It would only take a swipe or two to rip the flesh out of this mortal’s soft throat, and—
Thank you for the advice, he replied mentally. I’ll take it into consideration. Now… the windows and the filters, please?
Glenn could swear his digital assistant grumped at him. Nonetheless, the shutters of Glenn’s windows opened, allowing fresh air into the room. The filters of his air conditioning units also activated, sucking in the stale air and cycling it through odor-neutralizing screens before spitting it back out.
Annie sauntered toward a window, leaning on the wall as she inhaled the cool, clean afternoon air.
“Much better. Now before anything else, I want you to know that I have a timed switch on me. CCTV footage, the memories of my household servitors, logs of you entering my house… all that will go out in the open if something untoward should happen to me. Do you understand?”
Glenn stiffened his spine at the sudden threat, thankful that he didn’t open with hostile action. His digital assistant grumbled in his mind, but she quickly quieted down after a moment. He responded with a curt nod, which bought a derisive snort from Annie.
“Now… about what happened two nights ago.”
Glenn gulped, steeling himself for the conversation to come. Annie continued leaning on the wall, her lips thinned in a slight frown of displeasure.
“Thank you.”
Glenn blinked, confusion playing out on his face as he stared at Annie. For her part, Annie just huffed once more, shaking her head at his befuddled expression.
“You know, most people would bend over backwards just to get a hint of approval from a Rutledge. I’m expressing my unreserved gratitude, going so far as to visit you in your…” She sniffed, her lips curling up in distaste. “…fuck nest.”
She scrunched her eyes then, her gaze hardening as she glared at him. “That gratitude is the only reason confederate agents aren’t busting down your door and laying you out on a lab table. At least not yet.”
Glenn steadied himself, flattening everything on his face as he met Annie’s glare. This mask—its neutrality, its forced lack of emotion—was his fallback whenever he faced situations that the guides and manuals didn’t cover. He knew that he was supposed to show the classic signs of submission here, with all the cringing and the wincing, but Annie’s grave threat threw his plans out the window.
Her countenance shifted for a second at the change in his facial expression, a flitter of fear that she quickly quashed.
“You’ve heard of the announcement, yes? About the secret demonic invasion of our world and the dramatic arrival of the Amarians?”
Glenn nodded, his face still flat and expressionless.
“I was grilled by confederate agents two days ago. They wanted to know everything about what happened, how the demons tracked me down and what they wanted from me. They even brought in one of those self-proclaimed demon hunters to help in my interrogation. As if I could magically shit answers that I don’t have out of my ass.”
Annie crossed her arms then, the scowl on her face deepening as she continued. “I of course am as ignorant as they are about all this. The thing is, they refuse to believe me. They expect me to suddenly know everything about these demons, to reveal information that I don’t possess. They went so far as to drop a few threats about how my interests—especially Immentrop-Reubens Robotics—would be ‘adversely affected’ if I continued to play difficult.
“That’s why I told them everything… everything except you. All they know is the freaky demon with a hundred eyes wanted to eat me, and that it fled when the Amarians dropped out of their portals. I’m just an innocent victim of this all, someone picked out by a vicious monster for some nefarious purpose.”
Annie continued, her eyes locked on to Glenn’s. “I told them nothing about you, Roger. They know nothing about you.”
Glenn trembled a little bit before looking up at the ceiling and sighing explosively, releasing the tension from within his core. “Thanks,” he uttered as he lowered his head back down to match Annie’s gaze. Her arms were still crossed and she stood motionless.
“Gratitude isn’t the only reason I didn’t tell them about you, however. Once the confeds were done squeezing what they could from me, they just upped and shoved me out of their offices like a piece of meat. I want some answers of my own—and you’re going to give them to me.”
“Look, I’m just as in the dark about all this as you are.”
“I find that hard to believe, coming from a demon such as yourself.”
“I’m telling the truth here, Annie. I just got transformed a month ago, and I’m still not entirely sure how this whole incubus thing works.”
A twitch of the lips revealed Annie’s irritation at his professed innocence… or amusement, as she allowed a corner of her lip to curve up. “Really? A demon of seduction? Are you serious?”
“Pretty much,” Glenn replied while he nodded with as much earnestness as he could muster. “This might take some time to explain. Would you like to sit down, maybe get some food?” He diverted his attention to the couch, pointing at it with a brief incline of his chin.
Annie took one baleful look at the cheap furniture around her before smoothing out her pencil skirt and setting herself down primly on the edge of the seat. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’d prefer answers.”
Glenn nodded softly in response as he pulled an old monobloc chair from the dining table and sat down in front of her. “Okay then. What exactly do you want to know?”
“First things first: what was that thing that tried fucking up my brain?�
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“Terror Demon,” Glenn answered smoothly. “It Marked you as its target, stalked you while gradually driving you insane with fear and paranoia. It would have moved in for the kill once you were unhinged enough, drank in your nightmares to feed itself while killing you in the process. It thought I was stealing its prey, so it zoomed in on you while… while we were engaged.”
Annie grimaced as she studied him through squinted eyes. “While we were engaged… that’s one way to put it. Were you playing the same game as that thing? Would you have gobbled me up when you were done tenderizing me, hmm?”
Glenn scowled at the accusation in her voice, then shook his head. “That’s how things were supposed to play out when I first woke up as an incubus. Have you heard reports of people mysteriously turning into dried, shriveled corpses in their sleep?”
Annie cocked her head back, confused for a few moments before she finally got the connection. “Yes, now that you mention it.”
“Those are victims of Lust Demons. They normally attack sleeping targets, paralyzing them with spells while they rape them. Once the deed is done, they absorb their victim’s life force—which kills them.”
Annie’s fingers inched closer to the insides of her blazer while Glenn was talking, and that’s when he noticed the almost indiscernible lump inside her blazer’s folds. He gulped, realizing that Annie brought her pistol along with her.
“Something happened to me, though. I don’t know exactly how or why, but I don’t need to kill. I just need to, uh, bring my partners to orgasm to absorb a portion of their life force. I try to make it as pleasurable as I can, but—”
A loud snicker coming from his bedroom interrupted Glenn’s narrative, bringing his explanations to a halt. Annie reacted quickly, drawing her smart-pistol from its holster and aiming it at the source of the sound.
