by Callie Rose
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit, what do we do?!”
“Get her on her side!”
“Should we put pressure on it?”
“Yes, you idiot! She’ll bleed to death otherwise.”
“Piper, can you hear me? Piper!”
Jayce. I forced my eyes open to meet his. He was inches away from my face, cradling my head in his hands. Sweet Jayce. Some instinct tugged at me, even older and stronger than the instinct that’d made me pull on the piece of metal lodged in my stomach, trying to save myself. I raised my arm, almost blacking out from the pain of the movement, and pulled his mouth to mine.
Sweet, sweet Jayce.
He gasped.
I opened my eyes and found the darkness receding. Xero. I couldn’t see him, but I could sense his presence. I groped for him and he bowed over me. I kissed him hard, drinking him in like fire-soaked water. He trembled as our lips pressed together, our breaths mingling and tongues tasting.
When I finally broke the connection with Xero, I was already reaching for the next man. Kingston. Hesitant but willing, he kissed me.
They all think I’m dying. I am dying.
So why am I feeling better?
I tangled my tongue around his, and he didn’t resist. Something vibrated between us, powerful and intense. It was as if his essence had twisted around mine, lending me strength.
“Kai…” I whispered hoarsely.
“Piper?” His usually reserved, haughty expression was gone, and worry flickered in his eyes. He looked torn, like a dozen different emotions were eating him up inside.
Aw, Kai. Who knew you had it in you to care?
Taking my murmured name as approval, I grabbed him by his collar and pulled him down. His lips burned, and his kiss was stiff, but he gave me what I needed. The four men were clustered around me now, peppering me with kisses. Jayce on my neck, his hands roaming over my breasts. Xero on my earlobe, gripping my hip. Kingston kissing his way up my arm, devouring my flesh with his lips. Kai crushing my mouth.
Each kiss, every touch, was infused with power. I drank it in. My body vibrated with it as the pain washed away. It shouldn’t have been able to. I’d just been skewered, and I was pretty sure the rebar had nicked something vital.
But it didn’t matter. As long as they never stopped touching me, nothing mattered.
Ginger and fire, money and sea-foam braided together through my senses. Heady desire displaced the last tendrils of pain, making me hot and wet. Eight hands caressing me. Four mouths moved over my body. Someone’s hand was up my shirt, caressing my breast, and when fingertips brushed my nipple, I moaned into Kai’s mouth. To my surprise, he moaned in response.
Someone else’s hand was sliding between my thighs.
God, yes. Fuck, yes. Do it.
Blood rushed in my ears, carried by the lust blazing through my veins. My whole body buzzed with an almost incomprehensible energy, a high like I’d never experienced before.
A murmur rose all around us, then the whistle blew.
Wait. The whistle…
My eyes flew open. I released Kai. He broke away with a low groan, but I was looking beyond him.
The whole class was standing around us, staring.
Chapter Eight
The room had gone utterly silent. Hannah stood a few feet away, staring at me in slack-jawed horror and confusion.
Oh, holy Jesus.
My face burned. How could I explain any of this to her? I didn’t even understand it myself. All I knew was that somehow, making out with these guys had turned my mortal wound into something that barely hurt.
The whistle blew again. “All right, move along, nothing to see here.”
Beedle, a short man who liked to wear his horns, shoved through the crowd of students. “Go on, go on! Get to your next class.”
“But… she…” Hannah pointed a shaking finger at the pool of blood on the floor. I glanced at it and blanched.
Shit. That’s so much blood. I should be dead right now.
“She’ll be fine. Go on before you’re late. Everybody out. Move it!”
The crowd dispersed until it was only the instructor standing over me and my guys as we lay in a tangle on the floor. I stood up slowly, expecting to faint or double over in pain, but I didn’t. Jayce held onto one hand, Xero held the other. Kai and Kingston both looked as if they had just been hypnotized and weren’t quite sure what century it was.
Beedle squinted at us and sighed as he ran a hand over his little goat horns. “You better get checked out.”
I assumed he was talking to me. “Okay.” I squeezed the guys’ hands and started to step away from them, but Beedle’s voice stopped me.
“Nope, nope. All five of you, to the infirmary. Christ.” The small man dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Why is it always my class? All right, get out of here.”
“Wait, all of us?” Kai asked, suddenly snapping out of his daze.
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“The healer will explain. Now get moving before I make you move.”
He continued to grumble under his breath as we left. I looked over my shoulder when we reached the door and saw Beedle grabbing a mop and bucket. I winced, glancing once more at the several-foot-wide pool of blood he’d have to clean up. I wanted to apologize for the mess for some crazy reason.
“Hey, that was pretty cool,” Jayce said. He was still holding my hand. It felt nice. Safe, somehow, like flirting with a best friend.
“Was it? I’m not even sure what happened.”
He shrugged. “Seems pretty simple. You’re some kind of super-healing demon. And a pretty damn good kisser too.”
I grinned, but I knew I was blushing. “I think maybe I just went insane for a minute.”
“Ya think?” Kai said under his breath.
“Batshit crazy,” Kingston muttered.
I swallowed hard as a beat of guilt rattled my chest. Had I tricked or hypnotized them somehow? Was it like that moment when I’d used persuasion on Sonja? It hadn’t felt the same, but then, I hadn’t been feeling much of anything at the time. When I’d first grabbed Jayce and kissed him, I had been running on pain and instinct.
As if sensing my thoughts, the man in question squeezed my hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry about them,” he said quietly. “They’ll get over it.”
I wasn’t sure they would, and I really wasn’t sure I could afford any more enemies in this school. Sonja and her posse were already trying to make my life miserable. The thought of Kai and Kingston hating me was almost too much to bear, and I couldn’t quite figure out why.
I still hadn’t solved that puzzle by the time we reached the infirmary.
“Ah, I’ve been expecting you five. Come on in. Beedle called—he said you were injured pretty badly.” The healer was a wispy woman with huge ocean-colored eyes and hair that curled in long, lazy strands like bunches of seaweed. She ushered us into the infirmary and patted the paper-covered table. “I’m Cassandra Webber, one of the Fallen University staff healers. Have a seat, please, Piper.”
“Excuse me, but why are we here?” Kai asked gruffly as I clambered up onto the table.
“You are the four men who saved her life, aren’t you?” Her voice was like music. It made me want to go to sleep, but it seemed to make my guys uncomfortable.
“No, she saved herself. We just kissed her.” Jayce winked at me.
“She kissed us,” Kingston argued.
“Potato, tomato.” Jayce shrugged lazily. “But no, she just healed right up.”
“Because you kissed her,” the healer said firmly.
“I’m sorry, what?” Kai was almost growling.
“Let me see your wound.” Cassandra gestured to my stomach.
I lifted my shirt for her. There was a hole in the front of the fabric—probably one at the back too—and the garment was soaked with blood. She wiped at the blood smeared across my stomach with a rag soaked in alcohol.
“Ah! Yes. There,
you see? All healed up. Nothing left but four little marks.”
I couldn’t believe it. I looked down at myself and saw that she was absolutely right. The blood on my skin and clothes still looked pretty gruesome, but the wound had closed completely. The four marks looked more like freckles than scars, though I knew I hadn’t had them before.
“Four. That’s important,” she told me. “That’s your bond.”
“What?” She wasn’t making any sense.
Cassandra turned and counted the men in the room. “One, two, three, four. You’re obviously a succubus. It’s the only reason you’re still alive. Succubi glean power—including healing energy—from sexual contact. The one the succubus is bonded to gives her the most potent power. Now, it’s important to note that you can siphon power from any sexual contact, though none will be as powerful as those you’ve bonded to.”
“You said the one I’m bonded to,” I said slowly. “Which one is it?”
She looked at me with surprise in her big eyes. “Why, all four of them, of course! You must be a very strong succubus to have bonded to four men all at once.”
“I wouldn’t say we bonded,” Kingston said coolly. “She was impaled by a five-foot piece of rebar. It was a brutal thing to witness. We all panicked.”
“Mm? Oh, no, dear, you’ve bonded. Come, look.” Her gaze scanned me quickly, running over my skin like she was looking for something. Then she circled behind me and shifted my long dark hair over one shoulder. “Ah! There! You see those four marks? The next time you’re changing, check your own skin. Each of you will have a single mark which will correspond to one of the marks that run up the back of her neck.”
“And what exactly does it mean to be bonded to a succubus?” Kingston asked, shooting me a look that was almost suspicious.
Oh, yeah. Because I fucking planned this.
“Well, it means that you are her power, essentially. If she comes to you for sexual healing, so to speak, you can be sure that the four of you are best equipped to help her.”
Kai’s eyes were burning with an unspoken question, but I could hear it almost as clearly as if he’d said it out loud. And what if we don’t?
“So you’re a succubus,” Jayce murmured softly. His eyes were getting that sparkle they sometimes got in History when we learned something he found deeply fascinating. “Sweet.”
A slow smile spread over his face. It was comforting, especially since the rest of the guys seemed to be in varying stages of distress or denial.
Xero was staring wide-eyed at nothing, running a hand over his shaved hair in a steady rhythm. I couldn’t tell whether he had even heard the healer. Kai’s jaw was working as his black gaze tried to bore a hole in the wall behind me. Kingston’s brow was furrowed, and his eyes were moving like he was doing mental calculations.
“Well, there isn’t any reason to keep you here now.” Cassandra smiled calmly at me, like she hadn’t just dropped a bomb on all of us. Like I could walk out of here without a care in the world. “I’ll check you out just to be sure, but as long as you have your men around, you should be virtually indestructible.”
“Her men?” Kai bit the words out. Then he scoffed. “We’ll see about that.”
He stalked out of the room, turning and disappearing down the hall. His sudden absence felt like a rug being pulled out from under me, and I grasped Jayce’s hand hard, trying to ride out the sudden pain in my chest.
“Uh… feel better, Piper.” Xero wandered away, still rubbing his hair and gazing wild-eyed at nothing.
“Are there books on succubi in the library?” Kingston asked the healer.
“Oh, yes. Several. Just ask one of the teachers, they’ll point you in the right direction.”
“Thanks.” He nodded curtly. Then his gaze dragged over to my face, so slowly it almost seemed to be against his will. “Hey, Piper… see you at dinner?”
“See you at dinner.”
Kingston nodded and followed Xero out of the room. Then it was just me, the healer, and the blond man left in the infirmary.
Cassandra instructed me to take off my bloodied tunic, and she cleaned the rest of the blood off my body, clucking and murmuring under her breath as she inspected the small pink scars on my front and back where the piece of metal had struck me. She didn’t even tell Jayce to turn around—I guess she figured since I was a succubus and he was basically bonded to me, there was no reason to play at modesty.
He watched with a mixture of heat, curious interest, and concern in his gaze as she finished up her examination. Then she pulled out a slightly-too-large tunic and handed it to me.
“Here you are. As I suspected, you’re in fine health. Just remember, if you go too long without replenishing your energy, you’ll feel the effects in your body—in weakness, sickness, and a much slower healing time. Take care of yourself.”
“Yeah, okay,” I murmured, not bothering to point out that when she said “take care of yourself”, she actually meant “have one of your men take care of you”. And by that, she meant “get laid”.
Jesus. Just when I thought my life couldn’t get any fucking weirder.
A new thought occurred to me, and I pulled Cassandra to the far side of the room as I slipped on the new tunic.
“So,” I murmured under my breath, shooting a glance over my shoulder at Jayce, “I’m supposed to have sex with these guys to… recharge?”
“That is the general idea, yes.” She smiled calmly at me. I was sure talking newly turned fallen through their crazy transitions was something she was very accustomed to.
“What about birth control? My pills are back in Seattle, and I can’t exactly afford to drop out of school to raise a baby—not when it’ll get me banished to the underworld for eternity.”
Her smile widened, and she gave my arm a little squeeze. “You’re forgetting, Piper, you’re no longer human. Your biology, your basic DNA, has changed. You don’t need to worry about getting pregnant.”
My eyebrows shot up. Oh. Right.
Now that I knew how to shift and spent most of my time in what was basically my old human form, it was easy to forget just how much I had changed when I was turned. In my true form, I had a fucking tail, for God’s sake. I shouldn’t be at all surprised that I didn’t need to worry about birth control anymore.
Cassandra read the look in my eyes and gave me one more squeeze before dropping her hand. “You’ll be fine, Piper. Better than fine. Succubi are rare, and ones of your power are even more rare. As you come into your full strength, you’ll be quite a force to be reckoned with.”
“Thanks.” I nodded weakly, not entirely sure how I felt about that.
My gaze drifted across the room again, and Jayce grinned when he caught me looking at him. Truthfully, I was grateful the energetic blond man had waited for me. Losing the proximity of each of the other men had felt like losing several limbs, but Jayce’s presence was like a battery, keeping me powered up.
As I turned away from Cassandra, tugging on the hem of the overly large tunic, he grinned at me.
“All good? Come on, I’ll walk with you.”
Chapter Nine
The hallway seemed bigger than ever when it was empty. Behind every door, a class was in session, but the walls were so thick that it felt like Jayce and I were the only people in the world.
“A succubus,” he mused quietly as we walked. “How do you feel about that?”
“Completely weirded out.” It was the most honest answer I could give.
He looked at me with those intense blue eyes and squeezed my hand. “Yeah, I get that.”
Empathy rolled off of him in waves, and it killed my defenses dead. Words started pouring out of my mouth completely unchecked.
“It’s not the sex thing. Sex is fucking awesome, I love it. It’s the… the needing you all thing. I’ve never, ever been reliant on anybody. Not since I was little, anyway. My mom spent most of my life sick. She was barely functional most days, and some days she wasn’t functional at
all. I was making my own lunches in first grade. By second, I was keeping house for her.”
“Damn, that’s rough. Where was your dad in all this?”
“Gone. Wasted somewhere or locked up. He floated in and out of our lives for a while, and for some reason my mom always let him come back. Once she took a turn for the worst, though, he disappeared entirely.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.”
I attempted a shrug and swallowed hard. “I don’t tell anybody this stuff,” I said, choking on a laugh. “The point is, I’m reliant on you guys now, and I don’t like to rely on people.”
“Maybe it’s time you did,” he said softly. “It’s not the worst thing in the world. What happened then? After your dad disappeared?”
“Oh, God, um… well, my mom passed away when I was seventeen. I had an aunt who handled all of the funeral arrangements and everything, but she had no interest in me. I was close enough to being grown up that nobody really thought about rescuing me.”
“At seventeen?” He gave a low whistle. “Hell, I couldn’t even do my own laundry when I was seventeen.” When I shot him a look of disbelief, he grinned. “Okay, maybe I could, but I didn’t want to. My mom spoiled me a little bit.”
“Is your mom still alive?”
A cloud passed quickly over his face. “Yeah, she was when I left her. When I got turned. My dad too. They own a little self-sustaining ranch half an hour from the beach. Doing their part for the environment and all that. Total hippies.”
“That explains a lot.” I laughed. “You’ve got that granola vibe.”
He grinned. “I liked where their heads were, you know? Save the planet, save humanity. They weren’t all that effective, but I was going to change that.”
“How?”
“Acting.”
I cocked my head at him. “Acting, huh? Okay, so I’ve been dying to ask you this since school started, but I didn’t want to sound like a creep. Have I seen you somewhere before?”
Jayce smiled and gave a small shrug. “I mean, maybe. Where are you from?”
“Seattle.”
He thought for a second. “Hmm. I’m pretty sure it was broadcast in Seattle. Even if it wasn’t, I’m sure it was on the internet for a minute. Oh, and the other one definitely was.”
