by Jae
Sign up for our newsletter to hear
about new releases, read interviews with
authors, enter giveaways,
and more.
www.ylva-publishing.com
Coitus Interruptus Dentalis
Jae
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Coitus Interruptus Dentalis
About Jae
Other Books from Ylva Publishing
Coming from Ylva Publishing in Summer 2015
Coitus Interruptus Dentalis
by Jae
When Robin felt the first twitches of impending orgasm, she arched up against Alana and clutched her bare shoulders with both hands. “Yes! Right there! Right…”
But after six months with Robin, Alana didn’t need any guidance. She curled her fingers just the right way and used her thumb to rub small circles on Robin’s clit.
Gasping and panting, Robin moved against her even faster. Her eyelids drooped, but she forced herself to keep them open so she could watch Alana, who rocked her hips against Robin’s thigh with wild abandon, the pulse in her throat beating a frantic staccato.
The sight of it made Robin shudder with desire. Warmth flooded her body. Her gums started pounding along with her clit. Groaning, she arched up and pressed her overheated face against Alana’s sweat-dampened neck. She breathed deeply, inhaling Alana’s intoxicating scent.
Orgasm hit her fast and hard, like a bolt of electricity.
When she crashed against the headboard—which by now probably had a permanent indentation in the shape of her head—she realized that the spark of energy had, in fact, nothing to do with her orgasm.
“Not again.” Her cheeks still flushed, Alana sat up and rubbed her neck, which was unharmed. Her residual taqa, the left-over life energy of the djinn, had protected her again.
“Sorry,” Robin mumbled. “It’s hard to overcome the instinct to bite, especially when I’m with such a sexy woman.”
That turned Alana’s frown into a smile. “Good thing you’re a romance writer who knows just what to say in moments like this.”
Robin grinned but then shook her head. “I mean it. You’re the sexiest woman I know. Good enough to eat.”
“And that’s the problem, isn’t it?”
“Maybe I’ll get better at keeping my fangs to myself if we practice a little more,” Robin said.
“Practice, hmm? Is that what they call it nowadays?”
Nodding, Robin reached for her. “Let’s see if I—”
“Oh no! Your fang!”
Robin pressed her lips together in an attempt to hide her unsheathed fangs. “Sorry. It always takes a minute for them to retract when I’m aroused, but I swear, I won’t bite again.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. Your…your left fang.” Alana pointed with a trembling finger. “It’s cracked.”
Robin dismissed the comment with a wave of her hand. “Impossible. Girah fangs are unbreakable. They’re as hard as a diamond.”
“Yeah, and djinn energy is like a laser, so…”
Oh shit. Gingerly, Robin ran her tongue over her left fang. Pain shot through her as a jagged end that hadn’t been there minutes ago cut her. Stark-naked, she scrambled up from the bed and rushed to the bathroom on still-wobbly legs. Normally, Girah didn’t look like the vampires of human legends, but right now, her reflection in the mirror was unusually pale. When she opened her mouth, she had to clutch the sink with both hands.
The tip of her fang had broken off, a triangular piece now missing. No, no, no! This can’t be happening. Since she refused to hunt humans and drink blood fresh from its source, she didn’t need her fangs to survive, but still… What was a Girah without her fangs? She’d already given up too much of her identity when she’d stood her ground about her unusual diet, refusing to drink anything but synthetic blood. As a result, the elders had cut her clan ties and declared her persona non grata.
Alana stepped up to her and wrapped her arms around Robin from behind. “Hey. No need to worry. It’s just a little chip. I’m sure a dentist can repair it without a problem.”
Still staring at the sight of her broken fang in the mirror, Robin shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
“Why not?”
Robin turned around in her arms. “Because there are no Girah dentists. Like I said, Girah fangs are unbreakable. At least that’s what I and every other Girah thought up until now.”
“Oh.” Alana rubbed her hands along Robin’s arms, setting off little sparks that made her body tingle.
A sudden idea occurred to Robin. “But maybe I don’t need a dentist. If your taqa can break a tooth, it should also be able to repair it, right?” Alana’s djinn energy had healed Robin’s cut lip and other small scrapes in the past, so a chipped tooth shouldn’t be a problem.
“I don’t know. Let’s try.” Alana gently trailed her finger along Robin’s bottom lip, then the upper one.
All it did was make arousal grow in the pit of Robin’s stomach. “Maybe you need to touch the fang directly.” She opened her mouth and pulled up her lip.
Cupping Robin’s cheek with her left hand, Alana touched the fang with one fingertip and let it rest there for several seconds.
A tingling sensation spread through Robin’s gums. “Did it work?” she mumbled, her mouth still open.
Alana took her hand away and checked. “No. I’m sorry. It seems what little bit of taqa I have left is not enough to repair a broken tooth.”
Robin turned and morosely stared at her chipped fang in the mirror. Then another idea hit her, and she whirled back around to face Alana. “But Dahir could do it!”
“Um, no.”
“Of course she could! Unlike you, she’s got her full djinn powers.”
Alana squirmed. “Yes, she’s got the power to do it, but she isn’t allowed to grant wishes to her friends. She’s already in trouble for repairing that cut in my couch with a snap of her fingers. One more infraction and she could be banned from the Great Energy.”
Not an option, then. Robin knew how it felt to be kicked out of your family, and she didn’t want to be responsible for that happening to Alana’s best friend. Who else could she turn to for help?
* * *
“You need…what?” Meghan said after a long pause, apparently forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to talk to Robin anymore.
Robin resisted the urge to grit her teeth since it could damage her chipped fang even more. “A dentist,” she repeated.
Meghan’s laughter reverberated through the phone. “You’re shitting me, right?”
“I’m as serious as anemia,” Robin said.
“Oh, come on. Whoever heard of a Girah needing to go to the dentist?”
The fictional vampires in Robin’s novels never did. “It might not have happened before, but neither did a Girah living with a djinn,” Robin grumbled.
Meghan roared with laughter. “You mean your little girlfriend broke your fang?”
Robin was tempted to hang up, but she knew Meghan was her best chance to find someone who could help her. “If you’re done laughing at me, I could use some help. I know you have a lot of connections to all kinds of people, so…”
“Why would I help you? I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
For old times’ sake, Robin wanted to say but didn’t. Growing up as the only Girah born into their clan in the fifties, they had quickly become friends, but all they had ever shared were night hunts, never their dreams and emotions. Robin shoved away the memories of the last time they’d gone out to hunt together. That night, a human nearly lost her life and Robin started down the path of abstinence.
“How much do you want?” she asked.
Meghan snorted. “You mean money?
I don’t want any money.”
“What do you want?”
“A little nibble of your girlfriend would do,” Meghan said.
Every muscle in Robin’s body tensed. A possessive growl rose up from her chest before she remembered that Alana didn’t need her protection. “Are you sure that’s what you want? That’s how I ended up in this predicament.”
“Ah, shit. I forgot. Then I want you to hunt with me.”
“No!” Robin nearly shouted into the receiver. “Not that. Ask something else of me.”
“You don’t have anything else I want,” Meghan said.
Robin tightened her grip on the phone. “Well, I guess I need to find someone else to help me.”
She was about to end the call when Meghan said, “Write down this name and number. Shelby Carson. 1-917-826-1903.”
“Who is she?” Robin asked, after scribbling it down. “A dentist?”
“No. A psychiatrist.”
Robin threw down her pen. “What? I don’t need a psychiatrist. My fang really is broken. I’m not just imagining things!”
Meghan chuckled. “I wasn’t suggesting that you make an appointment with her. Although I’m sure it couldn’t hurt in your case. Not wanting to drink blood qualifies you for the loony bin.”
“If you don’t stop—”
“Fuck, you’re touchy. Must be the lack of blood. Call Shelby. She’s got a lot of connections in the medical field. If anyone can help you find a dentist whose hands won’t shake in terror when he tries to treat your fang, she can.”
Robin took a deep, steadying breath. “All right. I’ll call her. What’s one more Girah making fun of me, right?”
“Oh, she’s not one of us,” Meghan said, the smirk obvious in her voice.
“What? Are you crazy? I can’t just call a human and—”
“She isn’t human either. She’s a shape-shifter. As far as I know, she’s the only one of them who has a clue we exist.”
“She knows?” Usually, Girah steered clear of other species—except for humans, their preferred prey. Since the shape-shifters had come out to the human public, they weren’t exactly well liked in the Girah community. Now that humans were aware of supernatural creatures lurking in the night, hunting them had become harder.
“Don’t worry,” Meghan said. “She’s just a coyote, not one of the bigger, more influential subspecies, and she’s considered a weirdo among her people too, so she won’t give you away.”
A weirdo. Great. Robin sighed but resolved to call this Shelby person anyway. She was a vampire-like creature who’d had her fang cracked by a former djinn, so how much weirder could it possibly get?
* * *
Robin wasn’t sure what made her more nervous—entering the dentist’s office or being accompanied by a shape-shifter who looked as if she’d turn into a coyote any moment.
Shelby Carson fidgeted as they crossed the lobby of a high-rise building on Fifth Avenue, right across from the Empire State Building.
“You didn’t need to accompany me,” Robin said while they waited for the elevator. “Why didn’t you just give me the name and address of this dentist?”
Her gaze lowered, Shelby shook her head. “I promised that I would never give out her name over the phone and that I’d personally check out each patient I brought her.”
Probably to weed out the lunatics before they ended up on the dentist’s chair. Robin respected this attempt to protect the human.
When they entered the elevator, Shelby’s nervousness seemed to increase. She pressed her slender body into one corner of the elevator and ducked her head, her light brown hair falling into her narrow face and hiding her eyes. She had avoided looking Robin in the eyes since they had met.
Robin hadn’t noticed in the car, but now it was really getting on her nerves. “Would you calm down?” She growled as the elevator carried them up to the dentist’s office on the fifteenth floor. “You don’t have to go to the dentist, so why are you so nervous?”
“I’m sorry,” Shelby said, her gaze still lowered to the floor. “It’s just… I’m not used to being around Girah. You…you make me a little nervous. I mean, not you, personally. All superior predators do—which for me is pretty much anyone but humans.”
Robin rolled her eyes and stopped the coyote’s rambling with an impatient wave of her hand. “I have a cracked fang. Biting you is the last thing on my mind. Besides, not that I have tried shape-shifter blood, but I hear you taste like shit.”
“Thanks a lot,” Shelby mumbled, her voice pitched so low that Robin could barely understand it.
Robin couldn’t suppress a smile. She winced when it tugged on her lip, which she had cut on the jagged edge of her broken fang earlier. “Just calm down. I don’t want to be stuck in the elevator with a coyote.” She had never seen it, but she’d heard stories about what happened when a shape-shifter got really angry or scared.
“Don’t worry. I won’t shift. Even if I wanted.” Shelby sighed and regarded her reflection in the mirrored wall. “My adrenal cortex produces too little mutaline, so I rarely manage shifting.”
Was that why Meghan had called her a weirdo? “Well,” Robin said, surprising herself with the urge to say something that would cheer Shelby up. “I’m sure it has its advantages. Otherwise, situations like this could get a little…hairy. No pun intended.”
Shelby peeked over, a shy smile on her lips.
For a moment, they grinned at each other. The elevator doors pinged open on the fifteenth floor, and Robin sobered. She felt like a prisoner being led to the execution chamber.
With a gesture of submission, Shelby let her go first and followed her out of the elevator. She pointed at a frosted glass door to their left. “Here we are.”
Robin stared at the signage on the door.
All Smiles
Pediatric Dentistry
Kristina Pérez, DDS
She’s a kiddie dentist? Robin groaned. “Great. She’ll freak for sure as soon as I open my mouth and she sees my fangs. The little monsters she usually treats don’t have such dangerous teeth.”
Shelby shook her head. “I don’t think she panics easily. Last time I came here, I brought a Syak teenager who had half of a rabbit paw stuck in what was left of her braces—and that was before we came out to the human public. Dr. Pérez didn’t bat an eye.”
The removal of a rabbit paw wasn’t nearly as dangerous as a close encounter with the fangs of a Girah, though. “Does Dr. Pérez know what to expect?”
“Of course she does,” Shelby said. “I went by her office yesterday and personally told her about you.”
“Do you bring her a lot of non-human patients?”
“Not a lot, but it happens every now and then,” Shelby said. “Normally, shifting heals all of our wounds, so we Wrasa rarely need medical help. But when we do, it’s hard to find a physician who knows how to treat shape-shifters.”
“Are you sure she isn’t a shifter?”
“Even if she were shifting-handicapped like me, I’d smell it if she were one of us,” Shelby said. “She’s just a human who knows how to keep her mouth shut.”
Robin wished she could do the same—keep her mouth shut and not let this strange kid dentist work on her fang with her drills and other torture instruments. But she wasn’t about to reveal her nervousness in front of this little coyote, so she squared her shoulders and marched to the door.
At least if the dentist could afford to rent space in a building like this, business had to be going well. That had to mean she was good at her job, right?
“Do you want me to come in with you?” Shelby asked as if sensing her hesitation.
“No, thanks. I can handle it. No problem.” Only when the glass doors shut between them did she remember that shape-shifters were usually able to smell a lie. Some superior predator you are.
* * *
Two steps into the dentist’s office, Robin stopped and stared. This was really beginning to feel like a bizarre nightmare. What�
��s this—a safari or a dentist’s office?
To the right of the reception desk, a large stuffed giraffe seemed to nibble on the leaves of a potted palm. Murals of zebras, lions, and elephants covered every wall.
The receptionist behind the desk wore a scrub top that had little cartoon animals all over it. She gave Robin a smile that revealed perfect human teeth, then peeked around her as if expecting to spot a child hiding behind her. “Good afternoon. How may I help you?”
Reluctantly, Robin stepped up to the desk. “I’m Robin Caldwell. I have an appointment with Dr. Pérez.”
“Oh, right. She said to expect you.” The receptionist handed her a clipboard and a pen, eyeing her with curiosity, as if wondering why the doctor had made an exception for her and taken on an adult patient. “Why don’t you take a seat and fill out our patient form? Dr. Pérez will be with you in a few minutes.”
Robin took the clipboard and held it in front of her like a shield as she marched over to the waiting area the receptionist indicated.
Stuffed animals and toys were piled up in one corner, while colorful plastic chairs were set along the wall. A large flat-screen TV played an animated movie, but the sound was turned off.
A woman and the little boy on her lap were the only people in the waiting area.
It took only one whiff to realize that both the mother and her child were O negative—normally a treat Robin would have trouble resisting, but today, she wasn’t in the mood to even consider using her fangs on anyone.
She mumbled a greeting and sank onto a green chair.
The high-pitched whine of a drill came from a nearby room, making Robin wince.
“I don’t want to go in there, Mommy,” the little boy whispered.
“But if you don’t want to see Dr. Kristina, she’ll be very, very sad,” his mother answered with a grave expression. “You don’t want that, do you?”
“I don’t care,” the boy answered and stuck out his bottom lip, his little arms crossed tightly over his chest.
Robin suppressed a snort and focused on the information sheet on the clipboard, trying to ignore the horrible noises coming from next door. Under reason for today’s visit, she scribbled, chipped fang, then crossed out fang until it wasn’t legible anymore and wrote tooth next to it.
