Mallory of Strange Valley (Strange Valley Immortals #1) (3 page)

She swung her leg over his body, slid off the bed, and shimmied out of her skirt.

Jared was breathing hard through his mouth now, his eyes hungry with lust, and he started panting in earnest when she knelt over him, her inner thighs pressed against his hips.

She leaned over, her face inches from his. He gazed up at her, his eyes wide and glassy. “Are you ready for the most intense experience you’ll ever have?” Mallory’s voice was a sultry whisper.

He nodded and cupped his hands around her ass again. She positioned herself over him, and moved her hips to swirl her own wetness around the pulsating head of his erection. Then, with a practiced tilt of her hips, she rocked against him and lifted, pushing him deep into her.

He let out a guttural groan as she slid the length of him once, up and down. She paused at the bottom, savoring the sensation of a hard cock buried inside her. Then she lifted her hips again, a little faster this time.

He pulsated inside of her, on the verge of climax, and she figured he’d last maybe one or two more strokes. She was fast, but not that fast. She’d need round two. She pumped him twice more, and Jared’s head lifted from the pillow, his lips parted in a silent, strangled cry. Every muscle in Mallory’s body sprang taut as he exploded into her.

His orgasm filled her with an electric wave that began between her legs and ripped outward. It was like a magnified surge of mortal endorphins. As much as she loved a hard come, the feeling of a mortal’s life force filling her was a different kind of ecstasy. She threw back her head and her eyelids sagged shut at the pleasure and relief as she let the sensation wash over her and fill her reserves of life energy.

When the ecstasy began to recede, she opened her eyes and focused on her prey, waiting to see if he would lose his erection. He was still gripping her ass, as if holding on for dear life, and he seemed momentarily paralyzed. Not an unusual reaction after a Succubus encounter.

When a minute had passed and he remained as hard as before, she started caressing her breasts, pinching and tweaking her nipples. She reached one hand behind her, feeling for Jared’s sac, and began massaging it with feathery strokes of her fingertips.

He started breathing hard again, and she knew he’d come out of his trance enough to continue.

“Ohh, yeah,” he moaned, his eyes rolling back in his head for a moment. He reached up to knead her breasts with clumsy squeezes.

Then he pulled her to his chest and flipped her onto her back, and she gasped in surprise. Usually the less experienced ones didn’t have the presence of mind to do anything but let her take them as she pleased.

He thrust into her hard a couple of times, and she closed her eyes, happy to let him do the work.

Then the image of Asher in his demon form flashed unbidden across her eyelids. She grabbed Jared’s hips and jerked him into her even harder. Jared was ready to come again, and her own climax was building force.

She imagined Asher over her, driving his huge cock deep inside her, stretching her to the point of pain. She and Jared moaned in unison, and the white heat of climax flashed through her. Her prey filled her again with mortal life force. She lifted her hips in three more thrusts as she rode the waves of her own climax to completion.

Jared sagged against her chest and zonked out almost immediately, and after the last ripples of life force absorbed into her core and flickered out, she slid out from under him and silently gathered her clothes.

She opened the window and stood on the ledge, tensed her legs, and sprang, changing to her demon form in midair. Her wings spread in a sharp swoop as she grazed the lawn. New energy infused her—Jared’s life force—and it felt like she’d mainlined a dozen shots of espresso. The night air blew cool against her bare skin, a welcome relief after the hot friction of sex.

The ecstasy of another’s life force was like nothing she’d ever experienced as a mortal. But it always left her feeling a bit forlorn and empty, too. Preying on mortals was a thoroughly pleasurable physical pursuit, but there was no romance in it. And certainly no love. She rarely visited the same mortal more than once, not that any of them remembered her in any meaningful way anyway.

As she made her way home, flying just above the treetops, Asher’s devious smile and perfect form filled her mind’s eye. Sex demons were forbidden to couple with each other, and she’d never had even the smallest wish to do it. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the desire in his voice earlier, and how she’d imagined him thrusting his granite cock into her.

CHAPTER FOUR

“So was he a screamer? Or a moaner?” Claire asked. She sat across from Mallory the next day, Saturday, at Starbucks. Nearly every table was occupied, and Nirvana played in the background, drowned out at intervals by the whoosh of the milk steamer.

“Neither, really,” Mallory said. “I mean, he was into it obviously, but he was just sort of dumbstruck. He didn’t last long, but I got two out of him, at least.”

Claire giggled. “I freaking love having a Succubus for a best friend.”

Mallory gave her friend a wry look, but then cracked a grin. She had always suspected that Claire wished she was a Succubus instead of a Sylph. Sylphs fed off mortals’ life force, too, but not though sex. Vain mortals were naturally attracted to Sylphs, and traded their life force for lasting youth or enhanced beauty. Claire’s territory was the entire city of Strange Valley.

“I still can’t believe that Asher tried to, like, cockblock you.” Claire sipped iced coffee through a green straw. “That’s gotta be against the rules or something, right?”

Mallory scowled. “Maybe. I’ve never had to deal with this before. I’ve got to figure out what the High Council has in mind with this, and whether there’s some way to divide up the territory so he’ll stay out of my way.”

The thought of Asher made Mallory at once queasy and aroused, an unsettling combination. And she didn’t relish the thought of contacting anyone even remotely connected with the Council. She’d much rather keep screwing college guys—and the occasional professor or other campus staff—like a good little Succubus, and stay off the Council’s radar. She had a friend with Council connections, though. She’d start with him and hope she didn’t have to talk to anyone too far up the chain.

“So, what are you doing today?” Mallory asked, eager to change the subject.

“I work from noon to four, then I have an appointment with a woman who wants the works.”

Claire’s job at the Nordstrom cosmetic counter provided the perfect venue for her to meet soccer moms fretting over their cellulite, and retirees who hated their crows’ feet and sagging jowls. She made contacts through her job, and private appointments with people who wanted to trade some years of their lives, in the form of life force, for their vanity.

“The works? Nice, that’s a major transaction.”

“No kidding. I won’t need another one for a week at least,” Claire said. “How bout you?”

“Going to take a nap, then maybe hunt some more.”

“So soon?” Claire noisily slurped the last of her coffee.

“I figure I’d better get what I can, when I can get it.” Mallory shrugged ruefully. “Competition.”

On her way to the mall, Claire dropped off Mallory at their apartment. Mallory went straight to her room and sprawled across her bed. After she’d left Jared last night, she’d swooped around a nature preserve on the outskirts of town for a couple of hours, savoring the sensation of life electrifying every fiber of her body. It’d been a late night.

She stared at the wall, which was covered with some of the collages she’d made over the years.

Once or twice a month, she scoured yard sales, estate sales, and antique stores for mid-century magazines. Collectors would probably be horrified to know that she cut pictures from the yellowed pages and pasted them on poster board.

Usually, she had themes for her collages. A particularly large one tacked to the center of the wall featured smiling nuclear families. Mothers in dresses that pinched in at the waist, fathers in hats, and children with neatly combed hair. Another collage was nothing but rosy-cheeked teenagers. One in a lower corner was crammed with images of family houses bordered by white picket fences that sectioned off emerald rectangles of lawn.

Mallory’s eyes drifted closed and she sank into sleep and a dream of high school, the school she’d attended before she became Immortal.

She wandered an empty hallway, the long-forgotten smell of mildew and floor wax permeating the air. The dark rows of lockers looked exactly as she remembered, but the building felt as though it hadn’t been occupied in decades.

What quality gave a place the air of long abandonment? It was more than the amount of dust that settled. Perhaps human presence left some unseen mark or energy that faded over time. Maybe a sort of energetic decay that petered out and finally died, leaving only a lifeless shell where people once lived out their little routines and dramas.

She looked down and brushed her fingers over the fabric of her favorite navy blue knickers, as they called them back then. She felt rather than heard an electric crackle in the air, and gasped as the sharp scent of ozone tingled in her nose. The Everly Brothers’
All I Have to Do Is Dream
began playing, scratchy and distorted, over the bullhorn loudspeakers mounted on the ceiling.

Mallory started and stepped back, realizing that someone—a young man—was striding casually toward her, his face in shadow. She squinted into the dim light, trying to make out his features. Her Immortal night vision didn’t seem to be working.

A bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling flickered and clicked like an angry insect, and then sparked to life. The stranger stepped into the weak yellow light.

Asher. He was dressed in rolled-up khaki pants and a white t-shirt, his hair slicked back.

“So beautiful . . .” he whispered, his words carrying easily across the distance.

Mallory’s eyes flew open and she sat up on her bed panting, her heart pounding. She dragged her palms down her face, trying to clear the haze of sleep. The juxtaposition of the last place she possessed true innocence and the Incubus that just invaded her territory . . . it was almost too strange to grasp.

She rolled to her side and drew her knees to her chest, waiting for the dream to fade. But it remained vivid, like a persistent after-image, overlaid with the Everly Brothers’ sweet harmonies. The all-too-familiar hollow sensation in the center of her chest seemed to crowd her heart.

CHAPTER FIVE

Later that night, Mallory pushed open the heavy glass door to a head shop that was situated between a Christian book store that had gone out of business and a Mexican bakery.

“You have to be eighteen to enter this store,” an Asian guy in his early 20s called from the counter. “Can I see some I.D.?”

She rolled her eyes and pulled up her shirt, flashing her bra. “That work for you, Flyboy?”

He grinned appreciatively and tilted his head toward the bead curtain at the back of the store. “He’s back there.”

“Mood?” she asked.

Flyboy held up his hand and tilted it back and forth. “Ehh, about a five on a scale of ten.”

She parted the strands of beads and tapped her knuckles against the office door. A strip of dull red light was visible under the door.

“It’s Mallory,” she said.

“Come in,” came a voice, low and rough, from the other side of the door.

She opened the door and stepped into a small office bathed in red light. The only window in the room had heavy red fabric stapled around the frame.

“How ya doing, Zeke?” she asked, her voice warm with affection.

“Not bad for a five hundred year old vampire.” Ezekiel stood and raised one arm, beckoning her over, and she gave him a sideways hug. “So how’s the new tail-poker working out?”

She laughed ruefully and sat down on the folding chair in front of Zeke’s desk, and he sank low into his comfortable-looking leather chair. “I’m not really sure yet. I was hoping we could divide up the territory somehow, stay out of each other’s way, but I don’t think he’ll go for that.”

“I’m not surprised.” Zeke grimaced. “Incubi are such little bitches.”

“So do you have any idea how he ended up at Mead Community College?”

Zeke pressed his lips together and shook his head. She thought he looked tired, even for a fairly old vamp. He’d been in his early 40s when he’d turned Immortal, so it wasn’t that he looked old. But his handsome face--angular features, large, dark eyes with thick lashes--seemed to sag a little more than she remembered.

“Only thing I know is that he requested that territory. Must have made a pretty good case for the Council to approve it.”

Her chin dropped and her eyebrows shot up. “He
wanted
to come to Mead? Didn’t he know I was already there?”

“He must have.”

She frowned down at Zeke’s desk, where receipts and statements were shuffled into messy piles.

“Can you think of any reason why someone would do that?” she asked. “Other than to make my life difficult, I mean.”

He propped his elbows on the chair’s armrests and laced his fingers just below his chin, and regarded her for a moment. She couldn’t read his expression, but he seemed to be considering what to say next.

“Are you sure you’ve never met Asher before?”

Her eyebrows lowered in a frown. Not what she’d expected him to say.

I don’t think so,” she answered. “He has the kind of face you wouldn’t forget.”

“What about when you were mortal?”

Zeke had a point. When a mortal became a sex demon, his or her appearance could change quite dramatically, sometimes so much that the demon’s own parents wouldn’t know who they were looking at afterward. Some thought it was a sort of evolutionary adaptation, a way to make it easier for the new Immortal to separate from his or her mortal life and protect former family and friends. Or maybe it was to take on the most attractive form, in order to have the best chance of getting as much easy sex as possible.