Chapter Five

Angelo

Lydia woke up screaming, jolting me out of my sprawled position on the couch.

I slipped off the cushions and would have crushed the cat lounging below if he hadn't darted away in time. You wouldn't think a cat that was wider than it was tall could leave an afterimage behind him, but Chex could build up to an impressive speed if he really needed to.

Nightmares and sleepless nights weren't exactly a surprise after the literal hell Lydia had been through. I had a pack of Swiss Miss and a mug ready to go for nights like these. I'd offered to make her the real stuff with cocoa, but she insisted on the pale imitation, claiming it was a ‘comfort thing'—whatever that meant. And while I had ways of relaxing her that had nothing to do with sugar and dehydrated marshmallows, I hadn't offered. I'd taken her up on her challenge, and I was going to win this game by her rules, not my incubus abilities, damn it.

I was on my feet and heading for her bedroom before I could think better of it, without any hot chocolate in hand. She could call me a cheating letch all she wanted when she found me at her bedside, using my magic to console her. I didn't care—all I did care about was making damn sure she was still breathing—after that, she could call me whatever she wanted to. I'd heard her whimper, heard her cry, I'd watched her pace the floor relentlessly to burn off nervous energy, but I'd never heard her scream.

Something had to be wrong.

Lydia always rolled herself into a mouth-watering burrito of blankets when we watched television together at night. It was something I found adorable, which was a trait I didn't assign to many mortals. Truth be told, I was rarely around long enough to consider something any particular woman did as endearing. I still thought Fifi was insane for her insistence on monogamy with the sasquatch, but perhaps there was something to be said about taking your time with particular partners. The point was: if I didn't know Lydia as well as I now did, it might have taken me longer to spot the problem when I reached her doorway.

Her arms were hopelessly twisted up in the heavy denim blanket her mother had made her for Christmas the year before. She was half-buried in an avalanche of pillows, and she'd even managed to hook one foot around the post at the end of her bed.

Her shriek actually rose in pitch when I put a hand on her shoulder, trying to nudge her awake. She recoiled from my touch, throwing herself into a painful arch to escape the perceived threat. I caught her before she could flop off the other side of the bed. She'd not only clock herself hard on the head, but she'd probably bring down a suffocating amount of fabric with her when she fell. I wasn't going to let her die of a textile overdose.

"No, don't!" she whimpered.

"Lydia, it's me," I whispered.

"Please," she sobbed, obviously still caught in the dream's grasp.

"Lydia, wake up," I responded, getting a better grip on her shoulder. "Come on, wake up. You're just having a nightmare."

Lydia's lids fluttered a few times before her eyes opened. I felt a little warmer when they fixed on my face and softened.

"Angelo?"

"Yes, it's me," I crooned. "And everything is okay. You're safe. I've got you."

She wasn't supernaturally alluring like most of the succubae I'd grown up around, but those eyes. I'd never seen their equal. When people called them electric blue, they weren't kidding. Lydia's eyes reminded me of neon, buzzing with life and exciting possibilities. Her mouth was both lush and inviting, and the temptation to indulge—the need to taste her, was almost unbearable. The acrid smell of her fear tempered my reaction to the feminine scent of her skin and I found my own desire for her turning into something else—concern.

"Angelo?" she whispered again, as if half afraid I was just a vision or a ghost.

"I'm here," I said. "I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere. It was just a nightmare."

Her breath came out on shuddering exhales, and, to my horror, her eyes filled with tears. Before I could decide how to react, let alone proceed, the tears fell. Her arms came up and closed around my neck, dragging my face down to hers. There was no finesse to the kiss she offered me. It was raw, unfiltered emotion, and to an incubus, that was possibly even more appealing than the most practiced strip tease.

Anyone could be sexy if they tried hard enough—the main ingredient? Desire. That one word was enough to make any woman attractive to an incubus. If the need, the desire, was there, then usually so were we. But this was different. This wasn't just desire—it was something more. Something more refined, something more artful. Seduction—perhaps that what it was. I wasn't certain because I'd never been seduced before. No, in general, I always did the seducing—it was my job, after all. But this—this was different. Yes, I was fairly sure Lydia was seducing me with that look in her eyes. Only, she didn't seem to be aware of just what she was doing to me. Seduction—yes, there was a pattern to it that you recognized if you were around it long enough. And though I looked like a middle-aged human man, I wasn't. I'd bedded enough women to make Don Juan look like a fumbling virgin. I knew lust, knew the interplay of bodies by heart.

What Lydia gave me in that kiss was different, though. It was something I couldn't remember experiencing before. It was trust. A bewildering, baffling deluge of it. My inner demon, so eager just a moment before, balked, thrown off guard by the feeling. Lydia trusted me, but I just couldn't understand why. The thought made my mouth tingle, and I wanted to slide the feeling across my tongue to explore its contours. It was just so… new.

Lydia scooted onto my lap, slinging her legs around my waist. My hands slid up to her newly bared skin, embracing her on instinct. The material of her nightgown was slippery, and the hemline hit just far enough down her thighs to claim decency, but only just. The royal blue was a magnificent contrast to her skin. A small part of me wondered if she wore the silly thing as a form of plausible deniability. Nice enough to be sexy if she gave in, but not obvious enough to make her feel forward if she did. I groaned when she pressed herself flush against me. She was warm, eager, ready, and willing.

"Lydia," I started, but she shushed me.

"No talking."

It was obvious what she wanted. Obvious that she knew I was built to give it to her. Obvious that I wanted it and always had.

And yet…

Yet, I couldn't do it.

And, yes, that realization surprised me. Floored me even.

Desire was only a thin layer of frosting on a very ugly welter of emotion. Beneath the surface, though, Lydia was cringing so hard away from what she'd seen in her dreams that she was ready to crawl out of her own skin. She'd do damn near anything to stop the horror and that was when it dawned on me—she didn't want me. She just wanted to feel something, anything, other than the fear and panic that had gripped her from the nightmare and wouldn't let go.

I could give her that relief, that new channel of focus. I wanted to give it to her. My inner demon was snarling at me to take her to the bed, tear the flimsy material off, reduce her underwear to confetti, and taste her. In this state, she'd let me. I knew she'd let me—not only that, but she'd encourage me. She was even doing exactly that now.

But it was cheating. Because she didn't want this. And she didn't want me. Not really. I was convinced she'd have thrown herself at anyone who'd walked through her door: me, the irritating mundane Marty, Roy. Hell, I wasn't entirely convinced she wouldn't have thrown herself at my sister if Fifi dropped by for a late-night visit and found her in this state.

Peeling myself away from Lydia's body felt a lot like pulling superglued limbs apart. It physically hurt to stop what I'd started, and I realized that I'd begun to feed on her unconsciously, with just the touch of my skin to hers. I'd never actually touched a woman this intimately without siphoning her life energy, so that was nothing more than habit. Stopping that need in me though felt unnatural.

"Lydia, stop," I panted.

"No," she said, reaching for the hem of my shirt. Her fingers were shaking though, so she didn't have much luck peeling it away from me. She'd forbidden me from sleeping nude, but she'd never said anything about skintight sleepwear. She couldn't get a good enough grip to yank the shirt off, and a whine built in the back of her throat. "Off, please."

Dark ones below, she was making this difficult. This storybook hero thing she'd forced me into sucked. I wasn't built for it. Chivalry grated like a serrated knife over my teeth. I seized her shoulders and put a few inches between our bodies. Anything to keep her from grinding on me the way she'd been doing. If she actually managed to get my pants off, it was game over. We'd do things, and she'd regret them. And then I'd regret them.

"You don't want this."

"The hell I don't," she said hotly. "Kiss me."

"I want to, but that's not what you need right now."

"It's exactly what I need right now."

"No, you need someone to hold you and tell you it's going to be okay."

"Since when did you become a monk?"

"Since never," I frowned.

"Good, because I need you to kiss me… right now."

I took in a deep breath, but held my ground. "I'm not going to."

"Why?" she asked, shaking her head as tears filled her eyes. Jesus, I wasn't cut out for this. "This is what you've wanted from me all this time and I'm finally offering myself to you."

"Right, but I don't want you like this." I paused and swallowed hard. "We both know this isn't about me."

Her lower lip wobbled dangerously, and for a second, I thought the tears would free themselves from her eyes. But then a hint of steel entered her gaze. She stopped struggling to get my clothes off me and started on her own, whipping the nightgown over her head with impressive speed. She was wearing a bra and panties, and I never thought I'd thank the fiends below that she was wearing that extra layer. There was a first time for everything, I supposed.

"Please, Angelo."

"You're not in your right mind."

"I know exactly what I want," she argued.

"You think you do, but you don't. And… taking advantage of you now… well, it would be wrong."

Sweet hell, if my sister could hear me now, she'd be laughing her ass off. Since when had I started caring about morality? Any other incubus in my position would give her exactly what she was asking for. In fact, any other incubus would be inside Lydia already, sponging away the horror under waves of bliss. What was it about this woman that made me act so strangely? So completely counter to everything I knew and was.

Her emotions roiled, and unhappiness and a hint of despair soured her scent. She was on edge, clearly about to lose it. I had no fucking clue what to do if she broke down. What did you do for a distraught woman? I had no idea, because any time a woman had succumbed to her emotions in the past, that was my exit cue.

But I didn't want to leave Lydia. No, there was no way I was going to leave her to deal with her feelings on her own. I couldn't and I wouldn't. Even if that realization haunted me and made me wonder what in the world had gotten into me.

An idea occurred to me then. Incubi and succubae fed on life force through the act of sex, but it didn't always have to be that direct. Sometimes a lust-soaked location like a strip club could tide you over for a while. I'd gotten a contact high from being near an orgy and hadn't needed to participate in it myself. I had, of course, but that wasn't the point.

Sex was the easiest interface to get what we needed, but it wasn't the only one. Touch worked too. And lust wasn't the only emotion we could take. Reeper demons were proof of that. They'd started out like us once, and then diverged over time, choosing different, darker emotions to feed on. Fear. Pain. Anger. It stood to reason that I could do that, too—I could feed on Lydia's distress, her panic and her fear. I could take the offending emotions away from her. It would be disgusting, like downing a plate full of sprouts, but I could do it.

Lydia let out a sigh of relief when I leaned down to kiss her once more, but stiffened in discomfort when I drew on her life force. I siphoned off the bitter taste of her despair, the spoiled, sour milk taste of her fear, taking in as much as I could stand. By the time her tremors subsided, I was full of her pain and fear and panic, and desperately wanted to vomit.

Lydia blinked at me when I pulled away. "What... what did you do?"

"I ate my sprouts," I answered, rubbing at my mouth, as though it could erase the foul taste.

She frowned at me. "You did what?"

"It doesn't matter," I answered. "Let's get something warm in you," I continued, forcing myself not to think just how sexual that statement sounded. "Hot chocolate, I mean," I quickly added. "And you can tell me what the hell that dream was about."