4. Rauri

CHAPTER FOUR

RAURI

I drifted home on a cloud when Yarilo was done with me. My clothes were a mess and so was I, but that nagging, aching hole in my gut had gone away. I'd never felt so thoroughly... sated.

And not just in a sex way.

Because, well, I hadn't had a lot of sex with anything but my own right hand. That required me to leave the house and interact with humans and not be my usual awkward self.

Interact with humans.

It had always been a joke in my head, that; haha, humans were scary.

It put a different spin on things, realizing that I wasn't actually one of them. I wasn't human. I was, somehow, a demon. An incubus. I was the creature people told their children to beware of and avoid. Somehow, instead of being terrifying, that was a little... heady?

Well, that was until I arrived home and Jess was there.

It was good. I was glad she was well enough that they hadn't kept her at the hospital. But now I had to face her. Face reality, not just drift through my day thinking about Yarilo and his cloud of silken purple hair and his glowing ruby eyes and his magical fucking cock.

I had to face my best friend, with dark circles under her eyes, curled under a blanket on the sofa.

She sat up when I came in, and her expression was worried. "Rauri. Are you okay?"

For a moment all I could do was stare at her. Me? Was I okay? I'd almost killed her.

"I . . ."

I crossed the room to stand in front of her, and she didn't duck away. Didn't cringe at the look of me. No, she really did look worried. Seriously worried. "Are you... is it drugs? You didn't smell like liquor."

She didn't know what I'd done. The EMT had said he'd made sure it was explained, but apparently it hadn't worked, whatever they had told her. I crumpled onto the sofa, and she leaned toward me. "Rauri?—"

"I'm a demon. An incubus. I didn't... I didn't know." I pressed myself into the back of the sofa, pushing my face into the padding. Maybe I could just accidentally smother myself and not have to have this supremely awkward conversation. That seemed like a healthy, adult choice.

Silence pervaded the whole apartment for a moment, then a deep exhale. "A... a demon. I wasn't imagining that you had horns? But you don't. You don't have horns. I was afraid maybe there was a gas leak and we were both hallucinating. Maybe you thought I was a hot guy. I know you're no more into me than I'm into you."

Well thank the gods for that, at least. I rolled my head, turning to look at her, and closed my eyes. Yarilo had taught me how to pull the demon to the surface, and how to suppress it. It was actually the easy part of the whole mess, like flipping a switch in my head back and forth, just a little slower than that.

She blinked, staring at me, eyes going wide. "Holy shit Ro, you're really a demon. And you... you didn't know? Not at all?"

"I thought I was a plain old antisocial weirdo," I agreed, sighing. Before she could correct me as she was prone to doing, reassure me that I wasn't antisocial, just had anxiety, I went on. "The EMT who took you to the hospital told me to go to this place for help. A club. Purple Haze. Another demon owns it, and he... he told me what I am. What it means to be an incubus. What I have to do so I won't—I won't ever attack you again, Jess, I promise. I'm so sorry."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." She reached out and grabbed my hand, dragged me against her and leaned into me. "Did you think I thought you wanted to kill me? I've known you since we were in diapers, dumbass. I knew if something was going on it wasn't because you, of all people, were trying to hurt someone. I was just worried maybe there were drugs involved. Maybe, I don't know, you made a deal with a demon. Not that you were one."

I sighed and nodded, and her eyes caught on my horns. "Demon. Wish my parents had known or something. Wish I'd had any warning. I... I'm not even human, Jess."

She blew a raspberry at me and tugged me in even tighter. "Screw that. Being human is overrated anyway. I wanted to help you and just passed out instead. Glad someone was there to tell you how to get what you needed." The tension was leeching out of me as she continued to speak. I hadn't lost her. I hadn't killed her, and she wasn't angry with me, and everything was going to be fine. She paused for a moment. "Do you smell like sex?"

Oops.

When I didn't respond, she laughed. "Dick. Go shower, I'll order a pizza, and you have to tell me everything."

Three days later, the edge of hunger was just starting to nose its way back into my consciousness.

I hadn't known what it was the first time. I'd started eating everything in the kitchen, because there'd been a gaping maw inside me that hadn't been satisfied by anything. Every snack we kept in the house had gone to feed a hunger food alone hadn't been able to sate.

Fortunately for me, Yarilo was a thorough man. Creature? No, that sounded silly. Man.

Whatever, the point was, he'd made plans before I'd left Purple Haze that first night, to meet at a nearby coffee shop and talk about... about how I could survive without his help.

It didn't sound at all appealing, to tell the truth, but it also seemed like a sensible choice. I did need to be able to take care of myself, even if all I wanted to do was go back to his purple bedroom and do what we'd done again and again, for the rest of my life.

Maybe that wouldn't even work. Maybe one of us needed to have sex with other people, because we'd eventually starve to death if we only fed off each other. It hadn't felt that way when we'd been doing it—it had felt like the more I'd given, the more I'd gotten back, in an endless loop, until I'd been full to bursting by the time we'd lay, panting, staring at his ceiling. I'd thought he felt the same way, because he'd been fairly glowing with power.

But hell, what did I know? A week earlier, I hadn't even known I was a goddamned demon.

So yeah, coffee shop.

I got there half an hour early and was on my third cappuccino by the time Yarilo got there, and honestly, it took me a minute to recognize him. He wasn't wearing his sexpot bartender outfit, with his hair billowing around him like his own perfect purple background for pictures. He was wearing his hair up in a bun—I had no idea how he fit that much hair in a tight bun on the back of his head, but he did. Maybe as a demon, his hair broke the laws of physics.

Either way, he was wearing plain acid-wash jeans and a simple red button-down that wasn't especially sexy. It hardly even stood out, and that only because it matched his eyes.

If you looked at him, you could still tell how perfect he was. Those sharp cheekbones, that perfect skin, the full lips... but if you weren't really paying attention, your eyes might skim right over him.

Frankly, it seemed like a tragedy for all the people in the shop, rushing about their daily lives, ignoring everyone around them as they dropped in for coffee and then immediately left when their addiction was fed.

He picked up a drink and plate with a chocolate croissant—of course he picked something with chocolate. Could the man do a single thing that wasn't sexy in some way? Doubtful. Not like me sitting there with a blueberry muffin like a generic worker drone.

It seemed like a bad sign, honestly, that the moment he'd come in, every one of my senses was trained only on him. I was supposed to be learning how to feed on other people, right? How to pick a rando and sleep with them without killing them?

Ugh. Just the thought made my stomach turn. I didn't want to pick up a rando to be able to eat. The only thing I wanted in the whole shop, including the drink and muffin I'd been happily munching on a moment earlier, was him. I could smell him all the way across the shop, and yes, fine, if I tried, I could smell any of the people in the place. It was just that I didn't want to smell them. They smelled of work and depression and sadness. And he... he smelled of Yarilo.

Fuck. I had a crush on the demon who was kindly teaching me how to demon. What the hell was I going to do with that?