well-fed,” he sneered, rank breath blowing over my shoulder. “And yet the fresh souls are less compliant than they should be. Why is that?”
I shrugged, keeping my eyes fixated on earth’s scorched surface down below. “Perhaps they’ve grown resistant to my feedings.”
Even a big, dumb demon like him wouldn’t buy it, but I had to say something to buy myself time. If he took me to Belial, I might not come back.
“In all your millennia as a succubus, they’ve just now learned to resist you? When they have nothing left to enjoy?” Kimaris barked out a cruel laugh. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“You know how they are with addictions,” I continued to stall. “Their tolerance just keeps getting higher the more they take.”
“So where are you getting your supply from? You look…” His voice took on a husky tone. “Exquisite. Like you haven’t skipped a single day. Are you projecting down there? Dream-feeding again?”
I bristled without giving him an answer. King Belial tossed me to Kimaris and his legion as their reward for wiping out every influence of Christ in the South Pacific. It was because of these lunkhead demons that I started dream-feeding with regularity, to recover from what these infernal brutes put me through.
The first time Kimaris caught me, I threw myself down at his gigantic hoofed feet and begged him not to tell the king. He delighted in using my secret feedings to blackmail me, to use me in replenishing his own power until I barely had the strength to lift my head up.
Living forever was tiring, so maybe I’d finally had enough. Despite Kimaris' threats, I kept sneaking visits to my priests in their dreams. Apparently I didn’t cover my tracks well enough. That, or I just didn’t care about getting caught anymore.
A massive hand, nearly as big as my head, wrapped around my upper arm. The contact immediately burned, pain shooting through the right side of my body. I hissed and fought against every instinct telling me to spend my energy to heal. I needed to conserve it.
“You spend so much time down there. You want so badly to join them?” Kimaris taunted in my ear. “To be a mortal human woman who loves, ages, and dies? Even for a succubus, you’re pathetic.”
“Pathetic enough for you to fuck,” I bit back. “No demoness in the hierarchy wants your stupid ass, so you settle for abusing me.”
His hand clamped down on me tighter, the burning pain shooting through my vision. A human woman’s bone would have crumbled to dust under that grip.
“You’re the only succubus with the privilege of being a king’s toy. You should be grateful to get fucked by anyone in the hierarchy at all. But you spend your feedings on dream-walking with humans, like a basic bitch with her lattes. You shame your brethren, Deyva.”
Biting down against the pain, I tilted my head up to stare into the churning ash-and-coal gaze of the demon towering over me, pupils like lightning strikes slashing across his irises. His horns were long and corkscrewed, angling backward like an ibex. Long, black claws decorated his hands, with pitch black skin traveling up his arms. His body was made of carved and twisted muscle, body extending forward in a constant leer, shoulders pushed back to the center of his spine. He reminded me of some ancient beast, a dinosaur, bones protruding at odd angles and the hard shell of old callouses like shields over his chest and legs. He was considered attractive by demon standards, and for the longest time I couldn’t understand why I felt sick every time I fed from him.
He always tasted awful. Rancid and rotten.
“I’m not your brethren.” How many centuries had passed wishing I could say that out loud? “I’ve never been anything like you.”
Kimaris' eyes flared the color of liquid fire, a burning red-orange. The pain extended down my side and to my legs now as his fury grew.
“I hate how you taste,” I went on, throwing gasoline on a pyre that was already sure to kill me. “Your flavor is bile and your offerings are pitiful and sluggish. I’ve never enjoyed feeding from you. King Belial, your legions, and the souls we’re accumulating? I hate how you all taste.”
Everything I’d been bottling up for centuries came pouring out. I might not survive Kimaris' wrath, but at least he couldn’t use sex as a weapon on me anymore, abuse me with the very gift I was created for.