New York Times best-selling paranormal romance author Felicity Heaton
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Suki regretted agreeing to come to Underworld tonight. She had
regretted it from the moment her sisters had cajoled her into the trip,
and she should have made her excuses and left. She wasn’t in the mood
for hunting tonight. She was tired, cranky, and absolutely nothing was
going her way.
She had managed to steal one kiss from a nice guy
who had moderately good looks and had fallen for her charms, but he had
tasted like ashes and her fuel gauge was still on the red line. She
needed a male who could fill her tank, didn’t want to resort to the sort
of feed her sisters seemed intent on getting tonight.
Allura
openly fondled the man she had cornered, one who Suki had surmised was a
shifter of some variety. Shifters often provided a good feed, but it
would come at a high price. Chances were, Allura would kill him once
they got busy. Shifters were strong, but not strong enough to handle sex
with a succubus.
Suki had lost track of Vidia. The blonde female
had been swift to ditch Suki’s sorry ass as soon as she had spotted
potential prey. If Suki had to guess, she had spotted her favourite
food.
A nymph.
Nymphs were strong enough to handle a
succubus if they were old enough, but the ones who were old enough were
so damned conceited and egotistical that Suki couldn’t stand them for
long enough to get past the conversation stage of a hunt.
Vidia
had once said that petting the ego of a nymph was worth it, even though
it left a bad taste in her mouth. According to Suki’s clan, doing
whatever it took to get a good feed was worth it, regardless of how
crappy it made you feel.
Maybe that was the reason they all thought Suki was a complete and utter failure.
She
was starving but she still couldn’t bring herself to sleep with a guy
who wasn’t strong enough to survive it or stoop to grooming a nymph’s
narcissism.
Suki tried to push all the niggling voices out of her
head, the thousand jibes and taunts, and harsh words that had come from
every corner of the clan, including the mistress who acted as the head
of it. They went, but not before they took a few cheap shots at her
already fragile mood, cleaving holes in her heart.
Why the hell had she bothered coming out tonight?
She
looked at the pleasant man opposite her, one who scored an eight in
most departments and who was talking her ear off about a subject she had
no interest in and slowly looking more and more as if he was leaning
towards ditching her for someone else.
Probably Allura or Vidia.
He had asked about them more than once and she had caught the way he had
drooled over Allura when the onyx-haired and violet-to-blue-eyed beauty
had stopped to check in on her. She couldn’t blame him. As always,
Allura had somehow managed to squeeze her incredible body into a black
rubber mini and a leather corset that barely contained her ample
breasts.
Suki was beginning to feel she should have stayed at
home. This night was going to go the same way they always did when her
sisters dragged her out. She had started out thinking tonight would be
different, as always, and she would finally get things right. A few
unfulfilling kisses later she would end up screwing everything up and
going home alone, still hungry and in an even worse mood.
The opinion of her sisters would only get worse and her future would only look gloomier, and her mood would only grow darker.
She
smiled at the nice man and forced herself to move closer, tried to
focus on what he was saying but it really was boring. She didn’t really
care what kind of car he drove, or that he owned his apartment rather
than rented. None of that impressed her.
She had never been into material things.
At least not to the extent that her sisters were.
Sometimes,
her succubus nature got the better of her and shiny cars and fat bank
balances easily seduced her. The perils of living on a tiny allowance.
When her money was in danger of running out, she fell victim to her
nature, a strange sense of desperation gripping her that had her
spending most of the days until her next payment walking around frazzled
and in her own little world, seeking a male who might buy her something
pretty.
A girl could dream about having money, enough to buy whatever she wanted, couldn’t she?
Of course, normally allowing herself to dream like that only made the reality of her situation an even worse nightmare.
Her
sisters could afford pretty things, nice clothes and jewellery, and
expensive make up, because they preyed on more than the sexual energy of
their hosts. They preyed on their bank accounts too, convincing the
addled males to buy them things. Suki had tried that once or twice, or
maybe a million times, when in the grip of her flat-broke-fever.
She was yet to succeed in convincing a male to buy her something.
Another thing that left a sour taste in her mouth.
Allura did a drive by and sneakily pressed her hand to her forehead, forming an L against it. L for loser.
Her
sister meant the male was a loser and to ditch him, but Suki couldn’t
help but take it personally. Her entire clan thought she was the loser
because she was forever having problems with men and feeding. The charm
her mother had been famous for had apparently refused to be inherited by
her.
Suki lacked the basic succubus skills so badly that a few of
her sisters questioned whether she really was her mother’s daughter and
not some stray she had picked up in the fae town or a baby swapped at
birth with her real daughter.
Sometimes, Suki wondered that too.
Most
of the time, she wondered how she could make her sisters proud of her.
She didn’t want them to look down on her. She didn’t want to lose them.
The world would be a bleak and lonely place without her sisters.
She
struggled to fit in at the clan, but she would struggle even more to
fit into a world without them in it. She belonged at the clan, with her
sisters. She had lost her only blood relation, but every female in her
clan was her sister, whether they were a daughter or a mother, an aunt
or a grandmother. They were all her sisters.
The only family she had.
Before her mother had died, she had told Suki something that remained with her to this day.
One day, she would find her place in this world.
Suki
knew what her mother had meant by that. One day, she would prove
herself to the clan, would learn to use her powers and bloom just as her
mother had always said she would, and she would become part of the
family just as she had always wanted.
One day, her sisters would love her just as she loved them.
Solid Eight tossed her a flirty smile, one she returned as she sidled closer to him.
She
brushed her arm against his, savouring the way his aura shifted, the
colours that flared around him like an aurora changing to reveal the red
of passion and arousal. He wanted her. She could bag and tag him,
although there was a danger the tagging part might end up being one
attached to his toe as they wheeled him into a morgue.
Why did Solid Eight have to be human?
She
was sure that underneath his blue jeans and dark checked shirt he had a
good body, one that would delight her, and that his desire and passion
would provide a modest meal. Humans were off limits as far as she was
concerned though. One slip and she would end up killing him, even if
they were only kissing at the time. She didn’t have the energy to focus
on restraining herself. She was too hungry, needed a man who could get
her off the red line through kissing before she dared to do anything
saucier with him.
Allura strolled past again, tugging a handsome
man along behind her. Suki was surprised her sister didn’t plant another
L on her forehead. The clan’s favourite succubus just rolled her eyes
instead.
Suki glared at her.
Fine, she was taking too long
with the guy, but Solid Eight had her twisted in knots. The temptation
to kiss him and see if he could handle giving her a little of his energy
was great, but the thought of accidentally killing him was like a
bucket of icy water on her libido.
Suki looked around the room
again, hunting a stronger target, one who could handle a succubus and
might be able to provide her with a good feed. If she could find a
powerful man, not a nymph, she could probably fill her tank on kissing
or at least kissing and a little fooling around.
An ache bloomed
between her thighs and she rubbed them together in her tight black
cotton mini, the thought of getting frisky with a man sending her
temperature soaring and short-circuiting the part of her brain that
constantly chided her, telling her not to go too far in case she
accidentally killed her host.
A man flashed into her mind, his
gaunt face and dull blue eyes hurling another bucket of ice down her
panties, quenching the fire that had just started burning.
It had
been more than a month since she had let her hunger get the better of
her and had almost killed him, and although it had been a mistake on her
part because she had been convinced he had been stronger than he had
turned out to be, she still couldn’t shake the guilt.
That night had left a bitter taste in her mouth.
And it had also cemented her clan’s opinion of her.
Any
one of her sisters would have gone ahead and given the man a
pleasurable exit from this world in order to fill up her tank to the
max.
Suki had panicked and teleported him to the emergency room of a London hospital instead.
Cyrena,
the clan mistress, had hauled Suki into her office and had talked about
the rules, reiterating them for the thousandth time, and had given her a
look that left Suki in no doubt that her next mistake was going to be
her last.
If she kept failing at everything a succubus was meant
to be good at, if she kept tarnishing the hallowed name of their clan,
she was going to be kicked out of it. She had been warned enough times
that they wouldn’t tolerate any black marks on their highly respected
name, and Suki was a massive dark smudge right across the middle of it.
If her mother had been anyone else, she would have been tossed out on
her ass by now.
In the last month, she had doubled down on her
training, more desperate than ever to prove herself worthy of being a
member of the family that had raised her. She had hit fae clubs in
Scotland and northern England, and even a few in America, practicing her
charms on soft targets.
Tonight, she had come to practice on stronger marks.
But
judging by the bored look on Solid Eight’s face, she was failing
dismally. If she couldn’t charm a human tonight, how was she meant to
charm a strong immortal?
A hot bolt of fire shot down her spine,
lighting up her insides and cranking up her temperature, and she frowned
as she swiftly scanned the room. Someone was looking at her and it
wasn’t the human.
She shivered, the delicious heat that curled
through her threatening to rip a moan from her lips as she tried to keep
it together. Her eyes darted over everyone, her limited senses
stretching out around her in an attempt to pinpoint the one who was
looking at her.
Because whoever it was, they had somehow fired her up with just a look, one she wasn’t even reciprocating.
Her
eyes locked with intense dark pools set in a stunning sculpted face and
the room dropped away, Solid Eight’s words lost on her as she fell into
those fathomless depths.
Heat suffused every inch of her, fire
flaring in her veins as she swallowed hard, bewitched by the spell this
newcomer had cast on her with just a single look.
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