Dare to Desire

I can’t hold my breath any longer.

My chest burns and my vision starts fading from the translucent blue of the pool into darkness.

I welcome the bliss.

I don’t belong in the light.

I’m a demon.

I prey on the weak. Take their life essence bit by bit until they are dead. I’ve done it for over a hundred years. Cycle after cycle of mortals have claimed this body and met an end fit for someone who sells their soul to the devil.

Or rather, to my King. The Incubus King.

But this year is different.

Since being promoted, I’ve come to the pool more and more. Sinking to the bottom until death tempted me.

It was hard to resist some days. Especially when I was here, the silence a welcome change.

My promotion had been celebrated. I was now the highest-tiered Succubus in all of Demon Court. My benefits were that I got to give the essence I earned and the souls I claimed directly to the King by fucking him - the dream to most apparently.

The lower-tiered Succubi usually had to give theirs to the King’s commanders. Only a few got to give to him directly. And I was one of them.

But they didn’t know that I’d been his for years.

They thought me lower? If I could’ve scoffed underwater, I would’ve.

The King had been keeping me as a pet for longer than they had been fucking for souls.

And now, everything had changed. I had changed.

I couldn’t take souls like I did before. I wasn’t numb like I was before.

I felt everything.

I felt all the things a demon like me shouldn’t.

I had dwindled down to 2 clients and I hadn’t taken on another in a long time. A long enough time for the King to notice. Which is why I was hiding in the pool, contemplating my death.

It would be easier to just let go.

I hated the feelings that plagued me. The attachment to the Vampire King who was my longest client was unhealthy. And even worse? My attachment to a filthy, djinn Demon. My Incubus King would rip my heart out if he knew.

My chest burned even tighter, and my vision was almost gone. I clenched my eyes shut and teetered on the decision of whether to kick up to the surface or stay down here.

My decision was ripped from me when a gold snake dipped into the water, curled around my waist, and yanked me out of the pool.

My King had found me.

I gasped as I broke the surface, wiping the water from my face as the snake dumped me on the ground in front of the lounger King Kylian was relaxing in front of. His snake recoiled back into a band around his forearm and I scowled at it.

It had been wrapped around me before but never to annoy me, always to pleasure- in a captive kind of way.

“You think I’d let you die so easily, Huntress?” Kylian smirked, his lips shimmering with gold glitter that matched his gold eyes. His skin was a deep tan from the scalding sun that was perpetually present in the Demon Court.

The only salvation from the heat was the water or the palm trees.

“A girl can hope,” I snarked back, folding my arms. His eyes dragged down to where my arms pushed my cleavage up in my black bikini with gold beads on the straps. It was one he’d bought me.

“So can a King,” he said in a lowered voice that made my skin pebble. My nipples too. He had a voice that was pure silk and seduction. A voice that made my knees weak and had me giving in to him every time.

He knew it too.

I licked the chlorinated water from my lips and squinted under the glare of the sun. The King was draped in women as usual, all laying next to him on the lounger, hands caressing his impressive body.

He was a big man with a snake tattoo that wrapped from the head on his chest around his arms and biceps and up his spine.

His hair was a rich brown that was usually wet from whatever part of the pool wrapping around the villa he had decided to fornicate in.

The girls were his entourage, the selected few he let in to collect essence from. They thought they were the originals. Cute.

But I never clued them in. There was no point, they could think what they wanted, he’d still come to find me every time he needed to scratch the demon itch. An itch they didn’t even know existed.

If they did, they might not be so quick to get that close to him.

I wasn’t scared of him though, I hadn’t been for a long time. He smirked as he caught me looking at the three girls worshipping him in front of me.

A dark-haired girl, Akemi. She was smirking, running her fingers down his arm like it mattered to me.

The blonde one- she was massaging his legs with oils. The joke was on her, those oils Kylian had bartered with a mage to make specifically because he wanted my scent on his skin always.

The redhead was the most dangerous. She wasn’t trying to rub it in my face that he had his hands full, she was trying to mark her territory.

That one got to me.

She was kissing his neck, licking up his ear. He turned his head to the side to let her, smirking because he knew it got to me.

And it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t mean anything to me. I should be power hungry, wanting the next powerful soul, signing on the next biggest essence to our court.

But I’m not. I don’t want to collect another soul by making them sign over their essence to me.

I don’t want to go fuck a new person to collect that essence. I want to keep the ones I already have because they mean more to me than they should.

“Well if all you wanted was to ruin my swim, then I’m going to go,” I went to reach for my towel.

He planted his bare foot on it, his thin gold anklet glinting in the sunlight, “That wasn’t all and you know it.”

I huffed and yanked my towel, his snake tattoo unspiralled in a split second and hissed at me.

“Am I not allowed my towel now?” I snapped.

He smirked, his groupies still fawning, snickering.

He shook his head slowly, “No.”

“Why?”

That had his smirk stretching into a grin, “Because I want to see all of you on display for me.”

“It’s not for you,” I was not in the mood to placate him. Technically, I was starving. I needed essence and since I was denying myself as long as possible, my ability to deal with him was hanging by a thread. “And since you like it so much, I was thinking of changing. Putting on a few pounds to throw you off.”

He just grinned, pulling his sunglasses over his gold eyes, “Then I’ll buy bigger chains to accommodate, Huntress.”

He had answers for everything.

“I told you not to call me that.”

“And I told you I didn’t care. It is what you are. A beautiful Huntress of souls.”

“No, Kylian. I’m a Succubus. That’s it. Now tell me what you wanted so I can go,” I huffed, sick of his teasing. There was no point to it.

We had tried the romance thing. It had gone nowhere because I had to fuck to reap souls and he had to fuck to consume them. That was our lives. I couldn’t have him to myself. Which had turned me into a resentful bitch with a chip on my shoulder. And him into a King with rejection issues.

“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you, Grace?” He peered at me over the rim of his sunglasses before accepting a drink of guava juice from the redhead in the tiny green bikini.

I pursed my lips refusing to answer because I knew exactly what he wanted to say.

“You need to take more essence,” he said, his tone changing from teasing to King mode.

“I know. I’m meeting Jethro tonight-”

“No, Grace,” he interrupted, “I said ‘take’ more essence, not get. You need another client. The two you have aren’t keeping you healthy enough.”

I blanched at his request, “I’m not taking another client. Jethro is a thousand-year-old vampire King. And Hawke gives me essence whenever I ask for it- and he has djinn blood!”

King Kylian surged forward off the lounger with a fluidity that had me stepping back. I almost went in the pool with a gasp but his snake band whipped out and caught me, yanking me back into him.

My body was flush with his and my breath caught in my throat. His body had that effect on me and as much as my mind denied him, my body never did.

He leaned in, his finger running along my chin, “Then clearly it is not enough because you have flawless skin, and yet,” his finger dragged under my eye, “You have shadows under your eyes. You need more essence.”

“Then stop taking so much,” I said, my voice holding no conviction while my body was in his grasp. He only wore a short piece of satin black cloth around his waist that didn’t cover nearly enough of his muscular body.

“I’ll take whatever I want, and you will be a good little Huntress and hunt. It is your only purpose.”

“Not what you told me last night,” I smirked, intentionally pressing my body against his. He gripped me tighter, his hand moving to the side of my head, holding it tightly.

He released a low groan, “Hmmm, using my own words against me? I’d have anyone else’s tongue cut out for such behavior.”

“And mine?” I taunted, licking my lips with the tip of it.

He smirked, pulling my head to look up at him, leaning close “I like your tongue far too much to let it go,” he whispered then kissed me, deep and rough.

Which meant this was more of a punishment.

But I couldn’t pull away.

I kissed him back, my hand sliding against the skin of his waist, the other cupping the back of his neck where the softest of his curls were.

He groaned then nipped my lip. He licked the droplet of blood he caused then gripped my jaw tightly, turning my head so he could lick up the shell of my ear, “When you are weaker, we are weaker and I am a King, I will not be weak. So,” he pulled my face back to look at him, “You will go out and get me another supernatural from anywhere in the Immortal Isles who is willing to sell their soul for a taste of your delicious body, do you understand?”

I gritted my teeth, “I understand.”

He grinned, “Good girl, Huntress.” He left me, climbing back onto the lounger with his dick hard under his cloth.

Something his whores took advantage of. I glared at him as he smirked and leaned back, relaxing as Akemi climbed between his legs and started licking along his abdomen like a fucking dog.

He winked at me, “You don’t have enough essence in you right now to fuck, Grace or I would be offering.”

“Sure you would.”

“Sire, I thought I was to be the next?” The red-haired girl, Synia said, her voice a seductive moan. Her fingers traced over the snake tattoo on his chest, her red curls dropping over his shoulder as she leaned over him from behind.

“What, you have a schedule for them now?” I bit, my arms crossing over my chest, my fingers clasping my small biceps so I didn’t clasp them around his damn neck.

He was rubbing them in my face on purpose.

Asshole.

Synia scoffed and walked around the lounger to confront me, her heels making her taller than me, “The king needs to be kept fed and since you clearly aren’t doing it, we will,” she smirked.

It grated on every nerve I had that she was using the essence card. I might not have much to give right now because I had left it too long between feedings but we both knew that as soon as I got back from either one of my clients, I would have more essence in my body than she could ever get from her entire black book of clients.

She made petty, 10-20 year deals. I was in the thousands. She couldn’t touch me.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Sweetheart. Alone.” I knew Synia spent her nights alone because the King spent his with me.

“You should have more respect. Our King deserves more from his top Succubus. You’re nothing but a liability, using his name to get ahead when we all know the only reason you have two clients is because you’re too lazy to procure more-” Whatever insult she was about to say next was cut off because Kylian’s snake whipped out and wrapped around Synia’s throat.

She instantly went red, spitting and choking as the snake tightened against her airways.

I raised my brow at Kylian who had moved his sunglasses to the top of his head, “The only person I will tolerate talking to you in that manner, is myself,” he said to me a second before the snake around Synia’s neck tightened and snapped it.

The other two girls gasped and Synia’s body sagged.

The snake yanked the head off and her collected essence broke out wafting in the air before going straight to Kylian.

He breathed it in with closed eyes as his snake slithered to the ground and consumed Synia’s body.

I rolled my eyes, he always had a flair for theatrics.

“Was that necessary? I could have put her in her place.”

He shook his head, putting his glasses back in front of his eyes, “No, I can feel what you have left and it’s not enough to exist past today let alone fight back. Go get a client, Grace. Or I’ll change my mind about not letting my snake eat you.”

He laid back against the lounger, put his hands behind his head and it was all he had to do to have the two girls all over him again.

I made a face of disgust then stormed off into the villa.

It was always quiet this time of day, all the incubi and succubi out hunting. Making deals. It was what I should be doing.

I had been hoping to make it until tonight when I was seeing Jethro, the Vampire King but Kylian had given me an order.

I had no choice but to go out and find a new damn client.