Underrhelm

Sweat started to bead down Rayna’s temple as the silk sheets she was intertwined in tugged at her calf. Sleep had not come easily tonight and when it did horrid night terrors awaited her. Dreams of blood slapping up her arms to her elbows and rage ebbing and flowing like the vast sea. Always the same past haunted her, one she had never dealt with and likely never would.

Valentine could see his shaky breath in the air as he turned the silver doorknob to his boss’s apartment. It smelled strongly like a moss covered forest floor with flashes of tobacco. On the opposite side of the entrance that he now stood in, weary on whether or not to enter, was an ornate birdhouse. It looked oddly like a rotting cathedral nestled in the branches of an old dead tree. From the void where the doors should be V watched as three red eyes lit up one by one.

Strands of smoke started pouring from the hole each tendril wrought with murderous intent. Suddenly an achaierai emerged the size of a cat, his four legs braced on the branches as he looked at Valentine, no doubt deciding which park to peck out first.

V swallowed the fear in his throat, for no one knew where he came from and Rayna had not told that secret to anyone. “It’s just me Edgar, I’m picking her up for work.” He pleaded with the bird.

The smoke crept back into its hole, Ed disappearing with it. V turned down the right hallway with a sigh of relief only to be met with a door in front of him and to the left. On the left was a sign that read ’DO NOT ENTER’.

He thought for a moment about entering the forbidden room, the sign filled him with such intrigue that his sense of self-preservation was almost swayed. Ultimately, he decided against it as he opened the door in front of him. A heat waved blasted against his skin as if he’d opened an oven door and stared right into. A burning, floral aroma wrapped around him, drying his eyes and mouth as he laid his sights on a beautiful demon fast asleep on a canopy bed.

His breath caught in his throat, from longing to trade whispers in the night for all eternity or pure hunger to be where the sheets were positioned between her legs, he did not know. His hand inched ever closer toward her as if he could not bear the space between their skin any longer. She was the color of ripe strawberries and her hair that flung wildly around her pillow was a deep shade of onyx. It matched her voluminous lips and the small pointed horns jetting out from her either side of her forehead.

Valentine wanted to taste her, feel that heat warming every broken part of him till they welded together, but a voice inside him screamed NO. He raised his hand above his head and shot it forward across her ass cheek. It rippled a bit as her bare behind was firm but luscious and full. He wanted to kiss away the sting but instead shouted, “Wake up!”

Before V could register what had taken place, the demon was standing up right on her bed. Her wings spread as far out as they could go. The tips grazed the see through fabric that draped around her iron colored bed. Her black usually doe eyes lit up with seething wrath as she bore into him, threatening to undo him completely.

Her hair clung to her rather plentiful chest as it heaved with ragged breath. Rayna’s stomach was tight and healthy as it flowed like satin to her supple hips. V’s eyes, lapping up every detail of her naked body, made it to her navel before a knife flew into his chest. The force sent him tumbling into the armchair behind him. The soft cushion held him as his flesh sewed back together around the blade.

“VALENTINE!” She seethed through gritted teeth before stomping behind her three paneled room divider and slipping into her boudoir robe.

“V, are you so stupid as to piss me off first thing in the morning?” She asked, trying not to let her anger take her over. While she had a moment of privacy she rubbed her temples trying to drive away the images of her terror before plastering on a lusty mask of even calm.

“I’m sorry boss but, you were so heinous looking. Drooling and snoring like a gathra after a meal,” he teased with a playful, metallic smile.

A twinge of excitement slithered up her spine as she lit the cigarette between her lips. Valentine was a big demon, six feet at least. His black cotton T-shirt could hardly hold back his coiled chest. His skin looked like it had been dipped in Prussian and was made brighter by his silver eyes and matching horns. His coy grin pierced her to her very core. Images of him beckoning her to come closer skidded across her mind.

“I believe that like I believe in the bicornaclops!” She snorted as she perched herself in front of her vanity. Rayna would never allow those imaginings come true, she couldn’t. While collecting half of her hair into a bun, she never broke eye contact with his reflection.

Two can play at this game V, she thought to herself behind another drag of her cigarette.

She sensually ambled toward him, poking the hilt of the dagger extending from that thick muscle, making him wince.

“You know, I am a succubus.”

“I can be any Hell beast you want me to be.” She cooed with a wicked grin as she pulled back her face and nestled her knee between his legs. Luckily she did not press against him, for she would feel the length of him and find out just how much her wrath excited him. “Should I see who it is you desire?” She teased leaning back, her robe falling off her thigh, threatening to show her delicate center.

“Would I be appalled or flattered?” She was throwing blows at the truth she’d craved for years, that she wouldn’t change at all for she was all he wanted. She could tell by his agitated face, she had won their little duel. Rayna then exhaled smoke in his face and extinguished her cigarette in a glass dish on her vanity.

When she dared glance back at him, Valentine pulled the blade out in one swift motion. It tore his healed skin creating a fresh wound that closed again while V frowned at the new hole in his shirt and thought to himself, Hell save me if I ever truly piss her off.

“What are you doing here anyway?” She demanded from inside her closet. “You’re late and demons are lining up outside of the club. They’ll start revolting soon and if anymore gather Lucifer will be the next one creeping into your bedroom.” He frowned with seriousness.

Lucifer was only worried about keeping his worker bees loyal. The only way in his mind to assuage loyalty was through keeping them sated and Rayna was instrumental in that promise, and if she failed she would be replaced. But not before he dragged out her punishment and inevitable elimination. Rayna was one of the few who would stare down the dark prince without so much as flinch and in doing so had earned a reputation of ruthlessness.

“Late? I’m never late. Everyone else is early. And Luci can kiss my ass.”

“Still, I’ve got stuff to do Rayna so hurry up would ya?” He requested, trailing off as he closed the door behind him. Ray had decided to wear a sports bra and knee length spandex shorts with a cropped hoodie to travel to and from the club, but a slinky dress awaited her for the night of work ahead.

As she applied pearly gray liquid over her eyes and powdered her face she looked at all of her angles, turning left and right while searching for the hideous boar beast V had seen.

“Why does that idiot even hang around if he thinks I’m so ugly?” “He’s stupid anyway and I don’t care," she lied to her reflection, a ripple of rejection floated across her features. Rayna slammed her fist into her vanity and stalked to the kitchen.

When she opened her door she was met with V pouring coffee into her favorite thermos. It had a white bezekira on it, middle finger extended up and it said ‘Fluff You’ on the bottom. V stiffened spilling coffee on the floor as he took her in. A cluster of seconds slowed into minutes, her shapely ruby colored figure sashaying slow enough for him savor ever moment. The silver around her eyes made them look like bottomless pools of midnight. Her lips had always been slightly puckered and had a shine to them akin to molten tar; they parted slightly to reveal the tips of her fangs. Valentine swallowed away the new dryness of his mouth as he thought about them grazing his skin.

Rayna, oblivious to his gawk, glazed over her granite countertops and the ash leather bar stools pushed against her kitchen island. Her gaze ran over her plush velvet couch and glass coffee table at last locking eyes on Edgar who was perched outside his birdhouse looking a bit irked.

She gave her loyal companion a pat on the head and purred, “Good morning, my beautiful Edgar. Is there a reason you did not inform me I had an intruder?”

“Hungry!” He squawked. “Tsk.”

V’s laugh bounced off the walls of the otherwise silent apartment. It’s like warm honey, Rayna thought quickly to herself, trying not to show the startle she got from it. She went to the fridge and grabbed Ed’s favorite, human liver, the slimy weighty organ almost slipped from her grasp as she tossed it towards him. Edgar snatched it out of the air and swallowed it whole with shiver giving wet gulp.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” she chuckled as she grabbed her purse and coffee, heading out the door, Valentine right on her heels.

The wind filled and spread under their wings, caressing them into dips and inclines while keeping them steady in an effortless glide. It only took a few moments to see a sign lit up in the darkness. A large neon, pale blue U inside of a circle and they landed in front of Club Umbra minutes later. A line of angry demons started to form on the sidewalk out front. Many of them tried to claw through one another and in their path to bliss stood Osiris. Even bigger than V, he was a towering seven feet tall and his skin was as dark as shadow, it would have swallowed the light were there any save for the flashing rainbow streaking through the glass windows.

His eyes were pure starlight along with his hair and thick, short horns that sat on either side of his crown. Osiris’s lips were full and curled into a smile that met his eyes, crinkling the eyeliner he wore to match the symbol carved into his forehead of the same energetic light. This mark meant he was tied to these grounds, his sole purpose to protect them. His secondary form served him in this purpose, a hellhound the size of a nightmare.

“Osiris,” She greeted with a nod. “Good evening boss, you have a visitor in your office.” He responded as he opened the massive glass doors, flexing the toned back muscles that flowed down him. Fuck, she rasped in her head.

“V, have Darci bring my drink to my office.” She barked. “Of course boss."

Rayna stomped up the stairs, past the club’s receptionist and kicked in the hefty rosewood doors of her office, flaring her wings at the same time. A shadow of grand horns that reached for the ceiling and gentle blanket of smoke kicked back at her.

“Camille.”