Seven Sins (1-3)

HOME SWEET HOME(1)

Sarah wasn't home when I returned, which wasn't until the day was almost over. Let her think I went to work. That sounded a lot less pathetic than wandering Seattle trying to get an incubus' s*x scent off my body.

"Sonya!" Sarah squealed as she burst through the door. A sports tank clung to her sweat-glistened body and she wrapped her arms around my neck.

I smiled against her teeth as she gave me a sweet kiss. She leaned and gave me a smug grin. She knew the effect she had on me made me crazy.

"What's for dinner?" she asked. I gave her a raised brow. "Pizza?" She laughed with delight.

"Perfect!"

"Didn't you just work out?" I asked as I poked her perfectly flexed abdomen. She smirked and detached herself from me before waltzing down the hall.

"Working out is just so I can eat all the pizza I want, duh."

She gave me a wink over her shoulder before she disappeared upstairs. I stared after her until the sounds of a shower running intertwined with the pounding of my heart. I loved life with Sarah, at least when it was like this.

She was always happy and giggling, and a little hole inside of me welled with guilt knowing that I was lying to her. If the truth came out, she'd be broken.

That guilt nagged at me as I slumped on the couch and flipped open the laptop to order pizza. I picked out our standard, two medium pizzas and a liter of soda, but just as I hit the confirm button, tiny zaps jolted up my fingertips. I

hissed and tried to make a fist, but a fresh jolt of pain went through my temple and I jerked, sending the laptop careening to the floor.

"D*mn it!" I yelled as the screen swept with white lines before losing power altogether. Sarah and I were both bartenders, and even though we were both holding Seattle's record for tips per night, things were running tight. Sarah didn't know that half my tips were going to a Den's incubus down the street.

I couldn't explain why I couldn't afford to fix a laptop. Sarah rushed to the top of the stairs with wet strands of hair clinging to her face and a towel clutched to her chest. It twisted, in danger of falling off her body.

"Babe, you okay?" She frowned as I swayed on my feet.

"I'm-" I tried to say, but the world spun and the next thing I knew Sarah was screaming my name as I fell into the cackling blackness of my nightmares. When I finally awoke, it was to Sarah's deep frown. She towered over me and tiny droplets fell from her curls.

Okay, that was a good sign. I hadn't been out long.

"You had me worried sick!" she snapped. I gave her a wry smile.

"You're going to give yourself wrinkles with a frown like that," I croaked. Unamused, she gave me a nudge.

"The hell is going on?" She surveyed me, as if looking for what had caused my episode.

"I didn't think succubi were supposed to get sick." Easing up, I clutched my pounding head and ignore the urge to scratch the enflamed rune at the apex of my stomach. I didn't want to admit what was wrong. I hadn't had s*x with a male in six months and my body was starting to rebel. I couldn't keep this up for much longer.

"It's nothing," I murmured.

Her frown deepened with a vengeance. "Don't make me read your mind. Because I will!" Black dots sprinkled across my vision as I forced myself to stand. Sarah shot up to guide me, still only wearing her pink towel.

"Don't threaten me with your mighty muse ways," I teased and pinched her chin.

"I'm just hungry, that's all." She narrowed her eyes.

"But we just had s*x last night." She pouted.

"Am I starting to bore you?" I huffed a laugh and kissed her cheek.

"Of course not, my beautiful girlfriend. I'm just having trouble feeding. I'll go see a doctor first thing in the morning."

She frowned. "A doctor, or a doctor doctor?" I snickered.

"What other kind of doctor is there?" She frowned.

"There are doctors, and then there are those creepster voodoo witches you call succubi doctors. I don't trust them."

She turned over her palms and looked into them as if she could read her own future. By the lines on her face, she didn't like what she saw. "They'll tell you that you need a boyfriend."

Easing back down to her side, I took her face in my hands.

"That's not going to happen, okay? I'd rather die than cheat on you."

Her glittering eyes found mine, instantly glassy with emotion.

As a muse, Sarah could be extreme when it came to passion, but that's what I loved about her.

"Then prove them wrong. Feed on me, and don't hold back." She pressed her warm lips to mine and the sweetness of her magic filled my senses. I couldn't feed on her, no matter how much I wished I could, but there was so much power that her presence still made me drunk.

I didn't fake the impact she had on me.

"We don't need to-" I began to protest. Sarah eased her fingers over my breast and nipped my lip with her teeth, making me flinch. She licked over the small hurt.

"You need to feed. I'm always hot for you, babe. Take what you need from me."

I needed to feed, and as much as Sarah aroused me, and I aroused her, s*x with her wouldn't fix what was wrong with me.

"Okay," I said with a grin, in spite of the emptiness of her offer to most succubi. "But the pizza guy is going to be here soon and I'm not going to f*ck you through dinner again." She sighed and pressed herself to me, fitting her curves perfectly into mine.

"We'll see about that." She flashed me a smile that was full of mischief and tugged me to the stairs. "I still need to finish my shower."

Reluctantly I allowed Sarah to drag me through our bedroom and in the confined space of our apartment's stand-up shower. She curled he fingers under my shirt and I lifted my arms to allow her to peel it off. She glanced at my angry runes.

She ran a finger around the top one that had turned black. "Is that normal?" I grabbed her fingers and brought them up to my lips for a kiss.

The worry lines across her face smoothed as she smiled.

She knew I didn't like to talk about it, and she appeased me, giving me what we both wanted instead.

This was what I enjoyed with Sarah. She was so strong and dominant. I never got to experience that with men who were enthralled to me the moment I even thought about spreading my legs.

But Sarah? I could never tell her no, and it felt nice to be wanted for me instead of my magic. After I'd stepped out of my jeans, I squeezed into the shower with Sarah and wrapped my arms around her.

I smiled as she kissed my neck. I squeezed her perfectly formed butt cheeks in return. "You're working out too much," I teased. "I think you could open a beer bottle with these."

She growled as she slid her fingers into me, sending my breath hitching. "You don't want to tease me," she warned. "I'll make you suffer and then we'll miss dinner for good."

I rolled my eyes into the back of my head as pleasure wafted through me.

When I gave in and moaned, she spread her fingers apart, making my knees buckle. "You need to feed," she insisted. I'd always told her that my own arousal wasn't enough, that I needed to give her pleasure. Had she been a man, that would have been true, to an extent.

But the truth was that I felt guilty, and giving Sarah orgasm after orgasm was my way of making it up to her. She took my hand and guided me over soft flesh.

When my fingers rolled across her hard nub, she gasped and I took over, rolling in soft circles. and pressing her against the tiled wall.

I took her breast in my mouth, syncing the rolling of my tongue with the swirl of my fingers, bringing a sweet musk of Sarah's magic and arousal into the steaming air. When the doorbell rang.

I ignored it, accepting that we'd both be going hungry tonight, but comforted by the soft moans of Sarah coming to climax because of my touch. Not my magic, not because of what I was, but because she wanted me for me. It was almost worth starving for.

S*x with my muse was always dynamic, even without the curling warmth of feeding on s****l life-force.

But this time I was weak, and even though we'd brought each other to climax more than once, I lay awake and hungry as she slept curled up next to me with sheets wrapper around her like gift paper.

Not to mention the rune across my stomach burned with renewed fever and the skin was starting to peel. It hissed a ned inside of me that I was missing something important and it was time I stopped ignoring it. I didn't want to deal with my nightmares right now and I laced my fingers behind my head and sank deeper into the pillow.

Sarah's soft sounds as she slept next to me gave me a mixture of comfort and guilt I'd spoken the truth when I told her that I'd rather die than cheat on her with a man, even if I needed to feed.

The last time Sarah had caught me with a guy she'd disappeared for two years. It didn't matter if she knew what I needed, it still hurt her.

That heartache had been a dagger that dug a little deeper every time I came home and found our apartment empty. Then, one day, Sarah was there, and I'd made a promise not to have s*x with another guy. I'd thought that I could feed off of her, for a little while.

Since she was a muse, there was a magic to her that I could taste. But it took a dangerous night where I'd almost died to realize that her magic wasn't something I could live off of.

I'd been two blocks from the Succubi Den and that's when one of the regulars had found me and paid for me to have a night with their most powerful Incubi.

Even then, I hadn't let him take off my clothes, but I'd fed off his kiss and the pressure of his skin against mine. It was just enough to keep me alive. Now that I was starting to black out again, I had a decision to make.

Either I was going to cheat on Sarah... or I was going to die. I forced myself into a fitful sleep hoping I could run away from my problems by getting some rest.

That's not how it worked and I knew that, but I was good at denial.

My standard nightmare of the end of the world raking death across the horizon took a back seat and something else took its place. There's only one thing worse than a nightmare... and that's a memory of my mother's death.

She haunted me!