Cherry Creek (20 page)

“This is ridiculous,” I mutter. And it is. I've kissed Trace twice and nothing happened. No one knows I've kissed him, and I'm not about to tell Khristos simply to prove him wrong. Trace had seemed worried about his job, and I'm not about to put it in jeopardy.

“Prove me wrong,” he taunts.

“I hate you.”

His eyes close briefly, and I can tell he's close to losing his patience. When he looks at me again, his eyes are grim. “Hate me all you want, but a single kiss will save your life. Will you keep denying it just out of spite?”

“Spite?” I sputter, then wince as the headache shifts in intensity.

“Do you want to die?” he asks with brutal bluntness.

“Of course not.”

“
Prove
me wrong.”

“Fine,” I grumble as I give in. It's taking too much out of me to continue this conversation anyway. I need to try to calm down. “I'll kiss Nathan,” I say reluctantly.

Relief flickers across Khristos's features before he promptly walks away to open my door. He says something to someone, and he's back a second later. “It has to be an open-mouthed kiss. Use tongue,” he says curtly.

I gape at him with disbelief. “Are you seriously giving me suggestions on how to kiss?”

“It's how we feed, through the mouth. Trust me on this. You'll also feel it when you start to feed. It'll feel like you've swallowed something fizzy, like soda, but it'll feel much better. It'll be warm, and you'll feel really good while you feed.  What you'll be doing is taking some of his energy, the very thing that keeps him alive. You don't have to worry about taking too much. You'll only be taking a quarter of what we usually take.”

He seems serious. It's weird knowing he believes all this. I'll humor him and kiss Nathan, then he needs to take me to the hospital. There's a knock on the door, and I turn my head and watch as Nathan steps inside. I can't help but frown. At the club, I'd found him super attractive, but now I just feel annoyed. I scowl up at Khristos. “You've had him on standby?”

“Yes.”

“Get out. I'm not kissing him with you here.”

“I'll just be right outside.”

“Yeah, that so does not get me in the mood,” I grumble under my breath. He must hear me, because I see his lip quirk up in the corner before he turns and leaves.

Now, I'm all alone with Nathan.

He walks over to stand by the bed, and his eyebrows furrow as he looks down at me. “You look really pale.”

“Killer migraines will do that to a girl,” I quip.

Nathan looks uncomfortable, and he tucks his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Do you have enough strength to sit up? I don't want to feel like I'm forcing myself on you or something. You've made it pretty clear you're not into me,” he says with a crooked grin.

“Do you really believe I’m what Khristos says I am?” I ask as I study him.

His eyes don't pull away from mine as he says, “Yes.”

Is everyone in Cherry Creek crazy?
“What makes you believe him?”

“I've let Tate feed off me before,” he says simply.

“Tate? You mean Tatum?” How many of these people believe they are demons?

Nathan nods.

I'm silent for a moment. First Khristos, then Roman, and now Nathan and Tatum. There can't possibly be any truth to any of it.

Nathan sighs. “Your doubt is written all over you face. Why don't we just kiss, it'll clear up a lot of the confusion.”

I'm actually in agreement. Let's just get the kiss out of the way so we can move on already. They are placing all their faith in some stupid kiss, and all I want to do is go see a doctor. It's a struggle, and I manage to sit upright, but it takes a lot out of me. I am so incredibly tired.

Nathan pulls his hands out of his pockets and motions to the bed. “Is it okay if I sit next to you?”

“Yeah.”

He sits near me, and I gaze at him warily. This is just so weird. Nathan doesn't give me much time to dwell on the awkwardness of the situation. He reaches out and touches the side of my face before leaning in and pressing his lips to mine.

I'm not the type of girl that goes around kissing guys I don't know, so I keep my lips firmly shut. But then I remember Khristos telling me that I need to use tongue. I can feel myself pulling back from Nathan as I think about my certifiably insane uncle.

Nathan's free hand reaches for the other side of my face until he holds me in place, not allowing me to escape. His lips push against mine, his tongue seeking entrance. I still don't believe any of this, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I know that if I don't kiss Nathan like Khristos wants me to, he'll claim I didn't even try. After a brief hesitation, I part my lips and let him in. I'm not exactly enjoying the kiss. It's not what I'd like to be doing right now, so it takes Nathan a bit to coax an honest response out of me.

Everything changes the minute I begin to enjoy it. An odd feeling comes over me, and suddenly, I need more. I deepen the kiss, searching for something—but I'm not sure what. I just really, really need that unknown. I reach up and grip his head as I kiss him with an intensity and desperation that would embarrass me if I weren't so busy devouring him with my mouth. A warm feeling slides down my throat and sweeps throughout my body. I begin to feel tingly sparks, and they feel crazy good as they too slide down my throat and enter my body. I've never felt anything like this before in my life. It's not sexual, it's just something that feels so right and so good that I want to revel in it and make it last forever.

Nathan growls low in his throat, and the rumbly sensation enters my mouth, making me shudder. My hands begin to tingle, and I feel like I'm experiencing an adrenaline rush. There's so much energy swirling around inside me now. I feel like I could easily run a marathon.

Oh. My. God.

Reality crashes in, and I tear my lips from Nathan's to stare at him with shock. His eyes open, and he blinks dazedly at me as his arms drop away from where they'd been wrapped around my body. He gives me a loopy smile right before his eyes roll back into his head. His body promptly slumps over the side of the bed and onto the floor with a loud thud.

I stare down at him with disbelief, then horror as I scramble down next to him. “Khristos!” I yell with alarm as I pat at Nathan's cheeks desperately. “Nathan?”

My door flies open, and I look up as Khristos strides in. He quickly drops down next to Nathan and checks his pulse. He looks at me and gives me a reassuring smile. “He's fine. You just took more than what I thought you would. We have to work on your control so you can feed in public.”

I ignore his comment and stare at him worriedly. “He's okay? You're sure?”

Khristos's eyes roam over Nathan, and they settle on a small damp spot on the front of Nathan's jeans. When he looks up at me, there's no mistaking the laughter in his eyes. “Trust me, he'll be fine. He'll wake up feeling...pretty good.”

A fine line appears between my eyebrows as my eyes flicker to Nathan's jeans. When I realize what it means, I scramble away from him and dart across the room. I cross my arms over my chest with embarrassment as I avoid looking at Khristos. I look
everywhere
but at him and Nathan.

“Trace,” Khristos calls.

I look up and see Trace appear in the open doorway of my room.

“Take Nathan to the guest room,” Khristos says as he lithely rises to his feet.

My face is still red hot as I watch Trace walk over to Nathan. He bends down and easily hefts him over his broad shoulder before turning and exiting the room without a word.

Khristos turns on me, eyes serious. “Feeling better?”

It all sinks in, and my heart begins to thud out of control. My breaths come in quick pants, and I begin to feel light-headed. It's
real.

Khristos quickly approaches me. “Head down, long deep breaths,” he orders as he pushes my back down, forcing me to lean over so that my hands are braced on my knees. My head drops forward as I try to control my breathing.

I'm a succubus.

There is simply no other explanation. I
felt
Nathan's essence as it flowed into my body. I...recognized it for what it was. My eyes close tightly. I'm part of a demonic family.

I'm a demon.

Khristos rubs my back. “Better?”

I jerk away from his touch and straighten up to face him. “Better?” I ask with sarcastic incredulity now that I can breathe normally again. “I just found out I'm a demon.
No
, I'm not better,” I snap.

“Part,” he corrects.

“Whether I'm fifty percent or one-hundred percent demon, I'm still a demon,” I point out.

His eyes scan mine. “It'll be a bit of an adjustment,” he agrees.

A bit of an adjustment? That's an understatement. I turn away and begin to pace, because I can't seem to stand still. The second I'd ended the kiss with Nathan, my body's been feeling restless. “I don't understand any of this,” I tell him. “Why am I this way? Why do I have to take someone else's energy?”

Khristos looks at me with that damn, impenetrable calmness of his. “You're the product of a human and incubus conception. Your mother unknowingly slept with an incubus, and she got pregnant. Most incubi take a form of birth control, because no matter what folklores say, we don't go around trying to impregnate every female we feed from,” he says dryly. “Sometimes our method of birth control gets low before we're aware of it, which can lead to unexpected...pregnancies. Our kind knows when a living seed has...ah, reached its destination,” he says tactfully. “We can sense the conception. My brother sensed it after he left your mother, and he kept tabs on her. Once he died, I took over and kept track of you and your mom.”

I halt my pacing to pause several feet in front of him. “I figured out you'd been watching me way before Brad attacked me.”

He nods. “Most succubi and incubi come into their powers at the age sixteen. Their energy begins to decrease, and that's of the age where they need to start learning our ways and feed. The female succubi are a little trickier to predict. All males born from an incubus are full incubus. Females on the other hand are kind of what you would say a touch and go of genetics. There's a fifty percent chance the incubus genes will become apparent, and sometimes the female’s human DNA will reject them completely. This is how some females born from a human and incubus conception turn out to be completely human. The other fifty percent have the genes, and it either flourishes within them, or it mutates, causing a partial succubus. When you showed no signs of debilitation by the time you turned seventeen, I quit having you watched on a regular basis. Then, the incident with Brad occurred, and I realized we were wrong. Usually a succubus has an aura of power, as do all supernaturals. We can sense it among other supernaturals, though you may not ever be able to sense another’s aura, not with being only part succubus. However, you never had that aura, I couldn’t sense it.  At least not until I moved you here. Once you were among your own kind, it began to develop, but it never got stronger than a faint trace of it. This is how I know you can feed off a kiss. Your aura would be a lot stronger if you had the full genes.”

“I still don't get it. Why do I need to feed at all? You say we lose energy or something?”

“Yes,” Khristos nods. “As adolescents, you can't feed. Everything has to mature in our world before they begin to embrace what they are. Once our kind is of age, we can't sustain our own energy anymore, I guess you could say it's like our life force. You know how people need to eat and sleep to survive?”

I nod.

“Well, with humans, their stomachs empty of food, and their energy fades, causing them to need rest or to replenish their body with food. It's the same for us, but instead of just food and rest, we also need energy. Our body doesn't sustain it on its own. It eventually begins to fade, and we need to take it from elsewhere or we die.”

I mull over what he says. “Okay. But why does it have to be during sex? And even if I'm half-succubus, how was it I could feed through a kiss instead of sex?” I ask as I look at him expectantly.

Khristos gives me an approving look. Evidently, I'm asking all the right questions. “We can't steal someone's energy, it won't sustain us. When it's forced out of someone, it does something to their life force and energy. It begins to deteriorate immediately the second you try to take it. By the time you get it in your own body, it's practically non-existent. It won't last but for an hour, maybe two,” he explains.

“So the energy has to be freely given?”

“Yes. The best energy is taken when a human is active or excited. A happy human means potent energy. Sex is ideal because the energy is the strongest during this time. Plus, a lot of humans lose consciousness after they've been fed from, and most just assume they fell asleep afterwards. We feed, and they never know any better. You can't just walk up to someone who's jogging and kiss them. Well, you can, but I doubt they'd be all that willing,” he muses. “Sex has been our way of feeding for centuries.”

“Can a succubus or incubus feed during a heavy make out session instead?” I ask curiously.

Khristos shakes his head. “Someone like yourself can, but we can't. The energy isn't as potent. We tend to feed while the human is ah...reaching their highest moment of pleasure. A make out session, as you call it, doesn't give us the strongest potency that we need. Because the genes are mutated, you only need about twenty percent of what we generally take. You also don't need it at the strongest level. Weak energy will still sustain you, because you aren't considered a full succubus. Of course, you can feed through sex if you'd like, and it'll likely keep you well fed for quite some time compared to just a kiss. But I guess that will be up to you. As for tonight, Nathan passed out because you were too low, and you didn't know enough to pull back when you'd had enough.”

“Could I have hurt him?” I ask with alarm.

“No,” he assures. “You don't have the ability to contain a human’s entire life force or energy inside you. The human would pass out like Nathan did, putting a halt to the feeding.”