I was mortified.
I’d ripped my things from his hands and stomped out of the apartment, swearing to never see him again. All the while I knew I would be right back here before morning. In fact, half-way to the sewer I was tempted to drive back, slither out of the girl’s body, and double up on Gaire, just to show him what I was made of. But the way I feel about him, the way my body reacted to him, gave me a smidgen of hope—a small dream of finally finding someone to share more than one intimate moment with—and I kept going. When the succubus at Purgatory had suggested the very same thing—rolling on Gaire—I’d almost spit a laugh at the irony of it.
CeCe’s eyes blink me out of my daymares when a light comes on over the diner. Having worked up a slathering lather of annoyance, I exit the car and stomp my strappy pumps all the way around the building to the back stairs leading to Gaire’s apartment. I let CeCe fill her lungs and then take the stairs two at a time.
I don’t knock, but grab the doorknob in a death grip. “All right, door, we can do this easy, or I can get all hard and aggressive.”
I growl, giving the knob a twist, prepared to break the door from its hinges as I enter. But before I can push to see if it’s unlocked, the door is pulled hard and fast. I find myself in Gaire’s firm grip, my lips held captive by his.
It’s a good thing I don’t need to breathe to live, because by the time he takes me to the loft and dumps me on the red satin comforter I would have been dead. My mind takes in a diminutive awareness of his strength and agility to climb the ladder with no hands while carrying me, but promptly tosses the thought on the floor beside the dress Gaire has just ripped off my body. I didn’t even notice him take off his clothes and when he covers my body with his, a moan escapes me—not CeCe!
The deep desire to be part of him wipes any sanity of the moment from my mind. Everything in the room fades around me. I revel in the way his skin feels, his mouth breathes into mine, his fingers search. Undergarments are torn away, firm pleasure parting my thighs, filling me and driving deep. Mouth against his, I pant an orgasm deep and strong. Lips devour, teeth puncture flesh, claws slash through delicate skin. With a heady disoriented high, I feel CeCe’s skin being ripped from me, and instinctually I begin to shed my host. What was once CeCe sprinkles the bed around us and dissolves.
My fiery red eyes pop open. His lids flutter, and I freeze in silent horror. I disperse and cloak him in smoke, under and over him as I pass up through his morphed body with a shudder of unwarranted fear and an intense struggle for survival.
His long arms frantically reach, claws arcing and then clacking in mid-air with lack of purchase. His teeth bite nothing, and his lungs gulp and expel black smoke to no avail.
I rise to the ceiling like a cloud from damp wood off a camp fire. I whoosh away as though caught by a gust of wind and, palpable, thick, and cloying, I breeze through the many cracks on the closed window frame and dissolve into the night air.
As I twist and twirl in front of the diner, nothing but red orbs flashing, my needle-sharp teeth fold back into my mouth. I continue to stare in horror.
The wendigo from Purgatory stands on the other side of the window above the diner.
Gaire
“What the hell do I make of that?” I ask myself as I pace the apartment over the diner. “I totally blew it. Did I kill her? Or did she run from the apartment?”
I can’t remember anything after I tossed CeCe on the bed, except a deep heat—a tightness—as I slid into her body, a hunger so strong it demanded gratification.
“Blood lust! I was enthralled in the lust for blood. Damn it! I devoured her!” I run and leap up into the loft, surveying before I realize and acknowledge there’s no blood, bones, nothing to show the brutal event that I thought had taken place.
No! You know it took place. You smelled it, felt it, and you can still taste it on your lips. It happened.
“What the hell are you, CeCe?” I scream at the ceiling. “And damn my mother and father for not educating me about the world Down Under!”