Succubus in the City (26 page)

We talked. We danced. He held me very close and we swayed back and forth to some indistinguishable mellow tune. I could feel the developed muscles of his arms through his silk Armani jacket. He molded me tightly against his body in the way that dancing is almost sex.

Almost, but not quite.

I wanted him. I wanted him the way I hadn’t wanted anyone except Nathan for a very long time. I wanted to take him upstairs and rip off that nubby silk and see what he wore underneath. And I wanted what was under that, too.

He walked me back to my room with his arm around my waist, keeping me close. I could smell his cologne (Gaultier, expensive), subtle against his skin. We arrived at my door and I turned in his arms.

He stared down into my face as if he were memorizing my features. “I do not want to leave you,” he said, brushing my curls with his left hand as his right held my waist.

Back in the real world I would have told him that I didn’t want him to leave either. It was the truth. Let him think I was fast, what did that matter? This is the twenty-first century and modern women have a right to control their sexuality. If we want, and he’s willing, why should we wait?

But wait I did. I muttered something about it being a long flight. I don’t know what had gotten into me, but the thought of having someone who really wanted to spend time with me, who wanted to date me, not just have sex with me without preamble, was infinitely appealing. And I was drunk.

He leaned down and his lips touched mine for one innocent moment. Then the innocence dissolved and he teased at my lips with his tongue and I was open to him, drinking his desire and passion with his kiss.

“Tomorrow,” I whispered into his mouth.

He came up slowly, his arms still wrapped around me. “Tomorrow. At noon. If you do not wait for me in the lobby then I will come up here and I will not let you go, Lily.”

“And if you are ten minutes late I will call the hospital and I’ll call hotel security because I don’t think I can wait. And if you don’t show up I’ll have all the demons of Hell at your gate,” I whispered. Not that he realized that I was uttering a literal curse, and that I had the power to do so.

By the time I staggered into my room, I was giddy with anticipation. This insanely handsome man had treated me like a lady, like someone he had to court and date, not like cheap sex. I kicked off my shoes and whirled around, laughing drunkenly, though I didn’t think that alcohol had anything to do with my delight. Marten had kissed me. And, more important, he had gone no further than a kiss and wanted to see me in just a few hours.

I collapsed into bed and had delicious dreams.

“Okay, so who were you with and what have you been doing since last night?” Desi asked. We were all sitting in the living room area of her suite. Marten had left not ten minutes earlier, and we had a date for midnight at the club. The day spent with Marten had not disappointed, but I needed to check in with my friends and let them know all of my good news (and hear theirs) before we got ready for dinner with Margit.

“What about you? What have you been doing? Or whom?” I laughed as I said that.

“You wouldn’t believe it, Lily,” Sybil said, her eyes huge. She was still in red, in a maillot that pretended to modesty while it made the most of her assets with a matching pareu wrapped around her waist to make a long, elegant skirt. Her finger- and toenails were a matching hue, and she wore brilliant metallic red sandals with ribbon ties to her knees. She looked like a golden Greek goddess, which was pretty close to accurate, since she had been an Oracle at Delphi and had been granted her prophetic gifts by Apollo himself before she took a better offer.

Hmmm…Could Apollo be behind the Burning Men? He certainly had a nasty sense of humor and all the requisite pride.

I raised an eyebrow. “I can believe a lot, Sybil. Try me.”

“I met two guys last night and I had a date with one today and I’m meeting the other one tonight after dinner. And they’re both really cute.”

“Cuter than Vincent?” Desi asked.

Sybil blushed.

“Oh, it’s good for you,” I said breezily with unworthy thoughts of getting my doorman back into my service.

“But there are two of them and we’re leaving on Monday,” she said. “What do I
do
?”

“Sybil, you have been married at least fifteen times. You ought to know what to do by now,” I said, just a tiny bit exasperated.

“But I’m only going to know them for the weekend and then I’m going to go away,” she wailed. “I can’t sleep with them. I’ll never see them again. It’s not like I’m really going to date either one of them.”

“What do you want to do?” Desi asked.

Sybil flapped her hands in the air, destroying all resemblance to the forties sex goddesses of the silver screen. “I don’t know. I want to sleep with them. I want to date them. But I want to date Vincent. I don’t know what I should do.”

“You should definitely have sex with both of them,” Eros said, moving directly to the point. “They’re here, they’re willing, and you like them. And this is Paradise, and can we have Paradise without sex?”

“But what about Vincent?” Sybil asked, utterly confused. “And if I have sex with these guys and I never see them again, does that make me a slut?”

The three of us blinked at her, confounded.

“Sybil, we’re sex demons,” Desi reminded her carefully. “Would you call us sluts?”

“Nnn, no,” Sybil answered softly. “But two of them? In one weekend?”

“Do you think they could be bi?” Eros asked. “Then you could have a threesome. Well, you could have a threesome anyway, actually. But it’s more fun if the guys are bi. It’s definitely hot.”

Sybil looked scandalized. “I can’t think that way,” she protested. “I have never had a threesome, ever, and I do not intend to start now. I just…can’t. It’s too awful. And…ick. It’s not hot, not to me.”

“Really, Eros, you’re pushing it too far,” I said. “Sybil gets married. She’s not a sex demon.”

Eros shrugged. “I take her investing advice, even if I don’t understand it. She’s almost always right. So I think she should listen to me in my area of expertise.”

I couldn’t fault Eros’s logic, but Sybil still looked shell-shocked. “It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s okay if you have sex with one of them, or both of them, or both of them together, or a third person, or no one at all. It’s your vacation and we’re here to have fun.”

Desi came around and touched Sybil’s shoulder. “Honey, if you want to have sex with them, then do it. Enjoy it. Listen to Lily, she’s right, it’s vacation and the guys know that. That’s why they hit on us. They know we’re going to disappear, that’s the point. But on the upside, it will always be perfect. They will never be bad boyfriends who don’t return your calls or forget your birthday. These guys won’t break your heart.”

Eros nodded sagely and Sybil blinked.

“Falling in love is a bitch,” I said firmly, thinking more of Niccolo than Nathan, but truthfully a few little thoughts floated by.

“Falling in love is wonderful,” Sybil responded, horrified.

“Falling in love means that you’re probably in for a broken heart and possibly years of therapy,” Eros stated flatly. “I hate the vulnerability, the judgment. All the time wondering if he feels the same way you do and if he’s going to drift. He may seem wonderful right now, but what happens down the road when he decides that he’s in love with someone newer and shinier and makes you miserable? What then?”

Sybil looked confused. She had married a large number of men, and claimed to have been in love with each of them. And then, being mortal, they died. And Sybil mourned and cried and carried on, and her loyalty to Satan sustained her until she fell in love again.

“Better to think about clothes than debate love,” Desi said. “A good hot shower and a decent meal will solve half the problems in the world, and right now that sounds really appealing.”

Desi was right. A long hot shower was a luxury. I stood under the water thinking of my afternoon date with Marten. In daylight he looked much better than he had the night before, his sandy hair precisely cut to fall into his eyes and his skin a smooth golden tan that made his eyes look just the color of the Caribbean Sea as it touched the beach. And he wore loose linen Versace pants with sandals, the perfect picture of island casual at its most elegant.

He had picked me up in a Jeep with a picnic lunch packed, and drove inland away from the beach. This was the real part of Aruba where the residents lived.

“We’re going to the bat cave,” he announced.

I’d been to Aruba a number of times and had never heard of a bat cave, but I let him take the lead and he drove us over rugged desert to an outcropping of rocks with several tour buses in the distance. He pulled off the road and unpacked the cooler chest that yielded bagels with sliced turkey, lettuce and tomato that had been professionally wrapped, several bottles of good Belgian beer, and a box of Dutch chocolates. Perfect!

“Since you’re a New Yorker, I thought I would make you feel at home,” he said as he offered me one of the bagel sandwiches. And, true to advertising, it was the real thing, crusty and chewy and dense.

“Sometimes I miss a real city,” he told me as he unwrapped the chocolates. “After the first year I thought I knew just about everyone who actually lives here, and the island seems a little small. I get lonely.” He sighed and shrugged.

There was little I could say to that. So I gathered up the empty wrappers and threw them into a plastic grocery bag. And then he stood up and pointed to the tour buses and said, “No more sad talk. Bats.”

“Bats?” I asked.

“You aren’t afraid of bats?” he asked, wary. “I was going to take you to a famous bat cave. It’s a big attraction.”

“Oh, no, I like bats,” I assured him.

We got back into the Jeep and drove to the parking area. There were tour groups going in and out of the cave, and we tagged behind one as the guides explained how the bat population was declining and this was a problem since bats eat most of the insects that would otherwise plague us. And then they turned on bright lights and the bats woke up and flew around and I was fuming. Bats have a right to a decent day’s sleep. How cruel, to wake them up every half hour so that tourists could scream while bats flew around. No wonder the bat population was declining.

I like bats even if they do belong to Upstairs. They’re adorable, with their little rounded ears and their pretty soft fur. Most of them have cute faces, which I’d mostly seen up close on
Animal Planet
when I was channel surfing and feeling sorry for myself. The cute bats had cheered me up a little bit, and the knowledge that they ate tons of mosquitoes cheered me up a whole lot more. Though, actually, insects don’t often bother demons. Something about ichor doesn’t attract them the way human blood does. One of the minor unadvertised perks of selling one’s soul to the Devil.

And then we returned to the hotel and Marten dropped me off and reminded me that he would meet me at midnight in the club.

Out of the shower. Clothes. Makeup. Hair. Do not think about Marten. Think only of the next ten minutes. Get downstairs. Get a taxi into town.

Demons are good at living in the present, keeping the mind firmly disciplined from either past or future. Or they don’t make it past the second hundred years. They have breakdowns and end up in precincts of Hell in low-stress filing jobs where they don’t have to cope with human mortality and their own lack of it.

The taxi driver delivered us to a discreet gate in a white stucco wall that was covered in flowering vines. Margit’s garden was large and elegant. We followed a winding paved path around several large trees and by a pond where koi swam around the water lilies that scented the air.

The house itself was shrouded in vines, honeysuckle and wisteria that appeared to bloom out of season. A maid in a peach-colored uniform ushered us inside, to where the shadow provided delicious coolness after the blazing sun. Through an archway we found Margit seated in a shaded courtyard. Inside and outside flowed together in this house. Here under the open sky there were large tree-sized ferns growing, shading the velvet upholstered sofas arranged like a living room. The effect was stunning.

Margit rose and burst into a smile. “I am so very glad to see you here, to welcome you to my island,” she said as she crossed the courtyard. “Come, come in please. Rosario will bring us some drinks before we go out.”

Whereupon, as if on cue, the maid in the peach uniform entered with a silver tray laden with tall thin glasses with ice and lemon floating on what appeared to be iced tea. Fortified iced tea, I discovered when I took the first sip. At least my island vacation was going to be awash in alcohol, which was perfectly suited to my mood. Curiously, there appeared to be one extra glass. Either someone else was expected or Rosario couldn’t count. I rather suspected the former.

“Our reservation for dinner is in an hour, but I thought we might enjoy some quiet to catch up,” Margit said after we were all served and Rosario had withdrawn. “And I have another visitor who has a message for you.”