Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

“I’m amused by simple things,” he said, holding out the glass for her to pour. He didn’t much like dry champagne, but he’d drink it anyway. She sat down beside him in her jeans and halter top, skin like snow under moonlight.

He was a thirty-five-year-old atheist sleeping with a Jewish vampire of indeterminate age, and he was drinking champagne because Lilith liked the tang. Work that one out, Ann Landers. Or maybe the Penthouse letters column would be more appropriate…

She rested one hand on his thigh as he drank. This was cozy, like coming home; the closest he’d ever come, anyway. The soft wind that ran up the hill from the ocean was like raw silk, a few degrees colder man usual. He’d worry about rain, except the night was so damned clear.

She was thinking the same thing, apparently, because she glanced upward, smiled, and said, “‘Look, how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patins of bright gold.’”

“What’s that from?”

“Merchant of Venice.” She poured him more champagne. Get that blood alcohol level up past .08, where she could taste it. He smiled; God, he was easy.

“And it means?”

“Come on, Bailey, you never see stars like this in the city.”

“Ah, stars. I thought you said ‘pattens.’ I wondered why the floor of heaven was covered with shoes.”

She looked at him. “You’re just asking for it, aren’t you, Bailey?”

He nodded, not even trying to beat back his grin.

She reached up and pinched his neck, suddenly, as though testing readiness for the oven. “Ouch!” He let go of the champagne glass. Her tongue followed a second later, laving the vein, playing with the hollow, tracing its way to his ear. His breathing become ragged. She touched tongue-tip to the mapped roads of his ear and began running fingers through his hair, nails trailing the scalp, just above that ear. He gasped and his body jolted very slightly, as though a current had run head to toe. He turned into her touch, then turned further, facing her. He took that hand and kissed the palm, his gaze steady, leaping deliberately into those eyes.

Some time later she said, “Bailey…”

“What?”

“Why is the floor of heaven covered with shoes?”

He knew this game and smiled through the haze. “Well, it would make sense, you know.” Her lips were playing with his neck now; and the longer he could spin out this nonsense, the longer the beautiful torture would go on. “The floor of heaven is painful.”

“How do you figure?” Her breath was warm spice in his ear. She ran her palm over his forehead and he sighed.

“It shifts under your feet.” She moved on top of him, covering him with cool heat. “You need rubber-soled shoes.” Her hair swept past his neck like living silk. “Enjoy it while you can.” She’d zipped down his shorts and now she was playing with both ends of him, caressing his cock while she let the tip of her teeth remind his neck what it liked. So much for his concentration.

“Bailey?”

“Umm.”

“I liked that.”

“Umm.” Fortunately, the change in tone seemed to be carrying his response, because it was the best he could do just now.

She’d shifted position, her knee between his legs, just touching his cock, the extra contact making him dizzy. A new breeze rolled in off the ocean, unexpectedly cold, and Jesus, on his sensitized skin it was as erotic as the rest, making him shiver with pain and pleasure. He didn’t know the wind could do that.

He clutched her shoulders as the first touch of desperation took him. She held him then, rocking him through it, as his body, reminded now of what it had lacked for the last ten months, convulsed.

Lilith never took him after the first one. She could spin this out for hours, on a good night, and for most of those hours he’d be right there with her, delighting in the ride. Even delighting in the sudden, sickening descents of the roller coaster, because he knew what followed. But these moments, these were the hardest, when his body didn’t care about games or what came first or followed after.

Then it passed, and he was breathing hard. The cool, healing lips were on his, as though she could pass that inhuman strength into him, keep him going long enough for a dance humans weren’t designed to live through.

He sucked it in, opening his mouth, welcoming her tongue and its invasion. That army was on his side, boys. The cavalry was here for him…

There was a sudden change in her body. She pulled her mouth away, pushing him back.

He murmured, confused, “What…?”

She rolled away from him, staring toward the kitchen door. From which Teej emerged, looking as if he were about to be sick. His hands were clasped behind his head and he stumbled as he came through the door. A nine-millimeter automatic was about an inch from the back of his skull, held there by a man in a T-shirt and light nautical windbreaker.

Ron.