She didn’t give me any time to recover before she pressed her attack. She came in fast, throwing a nice combination of punches. I blocked the first two, but the third slipped past, catching me in the temple. Once again I saw stars, my legs doing the chicken dance beneath me. She laughed and took advantage. She drove a straight right into my nose. I felt the crack as once again the cartilage in my nose shattered. Ice pick-sharp pains shot through my eyes as they welled up with tears.
“Bitch.” I growled as I stumbled back, getting angry, but she wasn’t finished with me. She charged forward, throwing a flurry of punches and kicks.
I managed to defend against a few, but most of them connected with solid thuds. She drove me back toward the hotel, her fists a blur of violent motion that rocked my head back and forth, blurring my vision even further. My skull rang like a bell.
I felt my back slam into the wall. With nowhere to retreat to, my face a train wreck of swelling contusions and bleeding cuts, I needed to do something to turn the tide. As Veronica closed on me, I dropped down and slipped a punch, causing her fist to crash into the cinder block wall behind me. I heard her grunt, but didn’t wait to see if it slowed her any. I popped back up and headbutted her. My forehead collided with her nose and I heard a loud snap. She shrieked and stumbled back, clutching her face as blood seeped from between her fingers.
Not interested in giving her time to recover, I leaped forward and grabbed her by the arm. With every ounce of strength I had, I spun her about and flung her through the window of her room. The glass shattered, exploding into a million shards of glittering razors that slashed at her as she flew through, landing in a heap on the hotel bed. I waited a second for the shards to clear, then dove in after her, landing on top of her, my weight pressing down.
I knew there was no reasoning with her, especially now that things had gone so far, so I did what I had to get through to her. Crouched on top, I slugged her in the face. I followed that up with another, then another, pinning her beneath me. She squirmed and cursed me as I rained down blows, her hands tearing at me to get me off her. One after another, I punched her until her face looked like a slab of tenderized meat. By about the twentieth shot, her struggling resistance at last gave way to whimpering compliance and I stopped. She looked up at me, her blue eyes filled with pools of crimson, interspersed with tears. Her clawing hands, giving up their useless defense, now gripped me like steel vises. I stared down at her, meeting her sad, beaten gaze with my own. She moaned, part pain part something else, and pulled my head down. With a passion I’d not experienced since our wedding night, she kissed me.
Though I knew her as well as anyone, I had to admit, I hadn’t thought my plan would work considering our history. You see, succubi are not like most women- or more correctly, they aren’t like what any woman would ever admit to being-in that they are drawn not only to power, but to the display of said power. The bigger the display, the better. Able to control men with but the merest sliver of their sensual capabilities, they find themselves bored easily so they seek out those who offer them the most challenge. The harder the pursuit, the more they invest themselves in the chase. Due to the nature of succubi, the man who can conquer one physically also conquers the succubus’s heart. Though that didn’t make things perfect, our failed marriage a good example of that, it certainly made things easier in the wooing process.
I reveled in the kiss, letting her tongue run amok inside my mouth. Through the heat, I could taste the intermingled blood of our wounds and as disturbing as it might sound, I found it arousing. I pressed down onto her, leaning hard into the kiss. It’d been a long time since I’d been with a woman. At least, it’d been a long time where the encounter didn’t end with me pulling out my wallet, so I did my best to savor every second.
I felt her grinding her hips into me, setting off rampant sparks in my crotch. I shuddered in pleasure and ground back, working myself into a frenzy. I could feel the warmth, radiating outward from our conjoined crotches, tingling up through my limbs. I tore my mouth from hers and pushed her head to the side, diving into the crook of her neck, kissing and biting. She hissed in pain and pulled away, shattering the moment. I sat up in a rush, taking my weight off her. I looked down at her beautiful face, although it was really hard to call her that at the moment considering the amount of swelling and bruising present. I felt a little bad, I had to admit.
“Uh…hi.” Her voice was raspy and wet sounding, but nothing could hide its sexiness.
“Hi yourself,” I replied, a little at a loss for words, all the blood somewhere besides my brain.
“No hard feelings?”
“For what? Sending assassins after me three times? Trying to kill me?” My mouth went on autopilot. I have foot-in-mouth disease.
“You sent me back to Hell, how’d you think I was going to react?” Her look turned hard as she pushed me away.
I rolled off her and sat on the edge of the bed. I raised my hands in surrender. “You’re right, I probably had it coming, but what did you expect? I came home to find you in bed with the cable guy. You didn’t even have the decency to get us free HBO.”
“Hello. I’m a succubus, that’s what I do. You knew that when you married me.” She sat up, glaring.
“Knowing you use sex to retain your strength is one thing. My walking into the bedroom to see some strange guy’s hairy ass bouncing up and down as he pile-drives my wife is another thing entirely.”
She shook her head. “You always were too damn sensitive, not to mention insecure. That’s one of the reasons I left you, not counting the unexpected, forced visit to Hell. And just so you know, it took me fifteen years to hitch a ride back to Earth thanks to your uncle shutting most of the damn gates down.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “I was with you because I loved you, not because you satisfied my needs as a succubus.”
Ouch. I felt my hard on retreat. “That’s just cruel.”
Veronica laughed. “Get over it. You know damn well I can’t feed off you because of your genetics. Don’t get all butt hurt over it. It just wasn’t going to work. I needed more than you could provide.”
Bah. Women. Can’t live with them, can’t bury them deep enough to avoid prosecution. I tried to act like I was cool with her logic. I wasn’t, but I didn’t want her to know that. I went on auto-redirect. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to stir up old memories.”
“Then why did you come?” She ran her hand over her battered face and winced.
“Meinie told me you tracked me, knew where I was all the time.”
She looked at me with quizzical eyes. I sighed and explained. “You know, one of the longhairs you were sleeping with to get him to kill me?”
“Ah, okay. What about it?”
“I remember your life-sensing abilities were pretty limited, so how’d you do it?”
She snarled. “A lot has changed in the last twenty years, Frank. I’ve gotten better at everything I do.” She licked her swollen lips.
Like an idiot, my thoughts started to wander. I reined them in as flashes of past perversions burned their sinful images into the screen of my mind. “How good is your tracking these days?”
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“Quite good. I tracked you easily enough, didn’t I?” She looked me over like a piece of meat. “Although I have to say, it helped you’ve gone and upped your power a few notches since we last crossed paths.” I thought I heard her purr.
“I’ve seen a bit of action, lately.” Of course, it wasn’t the kind of action I wanted to see. “So, if I were to ask you to track someone for me, could you do it?”
“Depends.” Her eyes grew wary. “Who’s the mark?”
“An angel. He’s no one you know, but I really need to find him.” I didn’t want to tell her too much, but I tried my best to convey the importance of what I was asking of her. She picked up on it pretty fast.
“What’s in it for me?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Like every other supernatural being in my life, they all wanted their cut. Shit, for that matter, so did all the humans. Veronica was no different. “What do you want?”
She smiled, knowing I’d given in too easily. She’d figured out I needed this favor badly so she was gonna make it worth her while, regardless how it turned out for me. Satisfied she had me by the short and curlies, she decided to drag it out. “I’ll think about it for a bit. Right now, I’d like to get cleaned up and find a way to heal.”
I heard the less-than-subtle hint in her words. She knew about the vials Lucifer had given me and was maneuvering to get one. I kept the fact I had one on me to myself. “I think we can work something out.” I didn’t mind giving her a bit of my uncle’s blood, but I sure wasn’t gonna do it before I got something in return.
