Soul to Keep Read online

“Yes,” I said. That brought back a genuine smile. “And I can eat and bake at the same time so if you don’t mind spoon feeding me, I’ll preheat these ovens and get going.”

  “Hattie, you’re seriously gonna die. Her desserts are the best.”

  Hattie laughed and poured herself more wine. “What a lovely way to go.”

  ❖

  Hattie stayed until all the baking was done, and we’d demolished the Italian food Tokyo had ordered for us. Sometime during my second glass of wine, I started to relax, started to forget about Ginger and the stick up her butt, and started to enjoy myself. Hattie was wonderful. Funny and kind. I loved the way she looked at Tokyo, like she was so proud and just happy to be around her. And not once did I think that genuine affection was due to their blood bond. I think if Hattie and Tokyo had to sever all their supernatural ties that night, Hattie would still care about Tokyo and Tokyo would feel the same. They would remain friends.

  Around 11:30, Hattie left, but not without vanishing with a large plastic ware tub filled with cupcakes and mixed berry lemon bars. She told me if I was ever in San Francisco, I was more than welcome to come stay with her. Or bake for her.

  When she left, I tried to start cleaning up, but Tokyo had other plans.

  She came up behind while I was suds deep in the sink.

  “I can do that later,” she said, rubbing the back of my neck. She was at her full height and she had to bend to kiss me in the tender spot. I knew she’d shrink down if I asked her to, but if this was her natural form, then that’s how I wanted her.

  “My dad and papa would kill me if they knew I was leaving dirty dishes behind.”

  “How about I don’t tell them and you come over here and let me fuck you like I’ve been wanting to do all night.” She reached around me and turned off the water. I continued to hold still as she reached for the dish towel and dried my hands.

  “Am I being instructed to let you have sex with me or do you have to ask me nicely?”

  Tokyo didn’t answer. She spun me around and picked me up by my bottom. And then her lips were on mine. And then I was on the center island.

  “Do you want me to ask you nicely?”

  I shook my head. “I think you already know what I want.”

  “Do I?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Should I make you say it?”

  I took a deep breath and gave the whole dirty talk thing a try. “I…would like you to fuck me. Right now. With your magic shape-shifting clit. Please.”

  “Aww, baby. You did it.”

  “I’m growing stronger every day,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “It’s the power of love.”

  Tokyo wasn’t so successful. She tried to cover her snort of laughter, but failed. “Lean back.” I propped myself up, giving her just enough room to unzip my jeans and pull them down. As soon as they were off, I nearly lunged forward so I could kiss her again. I had the silly thought, if it were possible, we would be kissing all the time. She held me close, giving me what I wanted, bit by bit, but not fast enough. I wanted her inside me now.

  “I know, baby. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You know what?” I moaned as her fingers grazed my clit.

  “How bad you want me. I want you too.” Her arm moved down to my waist, and she pulled me closer to the edge of the counter. “Guide me in.”

  “What?”

  She looked down between us. I followed her gaze down and saw what she was talking about. Her clit had extended and thickened into a decent sized phallus. With a little help, she wrapped my fingers around its girth. It was wet, covered in her juices, so potent I could smell her. My mouth started to water.

  “How does that feel?”

  “Good, baby. Let me in.”

  “Tell me if I’m doing it wrong.”

  “I will and you won’t.”

  I stroked my hand up and down the length of her clit for just a moment, watched her eyes close and the pleasure wash over her. If I had any confidence in my oral skills, I would have asked if I could go down on her.

  “Do you want me to fuck your mouth first?”

  “How did you know what I wanted?”

  “I don’t know. For some reason, you’re in my head.”

  “I am?”

  “Yeah. If you keep doing that I’m gonna come.” My hand was still moving. “It’s fine. I’ll come again, but if you want this first one to be in your mouth, you’re gonna have to back off a bit, baby. Oh fuck.” Her fangs dug into her bottom lip as she leaned into me.

  I had so many questions, but her pleasure was all I could think of and I did want her in my mouth, and…I nudged her back and hopped off the counter. I used my jeans to cushion my knees. A moment later, her fingers were in my hair pulling my head back. I knew she could be gentle, she was always gentle, but that wasn’t what I wanted and that’s not what she gave me. She teased me a moment, using the tip of her engorged clit to rub her juices all over my lips. That only lasted a moment.

  “Open, and breathe through your nose.”

  As I did, she shoved her clit into my mouth. It felt strange, how much I enjoyed it, how much I didn’t want her to stop. She pumped in and out, and I knew at some point I should close my mouth just a little bit to create some suction. So I’d heard.

  Tokyo groaned out a “Fuuuuck,” and gripped the counter. I tried to suck a little harder going against the motion of her hips, but when I glanced up for any sign or any cue that I was doing anything right or wrong, she was shaking her head. “Here.” Tokyo squatted in front of me and tore my shirt over my head. She popped the hook on my bra and pulled that off just as quickly, and there I was completely naked before her, counting the seconds before she was back in my mouth.

  “You were gagging a little bit. Breathe through your nose, but don’t try to swallow. Just let it run out of your mouth.”

  “Okay,” I gasped before she shoved her way back in. I don’t know why, but her roughness was turning me on so much. Maybe it was all the built up tension and stress from the week. Maybe it was all the pent up emotion from meeting Hattie and listening to her speak so lovingly about Tokyo. Or maybe it was the fact that we had barely gotten to screw during the week. Just two perfect, yet quiet and extremely gentle encounters. I wanted the reckless excitement I’d experienced at Moreland’s party. The chase, the seemingly high stakes. Maybe a bit of the humiliation.

  “Oh fuck! Please don’t say that.” She was purring now, almost growling, barely able to control the true animal that lived inside her.

  Well, right, she was in my head. Then she had to know how much I was enjoying this, my drool mixed with her juices dribbling all over my chest. She had to know how badly I wanted to finger myself, but I didn’t dare because I liked the way my nails felt gripping her thighs. She had to know how I thought maybe I might come just from the way my hips were rocking so close to the floor. The muscles of my vagina tensing over and over.

  “Next time, we’ll get you an audience. Would you like that?”

  I hated having sex in front of the girls. When we weren’t naked, they were always making fun of me, but I didn’t feel that way with Krystal and Moreland and Luke. Even Mayor Fillamorrow, who clearly knew how to let her hair down. I felt welcomed by them, comfortable in their company, like I could do anything with them around and they wouldn’t tease me or make me feel like I was too enthusiastic about Tokyo and the amazing things she could do to me.

  “Well, we’ll have to make that happen. I’ll fuck your mouth and your tight pussy in front of Moreland and all her friends. You’d like that.”

  I nodded my agreement, moaning with my full mouth.

  Tokyo’s clit just seemed to get wetter and wetter. My drool began to run out of my mouth. The feel of it was making my body more and more sensitive. If Tokyo didn’t do something soon I was worried I would explode.

  “We can’t have that.” She slipped out of my mouth as she dropped to her knees in front of me. “You should see how fucking hot yo
u look right now. I don’t even want to touch you. I love how desperate you are.”

  “Please,” I practically whimpered. On its own, my hand reached up and started spreading the drool around my nipples.

  “Say it again.”

  “Please.”

  “God, there are so many things I want to put in your mouth. Come here.” She leaned back against the cabinets and pulled me onto her lap. She reached down between my legs, placing herself at my very swollen, very ready entrance. All I had to do was sit. And not far either, when her perfectly sized length filled me up. Goodness, how good she felt.

  I’d never ridden a clit like that before, with Tokyo guiding my hips and sucking on my nipples, I managed to get the hang of it. I came so loud I’m pretty sure her neighbors heard my screams.

  ❖

  Once I got a clear understanding of how it was actually possible to screw all over one’s kitchen, Tokyo drove me home. I was too high, too perfectly sated to care about the freezing temperatures outside or the still bizarre mood in the house. It was late, but almost everyone was still up and in awful moods. A hot shower helped me get my wits back, but only a little. I couldn’t stop touching myself under the spray.

  Portia sitting in the hallway sweet-talking with her boyfriend helped make room for some clarity though. After I dressed for bed, I noticed a stack of blank surveys on my desk. I picked one up and grabbed a pen. I had a girlfriend now, a real one, and there was definitely sexual activity, but still there were so many things I didn’t have to worry about due to the simple fact that she wasn’t human. Maybe that would make me careless.

  I checked off the box for STD prevention, and I never knew what the future held or how far things could go…with an audience, so I checked off the box for birth control too. There was also a box marked relationships, and because I’m also practical and forward thinking, I had to be realistic and know that it was perfectly reasonable for me to write “how to handle a breakup” in that empty space.

  I was most certainly in love now, and I had every reason to be terrified that things with my real, undead girlfriend might not last forever.

  As if she could sense the downturn in my mood, my phone vibrated with a text from Tokyo.

  It was a very graphic picture of her wet fingers between her legs.

  I know it’s not a tasteful nude, but I don’t care.

  I’m still thinking about you.

  That was enough to give me sweet dreams for the whole night.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tokyo

  I’d gone from undead babysitter on house arrest to undead demon detective in a matter of weeks. When I wasn’t with the girls or Jill, I was hitting every police station, every sheriff’s office and highway patrol stop between Baltimore, Durham, and Austin. And nothing. No leads. The only clear victims I could find belonged to the vampires and our nests. I hit a few of the unloyals, vampires who agreed in the loosest terms to Dalhem’s laws, but did not serve him or any other demon-borne. He allowed them to live within his borders as long as they cleaned up after their feedings and never, ever left any bodies behind. Some of them had bound feeders, but the ones I caught up with hadn’t heard anything. Their feeders were safe and sound.

  So far, the only lead was that the thing was moving.

  The day we got a call from the Lambda chapter up at UNY, Ginger and Dalhem agreed that I should go talk to the girl in person, then speak to any of the locals who might know something.

  I went up as soon as the sun was down and met with the head sister-queen, Lila.

  Lila brought me to her underground dwelling, where Rory, a junior from Long Island, was visibly shaken.

  “Rory, this is Miyoko. She’s from the Alpha nest. They’re trying to make sure no one gets snatched up again.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Rory,” I said, trying to keep her calm. Her eyes were darting all over the place. “I heard you put up one hell of a fight.”

  Rory nodded, and I thought she was about to bite through her lip.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I was with Antonia, my roommate, and we were going to check out this free concert down at the park after class. And Mario, the guy I sit next to in my engineering lab, he wanted to come.

  “Where’s Antonia?” I asked Lila. “Get her down here now.”

  “I thought it was fine because Lila told us to stick together. I had Antonia with me. We were looking out for each other. Except when we got to the park, there was a huge crowd and things were getting out of control. People were shoving, and the cops came, which never helps. So Antonia said we should leave.”

  Just then a Latin girl, about medium everything with braces, cracked open the door. Lila waved her in.

  “I’m just telling them what happened,” Rory said.

  “Yeah, it was really fucked up. I mean screwed up. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You can swear all you want. Tell me what happened next.”

  “The cops were trying to direct people and we got separated, and it was only for like a minute, but Mario started dragging me away. Like not trying to get me out of the way, but like he was trying to take me somewhere and we were headed in the opposite direction of school.

  “I started fighting him, and he looked at me and something was way fucked with his eyes, like his eyes turned this really creepy gray and then my hand started to hurt.” She held out her palm for me. Her fingers were still a little red like they’d been squeezed too hard. But I was more concerned about the gray blotch in the center of her palm. All our Masters had a mark. Dalhem’s was a six-pointed star made out of six overlapping orbs. At a glance, it almost looked like a flower. This thing was unrecognizable, but it was something.

  With her permission, I snapped a picture and sent it to Dalhem.

  “Thank you. Please go on.”

  “My hand started hurting, and then I got this weird taste in my mouth, like how firewood smells, but the wood’s got rotten garbage on it. That’s what it tasted like. I blacked out for…I don’t know how long it was, but I wasn’t completely out. I could still hear, and I could feel everything. I just couldn’t talk and I couldn’t see.”

  “I found Mario trying to drag her behind some boulders in the park,” Antonia went on. “And it was his eyes like Rory said, but when I saw her face, her eyes were starting to change too. I knew it wasn’t just regular bad, you know.”

  I nodded, not wanting to interrupt.

  “I ran up after them and when I grabbed Rory, she and Mario said…”

  Antonia was visibly shaking now.

  “Please. It’s okay. What did it say?”

  “Bring me to your Master,” both girls said at once.

  “So I just started praying, well, kinda. This thing I know.”

  “Tell me exactly what you said.”

  Antonia repeated the words that quite possibly saved Rory and Mario’s lives, but it was no prayer. It was hard for me not to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. I glanced at Lila. She looked like she was about to vomit.

  “Where did you learn that? Who taught that to you?”

  “My aunt,” Antonia said. “She told me to say it if I ever get a bad feeling. She said it banishes evil.” Well, the woman wasn’t wrong. Hattie had taught the so-called prayer to me years ago. A lot of us vampires knew it. Except it wasn’t a prayer. It was a protection spell in a dialect of Aramaic. In my whole life as a demon-reborn, I never once had to use it and for that exact reason I’d forgotten about it. That was the thing about preventative measures. They always seemed to come in handy after the fact. Necessity sure did change things.

  “Is your aunt blood bound? Who does she feed?”

  “No one. She just…believes.”

  That was the tricky thing about real evil, and even real good. They transcended all human understanding, all religious boundaries, but you’d be surprised how much better equipped you could be to deal with them just by believing. Humility got you a long way too.

 
“So what happened after that?”

  “The thing, whatever it was, just vanished, but Rory and Mario were super freaked out. So I got them to a cab and we came back.”

  “You did a really good job, Antonia. Thank you.”

  “No problem. I’m still kinda freaked out.”

  “I know. So am I.” I turned to Lila. “Where’s Mario?”

  “I took care of him and sent him back to his dorm.” By took care of him she meant wiped his memory, which was the exact right thing to do.

  “Okay, well, girls, Lila and I are going to put you to sleep for just a minute if that’s okay. We’re just going to peek at your memories, get rid of the stuff about today that will traumatize you forever, but leave good information for you to recall when you need your survival instincts to kick in. How does that sound?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Fucking great. Please do it.”

  Their enthusiasm at being essentially brainwashed made me laugh a little. We had them both move to Lila’s bedroom where she put them both to sleep. Then I dove into their memories extracting everything, every sight, sound, smell that they’d captured that afternoon. They’d both given extremely accurate accounts. The huge crowd, the cops, the gray of Mario’s eyes, and even that taste Rory had described, like rotten garbage and firewood. And that ominous message.

  I could hear the creature’s voice plain and clear. It wanted to speak to Dalhem.

  ❖

  I didn’t head straight back to the house. I went to Dalhem’s instead. I felt bad and sufficiently stupid for showing up when I did. It was family time. Benny and Cleo, Dalhem and his wife/Benny’s mom, Leanne, all gathered around watching J.J. power crawl across the floor.

  I had no idea why Dalhem had invited me into their living quarters and not his office, but whatever. I sat there for a few awkward minutes, answering softball questions about the girls and pretending to be interested in J.J.’s development. I mean I was concerned about the kid’s general well-being, but Dalhem’s house was the safest place on the planet, and J.J. wasn’t going to help us solve this little mystery.