She was close by. He could feel her.

Impatiently, he drummed his fingers against the dashboard as he waited for the light to change. When it finally did, Michael drove down the narrow cobblestone streets glancing left and right until he caught remnants of her essence.

He slowed his speed, pulled to a stop at the curb, and lowered the passenger side window to peer at the figure huddled in a doorway of an abandoned loft space.

Michael leaped from the SUV and circled around its front before he forced himself to slow down and take it easy.

She was injured and weak. He felt her pain and her hunger as intensely as a sharp knife driven into his gut. She might strike out to protect herself. Despite his being different, he was sure he wasn’t different enough to be completely immune to her attack. He definitely wasn’t emotionally or psychically immune to her...

Michael knelt at her side, bracing himself for the worse, but when she didn’t move or otherwise try to attack him, he went closer and knelt beside her. “You’re going to be okay, Xevera. Can you hear me?”

She opened her eyes and stared at him. “It is you.”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“I knew it. I smelled you.”

“I’ll bet you did.” He wondered what exactly he smelled like to her and whether or not she was as aroused by his scent as he was by her spicy vanilla musk.

His cock jerked as she curved her arms around his neck and held tight. He had a moment of panic when she pressed her lips to his neck and gently sucked but beat it down as he slid one arm around her back and the other beneath her thighs to lift her.

“You taste so good,” she murmured.

His balls tightened at this and he was just barely able to croak, “Thanks.”

This was insane!

He wasn’t a schoolboy with a crush. Hell, he hadn’t ever really been a boy, hadn’t had a chance to be. Playing the man of the house from as far back as he could remember, moving from city to city with his mother, he’d always felt like a man trapped in a child’s body.

An alien trapped in a human’s body.

Xevera cuddled closer and nipped his neck. “Take me home, Michael.”

He swallowed hard and closed his eyes tight, fighting against the raw lust that scudded through him at the sound of her smoky voice in his ear and the scrape of her sharp fangs drawing blood from his throat.

Something about the command in her tone made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck in rebellion as much as her teeth puncturing his skin made his heart speed with excitement. Something about her words made him remember exactly what she was and what they were to each other in the grand scheme of things: enemies.

“I’ll take you home,” he murmured and silently thanked her for reminding him why he’d come to find her in the first place.

He wanted revenge.

// // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // //  

Xevera leaned up on one elbow and reached to massage his shoulders with her other hand, fingers alternately compressing and fondling his tense muscles, simultaneously relaxing and exciting him. “What is wrong, Michael?”

“What does mishva mean?” He heard her intake of breath as he turned to look at her over a shoulder and saw her stunned expression. “Is it that bad?”

“Not bad, just…”

“I’m a big boy. Tell me.”

“It means ‘my love’ in Inanna.”

Michael didn’t say anything, couldn’t.

He should have been prepared for her answer, had expected as much, but all the nuances of that one four-letter word hit him in the heart like a bullet through the chest, just as devastating and knocking his equilibrium off kilter.

Michael caressed her leg from smooth thigh to calf, pausing at the cuff locked around her ankle. “I’m thinking about releasing you, Xevera.”

He felt her go rigid behind him, her hand stopping mid-stroke on his shoulder.

“Why?”

He turned to face her full, heart throbbing with the enormity of what he was about to do, then stuttering at her expression of shock. “Because you don’t belong here with me.”

She sat up beside him. “How can that be when I belong to you?”

Michael silently reached for his neck where the key to her cuff hung on a chain. He pulled the chain over his head, knelt before her and reached for her cuff with the key.

Xevera jerked her leg away and leaped to her feet.

He glanced up at her from his knees, couldn’t help feeling like a boyfriend proposing to his intended. His heart thudded at the thought, and the irony of the situation did not escape him even while his intended was trying to. “Come back here, Xevera.”

She put her fists on her hips. “Why should I? If you are going to release me, you should get used to me not obeying you. I will be free to come and go as I please.”

“That’s if I release you.”

“Are you releasing me or are you not releasing me?”

He slowly got to his feet. “Come here,” he murmured.

“What will you do to me if I do not?”

“You’re about to find out.” He watched her eyes widen as he reached for her.

She was quick though, sidestepped his grasp and turned to run.

Michael followed at a full sprint and caught up to her in the living room. He didn’t think twice before lunging and tackling her to the carpet, the plush padding cushioning their fall.

She wriggled between his legs as he straddled her hips and pinned her wrists to the carpet above her head. “Let me go!”

“Is that what you really want?”

“It does not matter what I want. You appear to have made up your mind for the both of us.” She bucked and the action brought her lush round ass into direct contact with his erection.

Michael held her wrists with one hand and soundly smacked her ass with the other.

The sound reverberated throughout the house and his soul.

Xevera suddenly went still beneath him and whimpered.

“You’ll be still and listen to me.”

She didn’t say anything, just squirmed and moaned.

“Xevera?”

“I do not want you to release me.”

“We’re not doing what you want. We’re doing what needs to be done.”

“I do not need to be released.”

Michael gritted his teeth. She was making following his mother’s wishes damn hard.

“Do you want to hear me beg, Michael?”

Hell, yes! He wanted to hear her beg, and he wanted to hear her say ‘my love’ again, every day, for the rest of his life.

“I will.”

“Damn you, succubus…” He released her wrists and flipped her onto her back, rubbing his erection against her hot pussy and driving himself mad.

“I am hungry. Perhaps we should eat now.”

Michael glanced at her face, her expression as cool now as her words. He, on the other hand, was on fire with lust for her.

Why was he fighting it? Why was he fighting her?

As if in response, she reached up a hand to cup his face, rasping her palm across the stubble on his cheek and smiling. “I liked when you spanked me,” she whispered.

Michael groaned at the quiet shyness in her voice and leaned forward until his forehead kissed hers. He reached down between her legs, confirming the truth of her words when he caressed her moist folds. “I can tell.”

“I would like you to do it again.”

His cock jerked and he dragged himself away from her to stand.

At this rate, they’d be having the lasagna for breakfast in the morning because for the rest of the night he just wanted to dine on her pussy.