Black Lily

'Lily. Thanks for the drink.' He wants me. He's hoping to score, but he's going to be a gentleman about it. I think most women can tell when a guy is interested, but with me it's more of a certainty. I just look at them and I know what they want. That's one of my talents and it's really useful in a place like this because Aaron wants me in bed, but the guy sitting on the stool at the corner of the bar wants my blood and the woman in the booth behind him wants to eat my soul. It's important to know the difference. 

'My pleasure,' Aaron says as he settles onto the stool beside me. 'You a regular here? I just found the place.' 

'I didn't think I'd seen you in here before.' I take a sip of my drink, savouring the musky scent. When my eyes drift open, he's looking at me with his mouth slightly open. 'Yes, I come here quite often.' 

'You're, um, beautiful,' he says. It's true, I am, unnaturally so. 

I smiled. His cool was slipping. That can happen around me. 'Thank you. There are a lot of attractive women around though.' That was also true. There were a couple of fae and two century-old vampires in the room, and all of them looked stunning. Admittedly, if you could see what the vampires looked like under the illusion you'd run screaming, and you can't be sure about the fae, but I doubt he knows that. 

'Well, yeah, I guess, but they scare the shit out of me.' 

'And I don't?' 

'No,' he tells me, 'you don't. Maybe that should scare me more.' Guy's got a head on his shoulders. 'But somehow I don't think you're going to suck the life out of me.' 

'Well, I could, but I won't. And if I did I promise you'd die happy.' 

He gives me a quizzical little frown. 'What are you?' he asks as if he expects an answer. 

'My father was an incubus.' I see his resolve faltering a little, but it's balanced by his libido hiking up a notch. 

'You... you're a demon?' 

I give him a little pout. 'Half-demon. Half-succubus, if we're being precise.' 

'A succubus... um... wow.' His grin is a little timid; I've moved the stakes up. 'I've heard... things about succubi.' Suddenly his libido is in overdrive. Summoning a succubus used to be a great ice breaker at orgies. That's how I got born. Succubi are supposed to be the best sex a guy can get. It's true too. 

I lean toward him. My voice is husky and low. 'Want to find out if they're true?' 

~~~ 

Aaron lives in a flat in South Kensington. Nice. Tastefully decorated, if a bit of a bachelor pad. And he's got money, I may have to make him a regular; it's always nice to have someone pay for your meals. 

Speaking of meals, mine is pouring drinks. No, I'm not going to actually eat him! Well, maybe if he's lucky, but not like that. I feed on sexual energy and that's not as easy as it sounds. My evening snack needs to be suitably responsive. I turn my other aura on while checking out his book collection. That means I have my back to him and it gets some time to really sink in before he sees the little spark of red in my pupils. It might be overkill; I'm pretty sure Aaron's already pretty keen anyway, but there's no harm in a little extra push. 

His books give me pause. A lot of the titles are in Latin and there's even one in Devotik. Devotik is the most common of the demonic languages and you don't see it written down on Earth much. I can't read it, but I recognise the glyphs. I can even pronounce them. My Dad taught me that much. Of course, Dad's an incubus so the stuff he taught me to actually say was a little biased. Put it this way, I can't order a beer, but when Aaron and I get down to it later, I can probably name the position. If Aaron's got books like this, he's really got money. It also means he's either some sort of collector, or he's a practitioner.