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“No one can read me,” she reasoned. “You are no exception.”

Or so she thinks. Her words ignited a challenge in me. Something I hadn’t felt since I was a child.

“I may not be able to read you, but I can see them,” I said, and let my hand brush across the tendrils lying on the bed around us. “Though they give me no indication of what you’re feeling. They’re just… black.”

“You can feel them too. I see you react to them.”

“I do,” I confessed on a breath.

Her tendrils continued to travel, wrapping themselves around me and slipping under my dress. My body pricked with heat when they reached my inner thighs.

“Is this why you wanted a companion?” I asked, allowing her tendrils to pull a strap off my shoulder.

“You mean, do I want to touch you?” she asked. “Have you touch me? Taste the nectar from between your legs that causes demons to go mad?”

My face flamed, and there was a pulsing between my legs when I thought of her face between them.

Nectar was certainly a word for it. But the image of being spread out before her was feeding my desire for her. For something new. Something otherworldly.

“Do you?” I asked. “Is that why you purchased me?”

Like a switch, her tendrils pulled back.

“No,” she spat.

The sudden change caused me to pull back slightly.

“No?” I asked, confusion filling me. “Then why am I here?”

Had I misread the situation?

“As a companion,” she said and stood from the bed. “I’ll come pick you up in the morning.”

And without another word, she turned and left. The tendrils of her aura pulled away but lingered at the edges of my room.

I sat back on my heels and buried my head in my hands.

“What the actual fuck?”

Yien

Is that why you purchased me?

Her words caused something to stir in me. I wasn’t like those demons. I didn’t want to force the human to spread her legs for me.

No matter how tempting it may be.

A companion. That’s what I went for, and that’s what I got. No more. No less. And I wouldn’t allow myself the pleasure of touching or tasting her unless it was what she wanted.

“Don’t touch it,” I said as Iris got too close to the shadows that lined the property.

“They’re so pretty,” she said, her hand still coming up to touch the glimmering souls despite my best efforts to warn her not to.

I learned quickly that’s just how Iris was. Her eyes delighted in the challenge I was providing her, even if it was as simple as not touching the souls.

It shouldn’t amuse me as much as it does.

Just how bored had I been that this little human’s existence could light up my life in such a way?