Page 6

6

PENN

“I could be your feeder.”

My words hung in the air between us. I looked over at Cam, trying to read the expression on his face. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. His face was expressionless as he stared at me.

“What?” he finally asked, a few moments after I’d spoken.

Was it really that confusing? “I could be your feeder,” I repeated. It wasn’t like it would be a burden. He was hot. He was my friend. I hated seeing him like this, weak and barely able to function. How much longer could he go through life like this? How much longer would it take for him to find a feeder if he didn’t take me up on the offer?

Cam blinked a few times. “Do you…” He stopped and bit his bottom lip. There were so many thoughts written over that perfect face of his, but I couldn’t figure out a single one of them. I could see the confusion there, but beyond that? He was a closed book. He shut his eyes and drew in a deep breath. When he opened them, those piercing blue eyes were locked on me. “Do you understand what you’re volunteering to do? What feeding is… for incubi?”

“Hooking up,” I answered bluntly. We’d talked about it a little. I wasn’t stupid. Besides, there were some parts of human myth about monsters that were real. Vampires drank blood. Werewolves shifted, especially at the full moon. Incubi fed on sexual energy. “You said that you feed better when you participate, right?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “And, I mean, you’re okay with hooking up?”

It was my turn to look at him blankly. Did he not own a mirror? Oh god, were incubi the origin of the myth about vampires not appearing in mirrors? That might explain how he didn’t know that there was literally not a person alive who wouldn’t want to hook up with someone that looked like him. At least no one that I knew would have an issue with hooking up with someone that looked like him. “Yeah, I’m perfectly… I mean look at you.”

“Right now? Rather not. I don’t think there is any concealer that could hide the bags under my eyes.”

Guess that answered the mirror question. “They aren’t that bad. You just look like you pulled an all-nighter. Standard college look. Usually a bit later into term, but everyone has that look at least once, right?” He let out a weak laugh. “And that laugh is just another reason we should do this. I mean what will happen to you if you don’t find a feeder?”

Maybe I shouldn’t be pushing this, but I was concerned. What would happen if he didn’t feed?

“I don’t know,” he admitted. That answered my second question, on if he even knew what would happen if he didn’t feed. “Even when Ryder went on vacations, we never went more than a week between feedings.” He trailed off a little, which led me to believe that there was more to this than he was telling me. I wanted to pry, but if he didn’t want to share, it would feel wrong, like I was crossing a line.

I moved on, making a mental note to ask more about it later.

“What was your standard schedule?” He might have said it before. I didn’t remember every single word he’d ever said, and it wasn’t like his feeding schedule had been something I thought I’d need to know the last time we spoke.

“Usually twice a week.”

“And that just means we hook up twice a week?”

“I think I need a few minutes. Before we have this conversation.” I nodded and started to stand up from the foot of his bed. “You can stay. I just… I feel like I’m going to need more energy if I’m going to be talking about this with you. Think clearly so I can answer your questions.”

That made sense. I wasn’t sure that I had a lot of questions. I knew how hooking up worked. I’d done that more than a few times in my life. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe I did have a few questions.

Like what did feeding entail? Besides hooking up. Did he shift in any way when he fed? Did he suddenly grow horns and a tail or scaly skin or did he stay as hot as he looked right now? Would I feel any different after he fed? I mean I knew that it was siphoning off energy, but would it leave me tired? I didn’t usually feel like passing out after a good orgasm, but maybe I’d become like that if I was hooking up with him.

Were there any dangers to feeding an incubus? I doubted that one. I didn’t think the school would let someone in if they were going to be a danger to any of the other students, right?

Okay, so maybe I had a few more questions than I thought I did, because every question I came up with spawned a few new questions until my head was filled with them. Maybe he was right. This wasn’t just something that we could jump into, no matter how much I wanted to help him. There would probably need to be ground rules or something set out from the start.

I kept going over my questions while he laid back in his bed, eyes closed. Every once in awhile, he’d shake his head or he’d let out a contented sigh. I didn’t know how long he stayed there. Long enough that at one point, I thought maybe he’d fallen asleep. I watched as a little more color came back into to his cheeks. He was still pale and sallow, but he no longer looked as washed out. He looked closer to the person I was used to seeing sitting at the table with me in newspaper.

When he opened his eyes, they were a brighter than they’d been before. They were even more piercing, even with the dark circles under his eyes. “Snack?” I questioned.

He sat up, curling his legs underneath him like a cat. “Yeah. I needed it to think clearly. The dorm usually has better snacks than the quad.”

Probably because people were more likely to be hooking up in the dorms than out around campus. Or maybe not. God, how many people on campus were just out there hooking up left and right? Did he know who anyone was that when he was having a snack, as he called it? A part of me wanted to know. Not for any good reasons, but because the journalistic spirit did sometimes include gossip.

“Okay, what do you know about feeding?”

“Besides hooking up?”

“Yeah, besides hooking up.”

“Not a lot. We hook up; you do something to pull some of the energy?”

“It’s an energy exchange,” he corrected. “When I feed on the sexual energy, there’s some kind of exchange. I don’t really know how to explain it, but Ryder said it was like getting dosed with some really interesting drugs. After we had a session, he was always pretty out of it. One of Christa’s feeders said it reminded them of a cocaine high, but Ryder didn’t really do anything like that. So no point of comparison.”

“Me either,” I told him. “I wouldn’t have a point of comparison.” The elementary school anti-drug programs had worked wonders on me. I’d never even been curious to tempt fate and try them. The idea that feeding Cam would have some kind of drug-like effect made me a little nervous. “Is it addictive?”

“Is what addictive?”

“Whatever the feeling is feeders get after? The high? Did Ryder get addicted to it?”

Cam looked at me for a moment. “I don’t think so. I can call him and ask if you want. I don’t want you going into this with your eyes closed.”

I thought about his offer. Then I thought about it realistically. If there was a risk of addiction, would his previous feeder have been able to just walk away? To cut himself off from the supply? I doubted it. Especially if he’d been feeding Cam for so long. It had been a few years, according to what Cam told me when we’d first talked about his diet. “I don’t think I need that,” I decided, “but I might change my mind. Can that be an open offer?”

“Of course. It’s completely an open offer. If you ever have questions that I can’t answer, and you want a human perspective, then I can put you in contact with Ryder. Or I can ask my sister if one of her feeders can talk to you.”

I liked that. I liked that he was so willing to make sure I had the resources to make an informed decision. “Okay, so what does feeding entail? Besides hooking up. Does it have to be a certain kind of hookup? I mean if you jacked off with someone else in the room also jacking off, does that count?” Not that I planned to have our hookup be that. No, if I had him ready and willing to go as far as I wanted, then I did not want to stop at jacking off next to him. He was a walking, talking sex dream.

“Ryder and I used to feed like that at the beginning. Before we moved onto other things,” he said with a shrug. “We didn’t want to mess up our friendship with sex, but we’d jerked off with each other in the same room when we were first discovering masturbation and porn and all of that. So it felt less weird. Except then we started making eye contact, and one thing lead to another…” He trailed off, his lips curving up into a small smile.

“Did you have feelings for him?” The words escaped my mouth before I could stop them. There was something wistful about that smile. It tugged at my heart. I would give almost anything to have him make that face when thinking about me.

“Not romantic ones.” He looked at me for a moment. “But he was my best friend. I miss him. A lot. Not just the feedings, but I miss talking to him. I miss being able to tell him the little things about life and not having to explain any of my worries, because he’s been there my whole life. He remembers how nervous I was the first time I liked a guy and how scared i was that it’d awaken the need to feed early. He knew about every single crush I’ve ever had. Every insecurity. We were… I don’t know if there’s a word that describes it. Best friends seems too generic.”

“Platonic soulmates?” I suggested.

The smile he gave me warmed me from the inside. I didn’t know that was even possible. My stomach swan dived to my toes and a swarm of butterflies took up residence in the pit where my stomach used to be.

“That’s actually the perfect wording.”

I felt my cheeks warm as he kept that smile trained on me. Was that the incubus charm Mallory had teased him about when we’d all had lunch together? If so, I suddenly understood what she meant by discombobulated. I was feeling it right then. My thoughts were suddenly tangled, and I would do anything to keep that smile trained on me forever. Christ.

Unfortunately, getting discombobulated meant that I was struggling to remember the rest of my questions. I drew in a deep breath and closed my eyes. Maybe if I weren’t looking at him, I’d have an easier time remembering. It worked, kind of. I was still all too aware of how close he was to me.

I remembered some of the questions I had and opened my eyes. “Besides hooking up… how does it work? I mean is there biting or do you shift at all or…” I was rambling.

He laughed. “I mean there can be biting if you’re into biting, but it’s not necessary to feed. I don’t usually shift when I eat, but my eyes do glow.” He drew in a deep breath. “It’s why I always close my eyes when I snack. It’s a dead giveaway.” He stopped speaking for a moment, his eyes drifting shut. I would have worried, except his face was calm. It wasn’t the sallow strangeness from when he’d been on the verge of passing out earlier. He opened back up his eyes. “As for how it works? While we’re hooking up, I’m pulling in some of the energy we’re creating. There’s a big spike in it when we’re both participating in a sex act, and a bigger spike when someone finishes. That’s when the real meal takes place.”

“And then I basically get loopy?”

“Yeah. You get loopy, I get energized. As for what happens after that, I think it depends on the feeder.” He grinned. “Ryder liked to snuggle after. Only time he ever wanted to cuddle.”

“And you were okay with that? Even though it was platonic?”

“Yeah, I’m okay with that. I mean, he’s helping me out. You’d be helping me out. The least I can do is make sure that my feeder gets what he needs out of the situation. It’s about more than orgasms and energy to me.”

“Is that why you only use one feeder?”

Cam sighed heavily. It was the kind of sigh that implied that he’d had this conversation more than once. “It’s not not the reason,” he admitted. “There’s an intimacy to it. I don’t like to be intimate with just anyone and everyone. I feel vulnerable when I feed, and I know Ryder said he felt vulnerable after. I—I don’t know. I guess I just don’t want to share that with just anyone if I don’t need to.”

“That makes sense,” I decided after a few moments to digest his words. Cam was smart about this. I didn’t know why that made me even more committed to being his feeder, but it did. It cemented the decision before I even knew the answers to all of my questions. Before I even knew all of my questions.

I was about to agree when the conversation from the student union flashed back into my mind. The story ideas that Mallory and Cam had brought up at the table. I had the chance to do something here. Something unique, something that didn’t have a lot of study. I didn’t think I’d ever read anything about what it was like for a human to feed an incubus. I could double check it when I got back to my dorm. After. But there weren’t a lot of resources around it.

“How many incubi do you think there are on campus? And succubi? Is there a gender neutral term?” I felt like there should be a gender neutral term for incubi and succubi.

“Concubi,” he answered. “Technically, if you look at the historical origin of the words, incubus and succubus could also be gender neutral since they basically mean to lie on top or to lie beneath , but they’re also gendered when you’re talking about the species. I don’t know. I didn’t make the names.” I wondered if he knew who did. I wondered if that would be something that came up in Monster History. “As for your first question? I don’t know. I know there’s a good hand full at least. Christa had an entire clique of succubi when she went here. Like five of them.” He thought for a moment. “I think I can name at least ten that I personally know.”

“So enough that my pitch might work.”

“Your pitch?”

Right. I should start that at the beginning. He’d told me before that he was not a mind reader. There was no way that he would know what I was thinking if I didn’t actually tell him.

I drew in a deep breath. “I was thinking I could do a series of articles about what it’s like to feed an incubus. Or a concubus? Is that the singular form of concubi? Does it differ feeding an incubus or a succubus? I mean like feeding you versus feeding your sister?”

He laughed again. “I don’t know. I don’t really talk about my meal plan with my sister. I don’t care what species you are. That’s weird.” He grinned a wicked grin, eyes shining. “I can ask her if she’d answer your questions, maybe put you in touch with some of her feeders for interviews.”

“So you think it’s a good idea?”

“I think it’s a great idea. Besides, I told you that I’d do what you needed to make sure you were getting what you need out of this arrangement, remember?” He did say that, and I did need this. “So you really want to be my feeder?”

“Yeah,” I told him. There was no hesitation in my voice. I managed to meet his eyes without my stomach being taken over by a swarm of butterflies. “I really do.”