Page 8

8

PENN

Two weeks had passed since my first feeding session with Cam. I’d gotten used to the feeling that came over me when I was feeding him and the high that followed. We’d done four feedings total, and they’d all been like that first one. We made out. He jacked us off both or sucked my soul out through my dick, and I was left satisfied and hazy. I was also left wanting more. I wanted to experience everything he had to offer. I wanted to know what he felt like in my mouth, what he tasted about. I wanted to feel his hands all over my body. I wanted to do everything with him.

I’d found myself fantasizing about it, dreaming about it.

The dreaming about it part had been a bit disconcerting at first. I remembered the human myths and legends about incubi, how they fed on unwitting victims in their sleep by visiting them in their dreams.

“So, you think I’m visiting you in your dreams to siphon off excess sexual energy because you’re having wet dreams about me?” Cam had asked, laughing a loud, almost musical laugh. His laugh had become one of my favorite sounds over the past two weeks, and it was so easy to earn right after our feedings.

“No! I’m just saying it’s an old legend.”

“An old legend that you’re half asking if it’s true?”

I sighed. I should not have been having that conversation while I was still coming down from the high of our hookup. I should have waited until my head was clear, the way I did before asking him anything for my article. Or anything to just sate my natural curiosity. Instead of answering him, I’d buried my head in his side.

The memory made me grin as I looked at the words on the screen of my laptop, my first article in the series about human/incubus relations. I’d pitched the idea to Ever, and he’d been pretty hesitant at first. It had taken several other monsters on the newspaper staff to convince him. They all thought it was a good idea.

I read over the article one more time, smiling when I remembered different conversations with Cam, different things I’d learned about the man in the two weeks we’d had our arrangement. I thought I’d captured it all pretty well in the article but only time would tell.

I hit send and pulled out my phone to text Cam to let him know that I’d submitted the article. He texted me back a thumbs up emoji. I remembered he’d said that he had plans with his family that evening, so I didn’t think too much of it. It wasn’t like he was brushing me off or anything.

A fact that was confirmed a few hours later when my phone chimed.

Cam: so are you going to send me the article?

Penn: you want to read it?

Cam: of course i want to read it.

Cam: i’ve been looking forward to seeing what you say in it since you started talking about it.

Penn: give me 5 and i’ll email it to you

The fact that he wanted to read it made me both nervous and excited. I might be his feeder, but we were also friends. We’d started talking more outside of the newspaper room. He’d joined me for lunch almost every day. We texted. I tried to keep from blurring lines between us, because every time he was around, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the intense sexual chemistry we shared. I also couldn’t stop thinking about the other little things about him—the way his cheeks had more color now than they’d had since I’d met him, the way his laugh echoed around his dorm room, the fact that he had the dorkiest bed sheets I’d ever seen. (They had snowmen on them. It was September. It was actually kind of adorable.)

I forwarded him the email I’d sent Ever and waited for him to respond. A few minutes after I sent it, my phone chimed again.

Cam: that was amazing.

Cam: i think people are really going to love it

Cam: you mind if i send it to christa? she wanted to read what you were writing before she sets you up to talk to any of her feeders

I knew Cam was planning to get me in touch with his sister’s feeders, but I hadn’t realized that he’d already had the conversation. I smiled at his quiet consideration.

Penn: yeah. you can send it to her.

Penn: how was your family thing?

Cam: just dinner. it was good. mom and dad are happy that i have a regular feeder again

Penn: i bet

We texted off and on for the rest of the night. He told me all about his family dinner. I talked to him about my roommates’ latest shenanigans. We talked about some people in our various classes. Our texts slowly tapered down as the night grew later, and eventually he stopped responding.

I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

Ever had a lot of notes on the first draft of my article. It was a hundred words over the limit he’d given me. There were a few pieces of language that he thought needed clarifying. I took his notes and polished the article. Three days after I sent him the final draft, it was published in the paper.

Every time I saw someone looking at a school paper all day, my heart skipped a beat.

My words were in there. Words about something more interesting than parking, something that actually had meaning. I kept waiting for someone to say something about the article, but no one did. I’d caught a few stray glances, and I wondered if people knew I wrote it. I hadn’t been on campus that long, so maybe no one knew who I was.

I didn’t hear anyone talk about it in my first few classes. I heard whispers after lunch. A few humans were talking about how they couldn’t believe the paper would publish something that disgusting. I hadn’t thought about the fact that some people might not like the article, that they might find it anything other than informative. I’d heard a group of upperclassmen, monsters most likely, whispering about how they couldn’t believe Ever would even allow that article to be published in the first place.

Maybe it was a good thing that no one knew who I was.

It wasn’t until a break between classes that anyone actually said anything directly to me about the article. I was sitting underneath a tree on the quad, reading through my notes from my last class, when Mallory came and plopped down next to me. “So you and Cam, huh?”

I closed my laptop and looked up at her. Her green eyes were shimmering, and a goofy grin was on her lips.

“Yeah. We’re…” Calling it hooking up might have been accurate, but it didn’t feel like the right description. It didn’t mean the same thing to Cam. I might not have felt much of a difference between a regular hookup and a feeding, but from what Cam had told me, he did. “We have an arrangement.”

Mallory nodded. “Is that why he’s looked better the last few weeks?” I raised an eyebrow at her, wanting to know exactly what she meant by better . Was she getting sucked into his incubus mojo again? Because that had been a thing that had happened almost every time she joined us for lunch. She was always flirting with him, and while I had no right to feel any kind of way about it, I did. “Happier. There’s more color in his cheeks. His eyes seem sparklier, and somehow, I don’t know if it’s just me, but his jawline seems sharper?”

“That is just you,” I told her with a grin. “It’s part of the whole incubus thing. If you’re really into jawlines, his looks more defined. Are you really into jawlines?”

Mallory’s cheeks flushed almost as red as her mess of curls. “Shut up, that is not a thing!”

“It is!” I insisted with a laugh. “You could ask him. He’d tell you. Part of the incubus thing is this weird magic that kind of enhances how you see them. It’s why he always looks so damn perfect.”

I’d say it was infuriating, but it was actually kind of charming. It was even more charming that I’d seen him with most of the glamour stripped away. I’d seen the bags under his eyes that day in his room, before our first feeding session. I’d seen his hair looking less than perfect. The little imperfections had just made him hotter to me.

I’d also seen the way his eyes glowed when he fed. That had been eerie, but it’d also been pretty cool.

Mallory sat quietly for a few moments. I noticed her fidgeting with a few blades of grass. Her demeanor had shifted, and I wondered what was up. I waited for her to say something, but the silence just stretched on. It was becoming heavy and uncomfortable. She was almost always talking.

“What’s wrong?” I asked after what felt like an eternity of silence.

Mallory’s head snapped up. The blade of grass she’d been playing with came up with her hand, a few pieces of dirt scattering from the force she’d yanked it from the ground. “It’s… I liked the article, but I don’t think a lot of people did.”

“I’ve heard a few things,” I admitted.

She looked mildly alarmed. “What kinds of things?”

“People thinking it was gross, mainly.”

She began to tear up the piece of grass she’d yanked up. “It’s not just that. A few people in my math class were…” She sighed and looked down at the blade of grass she was shredding. “They weren’t happy about it. They said some really rude things, and they seemed kind of pissed off about the whole thing. I just… Be careful. I don’t think this is the name you want to make for yourself at the school.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean… like do you want everyone knowing your personal business? Yours and Cam’s? Do you want that kind of attention? Some of the stuff those guys were saying was really gross, Penn.”

I swallowed hard. I really hadn’t thought about the ramifications of publishing this article, but I stood by my idea. This was something that people needed to be talking about, especially on a college campus where monsters and humans went to school together. There would be other couples, other humans who caught feelings for someone in their class who happened to be a monster. And out in the world, the same things were happening.

People needed to know more about those types of relationships, how to navigate them. I had gone into this thing with Cam with my own misconceptions about what incubi were, and the truth needed to be out there.

“People have always found things they don’t understand gross, Mallory,” I said matter-of-factly. “There has always been push back. If you give in to it, then there’s never any progress.”

Mallory looked thoughtful for a moment. Her green eyes softened. She stopped tearing up the blade of grass, though that may have been because it was nothing more than confetti already and not because my words impacted her. “I guess you’re right. I just worry, you know?”

“Why?”

“Because you put a target on your back. Yours and Cam’s. And I care about you guys. You’re my friends.” She picked another blade of grass and began tearing it. I covered her hands with mine, trying to still her and save Creelin’s landscaping. She looked up at me and smiled softly. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Do you really think someone would hurt someone else over an article in a school paper?” Sure, it seemed like everyone in the school was reading the paper, but we were a small sample of the general population. It was a baby step to informing people. It wasn’t like it was online, going viral. Yet. Maybe one day I could write something that did that, something important that shaped minds and policy. Wouldn’t that be the dream?

Mallory took her hands away from mine and put down the blade of grass. It was progress at least. “I do. People have hurt people over less. So just be careful, okay? Please?”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised her.

“Besides, it was just the one article, right?” I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to lie to her, and I had a series of articles planned. I wanted to interview other feeders and make it more common knowledge. Eventually, I wanted to expand the series and talk to other people who dated monsters about their experiences. “Penn…”

“It’s never just one article,” I admitted with a sheepish smile.

Mallory sighed and shook her head. “You are going to be the death of me.”

The whispers followed me the rest of the day. They followed me into my classes the next morning. A few humans offered me tentative smiles, but most people just ignored me. It was better than Mallory’s worst case scenario. She was obviously overreacting, worrying about nothing. The only thing I had to worry about was Ever’s reaction to the push back, but I was ready for that too.

If there was fallout, it meant that people were reading the paper. They were engaging. It was good for the paper.

I had it all mapped out in my head.

I didn’t need to use it. When I stepped into the journalism room that afternoon, Ever actually clapped me on the back and said that he’d gotten more comments about that article than anything that had been published all term. He seemed excited by it, so I guess I was right about the more comments meant more engagement. He asked when my next article would be ready.

I was practically floating as I went to sit next to Cam. I was still smiling when we all left the journalism room with our new assignments for the next issue. I had another article about human/monster relations and a boring puff piece that I could probably get out in an hour or two. I guess Ever still had to keep up the status quo, and as long as I was writing harder hitting pieces, I didn’t really care. I could write the boring puff pieces.

“That’s him.”

The harsh whisper pulled me out of my happy haze a moment before I felt someone slam into me. I hit the brick building behind me with a loud oof . “What the fuck?” I demanded after I caught my breath.

“You’re Penn Leroy, right?”

It was asked by the guy who pushed me. He was bigger than me by several inches with sandy brown hair that fell into angry eyes. His breath stank of cigarettes, and there was an air of menace radiating off of him. I assumed he was one of the pissed off people Mallory had mentioned. I just didn’t know if he was a pissed off human or a pissed off monster. I supposed it didn’t really matter. He was pissed off and had me pinned.

I took a deep breath, tamping down on the fear that was rising within me. Yeah, this guy looked like he could kick my ass seven ways to Sunday, but that didn’t mean I had to make it obvious that I was terrified, right?

“I am,” I confirmed. “Can you maybe step back a little?”

“So your little incubus friend can be up in your space, but no one else?” the guy snarled.

“He’s my friend. He has permission to be in my space.” I was suddenly reminded of one of my high school friends stating that my mouth would get me in trouble one day. I’d joked that it would be my pen that got me in trouble, not my mouth. It turned out that maybe we were both right. Because my pen may have started this, but I don’t think my mouth was helping matters judging by the flash of anger that went through this guy’s eyes.

And he didn’t let me go, so it didn’t really matter.

“Why the fuck would you publish that article? It’s trash, and it’s encouraging other people to be used by monsters for what? Sex?”

“If you read the article,” I started with a sigh, “you’d already know that it’s more than just sex.” He tightened his grip on me. So clearly not the answer he was looking for. “If you have feedback, you’re more than welcome to email the paper. Write a letter to the editor or whatever.”

Yeah, my high school friend was definitely right. I was going to get my ass kicked.

The price I paid for interesting stories…

Except then the man was pushed off of me. It happened so fast I barely registered it. One minute, he had me pinned against the wall, and the next, he was sprawled out on the concrete. Cam towered over him, but not the Cam I was used to seeing. Instead of the drop dead sexy boy I had classes with, there was Cam the monster.

He had actual horns , and was I going crazy or was he somehow taller? He raised his hand and I noticed claws where his usually perfectly filed nails usually were. When he spoke, his voice was deeper, almost a growl. “Leave him alone. Fuck with him again, and I don’t just push you off of him. Do you understand?”

I watched as the guy scrambled backward like a crab before standing up and running off.

Cam turned to look at me. His beautiful face was inhuman. His eyes were glowing like blue flame and the horns… yeah. They were horns. His usually golden brown skin had blue undertones that made it look like it was glowing with the same energy that made his eyes glow. When he spoke, I noticed that his teeth were pointy.

This was Cam in his full incubus glory.

“Penn?” His deep voice was softer now, but it was still wrong. It wasn’t the voice I was used to hearing. “Penn, are you okay?”

I nodded, still looking at him. I’d asked him what he looked like when he shifted, but he’d never told me. Now I was seeing it, and all I could think of was the fact that he said that he only shifted when he lost control.

He’d lost control because he thought I was in danger.

My stomach sank to my toes. “Are you okay?” I asked, not answering his question.

“I’m not the one that was just being threatened,” he pointed out. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I assured him, unable to tear my eyes away from the creature in front of me. “I just… can you walk me back to the dorm?”

A flash of something crossed his inhuman features and he nodded before motioning me to walk with him. He kept his distance as we walked across the campus, right to the door of Karloff Hall. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“You’re not coming in?”

“Not right now.”

That deep voice was harder to read than his human one. Had I upset him? Had I reacted badly? Was he regretting using me as a feeder, letting me write that article in the first place? Maybe he was annoyed that he had to save me.

I watched him walk away without saying anything.