Hungry for Love

"I'll be there," I answered instantly.

"Great. Well... good night then, I guess."

"Good night," I repeated. "I love you, you know."

"I know. I love you, too. See you tomorrow." She hung up.

Her last sentences had sounded kinda exhausted. She might've not dumped me on the spot, but my chances didn't look all that peachy, either.

I wondered what had happened, how Trix had found out, if the spell had misfired, if Alice'd had outside help, stuff like that. But only for a minute or so. All these questions were interesting, but a lot less important than this one: What could I do to make sure Trix wouldn't dump me?

One thing I knew: I wouldn't appear empty handed. Trix needed to see right away that our relationship was precious to me and that I was ready to work for it.

My gaze shifted through my collection of magical sex toys. I could've given her one of them as a gift. But that didn't feel right. It were issues with my succubus side that bothered her, so a succubus gift might've only reminded her of that. No, I needed something plain and human, that still showed my best intentions.

Something like if I wrote that lame essay.

I threw that thought right onto my mental garbage pile. Researching eighteenth century French history was, like, one of the most boring and useless things ever. And even if I did, it would've been much worse than if Alice and Trix wrote it.

However, the more I kept thinking of alternatives, the more I got convinced that this essay was the way to go. I'd been pretty clear that I wanted to leech off them for this task and they'd let me. At least in part because I was too sexy to refuse. If I showed them that I was willing to do it anyway, that had to prove how committed I was to them.

And thus began one of the most frustrating nights of my life.

My odyssey started on Wikipedia. Reading through a list of articles that were possibly related to the topic was boring as fuck, but at least it was straightforward. I could've just numbed my brain and created a copy-pasta Frankenstein essay from slightly rewritten paragraphs of these articles. Sadly that wasn't going to cut it. We needed to cite sources and the Prof had been adamant that Wikipedia wasn't a valid source. And neither was any of the other websites that normal people got their information from.

Since I had precisely no idea where to find these mysterious sources that all these non-normal academic people used, I did the obvious thing and clicked the references at the bottom of my Wikipedia articles. From there only pain and misery followed.

Time passed in the strangest way. The seconds slugged by while I fought myself through another rambling article that might or might not have anything to do with the influences to French art in the eighteenth century, because why state what you're going to write about in the introduction when you could also cram in thousands of citations of papers that were most likely even less relevant, but were written by a big name guy a fucking century ago, which apparently was enough to count important, and seriously, why did you even write this essay if every other fucking sentence is just a citation from someone else? And then I'd look at the clock and find that somehow another two hours had passed and I'd made exactly zero process.

With each hour the night became more and more a fever dream. I didn't necessarily need sleep, but I did need some sane preoccupation to keep me from going delirious and there was precious little sanity to be found in the world of online academics. At some point I must've started writing, because at four o' clock in the morning I had a document with five pages, although I couldn't even remember the contents of a single line.

So I read through what I already had and quickly regretted this decision. If one of these Christian flat Earth doomsday government conspiracy people with the flashing green and pink websites had written about French art, it wouldn't have had less coherency than what I'd produced. After a full minute, during which I didn't know if I was laughing maniacally or crying, I opened a new document and saw if there was anything I could salvage from the old one.

By six o' clock I had five pages of text again, but this time in a form that a mentally sound being could comprehend. Or so I hoped, because by that point I very much doubted if I was such a mentally sound being myself. The essay was supposed to be ten pages long and time was running out, but I hadn't included any references yet and I felt like they should've easily given me the last five pages with just a bit of copy pasting.

Of course it wasn't that easy and I had to rewrite a lot of stuff to fit in the citations, but a bit after half past seven I had a ten page document, including references, that contained all the things I never wanted to know about French history. Things that I'd already forgotten again. It was bad enough to have that shit clutter up the pages, I didn't need it clogging my brain as well.

I could've given the text a last re-read, but by that point I was so sick of it, I would've literally puked if I had to look at any of my own words again. Alice and Trix surely wouldn't mind making the last couple of corrections after I'd done the majority of the work. So I saved the document to my USB-drive, set the alarm and fell into a coma for half an hour.

I didn't feel all that rested when the alarm woke me up at eight and my head still hurt, but at least I'd regained some clarity of mind. After two cups of coffee I felt almost sane again. That had to do, because I needed to move out if I didn't want to be too late and I sure as hell hadn't worked my ass off the entire night just to fuck everything up in the end because of something this stupid.

On my way to Trix I learned to appreciate the perks of insanity. Working on the essay had been hell, but at least it had distracted me to the point where I'd had no energy left to worry. With that gone, all the doubts came back.

The thing was that there wasn't anything I could do or say to change anything. I'd done what I'd done and for the most part I'd do it all again. Except maybe that next time I'd talk to Trix first. But, yeah, basically I could only look pretty and hope that Trix accepted me for what I was.

I arrived at her place a good ten minutes too early. I hadn't wanted to risk any issues with the public transport. For a moment I considered if it'd come off as desperate if I rang already, but what was the alternative? Waiting outside for ten minutes? No, I wanted to get this over with.

Trix opened the door immediately, as if she'd been waiting right behind it. And she wasn't alone.

"Oh. Hi, Alice," I said.

Alice sat in the back and looked at me with a flat "Hi, Nova." The first thing I noticed was her aura. It was completely normal, no trace of the fuzziness that usually came with the spell. Her low energy levels also clearly were the unmasked after effects of me taking her life force. That girl had actually managed to break my control.

"Want a coffee?" Trix asked me. She sounded at least as tensed up as I felt.

"Actually, all I want is to know what's going on. And where we stand now."

"Let's all sit down." Trix waved in the general direction of the table.

I came in and, with a sinking feeling, took the seat opposite of Alice. Alice, who'd changed all her clothes since the day before, but was still wearing this thick, pink collar.

"It's a protection against succubus magic," Alice said and tapped against it. "My uncle's girlfriend gave it to him so he'd be save. I borrowed it when I suspected what you were."

That solved one mystery. It also raised a bunch of new questions. And it formed a bigger picture I didn't like. At all.

"So does that mean it was all a trap? You provoked me into putting my spell on you and then you'd go to Trix to... I don't know, what's the end goal here? Make me look bad?"

"It wasn't a trap," Alice snapped back. "I just wanted to keep myself safe."

"Now calm down, both of you." Trix took a seat between us. "Alice and I have been talking a lot last night. We understand why you did what you did and we're not mad at you. But we need to get a couple of things straight."

I didn't know if this was a good or a bad thing. Them not being mad should've given me hope, but I didn't like how there'd apparently been a lot of talking behind my back.

"Like what?" I asked. It came out sharper than I'd planned to.

Trix sighed. "First things first. I don't want you to use your spell. On anyone. It's creepy."

"It's what I do. Yesterday you were okay with it!"

"I was okay with you taking someone's life force. Well, I understood that you had to take it. But is it really necessary to mind-control people? Didn't you say that you can wipe memories?"

"Only of people that are under my spell."

"So you could put them under your spell and then immediately wipe their memories and break the spell?" Alice asked.

I looked from Trix to Alice and back. What was this supposed to be? An interrogation? A rehabilitation program?

"I guess I could, but that costs magic. If I do that every time, I need to feed more often. It's more efficient if I keep one girl around for a week or two. And isn't that what you want? That I have to fuck other people less often?"

It wasn't even an accusation. I was genuinely confused where they were going with their questions.

"Actually, what I want is that other people don't get affected by what we're doing. And mind-controlling them is affecting them. And didn't you say that the side effects get much worse if you feed from one person more often?"

Maybe I did get where she was going at. "Yeah, it does. So, yes, only doing one night stands would be easier on them. But again, I'd have to do more of them."

"That's okay. Maybe it helps if you feed from me whenever my life force is regenerated."

"That doesn't really..." I interrupted myself. "Wait, just to be sure, we're still together?"

Trix took my hand. "Yes, I still want to be together with you. But you've got to work with me here. We need to work out a way for how we can go from here that we're both okay with."

I stroked the back of her hand with my thumb. "Thanks. And, yeah, we can do it like that if it helps you, but even if I do feed from you, I can't do it very often."

"You can also use me sometimes." Right, for a moment I'd completely forgotten that Alice was still there.

"So you liked it after all." I had to grin. Now, with the biggest risk of getting dumped averted, the world looked a lot more fun again.

"Of course I liked it. Just... the after effects suck."

"Sorry, that comes with the package. Unless you let me use the spell, but that's out of the picture."

"Yeah." Alice exchanged a look with Trix before she continued. "Another thing: Please don't tell anyone that I know about succubi or about my uncle. Not this Fera, not anyone else. I swear, no one in my family will cause any problems to you and we really don't want any trouble."

If I'd been a dutiful succubus, that would've been a big issue, what with our secrecy being all-important and stuff. Luckily I didn't feel all that dutiful, planning my own illegal relationship and all, and if Alice's family had kept the knowledge for fifteen years with no incidents, chances were that it didn't matter after all.

"Deal," I said. "So, are we all good?"

"I hope so." Trix pulled me close and gave me a brief kiss. "We can trust you, right?"

"Of course you can."

"Okay then."

And that was it. No further questions, no demand to prove my honesty. I'd done it. It seemed like I'd finally earned Trix's trust.

"One last thing," Alice said. "You haven't told Trix about succubus masters, yet. Did you think that it wouldn't work or is that just not an option for you?"

"Wait, what? The hell are you talking about?"

Alice looked completely taken aback. "Succubus masters?" she repeated. "You know, humans that can control succubi. And provide for them. You've heard about them, right?"

I guess I had, at some point. Or at least now that she said it, I thought I remembered hearing about this concept.

"Maybe," I said. "But it sounds like you know more about it then me."

"Really? Aren't you the succubus?"

I did my best not to get annoyed. "So what? Do you know everything there's to know about humans just because you are one?"

"I guess not," Alice said. "And it's not like I know that much, either. I'd hoped I could ask you for details. My uncle said that a human could become such a succubus master and if they do, they can, kind of, take in succubi. Bind them to themselves or something. I don't know how it works exactly, but the point is, if a succubus has such a master, she can feed from their connection."

As Alice kept talking, more memories came up. I'd definitely heard about this before, but more or less forgotten about it because there wasn't much practical relevancy to this information.

"Yeah, but, aren't they like, super rare?" I asked. "I think I've heard that there's maybe a hundred of them. In the entire world. Never met one, or at least not that I know of. But if your uncle became one, then maybe..."

I needed a lot more information before I could make any decisions, but the main idea showed some potential. If I could feed just from being with Trix, that would've solved the issue. As long as it didn't mean that I could only have sex with her. I loved her, alright, but I didn't think I could deal with a monogamous life forever. That just wasn't me. Didn't mean it had to come to that, of course. So far Trix had never had a problem with me fucking other women, only with me taking their life force and using my spell. If this master business wasn't one big design flaw, we could surely work this out.

"Actually, my uncle tried to become one, but failed. Apparently it's a really difficult thing to do."

That put a bit of a damper on my fantasies.

"Do you know how it works?" Trix asked.

Alice shook her head. "Only that it's some kind of trials. Sex related ones, I guess. My uncle didn't say much about it and, yeah, I didn't want to ask more."

Trix looked at me. "We'd hoped that you'd know more, so we could find out if that would be an option."

"You becoming a succubus master?"

"Yep." She grinned. It had a bit of a crazy vibe to it. The sexy kind of crazy. "But before we do anything, I'd need to know exactly what I'm getting myself into."

"Of course." I racked my brain for more information, but couldn't come up with anything. I'd never known any details, because I'd never much cared for this topic. Even if these succubus masters weren't so rare, I wouldn't have seen the appeal in seeking one out. I liked my lifestyle of going through multiple partners all the time.

However, that didn't mean that other cubi were as clueless as I was. "I guess we could ask Fera. He's got a lot more experience than me. There's a good chance he knows more."

"Wasn't Fera the one you wanted to ask how to take care of me?" Alice asked.

"Yes he is. And I won't do that, we already talked about that."

Alice still gave me a doubtful look.

"You don't trust me. I get it. But look at it like this: What would I gain if I told Fera about you? If I cared about secrecy all that much, I would've never started things with Trix. And talking about Trix: She'd be fucking pissed if I betrayed you and dump me. Rightfully so. Do you really think I'd want that?"

"I guess not," Alice said.

I took a moment to calm down. Yes, Alice had every right not to fully trust me yet, but I also had every right to be annoyed by them second-questioning everything I did.

"Nova won't do it," Trix said. "She hasn't broken a promise to me so far and I believe her when she says she won't."

"Thank you." I stroked Trix's fingers. "Anyway, I think Fera is our best bet. He knows a lot of stuff and I'm gonna see him tonight anyway. If you want, you can come with, so you hear everything for yourselves. And you can make sure I'm not ratting you out, if you're worried about that."

Alice didn't look happy with this option. "But if I come with you and talk about this stuff, wouldn't that prove that I know about cubi?"

"Kinda," I admitted. "But that alone wouldn't have to be that bad. There's a couple of people who know and aren't under a spell. The other actresses, for example. It's allowed, as long as there's a cubus having an eye on them. And if there's a good reason for it. So, yeah, we'd have to come up with a story why you're in the know. One that doesn't involve an uncle who had something with a succubus fifteen years ago and is running around unsupervised ever since."

"Speaking about that: What about me?" Trix asked. "Won't Fera wonder why I'm not under your spell?"

"He will. But if we say that I broke the spell because I wanted you to become my succubus mistress..."

Trix shook her head. "That doesn't really work if you know so little that you have to ask about everything first. I think it's safer if you go alone and act like I'm under your spell and you're just wondering, hypothetically, how this succubus master business would work."

"You sure?" I asked the both of them.

They nodded. "It's better if we don't take any risks here," Trix said.

I'd have liked to take at least Trix with me, but I couldn't blame them for being skeptical about Fera. They had a lot more to lose here than me. And I wasn't going to complain, not after how well that entire conversation'd gone.

"Okay, I'll talk to him then and fill you in afterwards."

"Great." Alice looked at her phone and smiled. "And hey, it looks like we can still make it to the lecture in time. That was a lot faster than I expected."

"Oh, bye the way." I took out the USB-stick. Now that everything had blown over without greater issues, I felt a bit stupid to have panicked this much, but I wasn't going to pretend it'd never happened. It'd taken too much work and sanity for that.

"I wrote the essay last night. The French history one."

They looked at me with big eyes. "But, didn't you say that you had no idea about that topic?" Trix asked. "And that learning about it would be like dying inside?"

"Yeah," I said, feeling even more stupid. "But, you know, I was worried what you'd say. That you wouldn't want anything to do with me anymore. And I thought, maybe if I did something for you, like, showed you that I cared, then... yeah, anyway, you don't have to write it now."

Trix stood up and pulled me into a kiss. "You can be so adorable if you want to."

I don't think anyone of us learned much at that lecture. I didn't want to seem pushy, but I was so happy that Trix still wanted to have me, I couldn't keep my hands from her. Nothing overly explicit, just a lot of holding hands, stroking cheeks and sneaky little kisses. Not that I'd have had a problem with skipping uni and going straight to make up sex, but there'd be enough time for that later.

Trix didn't seem to mind my constant affection, but Alice got pretty distracted beside us. Not in a bad way, according to her aura. It seemed unfair to leave her out when she'd done at least as much work as Trix in accepting me. So I put my hand on her thigh and gently stroked it.

"You don't mind, do you?" I asked the both of them.

None of them did. After its more than rough start, this was turning into the perfect day.

The day continued in this perfect fashion with a relaxed lunch break, an equally relaxed still life drawing seminar and a not so relaxed, but very nice quickie with Trix before I had to go to work. On my way out I promised that I'd return not only with info from Fera, but also with some magical sex toys to try out, because that seemed like the best way to finish off this perfect day.

On the way to the studio I got a message from Alice, which chipped away at the perfectness a little bit. Apparently she'd read my essay and decided that it had some problems. Problems as in it effectively being unusable without completely rewriting it from scratch. She didn't write it this directly, but that's what it came down to.