Succubus Rising Ch. 04

"The contracts will be short, with clients I've dealt with in the past for training," Bane's voice trailed off when he felt my thoughts balk at the idea. "You will need these contracts, Jezza. Even a mate can't feed your needs alone."

Chaz cleared his throat and I tensed even as Bane tried to calm me, "There's also the fact that I still legally own her."

"Like hell you own me!" My power roared through my mind, causing the notebook to go flying from the desk. Chaz glared at me and Bane did his best to calm me and get me to sit back down. I hadn't even realized I had stood and leaned over the desk.

"I do own you, whether either of you like it or not," he looked between us as Bane physically pulled me back down into my chair. His power was a soothing wash over me, but still I seethed. "The fact that you are both owned and mated - by two separate men, no less - is what is keeping the council in line. If you had come into yourself with a call like that when you were out on a regular contract they would have come in and forced you before them. As it is, they will only come through me to request your presence. This gives you and Bane the time to get things under control and get you some regular contracts set up. Personally, I would suggest Larian or Turq," he paused and I could feel his power reaching through the room. "Or both."

"Jezza," Bane's power wrapped around me, both comforting and burning a direct path to my core. "Go grab the box of paints so I can teach you a few new runes you're going to need."

I was being gotten rid of, but I really wanted out of the small office so I didn't complain. I was halfway down the hall before I realized I could have refused his request and he wouldn't have been able to force the issue. I ran my hand through my hair as I turned into his room and went to the nightstand and the box of paint.

With a questing thought, I could feel Bane in the office. His power came to mine, reaching and touching me as though he were in the room with me instead of across the house. It was distracting as all hell and I wasn't trying to concentrate on anything. But with the distraction came the distinct feeling of him wanting me to stay out of the office for the time being. We couldn't really share thoughts unless we put some effort into it, but getting feelings across was easy enough.

I laid back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. There was probably a rune or a spell I should be practicing, but I was content to do nothing for the moment. My thoughts turned inward and I could see the bond between me and Bane burning behind my eyelids. Right now, it was stretched between us like a rubber band, but something told me the stretching would ease with time. My power that I had once thought of as some metaphysical cat was now more of a large deep body of water in my mind's eye. Even in my own head I couldn't reach the end of it. Every now and then there was a wave across the surface, and when I felt Bane reaching for me it caused ripples to dance everywhere across the surface. It was beautiful, and deep enough to drown in.

The door opened and shut and I jerked on the bed. Judging by the low light in the room I figured I had probably fallen asleep. Bane walked to the bathroom and I heard the shower turn on. Chaz must have left and Bane had let me sleep. With him closer now, the connection wasn't so stretched. I sent a thought to that deep pool within myself and smiled at the ceiling when my power rose smoothly around me. The slight dissociative feeling of having my power thinking inside my own head had eased a bit now that I could direct it a little more. It whispered, planting wicked thoughts of mischief in my head before reaching out from us. We wanted the man in the shower badly, but he had sent us away.

Without realizing, I found myself in the bathroom naked and standing beside the glass door, watching as Bane washed himself. He didn't even twitch when I opened the door and the steam spilled around me in a thick wave. His back was to me and his hands were pressed against the wall while he let the water spill over him, and I stepped into the space and shut the door behind me with a click.

"I could feel you exploring that entire time and it almost killed me to sit there and discuss contracts with him," his voice was low. He didn't turn toward me even as I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed myself against his back. Just touching him eased a small part of the need that had welled up inside me when I heard the bedroom door open. His only move was to put one of his hands on mine, the cold of the tile shocking in the moist heat. "He's right, though. You need the contracts right now, and he's better suited to fielding them than I am."

My arms tightened around him so I wouldn't let him go entirely when he said the contracts were needed. I did not want to have make muster at the foot of the stairs, or hang out in Chaz's office. I didn't know what I had expected to happen when Bane took me out of that tiny room that night Larian healed me, but this wasn't it. He turned to face me, letting my arms fall to go around my middle.

"Hey," he slid a finger under my chin to make me look at him. "You've gone through a hell of a lot in a very short time. It's going to take more time to get used to your power, let alone figure out this mate-bond thing. Take all the time you need."

"He's going to send me back out there again," I was appalled that now, after everything that had happened over the last year, I sounded like a whiny brat.

"Chaz is one of the best of us at running these kinds of contracts," his hand dropped to my shoulder and then slid off my arm while I continued to hug myself. I didn't care if the man was an angel, I did not want to go back there. "You're not going back. Whether we like it or not, we're mated and stuck with each other. But legally speaking, Chaz does still own you." His hand twitched when I wanted to scream that I wasn't owned. "There hasn't been a succubus born that isn't owned to some extent. That you're mated doesn't negate his claim to you, just adds another layer to it. We are mated and will stay together, but he is your owner. Having power and a mate just gives you a lot more control over those contracts."

I would never be free. I wasn't even sure where the thought had come from that I could be free again. My arms tightened around me as I stared at the floor, trying to remember why I had come into the shower in the first place. "I spent the last year fulfilling his contracts."

"I know, but it won't be like that now," his feet edged into my field of vision and his power reached out gently to touch my own. "He runs the contracts, but you have the power now to say no to any of them. If you accept one, he gets a small cut of the profit and the rest is yours."

"So I'm a prostitute." This was just getting better. I turned to the door, not stopping when his hand slid across my back. Yippee for me, I was going to get paid to sleep with people. I grabbed a towel on my way out of the bathroom, wrapping it around myself and then walking across the hall to the room that had been my own for the months I had been here. The door swung back open when I tried to close it, and Bane stepped into the room with a towel around his waist. "How much is my body worth?"

"Jezza," his voice trailed off when I dropped the towel and climbed into the bed and under the blankets. "It's not like that."

"It's no better than I was a year ago, only now I can buy my own clothes. Yay." I curled on my side and tried to bury myself under the covers. Maybe if I went deep enough, I'd be able to find Narnia or something.

The bed sunk when he sat down and I groaned softly. Even without touching I knew he was frustrated and almost angry at something. "We have about a month before I will no longer be enough to satisfy you or your hunger, Jezza. This is nothing like it was after he bought you. He can't force you to go anywhere you don't want to go, can't force you to do anything anymore. But you will need to feed, and regularly, or you will lose control and your power will take what it needs whether you want it or not."

"Then can we talk about it a month from now when it becomes an issue?" The flair of red hot anger I felt through the bond made me cringe and scoot away from him on the bed.

"If you wait that long, I'm not sure my wards will hold up against the men you will call to you when you are starving. Creatures like you," I curled tighter in on myself at that. "We used to kill your kind on sight. Second generation succubi just don't have the control needed to be safe. The council likes nice, docile, low power succubi it can control."

"How do you even know how powerful I am or will be?"

"Because you took a mate the first night in your powers. That hasn't happened in centuries." I could hear him sigh as he stood up, and something in me ached to call him back to the bed, to make him touch me. "I'm also reasonably sure I will not be the only mate you take in the next year." The sound of the door opening and closing was quiet, but his power was there in the back of my mind, a comforting presence as I drifted off to sleep.