Page 36 of The Succubi's Choice

With a throaty, delighted laugh, the waitress braces her leg against the other alley wall, and Miri loses herself in her.

* * *

After,the waitress takes a second to fix her kilt, and Miri has a quiet existential crisis there in the brick alleyway.

“You usually go for women?” Miri asks, after a moment of quiet anxiety. “Or is this more of a rare…”

“Entirely just women,” she says, adjusting her hair in a hand mirror. “Don’t get the lunch time hookup that much, though.” She smiles at Miri, beautiful all over again. “You?”

“I get what I can,” Miri parrots the same line she always gives people. “Usually more men, cause it’s easier. Not as many women up for random hookups.”

The waitress clicks the small mirror compact shut, and there’s a finality in that noise. “I have to go back. I won’t complain if you show up here again.” She hesitates, for a moment. “Did you know that guy? Sorry if that was weird.”

“Yeah, I know him, just didn’t…” Miri trails off. “You know, I’ll go chat with him.”

“It was a bit weird. Our girls here will have your back if you have any trouble.” With a smile, the waitress holds the back door open, all evidence of their encounter entirely gone, save for two bright reds splotches high on her cheekbones.

Once inside, Not-Thomas is still at the bar, and his lips twitch into a smirk when he sees her come in.

Refusing to feel scared, Miri goes straight for him. “What was that?”

“You look more alert,” he says, instead of answering any questions. “Starvation isn’t healthy for anyone, much less you.”

He stares at her, dead serious, after that statement.

“Not like I had a choice,” she says, heart pounding again despite her best intentions.

“You did,” he says casually, as if suggesting something much less drastic than rebellion. “And even now, your handler’s waiting in his car, because they didn’t even trust you to drive here.” He shifts, stepping deliberately into her personal space, and Miri’s mouth goes dry. “Don’t you think you can do better?”

She shifts back on her heels, taking the moment and the distance to blink at him.

Someone scores a something in the sports game, and the entire bar around them erupts into noisy cheers, but he doesn’t break eye contact.

The vast majority of people like her exist within the system, and have to obey the rules of the Organization, or risk heavy consequences, but in exchange get to live relatively safely within society as a whole, and Miri is relatively fond of society.

It’s fairly impossible for succubi to live without human civilization, without a wide pool of strangers who are down to fuck at any given time. Some people can live alone with just a forest or the sea, and there are those like the Demi-gods who can flout the rules because of sheer power, but…

“I’m not sure who you think I am,” Miri starts, carefully choosing her words, “but I kinda have to follow all the rules.”

His eyebrows twitch, the most human expression yet.

“I have an event coming up,” he says, instead of addressing anything she said. “You should be there, it might be illuminating.”

“You showed up here to invite me to something?” Instinctively, she hugs herself, cause it’s still really fucking cold in the bar. “I know you have a phone, I text it all the time.”

Unbelievably, he smiles, and it’s again such a natural look her heart skips a beat. “I saw that Thomas reached out.”

“Does he know you talk about him that way?”

“We get along, he helps me out, provided the lodgings.” The demon inspects his hand, idly, as if it’s still new to him. And, for all she knows, it might be. “He benefits as well, he would be quite dead if not for me.”

“How much of that is because you put him in danger?” Miri asks, quick, as if saying the words quickly will anger the Archdemon less.

“He had about four types of incurable cancer and maybe one month to live, I think he’s okay with me.”

Instead of firing off her initial response, Miri takes a moment, looking away from him and at the dirty bar floor instead, at the expanse of sticky drink spills and grime that will never be fully cleaned.

“Well that’s awfully kind of you,” she says, after probably too long of a pause.

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