Page 37 of Legacy of Chaos

She blinked, dazed until he snapped at her again.

“Hurry!”

Snapping out of it, she kicked off her shoes and hurried into the kitchen. There was a half bath just off it, a door to a dark stairwell, and a sliding door that opened to a glass-enclosed dome with a luxurious pool. She only took a second to gaze at the snow surrounding it like a reverse snow globe. A couple of lounge chairs and a table sat at the near end of the modest-sized pool, and another door led outside to a covered hot tub. She could picture him out there, naked, arms thrown up onto the sides of the tub, relaxing with one of the superhot females he was often pictured with in the tabloids…

Ugh, that was enough.

She found his bedroom opposite a home gym people would pay a mint to use. Who needed three different treadmills?

Or a bedroom the size of her apartment?

“Cyan!” Stryke’s pained shout kept her from gawking.

She hurried into the bathroom—also huge. Just inside the door, a marble basket sat on the counter, filled with neatly stacked syringes, each containing 3 CCs of a reddish liquid. Assuming those were what he’d been talking about, she grabbed one and jogged back.

As she rounded the corner to the living room, she came to a shocked halt.

Welp. There’s the superhot female from the hot tub.

A naked female straddled his thighs, her hands scrambling at his waistband. Stryke captured her wrists and shoved her away.

“I said no.”

“You idiot!” Sitting back on his legs, she flung her arm toward Cyan in a furious gesture. “You have two females right here, ready to fuck you, and you choose a needle?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Confused for so many reasons, Cyan held up her hands, the syringe dangling from her fingers. “I’m not ready to fuck him. Not even close. There will be no fucking.” She paused. “Who are you, anyway?” She glanced over at the sliding glass door but saw no new tracks in the snow outside. “And where did you come from?”

The female jammed her hands onto her hips and stared down at Stryke. “Are you going to tell her?”

Ignoring the stunningly gorgeous, dark-haired, chestnut-skinned female with the mysterious accent riding his hips, Stryke thrust his hand out to Cyan. “Give me…” He took a couple of panting breaths. “The syringe.”

Cyan folded her arms across her chest, keeping the syringe well out of his reach. “Not until you tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Ha!” The female grinned, her emerald nose piercing glittering in the light from the antler pendant overhead. “I like her. Now, tell her.”

He snarled like a feral animal and tossed the female off him. She rolled and came to her feet in a catlike surge as he sat up and braced himself against the couch.

“Cyan, this is Masumi.” He hissed in pain, and when he spoke next, it was between clenched teeth and through shallow breaths. “She lives in that vase. She’s a succubus species created specifically to service Seminus demons.”

“Excuse me?” Cyan recoiled in horror. “She wascreatedto screw you?”

“Not me. Not specifically.” He rolled his eyes at what must have been an expression of disgust on her face. Yes, Cyan was a demon with murky moral boundaries, but she’d grown up in the human realm, and the idea that any female had been bred to please males made her sick. “Yeah, yeah, it’s horrible, but what are you gonna do?” He wrapped his arm around his midsection and groaned. “We need sex, or we’ll die. She needs sex withus, or she’ll die. Sex with her species even gives us a couple of extra hours of relief versus any other. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

Okay, but still. Infuriating. “So, Masumi lives with you? Or with Mace and Blade? I’ve heard them talking about her.”

Masumi snagged a pink satin robe from the arm of one of the leather recliners and slipped it on. “My other vase is in Stryke’s old compound, where his brothers and some cousins live.”

“You live in a vase? Do you travel between them, or do you exist in two vases at once?”

“Both at once,” she said. “Stryke calls it an extradimensional, um, spheroid.”

“Interdimensional. And still wrong.” Grimacing, he made an impatient give-me gesture at Cyan.

“No. You’ve explained precisely nothing.” Cyan held up the syringe. “What is this for? And if you need sex, why aren’t you having it with the succubus?”

“Those are good questions, Cyan.” Masumi slid a meaningful look at Stryke.

“Just”—Stryke doubled over and moaned—“give me the shot.”

---