‘Drink?’ she asked. ‘Wine, beer, coffee, tea?’
Finn shook his head. ‘Nothing for me. It’s late.’ He put his rucksack down at the end of the sofa. ‘Do you have a blanket or something? I’ll sleep on the couch.’
The words felt like a slap in the face. Sleep wasn’t really what Jill had in mind.
It was as though he’d read her thoughts. ‘You’ve had a rough day, Jill, and you’re exhausted. You don’t realise it at the moment. That’s what having Eleanor in residence does to you. But even she understands that in order to keep her host healthy, rest has to happen.’ He tilted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. ‘I’ve had her in me, Jill. I know what I’m talking about. I know how she is, what she can do to you.’
Jill’s tummy gave a tight little quiver at the thought of the very feminine Eleanor, nestled in some inexplicable part of her, residing in that same inexplicable part of the very masculine Finn. But before she could follow that intriguing train of thought, Finn brushed a kiss across her lips and nodded to her room. ‘Now go to bed. The next few days will be very demanding.’
Sullenly she brushed her teeth and took off the make-up she’d put on hours ago before she’d quit her job, back when the only thing she had to worry about was impressing a shoe-shop clerk enough to get him to shag her. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she noticed another text from Vivie, but she just couldn’t face that now. She was about to slip into her nightshirt when she thought better of it and crawled in between the sheets naked. It felt lovely. It would have felt even lovelier if Finn had slid into bed next to her all hard and ready to play.
She could hear the shower running in the bathroom, and maliciously she hoped it was a cold one that had nothing to do with being dirty. She turned off the lamp on her night stand and rolled over on her side, still trying to get her head around the events of the past twenty-four hours.
And suddenly she wasn’t alone. Suddenly the demon presence filled all the space beneath her skin and expanded beyond to wrap around her like silk. Once again she felt the full roundness of femininity wriggling close to her, nuzzling up to her, embracing her, and she couldn’t hold back a moan at the feel of tight nipples against her spine and soft pubic curls nestling up to her bottom. It didn’t matter that they weren’t physical. They felt stunningly real, and powerfully arousing. The warm breath against her ear was sweet and comforting. ‘Don’t feel bad, darling,’ a female voice purred inside her head. ‘He’s afraid, that’s all. He’s afraid I might damage you somehow.’ A hand cupped her breast, a thumb raked her hardening nipple.
‘Will you?’ Jill spoke out loud almost before she realised it. ‘Will you damage me?’
‘Of course not, my sweet Jill. Your flesh is precious to me, more so than you know. I would never harm you. Never.’
‘What do you want from me, Eleanor?’ This time Jill was careful not to speak out loud. For the first time since he sidled up to her in the pub, she wasn’t so anxious to draw Finn’s attention. This was her chance for a little girl talk. Girl talk with a lust demon. Jesus, the insanity of her situation was astounding.
‘All I want is to share your body, Jill. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve experienced so many things.’ Jill felt the brush of warm lips against her nape. ‘So very many things, and yet there’ve been long passages of time in which my consciousness has had no place to anchor. Oh, Jill, it’s such an empty space, eternity, when there’s no flesh in which to express consciousness.’ Eleanor snuggled still closer and a hand that wasn’t physically there moved down to rest against Jill’s pubis. She quivered at the touch.
Eleanor continued. ‘But you, my darling, have flesh, lovely, voluptuous, delicious flesh. And yet with it you’ve experienced so little. You fear the lust that partners flesh, what it longs for, what it’s capable of, what boundaries it may move beyond. I feel the ache in you, the need. I felt it before I took you. That ache to experience what you’ve not been brave enough to allow is what drew me to you, what I felt when you stumbled into Finn’s shop. You were like light shining into darkness. I could see nothing else. I wanted nothing else. But you.’
The embrace tightened and Jill found herself writhing against the mattress, grinding her bottom back against the demon femininity pressed next to her. It was then that she realised the hand she felt between her legs was not the imagined one but her own, fingers circling her clit and dipping in between the swell of her, still wet from the evening’s heat, still vibrant with the scent of Finn. And for a second she resented him washing the olfactory evidence of their lovemaking down the drain, covering himself in the unnatural scent of soap and deodorant, when she wanted him to smell of her, when she wanted him to smell of them, super-heated and driven, in the throes of a hard animal fuck. She inhaled deeply the smell of him on her body, inside her body, and contemplated the way her scent wrapped around it, mixed through it, enhanced it, made it smell like it belonged there, closer to her than any other scent that wasn’t her own. The imagined arms tightened around her and another warm kiss brushed her nape, feeling as real as anything she had ever felt. The circle and thrust, circle and thrust of her fingers intensified. She felt desperate for the release that was demanded by thoughts of the man now naked in her shower and by the fondling and cuddling of the demon woman whose caress, non-corporeal or not, felt urgent, insistent, needy.