supply any clues as to the identity of your mysterious stalker. My Las Vegas safehouse hadn’t spotted the Belial demon since their initial reports, and a careful combing of the Ruby Slippers’ surveillance footage proved fruitless. Demons tended to be confounded by modern technology, so there wasn’t even an online footprint to trace.
The trail was going cold.
Our only promising lead was on the identification of Seneser’s human host. His name was Maxwell Weir, a resident of San Diego who worked as a server in a high-end restaurant. He’d been missing for approximately two weeks when we arrived in Las Vegas and had not been seen or heard from in that time. It meant one of two things: Seneser was still inhabiting Maxwell’s body, or he’d moved onto another vessel. My contact at the coroner’s office maintained that no one fitting Maxwell’s description had been admitted, but demons could be quite inventive when it came to disposing of bodies.
After just a few days living together in close quarters, our routine became familiar—rise with your body couched in mine, transfer your cat from my person to yours, take a cold shower while relieving myself of spiritual angst, treat you to a large breakfast at a nearby restaurant, then to work. Upon our return, I made calls to my associates while you lounged at the pool and chatted up the other residents with your neurotic cat stalking its prey nearby.
After, you’d invite one of the hotel’s patrons to our quarters for a feed. “Room service” you cheekily called it, and it grew increasingly erotic, including last night’s bloodmeal when I was feeding from a man’s trapezius muscle and you from his upper thigh with your feverish eyes locked on mine.
During your relaxations at the pool, you practiced your seductions on the inhabitants of the Bambi Hotel, then relayed their trials and tribulations during our nightly stakeouts. Your tales had all the drama of a Greek play, and I found them endlessly entertaining.
You’d also managed to darken your skin to a tawny bronze. Sometimes I’d come out to the balcony just to observe you sprawled out on a lawn chair or floating leisurely on an inflatable raft. It made me long to see your naked skin against the beautiful blues of the Mediterranean. I’d promised myself I’d not make any advances, but my willpower was waning.
One afternoon, I called you up from the pool to ready yourself for dinner. You smiled up at me, brilliant as the sun, then collected your towel and basket of accoutrement. I watched your slow ascent to the second floor and admired the way your bathing suit clung to your ass like a wet tissue. Your fingertip grazed my chest as you passed by me, and that delicious cocktail of sweat, skin, and your clove-scented cologne wafted in my direction, so piquant I was salivating.
I took a deep breath, then followed you into the room to find you’d already undressed.
“Vincent, you’re—”
“Doing laundry,” you said mildly and tossed the suit aside. You assessed me head to foot and paused—not so subtly—to where blood rushed to my genitals, my arousal made plain by my tightening pants.
“Ah,” I said. “Are all of your clothes dirty?”
Your head tilted and you shot me a sly look. “Not just mine, Henri. Yours too. Everything is so… moist.”
After our first night trying to squeeze into a twin-sized bed, you’d rearranged the room, so the mattresses were now sandwiched together and fitted with a king-sized sheet. Since then we hadn’t slept apart, and on a few occasions, I’d stumbled into your dreams.
“Hardly my fault. Your imagination gets more vivid each night,” I said.
“Is there a particular one you liked?”
“The one where you’re tied up aroused me greatly. The one where I’m tied up and you’re making small cuts all over my torso with a sharp blade, a little less so.”
You smiled, satisfied that I was playing along.
“But I thought blood was your kink, Henri.”
“Well… I…”
You stepped toward me as I drank you in—the uninterrupted transition from the tops of your thighs to the bones of your hips which jutted slightly, the hard lines of your obliques, which led me back to your thickening shaft where it protruded, virile and proud. The skin of your groin was a lighter shade of brown, which reminded me this vision was mine alone. You stretched your arms behind your head, flexing your abdominals and biceps for my viewing pleasure. What an alluring display you made of yourself while your eyes stared