Chapter 5 #2
“Who…? Are they still here?” Alistair hisses. In the next second, he’s pushed past me and is crossing toward the hallway, from where Andrew is emerging. I only have a second to wonder where Gideon is before the confrontation is upon us.
“How dare you try and steal my human!” Alistair shouts, hands on hips. “And you tell that creepy demon to get a job at a fucking supermarket if he wants to organize canned goods! I had everything right where I wanted it!”
Andrew sneers. “If you can’t manage to keep him, he’s fair game. We need an admin, and he’s the best, and since we’re the best, he’s ours.”
Alistair growls. It’s a full-on hellhound growl, and the sound sends chills down my spine. Andrew hisses in response, baring his fangs, which suddenly seem longer.
This could turn ugly.
At the same time, it’s so fucking stupid.
“Guys,” I say firmly, bravely—or perhaps stupidly—worming my way between them and pushing them apart.
To be honest, I get the feeling they only move out of courtesy, because they each take a single step back and then stop.
They’re both taller than me and continue to glare at each other over the top of my head.
I’m really not much of a barrier here. “This is stupid,” I insist. “Both of you step back—now!”
Yeah… nothing.
“Step back now or I’ll quit CSG and get a job working at a perfume factory!” It’s the worst threat I can think of, since most species have an excellent sense of smell and the human habit of wearing too much scent is a nightmare for them.
Sure enough, they both give me horror-filled looks and move back.
“Okay,” I say, trying to maintain the upper hand now that I have it. “Let’s all go sit down and discuss this. Andrew, you sit in that chair.” I point to the armchair across the room. “Alistair, you sit on the couch—at this end.”
Neither of them move.
“Now!”
Once they’re finally seated, I pace in front of them, alongside the coffee table.
“First of all,” I begin, “I am not anyone’s human but my own.
I belong only to myself. If you think of me as a toy or novelty possession, that hurts me deeply and our friendship is over.
” I direct that comment and a pointed look at Alistair, who hangs his head.
“Exactly,” Andrew chimes in with a smirk. I turn the look on him.
“Neither am I a tract of land to be conquered and owned by whoever has the greatest prowess,” I say. “I am not ‘fair game.’”
To his credit, he’s immediately shamefaced.
“I don’t understand what the hell is going on,” I admit.
“Alistair, you should be happy for me. This would essentially be a promotion and a pay raise.” The lucifer told me about the pay and benefits package, and it’s very attractive.
“And it’s not like I’d be moving across the country.
We’ll still see each other all the time. ”
His face sets stubbornly. “I found you first. Now you’re going to have my stupid cousin and her dumb friends here all the time. They’re already here, and that weird demon is alphabetizing your house!”
Oh, fuck —Gideon! I spin in the direction of the hall, but Gideon is already emerging, his hand aloft, waving the virulently pink dildo I bought a year ago. “Do you want these arranged by color or size or species?”
I close my eyes. My cheeks are so hot, they could combust at any moment.
“Sam?”
I open my eyes. Alistair and Andrew have matching expressions of delighted shock on their stupid faces, but Gideon’s usual resting bitch expression is accented by a sexy little smirk. “Color or species?”
“Just—” I squeak, then swallow hard. “Uh, just leave them, please. I’ll, uh, think about how I want them organized.” I can’t fucking believe he wants to organize my dildos.
He shrugs. “Okay. If you decide you want them arranged by frequency of use, that’s fine too.
” Then, shocking me so much I lose the power of speech, he winks and adds, “I noticed the grip on the demon one is starting to get worn. You might need to replace it. Though, you should know that there’s no substitute for the real thing.
” His gaze locks with mine for a long, breath-stealing moment before he turns around and saunters back down the hallway.
My legs give out and I collapse to the floor.
Fuck me.
Also, what the fuck is with him? He treats me like dirt and ignores me for five years, then winks and makes innuendoes like nothing happened?
I don’t think I could possibly be more embarrassed.
“So, Sam… you never mentioned you were collecting interspecies dildos. Wanted a warmup before trying the real thing?”
I was wrong.
“Which is your favorite?” Andrew adds. “Vampire, right? Everyone loves vampire dick. It’s the spines.”
“Please,” Alistair scoffs. “You’re embarrassing yourself. Shifter cock is clearly superior.”
“Please stop talking,” I manage. The last thing I want is for them to start a full-on debate about which species’ dick is the best. Because, yes, there are differences.
While all species living on Earth in the physical plane are humanoid (or in the case of shifters, sometimes humanoid), there are some slight differences in physiology.
The most obvious are things like demon horns and vampire fangs, but as I discovered while trawling the community social media, there are also penis variations.
As Andrew said, vampires have spines. They’re actually more like stiff hairs, quite flexible and not at all damaging to delicate tissue.
Their purpose is to stimulate ovulation in female vampires, which works differently to humans, I’m told.
Honestly, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to that part.
It’s not something that concerns me. Anyway, shifters have retractable barbs, much like some of their animal counterparts.
In real life, the barbs are controlled by ejaculation.
For the dildo, though, there’s a button to retract them—something I should have checked for before using it. That was a very scary ten minutes.
Demons are very similar to humans, but don’t have a defined head. They tend to be thicker all the way from base to tip, too, wide enough to streeeetch their partners.
Incubi are probably the most interestingly shaped—their dicks have a “waist,” kind of like a bee or wasp. It makes fucking stimulating, to say the least.
Anyway, it’s not like I went out of my way to collect those dildos.
After discovering there were anatomical differences and watching a lot of porn to try and spot them, I found an online community adult store and bought a set of dildos appropriately called World of Wangs, which promised to be a collection of anatomically correct dildos featuring every species on the physical plane.
Based on the human dildo in the set, I’d have to say they did a decent job sticking true to life.
And after my scientific curiosity was satisfied, I set about using each one to satisfy something else.
And yes, the demon one is my favorite. What can I say? I have a size kink.
But I don’t want to explain any of this to the two idiots currently in my living room, smirking at me.
“Sam?” Gideon shouts from the bedroom. “Do you want to keep this World of Wangs box?”
I’m going to kill him.
“World of Wangs?” Alistair sounds like he’s choking. “ World of Wangs? ”
“Meeting you is the best thing that ever happened to me,” Andrew assures me sincerely, pulling out his phone. “I need a picture of that box.”
That snaps me out of my state of semifrozen horror. “Oh no, you don’t. Time to go. Shoo. Out!”
He crosses his arms and stands his ground. “Not until you promise to start work with us on Monday.”
“Nooooooo!” Alistair howls (literally). “Not Monday ! If you absolutely have to leave us, I can come to terms with it, but we need notice!”
“Harold already has someone lined up to be your new admin,” Andrew tells him heartlessly, and Alistair snorts.
“Not that kind of notice. We need time to prepare emotionally .”
What.
Just. What.
“Time to prepare emotionally?” I parrot.
He nods.
I shake my head. “Compromise,” I suggest, because I have a feeling it’s the only way I’ll get rid of them both. “Your new admin will start on Monday but I’ll split the week between the two teams so I can give them a proper handover and you can… prepare emotionally.”
Neither of them looks entirely happy, but they reluctantly agree.
“Great! Now, time to go!”
I shoo them, both protesting, toward the door and finally get them out. I shut the door in their faces, engage all the locks and the chain (not that it would do any good if Alistair decided to come back in) and finally lean back against the door in relief.
They’re gone. I have some peace to assimilate everything that’s happened over the past twenty-four hours.
Gideon walks into the room, and I squeal. It’s not an embarrassing sound at all. Really.
Fuck. I forgot he was still here.
“I’m done in the bedroom, for now anyway. Do you have a storage locker or anything?” He looks around, as though it will magically transport itself from four floors down in the garage to my living room.
“No,” I lie. There’s nothing in there except my Christmas decorations, a couple of suitcases, and some odds and ends I don’t want to keep but feel bad getting rid of because they were gifts.
“Uh, so, is, uh….” I don’t want to be nosy and rude, but if this is a condition that’s going to bleed into how he works, I need to know so I can adjust accordingly.
“Are you, um, do you have a medical diagnosis or do you just prefer things organized?”
His lips twitch into that tiny smile I remember so well, and I swear, my heart freezes in my chest. It just stops beating. Dark, broody, I’m-going-to-rip-your-arms-off Gideon is superhot, but this Gideon? He blows out the meter.