Angel's Eye

By Katerina Ross

For Tristan Todorov, formerly a freelance magician and now a consultant on occult matters, living with an incubus turns out to be rather challenging. Not only because there’s little information on incubi, Gomorrah pleasure demons. Jarek, the one he has a contract with, has a fiery personality and a dark past, and sometimes he’s a mystery Tristan can’t decipher.

When Tristan ends up in possession of an illegal artifact with peculiar powers, he hopes it might help him and Jarek to finally understand each other. Will it be a blessing indeed—or a curse that might put them both in danger?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight Publishing
• Release date: Dec 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781773398594

Book preview

Published by EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ® at Smashwords

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2018 Katerina Ross

ISBN: 978-1-77339-859-4

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Karyn White

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ANGEL’S EYE

The Sons of Gomorrah, 3

Katerina Ross

Copyright © 2018

Once, Tristan had wanted his life to be a fairytale. An exciting sequence of wonders and adventures. But most of the fairytales he’d learned since then, the ones that weren’t edited for children and illustrated with exceedingly colorful pictures, seemed to be rather grim in their essence. They were about curses and blood and death, even if it was the villain who died.

Now Tristan suspected it might be better to settle for something more common. But aside from it being not quite easy to curb his former ambitions and hopes, to forget his past completely, there was an additional problem: his current companion could be called anything but ordinary.

Living with an incubus turned out to be challenging, mostly because of mundane matters no demonologists, ancient or modern, cared to address in their lengthy manuscripts. Did incubi require actual meals, or were they content with feeding on sexual energy? Did they need toothbrushes and razors, or could they simply alter their appearance without tedious grooming? Could they catch the flu, or were they immune to all diseases? Tristan had looked up more than a few demon-themed texts on the Net in a hasty attempt to prepare himself for settling in with an unusual companion, but they all seemed to be frustratingly vague, evasive, and contradicting each other, as if on purpose. On the whole, it was very much like trying to build up a relationship with the dubious aid of psychological books, abundant but totally useless for the most part when it came to real life.

Talking was certainly a better option than looking for answers online, but Tristan was so used to living alone by now that he’d probably be out of his depth in day-to-day communication even if he had an affair with an ordinary human. Asking Jarek about some things felt awkward, like Tristan was studying him. Sometimes there was no other choice, but whenever Tristan could avoid it, he preferred not to bother Jarek with questions.

Maybe his vanity was partly to blame, too. He’d always strived to be the best in his line of work, even after he’d become a freelance magician, so admitting he still was ignorant in some aspects of demonology was unpleasant. There had been rumors in Scholomance about a group of mages running a project on rare kinds of demons, including incubi and succubi, but Tristan hadn’t taken part in it and knew no details. Either it had been top secret, or it hadn’t lasted long, which was more likely. Most sorcerers considered pleasure demons to be irrelevant. The odds of meeting one were slim, and the consequences of such an encounter promised to be rather enjoyable, so why bother with further research?

Especially because many topics for study were … of a sensitive nature. For instance, one of the most puzzling things was that incubi climaxed without spilling anything. Jarek said it was an orgasm anyway and clearly thought there was nothing more to discuss, and of course Tristan was too delicate—or more exactly, too embarrassed—to pry, but it left him curious. Incubi could be cross-fertile with humans, obviously. Not that it happened often, but some precedents were indisputable. Merlin, the one who had formed the Avalon congregation of magicians and thus ensured the dominance of the Welsh over the Isles, was strongly believed to be a cambion, the child of an incubus. But as for how exactly such an interbreeding was managed, demonologists had no unified opinion. They tended to disagree with each other on every possible issue, and the sex life of incubi was of no exception. Perhaps reproduction was a conscious choice for this species?

Maybe it wasn’t crucial, though, to know something like that when having an incubus for a roommate and a partner. However tempting it was to sift through all this inhuman otherness and to classify it, not always for practical reasons but out of a habit for order, there were moments when it didn’t matter in the least. Every time, it was a small wonder—to wake up into unexpected joy of not being alone anymore, and it had nothing to do with magic or with Jarek’s supernatural abilities. The novelty of it hadn’t worn off yet. Yeah, it was still weird to see up close a face that was a copy of Tristan’s own—with a mischievous smile that wasn’t his. It felt like a sequel to a dream, but a pleasant one, so it was always a good kind of shock.

Tristan would have never imagined he had narcissistic tendencies, yet he couldn’t but admit he took pleasure in watching Jarek, in the nude or dressed. Maybe because Jarek wore the exact same body as he did with more elegance. Unlike Tristan, he was effortlessly graceful. Seductive in every movement. And he liked being watched. Where Tristan would be self-conscious and doubting if he looked adequate, Jarek basked in attention. It was probably a common trait with incubi, but Tristan envied him a little nevertheless. He’d always been too much of an insecure prude himself, and not only because his body was marred with scars and he felt diffident about it. Even before that, with Bran…

No, he didn’t want to pursue this line of thought. He’d rather simply enjoy what he had now, without remembering what was forever lost to him.

What he had was a contract for a year and a day with a pleasure demon whose company he happened to relish very much, a job for the same amount of time, and a rented apartment, very small for two, but sunlit in the mornings when he and Jarek half-sleepily made out among the crumpled sheets. It was freezing cold outside, a Slavic winter in its worst, and getting out of the bed seemed like an unwelcome prospect.

You have a terrible wake up ringtone, Jarek murmured against his lips. It’s depressing. Nobody would want to get up at all on hearing it.

As if to confirm his words, the not-turned-off phone wailed again with the first notes of The Devil’s Trill, beautiful but rather sad indeed.

Tristan tried to reach for the damn thing blindly, without disengaging himself from under Jarek’s warm body. And, surprisingly, succeeded. I thought we were not going to get up just yet anyway, huh?

Jarek hummed thoughtfully as he nibbled his way down Tristan’s neck.

The next morning, Tristan was startled by an overly cheerful tune of a cheesy pop song: Jarek had fiddled with his phone. And had a good laugh, the smug bastard. No matter how irritated Tristan was in the first moments