Chapter 23: A Surprising Recovery...

"Holy shit," Alex said with his hands over his face as he lay in bed. "I can't believe my mother just tucked me in. It's like I'm supposed to be eight years old again."

Lorelei kept her amused smile to a minimum. "It's understandable. Moving is painful for you at the moment. You could have been killed. She feels the need to be a mother."

"Still. I should've known she'd freak out about you." His hands fell away. He looked up at her, now standing over his bed in the relative darkness. A gibbous moon and reflected street lighting through his window provided just enough light to see her.

"We could have done a number of things to mitigate this. It is not too late. I could look younger to her and others, and convince her to remember this night slightly differently. Some degree of deception is necessary, given the reality of our situation."

He sighed, considering it. "I don't want to hide you or what you are. Or what you are to me."

Lorelei smiled softly. "What do you want, Alex?"

"I want you. I want to be with you," Alex answered. "I don't want to hide with you in my bedroom in my mom's house anymore."

"I had assumed that last part," Lorelei said. Her intensified smile showed how pleased she was with the rest of his answer. "I can help ensure your mother comes to terms with it. There is no harm there. We can also acquire a new place for you -- us -- to live fairly easily."

"We accomplished basically nothing we went out to do tonight," he grumbled.

"I am rather amazed at all that you have accomplished," Lorelei replied. "Priorities often shift regardless of intentions. And I am at least in possession of my own finances and transportation again, along with a few other helpful things. The rest will come quickly. Master, I am terribly sorry for what happened to you and Taylor."

"You've said that a bunch of times already. You don't have to apologize, I know you didn't plan all that."

"I would like to make it up to you though," she said seductively, slipping off her jacket.

Alex smiled. "I'm sure I'd really like that," he said quietly. "Just don't make me move my upper body."

Lorelei smiled back, dropping the jacket on his desk chair. "Tonight you won't move a muscle with the exception of one. Just relax and let me take care of you, master. I think you'll find that I am very skilled in physical therapy." She reached for his stereo and pressed a single button. It was pop music, soft, sexy and turned down comfortably low. Lorelei began to sway. "Among my other talents," she added with a smile and wink.

Alex watched as she slowly ran her hands over her own body, starting from her legs and moving upward to draw is attention to every delicious curve. She had quite a few of those. She hooked a thumb under one shoulder strap of her top, pulling it free.

"You set this up ahead of time," he said quietly.

"I didn't know I could get you relatively immobilized... but I had the better part of two days here to myself," Lorelei conceded in a hushed tone. Both shoulders were bared now, and with her arms crossed over her chest, she leaned forward to give him a teasing view. "I'll be setting up many things to please you."

"Like Audrey?"

She laughed, just a little. The succubus straightened, continuing her slow strip-down. "Yes, master, like Audrey. Though I suspect that was more about you than you might believe. I felt you with her. It was lovely for me. You enjoyed her, yes?"

"You know I did."

"I do. You have resisted so much of what I have to offer. I hope you know now that my designs are in line with your conscience. I know what you can and cannot accept." Her crossed arms rose, lifting her top up over her head to reveal her magnificent chest, covered by a lacy purple bra that she hardly needed for support. The top fell to the floor.

She kept her eyes on him. For what seemed to be the millionth time, Alex was blown away by the recent turns in his life. This woman, stripping for him before she had sex with him, was asking with lusty interest about the last women he'd had sex with. Encounters that she was largely responsible for and she called him master.

Lorelei delighted in his gaze. It was plain in her smile. She seemed to let out a quiet laugh -- she was too dignified to giggle -- and her eyes sparkled. "I also know that you enjoy watching me," Lorelei said. Her thumbs slipped under the waistband of her jeans, sliding around them to draw attention to her hips, her alluring belly, and the sexy depressions between.

"I feel your desire. That hunger feeds me, and your inevitable satisfaction will give me much more. I taste gratitude, and affection, and... possessiveness." She winked, and added, as if the word pleasured her, "Master."

The top button on her jeans came undone. The zipper came down. Alex caught only a hint of the blue lace underneath before she turned away, still swaying, now showing off that ass they both knew he found mesmerizing. The jeans started to slide down, revealing blue lace and flawless flesh. "I like that lace thong, by the way," he smiled.

"You learned a thing or two tonight, didn't you?" Lorelei winked over her shoulder.

"Audrey brought me in that dressing room and did a little of what you're doing now. Differently."

"You don't have to make comparisons," Lorelei said, pulling one leg out of her skin-tight jeans and somehow making what should have been a struggle look smooth. "Did it work for you? Please you?"

"It really did."

"Then that's all that matters." When she turned for him again, she put one leg up on the desk and caressed its full length. Alex wanted to reach out of the bed and take that leg, along with the rest of her, but he understood his role here.

His partner's grin smoldered. "Tell me," Lorelei said as she teased at lowering her panties, then stepped away from it and continued to sway, sliding her hands over herself here and there, "what about Taylor?"

"Did you know she would be there?"

"I had no idea. But I could feel your sudden desire for her. Knowing your desires as I do, I knew it could be no one else. You seemed to have handled that quite well all on your own."

"I'm not sure how comfortable I am talking about her. I don't want to betray her trust. But she knew that I would tell you it happened, and was okay with that."

"I felt you make love with her, master. That is what it was, regardless of context. I felt it all, as if I were part of it. So much genuine affection and passion. You need not worry about me betraying your trust. I shall consider her as protected as anyone close to you, master. Your time with her was amazing." She snapped open the front clasp of her bra. "You seem to have parted on very good terms despite tonight's incident."

"I'm amazed at that. She said she just wants to be friends, but she doesn't want to lose touch again. Taylor, um, seemed interested in hooking up again in the future, though."

Lorelei's eyes glittered with interest. "Oh?"

"If my girlfriend doesn't mind," Alex said with a slightly sheepish smile.

"Oh, Alex," Lorelei said, "I may want that even more than you."

"Is it that enjoyable for you?"

Lorelei nodded. "I have told you that your desires and pleasures empower and heal me, master," she said, slipping off her bra and letting it dangle from her finger over him, then letting it fall. Her other arm caressed her breasts. "The feeling of you together was a rush of energy like nothing else, and could not have been better timed."

Leaning forward over him, Lorelei moved her upper arms together to push up her breasts even as her hands slid her panties down. So much of her came close to Alex's mouth, but he didn't try to rise to it. This was just part of the show.

Then she slipped around to the foot of the bed, placing one knee on it. "What happened tonight brought great strides in my recovery."

Alex's lips twitched in a smirk. "So it was good for you, too?"

"Oh, yes, master," Lorelei confided. Her hands slipped up his legs now, then his hips, and finally pulled free the blanket that he lay under. He was dressed in simple gym shorts. "I am eager to show you how good."

She slid forward along his legs again. One hand moved up the middle, taking care specifically to move over his sac and his very hard manhood before she pulled the shorts down and away. She crouched down and kissed his feet, looking to him as if to convey a provocative message by doing so, and then began to kiss and stroke her way up his legs.

Her right hand moved over his genitals again, sliding around his cock and stroking it while her left caressed around his hip and his leg. Her lips continued to trail soft kisses and licks all around. She seemed to slide along him more like a snake than a person; Lorelei didn't need to shift weight from one limb to the next, nor prop herself up on hands or elbows. Her body was draped sensuously over Alex's bare legs, and before long her tongue was trailing up and down his cock. It seemed too big for her to accommodate with her mouth, but he knew better.

"You're amazing," he told her.

"I know," she grinned. "I can feel that in you, too." She licked and kissed his cock as she said, "You will never stop lusting for me as intensely as if you had never had me. I know your mind and your heart will never truly look down on me as your slave. You see me as an equal and a partner. I will never be taken for granted... but instead always with great gratitude... and tender affection... for my service... my devotion... my loyalty... my all." With that, his head and shaft disappeared entirely into her wet, hungry mouth.

Alex groaned loudly in total surrender to his slave.

It was better this time than previous. He felt more connected with her than ever, more at ease. Alex had always thought of oral sex as a chore a woman would perform out of whatever motivations she might have, but not for fun in and of itself. He doubted it was especially pleasing to women. Whether or not that was true of normal women in general, Alex understood now how sincere Lorelei was. Their intimacy in and of itself rewarded her as much as it pleased him. Putting his cock in her mouth was a mutually affectionate and pleasuring act. As she took Alex in and out, devouring every inch of him regardless of how impossible it looked, Alex's emotions ran wild.

He lay still for her, moving only his head on occasion as he alternated between looking down at her and closing his eyes. Sometimes, when he looked, she looked back up at him. She wanted this act to be a defining part of their relationship, something he understood just from that gaze. At other moments, he looked down and saw nothing but a dutifully, zealously bobbing head, eyes closed and lips concentrating on their work.

"God, I want to... I want to give back," he moaned.

"You are giving back," she said. "You know this now. I can feel it."

"Still."

"Relax, master. You must mend. Time enough to toy with my body later. Let me serve you as you deserve to be."

As she continued, building into a sensuous, controlled frenzy, Lorelei began to moan as much and even more than Alex. The bed didn't shake, and he was held tightly enough to be kept still while Lorelei fucked him with her mouth as fiercely as if she were straddling him.

When his climax finally came, sending pulses of joy throughout his body and his limbs, he moaned -- and she all but screamed. The only things muffling her were his flesh and her need to swallow. Her body trembled and tightened against him. Lorelei came just as he did, despite doing nothing to stimulate herself.

It seemed for a moment as if it would last forever -- Alex would not have protested at all, couldn't have even thought of it -- but eventually, the intensity abated. She drank greedily from him, too focused now to look up, but he was coming down enough from that height of pleasure to stroke her head and her shoulders with his hands. They weren't twitching anymore. His fingers ran through her hair. Something else did, too.

Alex opened his eyes, looking down at her. Swaying across her back from just above the crack of her ass was a long, thin, darkly-colored devil's tail.

"Wow," he whispered, completely unsure what to think. "Lorelei, your... you have a tail."

"Mmh-hmm," Lorelei concurred.

"What does that mean?"

She pulled her mouth from him with obvious reluctance, but not distress. "As I said, master, your pleasure and satisfaction allow me to heal." Her voice, as always was filled with both warmth and sexuality. "Others will not see it. You will rarely see it yourself... and I can always conceal it if you prefer. You don't seem the type to develop a fetish for tails... but I did not expect you to be bothered, either."

"I'm not," Alex said, a bit surprised to hear himself say it. "I'm just glad to hear it's a good sign."

"It is. As Rachel said in the graveyard, symbolism means much to beings such as us. The loss of

supernatural features brings with it a loss of power. This shows significant recovery. I am more grateful than I can say."

"Long ways to go yet, though, isn't there?"

"Yes," Lorelei said, "a very long way. I don't think there will be any easy shortcuts again. We have much... work ahead."

They shared a look of unmistakable affection before Alex lay his head back down on the pillow. "Best get to it, then," he encouraged her. He didn't feel the least bit selfish about it at all.