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  Abra washed her hands, hurriedly slung on a cotton robe and went to sit on the porch while the acrylic dried. She stared at Val’s truck wondering where he might be. Where did a demon get a truck anyway? The ache of emptiness after having been filled by him haunted her body. She wanted to taste him, to feel his body joined with hers, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit any need for him.

  Emotion burned through her mind, cold, empty, longing, loneliness. “Stop it,” she warned. “Just stop it now.”

  “I need you.”

  “You’re using me.”

  Crickets chirped beneath the porch. Out in the fields, lightning bugs glowed and whizzed through the shadows. Their eerie green flashes made Abra think of Val’s eyes. She turned her attention to the blue-black night sky and the myriad stars twinkling amidst the blanket of darkness. There was no moon this night, only the stars and the coolness of evening to soothe her.

  She swept a hand through her hair and waited.

  * * * *

  Abra slid the finished angel’s easel next to the demon. It hadn’t come out as she’d hoped. Its hair, originally a muted auburn, had somehow grown into flaming reds and oranges as if it were afire. Although angelic at first glance, its shadow revealed its nature. Abra sighed, angry with herself. She flicked off the light and glared at the clock shining at her from her bedroom. Two in the morning and she’d not regained the style she lost when the demon visited. She feared she’d never get it back.

  After she cleaned herself up and brushed her teeth, Abra slunk down the hall and into her bedroom. She slipped beneath the fresh sheets, linens that no longer bore Val’s musky, alluring scent. She hugged her pillow to her body and cried.

  If he showed up again the following day, she didn’t think she’d be able to resist him.

  Chapter Five

  The cool November breeze couldn’t stifle the heatwaves emanating from the lonely asphalt road that cut through the farmland. Abra stood on the porch waiting for him. Inside the house, the clock ticked, and she heard it. She wore a long skirt and a t-shirt, nothing tempting, just plain and simple. Abra brought a glass of ice water to her lips, sipped and swallowed. This is it.

  The clock clanged out twelve times, its tone echoing.

  On the crest of the hill, Val strode along in his blue jeans and white t-shirt. His pace carried him past the barbed wire and unlike that first time, he didn’t waste a moment tracing the line. He hurried along, his gaze intent on her.

  She set her glass down and grasped the porch rail, descending the steps to the grass. “Hurry up!” she called to him. “You’ve got less than an hour now.” She smirked. For a fleeting moment, she decided maybe she could resist him.

  Val jogged along. He entered the property and only slowed when he approached her. “Afternoon.”

  “Yeah.” She held her hand out to him, and he took it. “You have some explaining to do.”

  He shot her a sideways grin. “Do I?”

  “Come on.”

  Avoiding his heated gaze, she led him up the steps, across the porch and into the kitchen. A glance at the dining room table made her cringe, her mind awash with coupling with him there. The chair she bumped into offered a similar fantasy, him seated beneath her, tugging her down again and again.

  “What’s your name?” she stopped before the side by side paintings.

  He let go of her hand, heat remaining around her fingers as if he hadn’t. Phantom kisses worked along her neck. Unseen fingers ran down her spine, her ass and paused to cup her butt cheeks.

  “Val,” he answered. “You know that.”

  “It’s short for something. You’re a demon. We both know that part. What is it? Who are you, really?”

  He studied the new painting, his thumb and forefinger stroking his chin. “Valefar.” Turning, he winked at her. “You’re good, Abra. You see things most don’t. There wasn’t an artist to take down what I looked like before the Fall, but…” he nodded. “This. This, my dear, is a masterpiece.”

  He walked a circle around her, his incubi assaulting her with kisses and licks. Fingers sought out her cleft and found it wet and wanting. Abra tried to stifle her desire for him. “You’re impossible,” she whispered.

  “But you’re fighting me.” He halted in front of her, grasped her shoulders and ran his lips across hers, not quite a kiss, more like a promise of one if she complied. “Why?”

  “I cleaned the house. I know what you are, what you want from me.”

  “What do I want? To be needed? To have a companion? To be loved?”

  “Noonday demon,” she said, accusing. “That’s why you show at midday and why you leave soon after. You want me to sin, to lose faith. I won’t do it.”

  “Humph.” He drew closer and assaulted her mouth, his kiss hard, invasive. His chest pressed into hers and her nipples betrayed her. Grinding his bulging jeans against her pubic mound, he moaned.

  Abra backed up until she met the wall. A picture fell off, crashing onto the floor. She broke her lips away. “I should clean that up.”

  “No.” He waved a hand in the air, dismissing her statement. “You cleaned the house. You’re making this difficult for me.”

  “It was dirty. I suppose that was your doing.”

  “Mm hmm.” The flash of red returned to his pupils. His irises glittered with the hazel she loved. Firm hands seized her shoulders, and his knee parted her legs. “I want you. More than anyone or anything I’ve wanted in a long time. You’re such a challenge for me.”

  Abra pushed her hands between them and found the zipper on his jeans. She worked his pants down his hips. “You like a challenge?”

  He grinned.

  Sliding her hands down the back of his underwear, she urged him against her, guiding him in a lurid dance of promised sex.

  “Say you need me. Say it. Three words.” He kissed her cheek, his tongue flicking hot and wet all the way to her earlobe. “I can say it.” He sucked at her skin and breathed heavy. “I need you. I need you. I need you. Say it.”

  Abra groaned. She tore at his underwear, relieving his body of them. His upper leg pressed into her pussy. “Oh God,” she whispered. “This can’t happen.”

  “Stop fighting me.” He kneaded her arms before his hands sought lower. Her skirt caught in his fingers and fell across her feet. “It felt good to be inside you yesterday. It felt right. But you have to let me do it.”

  His cock pressed into her abdomen. He wrestled her panties off. In a fluid movement, he lifted her and held her up, her back flush to the wall. The tip of his enormous phallus met her opening.

  “Say it.”

  She shook her head, their shared heat making it hard to resist his demand. Abra clung to his body and stared at the two paintings behind him. “You were an angel once,” she whispered. “What happened to you?”

  “You need me.”

  She arched her back and the head of his penis slipped inside. She moaned and embraced his waist with her legs, locking her ankles at the small of his back. Her sudden move forced him deeper.

  “Not like that!” He hissed.

  “I like it like that.”

  Valefar growled at her. “You won’t make a good pet.” He kissed her neck, his tongue laving across her skin. “You’re not obedient.”

  “And I never will be.” She thrust as much as she could, defying his desire to be in charge. If he didn’t have her pinned against the wall, she’d have forced him to the floor and ravished him there.

  He relented, gathering momentum and matching her rhythm. Her butt slapped against the wall. Her breasts jiggled between their bodies. The hot musk of sex filled the room. Abra reached back and braced her arms against the wall. She closed her eyes when his face contorted with passion. Her muscles tensed. She shook and cried out. Finally the orgasm ripped through her body, numbing her mind, flooding her senses with a wave of pressure released at last.

  She stopped straining against him.

  He knelt, his length buried in her. �
�I’m not done,” he whispered.

  Abra opened her eyes. She smirked. “Then it’s my turn to finish you.” She grasped his shoulders and shoved him down. He hit the rug and grimaced. He twisted and straightened his legs. Caught beneath her, his eyes shifting in color, he seemed helpless, not that she believed the illusion. A demon? Helpless? Impossible.

  Bearing down on his body, she reached with one hand and grasped the base of his erection, squeezing in time with her attack. She assaulted his body in slow, strong strokes burgeoning his lust to the brink.

  “It’s…not…supposed…to…be…like this.” He hissed and writhed, his eyes slipping shut. That luscious mouth tightened with ecstasy.

  Abra gave him no mercy and rode him until his voiced bliss and agony turned into hoarse gasps. When she stopped and stared down at him, some sort of superiority flooding her, she giggled.

  “Please.” He ran his palms along her thighs. “Say it, Abra. I don’t want to go back.” Tears welled in his eyes.

  The clocked ticked.

  He mouthed the word please once more.

  The clock struck one.

  Horns broke through his temples, twisted and black. His skin darkened. His eyes lost their whites, inking to the black pupiless ones in her painting. Red-orange flames glittered in their depths.

  Abra fought back her instinct to recoil. This was what she’d asked for, what she needed to see.

  He pulled his hands away from her, his nails curving into black claws. His mouth opened and snapped shut, the sharpened teeth within, too gory. He didn’t ask again. His time had ended for the day.

  The hot air that replaced his body whooshed into being. Just as his eyes blurred into nothing, Abra whispered, “I need you.”

  Too late.

  She sighed. Being alone had its rewards. There was no one to seek approval from, no one to anger, to make jealous. No one. It sounded so empty and final.

  Abra pushed her sweaty hair off her shoulders and closed her eyes. She wondered what she was getting herself into. A demon. Of all the men she’d ever met and had a good time with—and some of them weren’t the kind she’d have brought home to meet her parents—she had taken a liking to something not human.

  “Ironic,” she blurted and laughed at herself.

  She dressed and went to stare at the canvasses, seeing Val in both, although she had to admit, he was far more one than the other. “Can a demon rise after he has fallen?”

  She replaced the picture that had slipped off the wall and swept up the broken glass, careful to leave no shards behind. She no more wanted to give up who she was, the way she’d chosen to lead her life, than the demon tempted her to do so. Then again, maybe she could make room for a little laziness. Abra waited for tomorrow.

  Chapter Six

  At noon the following day, Val strode up the steps and across the porch. He didn’t knock, but let himself into the old house as if he belonged there. Abra was seated at the table with glasses of water already poured and waiting.

  “You’re sure about this—about me?” he asked, one eyebrow rising.

  “No. Nothing is ever a sure thing. That, I’m sure of.”

  He snorted out a half laugh and pulled out a chair. Scooting in, he eyed her. “And let’s say if I were to stay, what would we do here on this little farm of yours?” He waved one hand in the air, indicating everything around them. “Besides work, since it seems like that’s all you ever do when I’m not around.”

  Abra looked at the glass in front of him. A dribble of moisture snaked down the side, shiny and wet. “I suppose we’ll fuck like rabbits when we’re not working.”

  He grinned. “We? Working? I’m not that kind of demon, and you know it.”

  “I’m not so sure you’re all demon now.” She reached across the distance between them and pushed a lock of hair from his brow. His skin was so warm, his face, his body, tempting. But something was different about him, about the temperature in the room. The heat of midday had gone, and it was a cool November afternoon. Nothing felt stifling. She had her thoughts, her voice. The drive to have wild, bestial sex was still there, but muted.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” He leaned into her touch until she cupped his cheek. “Maybe I could do a little work around here, to pass the time.”

  She snorted out a laugh. “If you want to stay you’ll have to earn your keep.”

  He grinned and it was slightly sinister, although nothing like the thing in her painting. “I suppose it’s a bargain, although I think you’re getting the better end of the deal. A man to satisfy you at your whim when he’s not toiling on this Godforsaken flat piece of land. It could be worse.”

  “Could it?”

  Val nodded. He glanced around the kitchen and then back to Abra. “Yeah, much worse than this.” He nodded and his expression turned grim. “I’ve been in Hell a long time. In case I forget to tell you later on down the line, thanks for getting me a second chance.”

  Abra frowned. She hadn’t really thought of him as a prisoner. He’d seemed willing enough to do his job of tormenting her. “You’re welcome,” she said softly. “And thanks for making me be a little lazy. I guess everyone needs a break sometimes. Even a demon.”

  * * * *

  The art connoisseurs ambled around the wide show room, wine goblets in their hands and awe in their eyes. The canvas Abra stood by towered over all the smaller works, a vibrant melding of paint and pastel, darkness and light…good and evil. She gave the angel an appraising glance and wondered how many of those onlookers gathered around it really saw the demon within. It was tricky so see the subtle differences, the way the angel’s shadow went askew and showed a different shape bearing fangs and gnarled claws. There were other hints, slight things only those staring long enough might guess at. Life was like that. Good at first glance but capable of hiding more if one didn’t look close enough.

  After signing another autograph, she caught sight of her lover across the room. Val winked. He snatched a full goblet from a passing tray and drank it back as if it were the lemonade she’d offered that first day. It seemed so long ago, something of dreams since past and faded.

  He wore slacks and a black button-up shirt that showed off his tan and dark hair to perfection. His gait belied what he used to be and some part of what he still was. Courteous but impatient, he stopped at the edge of the crowd, one foot tapping.

  “Excuse me,” Abra muttered and hurried to his side.

  His hand fit perfectly in hers, firm and work-worn. Someone had to tend to the farm, to the fields of wheat and barley. She thought he liked it—the work, and she knew he enjoyed the lazy lovemaking thereafter. They wove through the crowd to be alone…with each other.

  The End

  About The Noonday Demon

  This novella was written to be included in a set of stories based on the seven cardinal sins, this story being inspired by accidie, better known as the noonday demon of laziness. Unfortunately, the other authors in our group either did not finish their tales or found homes for their stories on their own. A collection was not to be. Like many of my earlier works, it did not originally have a happy ending. Abra succumbed to the sin and the demon. In the rewriting of the tale, I sought balance between hard work and laziness, good and evil. I also hoped to give the demon a happily ever after.

  About the Author

  Anastasia Rabiyah writes erotic romance, paranormal erotic romance, and fantasy. She often crosses genres in order to follow her muses into the darkness where they seek out destiny in all its forms. She believes in fairies, demons, angels, magic, passion, chocolate, supportive friends, e-books and writing critique groups. Her deepest desire is to pursue her creative dreams and realize them. Every spare moment she devotes to writing for her haunting muses.

  Visit her online at:

  www.AnastasiaRabiyah.com

  PURPLE SWORD PUBLICATIONS LLC

  Romance and Speculative Fiction

  www.purplesword.com

 

  Anastasia Rabiyah, thenoondaydemon