Demon by Kristina Douglas

him up to me and kissed him with the fullness of my heart, and he moved my legs apart, and I was wet and hot and ready, wanting him, needing him.
    And then he rolled me over so that I was above him, straddling him, and I took him, sinking down onto the hard thick delight of him, making soft little sounds of hushed pleasure as he filled me. This was what I had spent eternity searching for. This was what made me whole. This man. And the climax shook me, startled me out of the deepest layers of sleep, and I knew I was alone and always had been.
    I tried to move against the smooth, soft sheets, but I was trapped beneath a weight of sleep. I couldn’t reach out to him—he wasn’t there. All I could do was lie there and feel the tears burn and evaporate in my dry eyes.
    “Lilith,” he whispered against my ear, but I ignored him, even though I wanted to turn and pull him to me. “Lilith.”
    And with the sound of my name in my ear, I sank deeper into a dreamless sleep.

    W HEN I AWOKE, A FAINT light was coming through the drab curtains, and I could hear the noise of cars outside. There were too few of them to even call them traffic, but the muted sounds of motors were unmistakable. I was still in the Dark City. I was still Rachel.
    My crazy dreams were only to be expected. He’d kissed me. I could still feel the heat and pressure of his mouth, taste him. It felt as if I’d somehow taken part of him inside me and there was no way to get rid of him.
    The night, his words, were a jumble in my head. A test, he’d said? His harsh kiss had made no more sense than his words—he hated me, he wanted me dead. Why in God’s name had he kissed me?
    And then I remembered the feel of his erection, hard against my stomach. I knew there had to be some other meaning. Maybe he’d simply needed sex and was responding to the only female in the house. Maybe he’d managed to convince himself that I was some kind of sex goddess, though that would have taken quite a stretch of his imagination. I could remember his long fingers on my breasts, teasing the nipples into fierce arousal. A sex goddess didn’t wear 34B.
    I had dreamed about her. Dreamed about the demon goddess who inspired fear and hatred among men. I had known her in my dreams, a lost woman of strength and anger, a mother and a lover and a goddess and a … was she a whore? Or was that simply part of the lies men told?
    The lies that Azazel believed. But then, he was a man, wasn’t he? For all that he said he wasn’t human. He had a dick, one that got hard. He was a man, with all men’s frailties and lies.
    The dream was fading now, like mist in bright sunlight, burned away, and I couldn’t recapture it. It seemed to be what passed for late afternoon here, and the room was filled with shadows. I sat up and turned on the bedside lamp, but the shadows and gloom remained despite the glow of the light. I looked down at my body, just to reassure myself that I was still in living color, and I froze. I was wearing a stark white Victorian nightgown, all eyelet and ruffles, buttoned primly up to the neck. Those hands had been no dream, and I skittered up to the top of the bed, wrapping my arms around myself protectively, as if I could belatedly keep his hands away.
    Azazel had come into this room and stripped the clothes off me, dressed me in this absurd thing, and put me in the bed. I didn’t imagine for a moment that anyone else had come in toperform these services. He wouldn’t care that stripping me would be humiliating. Then again, why should he care whether I slept on the floor or in the bed? He would be happier throwing me in a dungeon.
    He believed I was Lilith. And he said Beloch had sent us back so Azazel could prove he could resist me, and then he’d said I was irresistible. Clearly that wasn’t true. He’d kissed me, kissed me more deeply than I’d ever been kissed before, and then shoved me away, even with the proof of his body pressed against mine. He could have had