Logan settled into the hot springs with a deep groan of contentment. His arms ached. His back ached. His butt felt mildly violated.

Beauty set their newly acquired items near the rest of their loot and moved to join him. The generous curves of her lavender body descended gracefully into the steaming water. She slipped in behind him and started massaging his tired shoulder muscles.

Their guest lay nearby, moaning and writhing on the moss. Even unconscious she seemed to still be in a highly aroused state, yet the noises she made seemed more pain than pleasure. In the silence of the cave, her voice echoed off the naked rock. The sound was more eerie than erotic.

“What is wrong with her?” he wondered out loud.

“She hungers. Need more venom.” Beauty nibbled into his ear. Judging by the feel of her soft breasts rubbing against his back and her hands beginning to roam across the front of his body, Beauty’s insatiable appetite was in no way discouraged by this strange scenario.

“Venom? What venom? The scorpion thing we saw out in the wastelands?”

The Succubus chuckled against the side of his neck as if he had said something funny. “Demon venom,” she murmured between kisses across his shoulder.

Logan felt a chill of foreboding. He pulled away from Beauty’s embrace and turned to face her. “Explain please.”

She heaved a great sigh of disappointment, a very human gesture, at the realization that the sexy time she was hoping for was not going to happen. Her golden, cat eyes looked back at him with a mixture of amusement and mild frustration. Beauty stared off into the middle distance, thinking on how to reply.

“Logan eat meat. Cook on fire, more good. Eat raw, less good.” Her face screwed up in a comical expression of disgust to emphasize the “less good” part. “Demons feed on souls. Eat raw, less good. Venom make more good.”

“Why?” he asked. “How?”

“More good.” She snapped her teeth in her normal gesture of frustration. He watched her struggle to find new words. “Souls hunger for sex feel good. No sex. Venom make yes sex. Like Beauty do to Logan. Like Logan do to Beauty.”

He struggled to make sense of what she was trying to say. “Do you mean orgasm? You know, the… uh… big feel good in sex?”

“Orgasm!” she nodded with excitement. “Souls orgasm no. Venom, souls orgasm yes. Eat more good.”

“Ok, wait a second.” Logan felt like his head was spinning but this seemed too important to dismiss out of hand. He thought back on the woman engaged in unbridled sex with the two Incubi, and how there was both desire and fear in her eyes right before it all went horribly wrong for her.

“Let me make sure I understand this. The souls of humans damned to Hell, and the demons that are native to this place, are all, for some stupid reason, obsessed with sexual pleasure. Demons like you have a venom that allows those souls to achieve some measure of sexual release that they cannot achieve on their own, to reach climax. And by doing so, that makes feeding on them more satisfying. It “cooks the meat” as you put it.”

“Yes,” the demon nodded.

The full consequences of what she was saying dawned on him and with it, the true nature of their relationship. Logan looked at Beauty, still sitting in the hot water, orange crystal light reflecting off of her wet, smooth skin and delicious curves. Demonic venom, to make feeding more pleasurable. As she had been doing to him, from the very first day they met. Suddenly, her obsession with always wanting to finish him off in her mouth made complete, terrible sense.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Demon venom is an aphrodisiac,” he said. “That’s what you are trying to say. So your kind can feed. On humans. On human orgasm.”

He touched his ear. Now that he was looking for it, he thought he could feel a slight tingle on his skin where her mouth had been nibbling at his lobe. “Bloody hell, that’s why I am so damned horny all the time. It's you. All this time, you have been pumping me full of your demon venom. Every kiss. Every sexual encounter. Drugging me to keep me compliant to your hunger.”

He could all but feel the pieces clicking into place in his brain. Logan bit each angry word as it slipped past his teeth. “Cooking the fucking meat.”

Logan clamped his teeth against a torrent of heated words rising in his throat and climbed out of the hot spring before he said something they would both regret. The cool air in the cave against his wet skin felt good. It helped clear his head and calm both his anger and his lust, though not entirely. Despite everything, and much to his own chagrin, his erection still waved around at full attention. His hands still itched to touch Beauty’s silky skin. Even now, despite his anger and discomfort, he wanted her, and he hated himself for it.

Beauty moved forward through the steaming water and reached for him.

Logan fell back from her. “Don’t,” he warned. “Just… back off.”

Her hand fell away, though her golden eyes never wavered from his face. Confusion and curiosity played across her features.

He stared back. She doesn’t understand. Once again, Logan was sharply reminded that Beauty, for all her charms, was not human. The anger he felt was a mystery to her. The concept of feeling used and manipulated was entirely alien to her way of thinking.

“I need… space,” he said. “To process all of this.”

Before she could reply, he turned away to get dressed. Water splashed behind him as Beauty climbed out. Logan ignored her and walked over to check on the condition of the woman and found her to be groggy but otherwise in no distress. By the time he looked up, Beauty and the only other hunting spear were gone.

The cavern was suddenly very quiet and utterly still. He walked over to settle around their modest campfire and began the tedious chore of starting a fire. AT least now they had a piece of flint looted from a dead demon, a luxury after a week of rubbing sticks together. Yet, it was still so much labor and effort just to cook the last of their meat before it spoiled.

It was tedious and frustrating work which suited his mood just fine. Everything about Hell was confusing, frustrating, or simply terrifying. He could trust nothing and no one.

Not even Beauty.

Now that the truth was out, it could not be ignored. Beauty had been manipulating him all along. From the very moment we met. Logan thought back to that first encounter, being hunted by her. Her teeth sinking into his shoulder.

Injecting venom into him. Played from the very start.

He felt sick. It cast everything in doubt, even his own choices and decisions. Was Logan anything more than just a convenient food source for her?

Not human. Demon. Hellspawn, he reminded himself yet again like a mantra, or a prayer. If Beauty did not understand human emotions, then how could she possibly understand the very human concept of loyalty? The beautiful Succubus was as much predator as any jungle cat and just as wild. How long before she turned those claws on him?

Another thought followed, one he had never allowed himself to fully consider before now. Beauty was a native of Hell, a demon, and a Succubus. Manipulating men through sex to feed on them and imperil their souls was, quite literally, precisely what she existed to do.

My God, he thought. What if this has all been an elaborate ploy? The naivete? Learning to talk? Has she been playing me for a fool along? The idea left a cold pit of dread in his gut.

It was a painful thing to admit. That alone was a clear warning sign that he had allowed himself to get too close and let his guard down around the beautiful and deadly demon. Logan knew better than to fall into such a trap. He had been trained to know better. It was a basic tenet of…

Of my training. A memory floated up from the gray fog in his mind.

I am on the side of a dirt road as a military truck drives away with the rest of my training squad. The cold air of a North Carolina winter wind bites at my face. Sixty-five pounds of gear weighs at my back and shoulders. In my hands is an M-16 rifle, the size and weight are accurate but it is only a rubber replica. I have a map, a compass, and three days to navigate my way through forest and backcountry to the designated coordinates. This is it. Pass or fail after almost two years of advanced training.

Lieutenant Proud Bear, he realized. Stationed out of Fort Bragg.

Logan sighed and stared at the flint in his hands and at the cold, dead fire pit. There should have been some sense of joy at discovering another memory but he felt only nausea and the heavy burden of his suspicions as a fragile trust died in silence.