Chapter 3: The Binding
A faint, pinkish light pulsed from Demona’s neck, illuminating the sweat-sheened hollow of her throat. It was coming from the collar—a sleek, obsidian band now etched with glowing, intricate runes that hadn’t been there a moment before. She reached for it, her long fingers trembling, not with rage but with a kind of delirious shock.
A whimper escaped her, high and uncharacteristically soft. It wasn’t a sound of pain. It was the sound of tectonic plates shifting inside her, of an ancient, fundamental law clicking into place deep within her marrow. The voracious hunger that defined her existence hadn’t vanished. It had been… redirected. Sharpened to a single, blinding point. Him.
Harry, oblivious, had already leaned over to snag his buzzing phone from the nightstand. He squinted at the screen. “Mrs. Henderson wants to know if we got the new graphic novel shipment in yet. I told her Thursday.” He sighed, a mundane human sound that somehow felt louder than her centuries of dramatic entrances.
Then he felt the pressure on his leg.
Demona had slid off the bed, landing on her knees with a soft thud on the stained carpet. She was clinging to his calf, her cheek pressed against his skin. Her other hand was busy, gently, insistently cleaning him with a tenderness that was utterly alien to her. Her obscenely full lips were parted, a thin string of saliva connecting her to his thigh. She looked up.
The change was total. The arrogant, calculating gleam in her violet eyes was gone, replaced by a luminous, adoring vacancy. A gigantic, beatific grin stretched her lips.
“Please, Master,” she breathed, her voice a husky, worshipful coo. “How can I help you?”
Harry froze, phone in hand. He stared down at her. He stared at the glowing collar. “Uh,” he said. He carefully pried her hand from his leg. “Okay. What… what is that? Is this some kind of… weird cosplay thing?”
Demona nuzzled against his knee, her body writhing in a slow, undulating motion against his leg. The explanation tumbled out between little pants and sighs. “Ancient law… of the abyssal courts… mmph… a succubus fully conquered… by a mortal’s… essence… is bound! To serve! To cherish!” She punctuated each phrase with a small, eager hump against his calf. “You didn’t just… fill me, Master Harry. You overwrote me. The hunger… it’s all for you now. Only you. To serve your needs, to bask in your presence, to… to please you.”
She said it all with the radiant joy of someone explaining they’d won the lottery. There was no resentment, no shadow of her former self. Just pure, unadulterated, horny sunshine.
Harry slowly lowered his phone. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Conquered,” he repeated flatly. “Right. Because of the… the six times?”
“Yes!” she beamed, as if he’d solved a complex theorem. Her hands slid up his thighs, worshipping. “Your stamina! Your… generous offerings! My body has been recalibrated. I am yours.” She rested her chin on his knee, looking up with utter devotion. “Do you need a sandwich? I can learn to make a sandwich. Do you need your back rubbed? I have centuries of technique. Do you need to use my throat again? Please say you need to use my throat.”
Harry blinked. The scent of sex and stale pizza was now mixed with the faint, metallic scent of ozone from her magic. The flickering lamp cast jumping shadows over his anime posters, making the wide-eyed heroines seem to watch the scene with shared incredulity.
“I need you to not call me ‘Master,’” he said, his voice tired. “My name is Harry. Just Harry. I work at the library. I don’t have… servants.”
Demona’s face fell for a microsecond, then brightened even further, as if he’d issued a delightful challenge. “Of course! Harry. My Harry. My world. My sun and stars.” She said the words with devastating sincerity, snuggling back against his leg. “Then… how may this unworthy one help Harry?”
He looked at her, this ancient, terrifyingly proportioned entity from the depths of some hellish dimension, now on her knees on his cheap carpet, glowing with submission and desperate to make him a sandwich. He thought of his tiny apartment, his dead-end job, his mostly-empty fridge. He thought of the mountain of late returns he had to process tomorrow.
A profound, weary acceptance settled over him. This was his life now. Weirder than any anime.
“Okay, first,” he said, gently extricating his leg from her grasp. “You need to put some clothes on. Or a towel. Something. Second, the… the glow has to stop. It’s going to bother the neighbors.”
Demona sprang to her feet with preternatural grace, the movement making everything jiggle alarmingly. “Yes! Clothing! I shall fashion a garment from the shadows themselves to please you!” She held out a hand, concentration twisting her face.
Nothing happened. The collar flickered.
She looked at her hand, confused. “My power… it feels… fuzzy. Full of you.” She didn’t seem upset. She seemed delighted by this, too. She spotted his discarded hoodie on the floor and snatched it up, pulling it on. It was comically small, straining over her bust, the hem barely reaching her navel.
“This!” she announced, striking a pose. “This is a holy vestment!”
Harry just sighed, a long, slow exhale. “It’s a hoodie from a convention three years ago.” He stood up, his body aching in ordinary ways. “Look, Demona. I have to go to work in, like, seven hours. I need to sleep. You can’t stay here humping my leg all night.”
Her lower lip trembled, a gesture so absurdly out of place it was almost frightening. “But… where should this one go? My purpose is here. My orbit is you.” The glowing collar’s pulse seemed to sync with her pleading tone.
Harry ran a hand through his hair. He pointed to the ragged sofa, buried under stacks of comic books. “You can sleep there. Just sleep. No… orbiting.”
Demona’s grin returned, incandescent. “The sofa! A throne bestowed by my Harry! I shall guard your rest with my very being!” She practically skipped to the couch, sweeping the comics to the floor with a reverent sweep of her arm. She curled up on the stained cushions, pulling the hoodie’s too-small fabric around her, watching him with the unwavering focus of a devoted hound.
Harry turned off the flickering lamp, plunging the room into the soft, electric blue glow of his computer’s standby light and the persistent, pink pulse from Demona’s neck. He collapsed into his own lumpy bed, the sheets still damp and smelling of her and him and spent magic.
Silence stretched, thin and strange.
“Harry?” her voice floated from the dark, sweet and hopeful.
“What, Demona?”
“Do you think… tomorrow… you might conquer me again?”
Harry squeezed his eyes shut beneath his glasses. "Go to sleep, Demona."
Silence settled again, thicker this time. He heard the rustle of fabric on the couch, a sharp inhale, then a shaky exhale. A minute passed. Then another rustle, more pronounced. A soft, frustrated whine cut through the dark.
"Harry?"
He didn't answer.
"I cannot." Her voice was a pained whisper, devoid of its earlier sunniness. "The distance... it itches. Inside my skull. The bond is fresh. It screams at me that I am failing my purpose."
"You're fine," he mumbled into his pillow. "The sofa is five feet away."
"It may as well be a chasm!" she burst out, and he heard the springs of the couch groan in protest as she shifted. Her tone shifted to pleading. "Please. The sofa is cold. It smells of dust and old paper, not of you. My thoughts are... scattered. I feel unmoored."
Harry opened his eyes, staring at the faint, glowing outline of a poster on his ceiling. He was so tired. His back ached. "Demona, no. We are not cuddling."
"Not cuddling!" she insisted, the couch creaking as she surely sat up. "Guarding. I will be a silent sentinel. A warm... barrier. Against the night." She was trying to sound formal, but a desperate need thrummed beneath her words. "The collar, Harry. It aches with this separation. A dull, psychic throb. I fear I may... vibrate apart."
He knew it was a terrible idea. A catastrophic, boundary-destroying idea. He also knew, with a sinking certainty, that she would keep talking. All night. Her whimpering was worse than her boasting. It tugged at something in his chest, something annoyingly responsible.
"Ugh. Fine," he groaned, the word dragged from the depths of his exhaustion. "But you stay on your side. No orbiting. No... reconquering. Just sleep."
The speed with which she crossed the room was a blur in the dark. The mattress dipped violently, a tsunami of warmth and soft, perfumed flesh washing over him. Before he could protest or define a "side," she had molded herself against his back.
One heavy, impossibly soft arm draped over his waist. Her front pressed flush against him, her pillowy breasts compressing against his spine, her thick thighs bracketing his hips. Her face nuzzled into the nape of his neck with a contented sigh that vibrated through his bones.
"See?" she whispered, her breath hot on his skin. "Silent sentinel."
He was buried. Smothered. Ensnared in a cocoon of succubus. The hoodie had ridden up, and the bare, generous swell of her ass was settled firmly against his groin. He stiffened, intending to shove her away.
But the sheer, weighted warmth of her was… profound. It seeped into his sore muscles. The scent of her, now mixed with his own cheap laundry detergent from the hoodie, was strangely calming. It was like being hugged by a living, breathing, absurdly proportioned weighted blanket.
His protest died in his throat. This was objectively insane. Yet, his body, traitorously, began to relax. The constant, low-grade anxiety of his life—Mrs. Henderson, the late returns, the rent—faded under the immediate, overwhelming physical reality of Demona.
"Cozy," he muttered, the word escaping before he could stop it.
He felt her smile against his neck. "Yes, my Harry. Cozy." Her arm tightened, just a fraction, possessive and pleased.
Sleep pulled at him swiftly, a dark tide rising over the bizarre shoreline of his new reality. The last thing he registered was the slow, steady pulse of the collar’s light against his back and the deep, satisfied rhythm of her breathing syncing with his own.