Contractual Obligations

A tremor of anticipation runs between Arsa's shoulder blades. The summoning is nigh she just knows it. Nailed fingers scrape through her thick, short purple hair, dragging it away from the stubs of the nascent horns above her forehead. She runs her tongue out, moistening her pale lips, shakes her head and shifts her hips, applies a bit of heft to her sporty breasts, and puts on her best game face. This is it. This is what she's waited for. She's finally going to do it.

The call pulls her across the void, her first appearance in the human plane announced by an acrid burst of purple smoke and a peal of thunder. Told to expect something the candle-lit den of someone's slumber party or maybe a ring of stones in some wooded copse, Arsa is surprised to find herself in what looks like... a corner office?

No matter! Though the dim fluorescent lights sting her eyes, Arsa does not hesitate. Setting her feet against the floor, she exclaims, "Rue the day of this ritual, human, for—"

Before she can finish, a manicured hand wraps around her cheeks. Firm fingers drag her face to face with a tall woman with dark brown skin and dyed blond hair shaved into short, tight Mohawk of curls.

Expecting easier prey for her first summoning, Arsa instead finds herself face to face with this statuesque woman in a power suit—tightly cut jacket almost bursting against the swell of her breasts, densely constructed white button-down left partially open to show just the right hint of cleavage, and constrictive pencil skirt providing a natural visual taper down to her thick legs ending in expensive, unwieldy high heels. The woman turns Arsa's head from side to side and purses her violet-painted lips. "A Skint." Her baritone voice is clear and exact, dense and deliberate. "Horns haven't come in, so you're still young—a hundred, maybe?" She reaches for something; metal glints in the dim light of the stuffy office. "Hold still."

Arsa struggles her lips against the inadvertent goldfish pout her captor's fingernails have squeezed them into. "Now just wait a minute—ow!" The sudden pain has Arsa flailing her arms on instinct. Breaking free, she retreats a defensive step, holding her hand against her neck to staunch the blood from her newfound cut. "What the shit!"

The woman lifts a scrap of parchment from the mahogany desk beside her and wraps it around the box cutter she holds. As she draws it across the blade the ragged, age-yellowed skin quickly blots to maroon as it absorbs the peculiar color of Arsa's blood. Grace's eyes flit towards Arsa's crotch. "I thought Skint's tails were on their backsides."

Arsa's tapered tail flicks quizzically in the air behind her. She lifts her arms and tilts her hips, cocking a searching gaze back at her rump. "What?" She asks. "It's right where it's always been..."

Suddenly self-conscious, Arsa sweeps both hands in front of her small, flaccid cock.

The woman's lips quirk into a curious smile. "A bit small for proper use, isn't it?"

Arsa's eyes light in the dark room, her felid pupils soaring with amethyst energy. "Listen, lady—"

"Grace Gallant," the woman corrects, extending a lithe, powerful hand. "Esquire. I'm a lawyer."

"Whatever!" Still using her hands to mask her crotch—it's not her fault the growth fairy apparently decided to skip her—Arsa hunches her shoulders and spools up the power deep within herself, beginning the internal invocation that will burn Grace Gallant, Esquire to a rotten smear on the carpet. Can't steal a charcoal briquette's soul, but oh well. Skints are a proud sort of demon; even the young ones don't suffer these sorts of slights lightly. "Doctor, lawyer, fucking veterinarian, I don't care!"

"Ah, ah, ah." Without a hint of concern for her imminent demise, Grace Gallant (Esquire) lifts a single, long finger and tsk-tsks it in front of Arsa's face before pointing to a corner of the room. "I wouldn't if I were you."

Taken off guard, Arsa blinks. Craning her neck this way, she observes the cylindrical masses, glowing the cerulean blue of larval energy, set into each corner of the room at about head height, between the gaps in the bookshelves that line two walls, and the equally impressive floor-to-ceiling windows with their perfect view of the twinkling cityscape at midnight.

"Do you know what those are?" Grace asks.

The all-encompassing hellfire flickers uncertainly in Arsa's eyes. Chipping her toenail ruefully against the caked goat's blood of the summoning circle, Arsa answers like she's just had had her nose rubbed in something. "Thronic Dispersers..."

The tall woman's subtly confident smile grows. "Then we're on the same page."

"Sure," Arsa says. "If 'the same page' is 'your head will explode if you try any of that funny demon bullshit in this sanctified room.' So fine, you got me. What do you want?" She squints against the pain of her wounded neck. "And what's with the blood?"

Raising one expertly tweezed eyebrow, Grace smiles. "Oh you are a young one. One hundred, was it?"

Arsa grits the inside of her lip against her budding fangs. She resists the urge to cover herself again—though only just. "One hundred and seventeen..."

"I'll make a note of that." Grace lifts the blood-stained parchment between two long fingers. "This blood," she says, "makes you an official asset of Harris, Harris, and Clay."

"What the—" Forgetting, for a moment, her nudity and vulnerability, Arsa balls her fists against her sides. "Lady, stop this ride before I throw you off it."

Grace turns to the dense mahogany desk behind her. Bending over in a way that positively compresses her ass beneath that tight skirt, Grace opens a leather-bound catalog and flips precisely through its stiff pages, stopping on an empty space. "You're a Skint, age one hundred and seventeen. Name?" She asks.

"Huh?" The Skint blinks. "A-arsa."

"Aarsa," Grace repeats.

Arsa, perhaps forgetting the imminence of her situation, stands on tiptoes behind Grace, watching over her shoulder as the lawyer picks up a pen and begins to write. "What?" She says. "No, 'Arsa.' One 'a.'"

Grace emits a measured sigh. "Please be more precise."

"Please fuck off!" Says Arsa, unused to being chided by humans. "Why am I even tolerating this? You think those stupid wards can stop me, you rank—"

In a smooth, lupine motion Grace turns and wraps her fingers around Arsa's neck. "Excuse me?"

Goosebumps break across Arsa's skin, the grind of Grace's palm into the shallow cut forces her heels against the ground before she's even had the idea to pounce. Grimacing, she digs purple crescents into the back of Grace's hand with her sharp nails. Grace's lips set into a firm line, her chestnut eyes cloudy with intent. She speaks almost in a hiss. "You figured you'd get summoned by some drunk college kids or a pot head Wiccan who accidentally burnt the wrong herbs. You thought you were going to eat some simple-minded souls and be home in time for dinner. Sorry to tell you honey, but the shoe's on the other foot now."

"S-screw you." Arsa's sharp nails score against Grace's hand, spilling blood as she scrambles for some modicum of control, but the woman doesn't even flinch.

Instead, Grace darts her eyes downwards, just for an instant. Looking back to her captive, her lips quirk up into a smile. "Aptly put."

A clench runs through Arsa's shoulders, the color washes away from her face when, her attention directed to it, she feels the soft bob of her inexplicably erect cock...

Oh what the fuck, why now?

Those cheeks are pale only for an instant. Her face blooming with tender color, the Skint darts her eyes this way and that, taking in the tall bookcases, the posh fixtures basking the room in a soft white light, the comfortable-looking black leather armchairs on either side of the summoning circle—anything but the baleful, voracious gaze of her captor. Grace seems to grit her teeth as firmly as her fingers clench on Arsa's neck, but she says nothing further, simply waiting.

Unable to bear the silence any longer, Arsa drags down a painful swallow. "Just because it's... T-that doesn't mean anything."

"You don't have to explain it to me, dear." Grace's fingers slack. She lifts her hand to stroke through Arsa's iridescent hair, smoothing it away from where it's scattered across the stubs of her horns. "You look hungry."

Arsa's toes curl against the hardwood floor beneath her. She shakes her head. "I'm not."

Grace's hand meanders downward, around the curve of Arsa's ear, drawing out a cautious flinch with tickling fingers. "How many souls have you stolen, hm?"

"Plenty."

Grace's hand drifts further, her palm embracing Arsa's cheek, and lightly turning her head. "How many?"

A spicy scent clogs Arsa's brain, the smell of human arousal filtering through the air, sparking a predacious response that crinkles her nipples into an unfortunate hardness. "I said plenty—" Nonplussed, Grace pinches her fingers around Arsa's earlobe, drawing a yelp from the Skint. "Ow, fine! None. Is that what you want to hear? None!"

Then, she's free. The sudden motion leaving her reeling, Arsa stumbles backwards a step or two while Grace belts out a husky laugh. "A virgin Skint? For once, I'm suddenly not pissed about pulling overtime on a Friday."

Arsa's hands clench so hard her nails dig furrows into her palms. "I am not a virgin!"

With the hard clip of heels against the floor, Grace closes the short distance between them. "In this plane you certainly are." Arsa raises her arms, priming herself to fight, only to have Grace dart a hand past her defenses, squeezing down finger and thumb around one of her painfully stiff nipples, forcing Arsa to step forward, and into her, to relieve the pressure. Towering over Arsa in the closeness, Grace speaks quickly, fluidly. "How did you think it would go? Did they tell you it'd be easy? Did they tell you'd grab some wanton slut, bend her over her Martha Stewart coffee table—"

Arsa's scrabbles her nails into the rigidly constructed material of Grace's blazer.

"—feast on her eager, needy essence—"

Arsa groans in pain. Hellfire sparks in her eyes—fuck the wards.

The pad of her thumb still working its painful pressure against that throbbing nipple, Grace snares her free hand around the nape of Arsa's neck, using the trailing, wispy bits of her hair to arch the demon's head upwards and expose her lips. "—well, sorry to disappoint you. It's a dog eat dog world out there, little Skint."

But it's not just pain that makes Arsa groan. Trying to shunt away the heat building between her legs, Arsa emits an unconvincing growl. "You better—"

The glossy substance of Grace's lipstick smears against pale lips as Arsa's mouth opens to accept her tongue. A tentative shiver shoots down the demon's back. Grace's hand at the base of her neck guides her backwards, almost dipping her, as the tall woman deepens the kiss, thirstily roaming over and past Arsa's fangs, searching for the retreating mass of Arsa's cowardly tongue. And, finding it, Grace works against it in a spiral, urging a cautious blush into Arsa's cheeks. The Skint, beside herself, finds her legs have gone to shaking, and grips her fingers around Grace's elbow for support.

She moans.

Grace relents. Brows lowered deeply over her smoky eyes, she asks, "Are you going to be a good girl, Arsa?"

Arsa, trembling, lost somewhere between passion and rage, can do nothing but nod.

"Good." Grace folds her arms around the smaller girl, just for a moment, "To tell the truth, this summoning comes as a surprise to us both—I expected a wage demon, something simple, half-intelligent. Never in my life did I figure I'd summon a Skint, let alone a virgin Skint."

Arsa coughs, averting her eyes. "Can you stop saying that? It's embarrassing."

Grace's hand wraps laces through the slicked-back ends of Arsa's hair, slowly encouraging the Skint to meet her eye to eye. "Embarassing?" She asks. "It's perfect. Harris, Harris, and Clay—you've heard of us?"

Arsa's lips purse from side to side. The bridge of her nose seems to tingle. "How the hell would I?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised." Grace chuckles as her fingers slip affectionately through Arsa's hair, trussing it behind the Skint's ears. "Aside from the usual mergers, acquisitions, what have you, our firm specializes in molding appealing young prospects, such as yourself, into all they can be."

Arsa laughs, seeking to maintain her composure even as Grace's searching fingers send a quiet thrill up and down her spine. "What the heck do I need some lawyer's help for? I was born to do this."

Grace offers a calculated smile. "And yet, you never have."

"So?"

"So," Grace says. "We'll offer you opportunities for better meals than hapless college students, we'll put you up in the best suites money can buy while you do it, and what's more—" Her lips press out each and every word with a delibrate pop. "—we'll train you to have them begging for it."

Arsa wrinkles her nose. "And what do you get out of it?"

"We skim a little of your takings off the top. You think Skints are the only things that feed off that sort of energy? We're not some namby-pamby non-profit, Arsa. Occult practice is a growth industry, and Harris, Harris, and Clay is where sharks learn how to be bigger, hungrier sharks." Tracing her fingers around the curves of Arsa's ears, Grace draws a causal shudder from the Skint. "And you're not going be just any shark, Arsa, you're going to be Grace Gallant's shark. What do you say?"

Arsa's eyes flit back and forth across the dimly lit room. "Why should I believe any of this?"

"Well I wouldn't be much of a lawyer if I didn't honor a contract." Grace divulges an umbral chuckle. "Which loops us back to the beginning: I know how your kind seals their deals."

The lump in Arsa's throat grows to the size of a softball, she hesitates.

Fingers trace agonizing lines of touch across the Skint's soft cheeks. "Clock's ticking," Grace says. "Am I sending you back across the void or are you going to finish what I started when I took your blood?"

Arsa draws a hard wash of air through her nose, shuffles her shoulders, and stands up as tall as she's able. "I'm going to fuck you."

"Yes," Grace says. "You are." Her strong touch folds down Arsa's scalp, across the back of her neck—conscientuously skirting the perimeter of the tender cut—and rests atop her shoulders to apply a slight downward pressure, a gentle suggestion. "Time to get on your knees, honey."

Though she's hesitant to remove herself from Grace's embrace, an instatenous spark of indignation forces Arsa to wiggle free. "Excuse me?" She asks.

Grace spares her not a moment. Stepping precisely backwards, she extends a hand and blindly searches for the desk behind her. When she finds it she stops, stands up straight, and begins the arduous process of drawing her absurdly tight skirt up to her waist. "I said..." Her hips shift this way and that, gaining an inch here, an inch there, exposing bit by bit, her robust, sculpted thighs to Arsa's rapacious look. "On your knees."

Arsa sets her hands against her hips, standing proud, despite the tenuous circumstance and the treacherous erection so pointedly blaring her true feelings to the room. "I don't know what you think is going to happen, but Arsa, Seven Hundred and Sixth of her line, does not... does not—"

"Does not... what?" Grace settles her taut rear against the desk, letting her legs fall askew at the knees to exposing her clean, cotton panties. "Eat pussy?"

"A-absolutely not!"

"Well..." Grace's palm slides against her toned thigh. "Arsa, Seven Hundred and Sixth of her line, is allowed to say no, but..." Her eyes indicate the folio beside her, and the parchment of Arsa's captured blood. "I thought I was talking to a shark; sharks live to eat, don't they?"

Arsa swallows but holds steady, even as watching Grace's slowly roving hand sends sharp tingles through her nipples and down the back of her neck.

Grace's hand stops against the crux of her leg, wide thumb framing her panties, so vibrantly white. "You're hungry."

Arsa shakes her head, breath coming faster. Her tail lashes behind her in anxious whips, calling attention to the pent-up need she can no longer ignore.

"You came here to eat." Arsa struggles to ignore the furious desire ricocheting around her core. Grace cants her chin downwards, eyes smoldering with a different sort of hellfire. She arches her foot, tap-tapping her heel against the floor. "So eat, already."

And Arsa kneels.

Grace pinches delicately around one of Arsa's stubby little horns. It's only a playful pull she applies to it, just the suggestion of movement; it's Arsa's greedy, vicious longing that drags her, hands and knees, across the short distance between them.

With careful touch against the back of her head, Grace guides Arsa's nose to the curve of her hips where, moments ago, her hand had so precisely lain. The core of Arsa's being fluxes with an inward retch, unable to suppress the tremble that builds within her.

"There, there." Coddling the Skint, Grace's fingers guide her position in slow motion, urging Arsa's lips to find the crease of her thigh. "Is this your first time, being so close to a human?"

Stifling a winsome, passionate sound before it spills out of her throat, Arsa nods, the motion subtly swiping her nose against skin, plush and warm above the dense layer of muscle beneath.

"Take a deep breath..."

Arsa's eyes cloud with unbidden wetness as she inhales her captor's scent. The air seems filled with Grace's delicate perfume, but that mundane aroma is nothing beneath the piquant tinge of her human arousal, smelling to the demon's nose like coriander and cinnamon.

Ever patient, Grace's fingers sift through Arsa's hair, stymying the heave of her demonic instincts that still weakly thrash against this submission despite her need. Almost cooing, Grace ushers Arsa to look at her panties, damp with evident ardor. When, quietly, she says, "Take them down..." Arsa lifts trembling fingers to obey, only to find herself dissuaded.

"With your teeth," Grace says.

Arsa's fangs scrape across bare skin, once, then twice, before she hooks them into the elastic band of Grace's underthings. She tugs them ineffectually, a useless moan echoing in the room.

Grace's palm rests against the space between Arsa's shoulder blades. "Carefully," she says, lifting herself off the desk to assist Arsa's effort, her thighs mildly clenching around the Skint's ears. "Slowly."

Her tongue flexes against the strange texture of cotton. With painful effort, Arsa tightens the muscles of her neck, applying all her concentration to dragging those panties free of the rise of Grace's ass. Sweat beads across her forehead, her brow ceases deeper and deeper and finally, finally, she tugs them all the way down.

Arsa's breath leaves her in quiet pants. Her eyes search through the deep bank of Grace's curly, onyx pubic hair, trailing down to shaven, crinkled lips of an even deeper shade than her unthinkably dark skin. Arsa observes her prey, the rich pink flesh of Grace's center only barely shown behind her labia—lightly spread as if in quiet yearning, flecked with modest dampness waiting to smeared, tasted, and touched. With a languorous motion, Grace steps a foot free of her panties, leaving them snagged around her other ankle, so she can cock her knees outward, heels grinding against the floor.

"Kiss me," says.

Arsa no longer needs the encouragement of Grace's fingers. Her mouth embraces Grace in a sloppy, impatient clasp. She sucks down like she would against a candy, finding Grace's lips tender and soft, without a hint of stubble. Arsa's lips part, her tongue spearing out to clear away the salty tinge from those delicate folds. Eagerly, she searches for every brief taste of the day's sweat that's collected upon Grace's body. The scrape of Grace's nails drag passionate furrows into Arsa's scalp; she moans.