“It’sabout time you woke up.”
The harassed-sounding, unfamiliar female voice had Liam jerking upright in his bed. Wait. Not his bed. Someone else’s bed. Where the fuck was he?
“Shower’s over there. I’ve got other appointments to get to. If you don’t hurry up, I’ll just leave you to it. I’ll be having words with Ayden for knocking you out. It’s thrown out my whole night.”
“Sorry that my kidnapping is such an inconvenience to you,” Liam muttered, glaring at the woman. “I don’t need a shower. I need you to tell me what the fuck’s going on and then to get out of … wherever the hell I am.”
“Not hell. You’re still on Earth, for now. You really do need a shower. There’s only one way a lust demon can knock someone out with their power, and it makes a mess of someone with your anatomy,” the woman said, waving vaguely in the direction of his lap.
Liam’s face flamed bright red as he processed what she was saying and the sticky mess in the lace panties he’d worn out to the bar. He’d been knocked out with anorgasm? That should not be so hot. Not at all. Even if he had kinda begged for it.
“Did you saylust demon?!”
“Yeah. Ayden’s an incubus. Would’ve thought the arousal that follows him everywhere he goes would’ve clued you in.”
“Right. Because I come acrossdemonsso often in my everyday life that I can definitely name them all. I should probably have the Latin genus and species down by this point.”
“Incubus is already Latin. It means a nightmare induced by a demon. Probably because knocking people out with orgasms was their best form of defence, but the name originally implied somnophiliac practices at best and more sinister connotations at worst. Not really fair to them, of course. They can’t help their nature, and they’re no more or less likely to enjoy somnophilia than the next person.”
Liam stared blankly at the woman whose name he still didn’t even know, in the corner of the room he still didn’t know the location of, trying to parse that weird-as-fuck, encyclopaedic info dump. “Somnophilia? What?”
“Sex with someone who’s asleep, dear. You should really go shower.”
“Did that guy have sex with me while I was unconscious?” He didn’t think so. He felt far too empty and not nearly delightfully sore enough for that.
“No! Of course not. He may be a pain in the ass, but he would never do that without consent.”
“Right. I’m just gonna—” Liam gestured toward the ensuite bathroom, waiting until the woman got the hint and left the room before throwing the covers off and heading to the shower.
The whole time he was getting clean, he couldn’t stop thinking about somnophilia. Waking up to someone already taking their pleasure from your body sounded fucking hot. He really didn’t need to add another kink to his collection when he had no idea where he was or what they were going to do with him.
When he emerged a short time later, the woman was sitting, working at a dining table. There was a nice-looking kitchen to her right and a comfy couch and TV set up just in front of him. Judging by the single other door off the room, they were in a small one-bedroom apartment. But a way nicer one than the studio he’d been living in.
“Right,” the woman said, looking up as she pushed a folder toward the side of the table with a spare chair. “This is all the information you need. The Council is covering the cost of your accommodation for the first six months, of course. They’ve set you up with a job at Monster Mercenaries. You start on Monday, 8am. Don’t be late. You’ve got a new bank account and phone. It won’t be able to call any numbers outside the city, so don’t even try. I stocked the fridge for you while you were out, but if you need anything, there is a nominal start-up payment in your account, and the map on page six will show you where the nearest stores are. Given how rare humans are in Sanctum City, I’d advise you to be very careful with any social interactions. There’s a summary of the key species and their characteristics on pages 7 through 12 to help with your integration, but it’s best not to take any chances. Plenty of the residents rely on humans as either food, energy source, or preferred plaything, so unless that’s what you’re after, it’s best to act with caution. If yourun into any trouble, the number programmed into your phone as SOS will take you to a Supernatural Council operative who should be able to help. Any questions?”
Liam dropped into the chair with a thump, staring at the cover of the folder as his mind spun. “Yeah. What the fuck is happening right now?”
The woman huffed with impatience. “You’re part of the 0.7 percent of the human population resistant to mind manipulation by my kind. In order to prevent the disclosure of the existence of supernatural species to the general population, you have been relocated to a supernatural city. The Council provides re-establishment support in these cases in recognition of the change in circumstances.”
“The change in circumstances?! Your councilkidnappedme.”
“Yes, for the safety of the supernatural populations of Earth, you will not be permitted to live outside council-sanctioned areas for the duration of your natural life.”
“What about my family?”
“Visits may be possible in future with a permit, but that’s unlikely to be granted for the first few years. They’ve already been attended to by a vampire to ensure they recall regular contact from you. Luckily, they do not appear to have the same resistance that you do. Memory adjustment will be refreshed once a year to ensure they don’t suffer any distress.”
“What aboutmydistress?”
The woman shrugged, placed a phone, a bank card, and keys on the table, and then disappeared from the room in a blur ofmotion. The soft click of the latch left Liam to stare in complete amazement at the front door she’d just booked it through.
What. The. Fuck?
When he finally managed to drag his attention back to the table in front of him, Liam checked the phone to find it was midday on Saturday. A series of reminders appeared to be pre-programmed, including an alarm for Monday morning to ensure he didn’t miss his first day at the job he didn’t ask for. A job at ‘Monster Mercenaries’, which wasn’t ominousat all.
A quick flick through the folder revealed it was part tourist guide, part encyclopaedia. The encyclopaedia section left a lot to be desired, though. The introduction raised more questions than it answered:
For ease of integration, we have sorted the species into ‘human-passing’ and ‘primary citizen’ because Sanctum City primarily exists for those who cannot travel openly in their species form in the human world. The reader should note that various glamours can be used to make a primary citizen appear human, although these are seldom used within the city limits. You may come across the colloquial collective term of ‘monster’ for species that cannot pass as human, generally used in jest. The reader should note that this slang has arisen from recent amusing trends in human romance fiction, especially from species that mate or play with humans as a preference. Engage at your own risk.