Incubus Dreams--chapter 42-43+ ARTWORK HO!

Got the edits for Dragon Breath back today, will spend most of tomorrow going through it and cleaning up.

I've just realized I have a crippling fear of feedback. This is not a good thing.

Oh yeah. Cover art for Dragon's Breath. I've been sitting on this for a week. Here ya'll go:

Yeah, so where were we on this stupid book?

 ...Anita and Graham are still snuggling together in public, because Anita didn't have the forethought to wear pants to her october night-job.

I still have no sympathy. Anyhoo, they switch off with Requiem who starts snuggling because fuck if I know. Do Anitaverse vamps have a decent body temp?

Hey, we haven't had anything particularly rapey in a while.

He snuggled his face against me, an oddly catlike gesture. I’d had enough of the wereleopards rubbing over me to know what I was talking about. “I would do anything that my lady required.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, and I was feeling better enough to sound suspicious.

 He laughed and pressed his body against my legs hard enough that my knees moved just a little apart.

CONSENSUAL SEX. JUST ONE EPISODE OF 100% CONSENSUAL SEX. PLEASE. IT IS ALL I ASK.

 Anita says "Fuck no" to Requiem's insistant knee...and for some reason this makes Damian collapse with magical hypothermia. Apparently Anita's frozen vagina negatively effects the men in her life, and because she isn't letting Requiem warm it up with his penis, Damian is collapsing and dying.

So Anita will now have sex with Requiem to save Damian, right?

...yep. But because Requiem is a stranger Anita can't raise the ardeur, so Requiem has to roll her first. Meanwhile Graham almost has an accident because two people are having sex in a moving car to save the life of a third person several miles away. Although they aren't taking their clothes off first.

Oh, and Anita?

He looked down at me with eyes like drowned flames, and whatever he saw on my face seemed to decide him, because he slid hands on my naked hips, cupped my ass, and angled me up against the front of his pants, so the leather bindings rubbed directly onto the most delicate of places...It was as if he’d spread me wider with the push of his body, peeled back the layers of my most intimate places, until the leather braiding rubbed directly on those spots, that spot.

You just damn near froze your vagina off by wearing a thong and miniskirt in 40 degree weather. You can use the word vagina. 

 They orgasm, Damian gets up and wanders off like "I meant to do that" and Graham is all like "DUDE WHY DIDN'T YOU SHARE?"

...I am now visualizing Anita as a smoke-stained bong in some stoner's back bedroom. Oh, by the way, I've thought up a great idea for an anti-drug ad.

...and because LKH hates me, we get a detailed account of what happens when you rub yourself to orgasm on the other guy's leather pants. "Chafing" doesn't quite cover it, apparently.

End of chapter.

Next chapter, we are back at Guilty Pleasures. Anita catches a doorman letting underage girls through.

That should be an "instant fire" in any other club.

Buzz catches the under-age kids at the door, and Anita takes a minute to think about how wonderful big bad men are...and then another dude shows up and insists on seeing Gregory because he's Gregory's dad.

...yeah. This shit again.

If ya'll remember from last book, Gregory's dad is a pedophile piece of shit who pimped his kids out. Now, in any other book this would be either the start of a good character-growth arc for Gregory and his brother, or the prelude to one of those gray-moral stories where a character who would never kill anyone ever (preferably Gregory) leaves Greg's dad in a ditch somewhere and Never Speaks Of This Again while the audience cheers uncomfortably.

In this book, it's an excuse for Anita to be bad-ass.

Gregory's history of abuse is an excuse for Anita to get to be bad-ass. For about two seconds.

Seeing Greg's eyes in their father's face throws Anita, and the vampires throw him out of their club. Anita asks how often their father tries to get into the club and they say "once or twice a week, whenever the boys are scheduled to preform."

I do not condone violence IRL, because it's WRONG and it drops you down to their level, but I find it very hard to believe in a universe where eating the vanquished alpha is a hallowed tradition, Greg and Stephen don't have a single friend willing to follow Daddie Dearest down the nearest alley with a spiked bat. All the big dangerous man-eating monsters that strip at Guilty Pleasures are sitting on their hands waiting for Anita to come make the stalker-pedo go away.

...why do we have to have a stalker-pedo plot line? Why do we need to go there?

Anyway, Anita sits down and watches Nathanial air-fuck the stage. Because it is absolutely appropriate to go from A History of Child Abuse to sexual titillation. I am sure everyone wants to discuss pedophiles abusing their victims and then go watch one of their significant others strip.

This happens:

From the back, with his legs tight together, he looked nude. He laid his head on the floor, and the ponytail of his auburn hair spilled out around him like a cloak.... and I realized that he had it up in a high, tight ponytail. So that the hair bounced and moved with him.

NO YOU DON'T SAY. I COULD NOT HAVE PREDICTED THAT HIS HAIR WAS IN A PONYTAIL AFTER YOU SAID HIS HAIR WAS IN A PONYTAIL.

Jean Claude shows her how to feed at a distance, and she doesn't like it much. Then Nathanial drags her on stage because...

I have no idea. GOOD GOD DOES ANYTHING HAPPEN IN THIS BOOK AT ALL?

Anita and Nathanial realize that Anita has ditched the thong. She is sitting on the stage of a strip club in a blouse, mini-skirt, thigh-high lace stockings and nothing else. 

WHY.

 And then Jean Claude comes on stage with a whip and starts beating Nate while shouting "bad cat, bad kitty" and the crowd shouts "tie him up, tie him up" and I don't even. I am all out of even. There aren't enough evens in the universe.

Anita now has to beat Nathanial, the perennial submissive, on stage in front of lots of people. Then she really gets into it and starts yanking on Nate's hair. I'd be more comfortable with this if it weren't for the whole "We're doing this on stage" thing.

She bites Nate, which is all that he wanted. And then she kisses Jean Claude because fuck if I even know.

The chapter ends with Anita agreeing to be on the bottom for Jean Claude.