RSE CH 36 (Patreon)

The last thing Asa remembered was seeing Barlowe’s head arcing across the room and rolling to a stop at the feet of his now decapitated body. She blinked her eyes open to find them blurred by tears. She’d cried herself to sleep after Leo brought her here, and the tears started right back up again the moment she woke.

“I see you are awake.” The voice was monotone and devoid of emotion.

Her crying was interrupted as a silver-haired voluptuous woman wearing a maid’s uniform entered the room.

“What… who?”

Asa immediately was immediately wary of this individual. The worry of not knowing whether the individual facing you wanted to use you for their own twisted purposes or was there help you was one she knew all too well. It had been her constant companion these past few weeks.

In the past, she hadn’t hesitated to save a dying devil—healing the mortally wounded man. That was the ultimate source of her current misery, the reason she’d been excommunicated from the Church. Which was why she’d foolishly offered to help the Fallen Angles if it brought her back into the Church’s good graces. It was what had led her to be in Leo’s spare bedroom.

All these thoughts flashed through the petite blonde’s head, with the corresponding emotions on full display. Doubt, despair, fear, care, chagrin, and finally hope.

Lucy carefully scrutinized the plethora of expressions that flashed across Asa’s delicate features. It was most entertaining, seeing someone switch between different emotions so fast.

She knew well the kind of girl Asa was. Some people called them kind. Lucy considered such kindness naive. They did not understand the realities of the world they lived in. Because they never bore the pain that was this world’s one constant.

They managed to keep a child-like naivety and understanding of the world; a world that wanted nothing but to swallow them whole. For devils, such people were the tastiest prey.

After all, there was a great difference between someone who decided to be kind after witnessing the horror of the world and someone who was kind because they didn’t recognize the evil that lay behind the mask of beauty and peace.

Lucy paused, studying the tracks of tears on the young woman’s face. Perhaps this one understood more of the world than she’d given her credit for. That suspicion was confirmed when Asa scrubbed the tears from her face and narrowed her eyes at the maid.

‘There is strength there under the innocence,’ Lucy mused. ‘She could become the first piece under Leo’s control.’

At the end of the day, though, Lucy was a succubus. Corrupting young virgins was the very basis of her job. Nodding politely, she took the ends of her skirt and gave their guest an elegant curtsey.

“You may call me Lucy. I am currently serving as a Leo’s maid. He is the one who brought you here and I helped clean you up and tuck you in last night.”

Thinking back to the haze that followed Barlowe’s head leaping from his shoulders, Asa vaguely remembered hearing Leo’s voice and someone—presumably him—picking her up.

“Leo… helped me?”

She’d missed her friend. In the darkest of trials, thinking of him had been what kept her sane. For weeks she’d dreamed that he would, somehow, find her. Like her white knight, her lab partner would sweep in and rescue her from Barlowe, the Nephilim, and their Fallen Angel minder.

‘Who would have thought that he’d actually do it?’

Thinking about Leo, she couldn't help but remember the disgusting feeling of Barlowe’s hands on her, tearing apart her t-shirt and molesting her. It hadn’t been the first time a man had touched her, but was something she’d have a hard time forgetting.

‘Please, God… please tell me all men aren’t like that!’

Asa shuddered and bile surged in the back of her throat as she felt the need to vomit. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she could still see those lust-filled eyes as Barlowe undressed her with his eyes. To him, she was simply an object to vent his carnal desires upon.

Asa had been lost, drowning in a sea of self-doubt when she’d felt a jacket being wrapped around her. Already retreating deep inside herself, she’d still remembered that her body was on display. But Leo—it had been him who’d saved her!—hadn’t fixated on her revealed femininity.

Thinking back to last night’s jumbled memories, she remembered the anger in his eyes when Barlowe threatened her after she’d become the lunatic’s hostage. She remembered the kindness that had gleamed in their depths when he’d asked if she was alright.

She must have passed out soon after that.

While she was unconscious, Leo could have done anything he’d wanted to her, he could have vented his carnal desires on her defenseless body. With how powerful he was, he could have ravaged her if he’d wanted to—and it wouldn’t have mattered if she was awake or not.

She’d seen how easily Leo had handled Barlowe. There’s no way she could have defended herself. But he hadn’t mistreated her… Leo was not Barlowe.

This simple conclusion was as obvious as one plus one equaled two. It was more than enough for Asa’s fragile psyche. It kept her from falling in the abyss of despair, doubt, and mortification. Holding tight to the image of Leo as her savior, she crawled back from the precipice.

“That’s right,” Lucy continued. “It was Leo who brought you here last night. If you were awake, you would have seen his face and how worried he was about you. He brought you to me in his arms, like a princess.”

Lucy was not exaggerating on this part. She had been a worried the entire time Leo had been gone. She’d paced back and forth across the living room while waiting for Leo to clear his head and come back home. She’d been on the verge of walking out the door to search for him when he’d reappeared with this girl wrapped in his coat in his arms.

He'd immediately asked her to tend to the unconscious Asa.

Initially, Lucy had wanted to put Asa in comfortable clothes after cleaning her up in the bath. She’d ultimately decided against it. After drying off the unconscious girl following a shallow bath, she’d wrapped the petite blonde back up in the jacket he’d brought her home in.

It would be a constant reminder of the gentlemanly way Leo had acted towards her. Lucy had seen from the shredded t-shirt, tears, and terrible state the young woman had been in that she’d been the victim of assault. It was important that the jacket remind her of her chivalrous savior.

This was very important because, most women who were sexually assaulted tended to believe all men were like the monster that had assaulted them, even going as far as to hate men in general. In some cases, they would only remember that they hated men, completely forgetting the events that caused such deep-seated hate.

They didn’t have time for the woman Leo had brought home to get past those kinds of feelings. While Lucy, who could live for more than ten thousand years, considered herself a patient woman, she wasn’t willing to wait for Asa to come round.

‘This young woman isn’t worth making her Master wait that long the blonde to come to her senses.’

Of course, the easiest way would be to drug her with stimulating agents.

The fluids from the body of a succubus were powerful aphrodisiacs. Just a bit of her saliva or sweat would be enough to put Asa in a state of perpetual arousal. But doing too much from the start could easily backfire for two reasons. First off, she couldn’t see Leo offering the petite blonde one of his pieces if she wasn’t in full control of her faculties. And second, what if Asa became more than a piece and entered a true contract with Leo?

As the succubus plotted, Asa felt her heart beating ever faster. The maid had reminded her that Leo wasn’t anything like Barlowe. It made her think about every reason she’d started carrying a flame for her kind lab partner.

She wanted to meet him. She wanted to thank him. She wanted someone to show her the way forward.

And more than anything she wanted that someone to be Leo Karteros.

“I want to see him…. Please, can you take me to Leo?” Asa scrambled to her knees and clasped her hands together, pleading with Lucy.

“I don’t mind taking you to him. But he is currently taking a…Oh… Oh!”

Lucy was about to tell the young woman that she would take Asa to see her Master after he was done with his bath, but then stopped short when she realized something. Though her face remained its normal stoic mask, she gazed at Asa with a mysterious fire in her eyes.

“Do you really want to meet him now?”

“Yes!”

“Why?” It wasn’t an unreasonable request, so why did it make the blonde blush and stammer so?

“I… I just… I n-need to thank him f-for saving m-me.” A shudder ran through the young woman. “If h-he hadn’t stumbled onto us, I’m p-pretty sure Barlowe would have vented his carnal desires on me once he was done slaughtering those poor people.”

“You say he was your savior.” The silver-haired maid tapped a finger on her chin. “How will you thank him? I doubt you have more than the clothes that were on your back—oh, wait, that was his coat that was wrapped around you.”

The young woman clenched her fists and glared at the maid, but then her shoulders slumped and she looked away. “I’d give him my everything,” Asa replied softly.

“You’d bare your soul to him? Bare your everything to him?” the maid challenged.

When Asa nodded, Lucy continued, “Fufufu… Then follow me, and remember what you said. I wouldn’t want to learn you were lying.”

The fire in her eyes had become pink hearts. Lucy licked her lips, as she thought about how entertaining what was coming would be. For the first time in an age, Lucy would feast… on lust.