Settling into her seat, Netta tried to ignore about the hand that passed by her ass briefly as she sat down. She felt a little exasperated with herself.

Could it be that her attitude towards Ashwood softening after It had provided the comfort of a companion during the nightmare experience that was the plane ride?

Well, if she had any shame over it, it began in true with the fact that she had bought two plane tickets in First Class next to each other. She had made some feeble excuse that she had no desire to sit next to a human, but judging by the grin on Ash's face as she paid for the damned things, It knew that she wanted Its companionship.

Netta leaned back in her seat and swore that she could feel her eyes swimming in her head.

She leaned forward and took a long drink of the bottled water. She winced in pain as she felt the burning down her throat, a sign of her five trips to the restroom. It seemed as though her body was intent in its attempt to vomit out any of the remaining contents of her stomach.

As she leaned back and gasped like a thirsty fish, she spared a moment of relief at the fact that she had the means to travel first class. Then she remembered that it was for her sister, Sia, that was was traveling in the first place.

Ash, who had been busy reading a paperback that It had picked up in the airport - stolen - closed the book in Its lap and gave Netta a serious look.

"You need to knock yourself out. You haven't slept a bit and the more you stay awake, the more you vomit up that awful diet of Tasty Kakes and cherry slurpee that you subsisted on on the road."

Netta made a mental note to tell Ash later that she tried to eat carrots as well and then to tell the Monster to fuck off.

For the moment, she reclined in her seat and croaked out, "We're just two hours from the airport now."

"All the more reason why you should get some sleep while you can get it."

Netta rolled her eyes and nearly pressed her head to the wall of the plane before she reminded herself that she was close to the wall of a flying metal machine. She settled for shutting her eyes.

She wished that she could do as Ash said, that she could trust that she would be safe in this contraption.

As it stood, all that she could do was try to take her mind off of the ordeal.

"You know," she could hear Ash's voice. "you never had any aversions to flying with me, when it wasn't in some contraption for humans. I remember a time when you once used to wrap your arms around the back of my neck and let me carry you above the clouds..."

Once the plane landed, Netta seemed to have dropped into a fatigued fugue and was only aware that the plane had finally landed when she felt herself being lifted solidly out of her seat.

Startled awake, Netta struggled feebly against Ash.

The Monster whispered, "Easy. I'm just lifting you up."

she stopped struggling, having no more stores of energy to draw from in order to fight It.

When, finally, the Monster sat her back down, she looked around, desperate to see if someone had seen her levitate.

The walk through the airport was a haze - she was surely suffering from sleep inertia. Somewhere during the baggage claim, Netta drifted off into a sickly sleep while waiting.

She was fully awoken with a painful moan when she felt the bitter cold outside slap her in the face.

"Good night and welcome to Paris," Ash murmured.

Tired and bordering on delirious, Netta said, "Aren't you cold or tired, yourself?"

He laughed. "Aren't you forgetting something about me being a Monster with no real body?"

"Your body seems real enough to me," Netta said unthinkingly.

Ash didn't answer that. Netta did not realize that she was not holding her bags and that Ash must have been carrying them - making her bags look as though they were levitating next to her in the cold storm outside - until she was halfway to the hotel that she had made reservations at.

In the high-end hotel, Netta found her French, once expressive and well-studied, had grown rusty from a great deal of misuse and was not aided in the least by her exhaustion. Nevertheless, she got the impression that even if it was through grunts and gestures, she secured her room with relatively little fuss. The bellboy wheeled her luggage after her, saving her from being stared at when her luggage followed her.

They went up an elevator with the bell boy in absolute silence. They reached the room, with Ash giving the door a good kick to open it after It had slid the key card in.

It gave the bell boy a start at the sudden, unexplained movement as he had, thankfully, been looking away when Ash had opened the door.

Inside the room, Netta allowed her eyes to flutter open to behold their room. It was awful large - her gut dropped as she wondered, automatically, how much this place would cost.

She could hardly take many steps in her old apartment, and the reverberation in this room was cathedral-like as she staggered through it.

The bell boy asked something, and Netta had to murmur to him that she needed to sit.

She somehow managed to fish some order of bills out of her pocket. Judging by the wide eyes of the bellboy, she had handed him some sum of money that was well and beyond the norm, even for a place like this.

She could not, for the life of her, summon the energy to care if she was making herself conspicuous.

With an aching everything and a fatigue that felt as though it were radiating through her entire core, the urge to sleep descended on Netta.

Her wake up came when she could feel the imprint of a hot fingerprint on her left cheek.

Groaning, Netta lifted her head and glanced around her. The first thing that was obvious was that she was in a massive, beautiful bed - which she was sharing with a rather scantily clad Monster.

Ash laid so that It was facing her, staring at her with rapt attention on Its stomach.

When she looked up to his face, It smiled at her.

"Did you sleep well, Lovely?" He asked in an intimate murmur.

Netta pushed herself up and tried to wobble onto the floor. She narrowly managed to stop herself from falling off of the bed when Ash's hand snaked out to grab ahold of her, righting her swaying so that she fell face first back into the bed.

"Oh, this attitude won't do so close to breakfast time. No little revolting revolts before you've had your coffee and protein."

Netta froze as she felt Its hand splay out and away from where It had grabbed a hold of her arm to steady her. The Monster's hand crept down her shoulder to touch her neck. Its fingers moved in soft circles.

Turning to look at his face, she saw Its wicked smile.

"What did you do to me while I slept?"

Ash managed to look genuinely hurt. "I take extreme prejudice to the fact that you think that I would take bodily advantage of you while you sleep. I do not, however, deny the fact that I projected a lot of rather intimate things between us while you slept."

In the moment that the Monster mentioned it, the remnants of those sexual emotions came to her in full force.

Netta cried out and struggled backward out of bed.

"You took advantage of me, while I was too tired to block off your assault on me while I'm asleep."

Ash rolled onto Its back, reclining slightly as he did in a long, relaxed stretch.

Sighing, It said, "True, it was forward of me to give you a good look at the ideas that I've had brewing for seventy years - now, Netta, seventy years is a lot of time for anyone to salivate over the idea of the juiciest fruits that Eden has to offer, dangling just beyond your reach. But, oh, for an Incubi, only being able to dream of the object of my sole desire is enough to drive me to, well," the Monster laughed heartily. "madness. I don't think that we've had a good chance to air my grievance with you out so far in many a year. It goes like this - you, Witch, need power to do any of your own magic. Me, evil little demonling, capable of amplifying your powers," It threw Its arms out dramatically, Its voice rising to a cry. "Tenfold! Thousandfold! Now, really," the Monster said, cocking Its head to the side with an all too innocent smile on Its lips. "we should be able to make this work."

Netta, standing on the other side of the bed, clenched a handful of the blanket that she had spent the night.

"You're forgetting the most important aspect here. Mainly, how you're wanting me to trust you so that you can take control of me."

Possession. The thought of it came to Netta then, the drooling, tormented souls whose consciousnesses were either so fully driven out - or somehow worse, bonded to their tormentors - that they were mindless, murderous husks.

Still, that could only come if you supped on his magic more than you ought to, some needy, long-ignored voice whispered from inside of Netta.

And to be with a Monster - it was different than it was to be with a man - a human man. For Witches, it was oftentimes the norm for much of history to keep a human husband and to consummate a tryst with their Familiar only a few times for power.

Ash did not have to be reason enough to leave her old life behind, fully. To never see Wallace again.

She shook her head fiercely, dislodging that thought. Being with a Monster was fine - but Ash was not a normal Monster...

The Monster is question sat up, its elbows resting on Its kneecaps. "Or I could be willing to offer you a partnership that can prove lucrative to the both of us."

"Oh yeah? And what would you get out of our little arrangement, besides some titillation with some old maid - oh, and the small matter of being able to take control over me?"

Ash tutted at her. "I'm disappointed in you for forgetting the most important consideration. Lovely, how could you have forgotten the love between us? The trust?"

Netta laughed then, a huge belly laugh. She regretted the laugh immediately, feeling the answering pain of the muscles in her abdomen.

She groaned. "I'm going to the bathroom to see if I need to evacuate one of my food holes and I'll be back with a status update while you get dressed so that I can get something to eat."

Ash was up, grasping her arm. Turning, Netta saw how that brow of it creased, revealing for a moment that the personality in that form was far older than the form It had taken.

"If you did not want me, Netta, why didn't you tell your Calliope that you needed help to be rid of me?"

Netta stopped, for a moment surprised by Its question.

It was horrible, she realized, that it was him - It - that had to bring that up.

The easy answer was that she had been busy, was confused, frightened by the disappearance of her sisters -

By everything.

The discomforting, secret feeling that she could not ever own up to - that since Ash had shown back up, she had, finally, someone to talk to, with Wallace, gone - burned inside of her like a secret sin.

Finally she shook her head, then looking up into those accusing eyes, she said, "Calliope cannot help me with you. Only one of my Sisters is strong enough to help me be rid of you for some time."

She jerked out of his grasp, walking to the bathroom.

As she closed the door, she could not help but feel those intense, deep eyes as they showed, fully, their knowledge of her lies.

In the bathroom, she leaned towards the mirror and saw in her face a shaking, pale countenance staring back at her.

It was the face of a person in the depths of withdrawal - or, more than ever, regretting a promise that a teen girl foolishly made to a Monster with no idea of the repercussions of it. Or the depraved depths of sexual need.