Falling (Scared Sexy Collection), page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2025 by Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Original Stories are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781662533587 (digital)
Cover design and illustration by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
About the Authors
Chapter One
There was an infinite number of things Cat would rather be doing tonight, and the options scrolled through her mind as she trailed behind Jake down Lexington: Sitting on the couch in her apartment with a glass of wine and a movie. A dinner out with her best friend back home in Denver. A hot shower, a cold beer. A massage, a concert, the ballet.
She’d even take something as typically unappealing as a few hours in a dentist chair right now. Short of terrible illness or injury, Cat couldn’t think of anything much worse than attending a Halloween party hosted by the best friend of a guy she planned to break up with later.
Cat and Jake had been together for only three months, so there was no real devastation involved, just exasperation. He was cute and funny and always happy enough to spend time with her, but he was oblivious in the way that so many guys were: He was willing to put in the effort, but only if she told him precisely what that effort entailed. A quiet night at Jake’s apartment often found Cat squashed between a handful of guys on a shabby couch as they shouted at whatever basketball game was on the TV. If she suggested they do something, just the two of them, he’d take her out for sports trivia at a rowdy bar or a quick bite somewhere before heading back to his place for sex.
Basketball and trivia and bars and sex were fine for now, but Cat had realized earlier—when Jake appeared at her doorstep not in the agreed-upon shepherd’s robe to match her stupid lamb costume but dressed as his favorite Knicks player—that he mostly forgot about her the moment she left the room. The fact that they were still relative strangers wasn’t really a surprise, but given that Jake was either unknowable or not very deep, he and Cat were likely going to remain strangers even if they stayed together for the next fifty years.
So, no, she wasn’t upset about ending things. The sadness came whenever she considered that Jake—even barely knowing him—was still her closest friend here in New York. It was hard to make friends when most of your time was spent studying or in class, especially when the only free time you did have was monopolized by a beer-drinking, sports-watching, fine-for-now kind of guy like Jake. She only wished this realization would have occurred to her three months ago.
Already a little buzzed from pregaming with his friends, Jake pushed open the front door to Harry’s brownstone and walked in ahead of her. Tossing their coats on the couch, he clapped friends on the back and greeted a half dozen people before it occurred to him that Cat knew nobody here except for Harry—messy, loud Harry, always with a nauseating string of spit connecting his upper and lower lip—and turned around to take her hand, dragging her through the room.
“Ellie . . . Nova . . . Ashley! Nice costume, girl!” He dropped these names without offering hers in return. Everyone smiled, friendly but vague, and Cat did her best to connect faces to names, to give her bright, wide-open smile, but they were moving through the crowded room too fast for anything to stick. “That guy over there is the other Jake, we call him Ohio Jake . . .” Still walking, still a blur. “Ting, Ava . . . that’s Asher . . . Sophie! It’s been fucking forever!”
In the kitchen, he tugged on Cat’s hand again, leading her to a keg where he poured beer into a red plastic cup. Foam rose up and spilled over the lip as he distractedly handed it to her. Jake pressed a hard kiss to her cheek. “You good?” he asked.
She frowned at him, understanding immediately: He was going to pawn her off on someone. “I’m fine, but where are you—”
Jake looked around quickly before settling his gaze on a woman dressed as a witch and bent at the waist while reaching for a can of wine in the refrigerator.
“Regina,” he said, bright with relief. The woman straightened, smiling in surprise and hugging Jake. “Regina, this is my girlfriend, Cat.”
Cracking the top on her wine, Regina turned her warm, dark eyes to Cat and smiled again.
“Could you hang with her for a sec?” Jake asked. “I have to go find the boys.”
Before Regina could answer, he jogged out of the kitchen.
Unsurprised, Cat watched him go and then turned her wry grin up to the other woman. “You don’t have to babysit me; I promise I’m fine.”
Regina laughed and tilted her head for Cat to follow. “Jake is hopeless. Come on. There’s a group of us over by the couch.”
From the side of the room, he watched the little lamb. He’d been unable to take his eyes off her, in fact, tracking her from the moment she was dragged in behind the basketball player—a truly aspirational costume, given that the man couldn’t be more than five foot six—who deposited her unceremoniously in the kitchen with a woman she clearly had never met before. He stared at the lamb’s face—enormous hazel eyes, sharp cheekbones, a mouth like a soft, edible heart—and then took in the rest of her. Brown curls fell past her shoulders; she was petite but stood with a posture that spoke of a stubbornness and passion that made his skin hum. Feeding was endlessly more fun when they had a little fire in them.
He watched as the costumed witch led the lamb to a sofa where several humans sat and gossiped. The lamb turned from him, and he stared at the firm swell of her backside in her white leggings. A flurry of debauched images raced through his mind before he pulled his gaze away.
Stifling a yawn, he surveyed the party around him. Same shit, different setting. Forever twenty-five, he easily blended in with the crowd here, but even if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Sometimes he wondered if people even saw his face or only reacted to the pull of his power. After all, he’d been there barely ten minutes, but several women had approached him already, their eyes glazed in that familiar way, their offer simple and straightforward. He’d politely declined, compelling them to return to their friends, although he wasn’t sure why.
He needed to feed.
It was the singular reason he’d left his penthouse, wandered uptown, and followed the group of unexceptional humans down the sidewalk, up the front steps, and into this dull party. He should get what he came here for and be done with it.
And yet a familiar restlessness ate at him, made a tight, agitated sensation take seed in his gut and spread into his limbs. He was too impatient to spend hours slowly siphoning energy from the room, but he didn’t want to take one of these dazed women into a dark bedroom for pleasure and feeding either. He wanted the same thing he’d wanted for centuries: to not have to live like this anymore.
He knew that when he felt this way, the best thing was to run or swim or fly, but tonight he wanted something else more than he wanted relief from the tension of perpetual boredom or the urge to siphon from humans: Tonight, he simply didn’t want to feel alone for a little while.
He didn’t lie to himself; of course he was lonely. In this way, he supposed, sex served two purposes—companionship and sustenance—though of course for him companionship was a term to be used loosely. Centuries ago, when he’d been cursed and transformed, he quickly learned that a beat of eye contact was all it took. In a way, humans became drunk—not on fairy dust or pheromones or alcohol, but on the very essence of him, which turned their attraction or fascination into a raw, carnal hunger. From there it was as simple as finding a private space—an apartment, a dark hallway, an alley—where he could pleasure them for as long as he wished and breathe in their vitality until he was sated and they were drowsy enough for him to vanish without notice.
The unfortunate paradox, of course, was that no human in this state was very good company. Beguiled as they were by him, as soon as he was alone with a human, they were reduced to vacant, hypersexual beggars. The ensuing encounters sustained him, and certainly the sex itself was enjoyable, but it made the loneliness expand inside him into a dark, yawning pit.
His eyes returned to the little lamb, shifting anxiously on her feet with the group of strangers chatting amiably around her. She lifted her gaze, searching the room, her eyes passing, unseeing, over where he stood; despite his size, his tailored but nondescript black trousers and sweater as well as centuries of experience allowed him to blend into the shadows.
And then her attention traveled the same path, but in reverse, and despite the absurd Halloween mask that covered half of his face, she saw him, her gaze clashing with his for a single, excruciating heartbeat, long enough for most humans to lose whatever trivial thought occupied their minds and move directly toward him. But strangely, the lamb’
Shock flooded him, and he was immediately—desperately—curious.
In a world where every second was predictable, the sensation of surprise was blissfully foreign to him. Turn around, he murmured to her, using the low, vibrating voice that seemed to run down a human’s spine, compelling them to unquestioningly do his bidding. For much of his existence, he’d used this power greedily, to amass property and riches, to wordlessly coerce humans to dance and sing and make general fools of themselves to his great amusement, but in recent decades, he’d mostly used it to direct them away.
The lamb frowned, turning her head to the side as if she’d sensed something behind her, someone speaking in her ear. But then, to his utter disbelief, she turned forward again.
Can you not hear me? he said to her. If a heart still beat in his chest, it would be pounding in anticipation. I said turn around, little lamb. Look at me.
This time she did turn, confused, and peering all the way over her shoulder to where he stood at the wall behind her.
Their eyes met again, and her brow creased in confusion. Her expression spoke of uncertainty, thinking perhaps that she couldn’t possibly have heard a man whispering to her from all the way across the room. When she tore her gaze from his, returning her attention to the group of humans before her, he pushed from the wall, his entire body vibrating with thrill.
She’d heard his command but been unaffected by it.
How?
He needed to get her alone.
He studied the other humans gathered in the living room. The man she’d come with had yet to return. What kind of idiot brought the most beautiful girl to a tawdry, cacophonous party like this and deserted her? If only he knew there were monsters out there, waiting for their turn.
Chapter Two
The brownstone belonged to Harry’s father, a man douchily named Royal, who Cat vaguely remembered Jake telling her was an asshole but seriously loaded. What Harry apparently lacked in parental love he had in spades when it came to housing. Cat had moved to the city for graduate school only a few months ago, but she knew living here for even a decade she’d be unlikely to meet another twentysomething with a house like this all to himself. The party was on the ground floor—mostly contained to the common living spaces—but there were three levels to the place, and Cat was tempted to escape the party to explore them all.
But first: a restroom.
The one on the first floor was occupied, so she peeked into the empty bedrooms, ducking through the doorway of one with an en suite. With a sigh of relief, she crossed the room and closed the bathroom door behind her, sealing herself up inside.
At the mirror, Cat studied her reflection and exhaled a slow, annoyed breath. When Jake suggested the coordinated costumes, his idea that she be the lamb to his shepherd struck her as vaguely patronizing and overtly patriarchal—not to mention the unspoken expectation that she somehow manage to be a sexy lamb. But she’d agreed because, frankly, she was lazy about Halloween and happy for once to not be asked to be a sexy Cat. That Jake hadn’t even remembered the plan felt like salt rubbed into a paper cut. She wore all white—white leggings, white sneakers, and a fluffy, cropped white sweater. Her woolly hat had soft lamb ears, and she’d drawn a circle of black over the tip of her own nose.
“You’re dressed like a toddler,” she told her reflection, swiping off the hat. She turned on the sink, washing the sticky, dried beer from the back of her hand before wiping the black makeup from her nose.
Drying her hands and then leaning back against the counter, Cat ran through in her mind how and when she would end things tonight. She’d been the dumper and the dumped enough times to know that this breakup was unlikely to come as a surprise to Jake, but she still dreaded it, in part because there could be no brunch with girlfriends tomorrow to process it all. Everyone she knew and loved was hundreds of miles away.
Can’t I just text him? her mind whined, before deciding: Yes. A text was exactly the level of engagement this three-month mistake deserved. Pulling out her phone, she typed the simple ending:
I don’t think this is working. We have fun together, but I think friends-only is the right vibe for us.
She waited, staring at her phone, and in only a few seconds, her text was decorated with the blandest of reactions: a thumbs-up.
To be fair, it’s the correct reaction to a breakup text, she thought.
With a laugh-groan, she pushed off the counter and walked to the door, intending to put on her big-girl-lamb pants and return to the party, unwilling to let Jake be her only tether to other people. But the door to the hallway was no longer open. And when her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw, too, that the room was no longer empty. A man—that man—tall as a tree and just as broad, leaned against the wall near the closed door, casually scrolling on his phone.
He looked up when she stepped out, and from behind his ornate black-feathered mask, his eyes went wide in the way she knew hers had too—as if they’d each been caught doing something they weren’t supposed to.
“Oh.” She hooked a thumb behind her, saying, “The bathroom in the hall was occupied,” just as he said, “I needed a spot of quiet.”
His voice was low and rich, a melted confection, the words curled with a proper British accent. His clothes were all black, and something about him felt attractive, even though she couldn’t make his features out in the darkness, behind his mask.
“Okay, good,” she said, exhaling. “So I haven’t been caught sneaking around your room.”
His eyes drifted to the enormous blue-and-orange Knicks banner over the bed, and he uttered a sardonic “No.”
Cat was stunned into silence when he stepped forward into a bit of streetlight slanting in through the window and lifted his mask. She revised her thought that he must be attractive; in fact, she’d never seen a more gorgeous person in her life. His features were severe and aristocratic: thick, dark brows, intense brown eyes, strong cheekbones and jaw, and a mouth she was positive was equally skilled at kissing and mockery. And then he smiled, becoming devastatingly more beautiful. Deep smile lines carved into his cheeks, his eyes lit with mischief, crinkling at the corners. Cat felt her rib cage shove a shaking breath out and suck another back in, hungrily.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away. Time stretched, and the walls of the room seemed to shrink down to a shoebox. A weight in her chest heaved forward, the desire to move toward him, but she fought it, frowning in concentration as her hands reached back and curled around the edge of the windowsill.
He was frowning too, confused. Silence pulsed between them, a force compelling her forward, growing heavily in the air, and then she heard it, a soft Yes, darling, stay there, in that deep, luxurious voice she swore she’d heard back in the living room, like an invisible man’s voice had whispered directly into her ear. The tension snapped, freeing her to blink, to breathe, to retreat a step and feel the wood of the windowsill dig into the backs of her thighs.
She shook her head. “What did you say?” she asked.
He frowned, his “What do you mean?” coming too slow, like a clunky lie.
Awareness began at the base of Cat’s spine. She didn’t know how she was so certain, but she was: She’d been ensnared by him somehow, a fish lured in and caught on the end of a line before being released. The surreal question rose up her throat and stuck there: Did you do that to me?
She was being ridiculous. She should head back to the party. “Nothing. My mistake.”
He smiled warmly again, and the expression lit a small fire inside her.
“Happy Halloween,” she added.
He laughed, a sound so deep and intoxicating she felt it spreading like smoke through her bloodstream. “Is it?” he asked, smile turning wry.
Cat felt the laugh rise out of her. “Yeah . . . not really.”
He sent a hand into the pocket of his trousers and pulled in a deep breath that only seemed to heighten his hunger for this strange human. He’d discovered that she could hear the voice but wasn’t commanded by it; she’d felt his allure, been tempted by it, but it hadn’t made her mindless. He could taste her in the air, her lust like golden licks of flame all around her—but she’d kept her own mind.
