Victoria's Adventures in Time and Space #1
Alia Bess
Contemporary Romance/Paranormal/Time-Travel/Erotica
Published in 2012
H/h - The Demon (Marcus/Torgal/Jack)/Victoria
Setting: Various countries and time-frame as it contains time travel but mostly centered in the present.
Read in August, 2013.
My rating: 
[spoiler alert]
All I know about Alia Bess from amazon is that she writes Historical Fiction under another name. But let me tell you very honestly, I think she should consider publishing MORE erotic paranormal stories because I simply loved Victoria's Demon Lover! I had NO idea what to expect when I went into it. The reviews had some certain warnings that didn’t sound good. I was intrigued nonetheless. And when I started reading, I could hardly put it down. This story does have a demon, an incubus haunting the heroine, Victoria with some seriously hot smexing. That much is pretty straightforward from the blurb but the entire plot goes much deep and complex than your average raunchy demon erotica.
Victoria, an accountant, lives in a lake house, all alone. Apart from her boring day job, she has no real companionship to speak of. Her previous relationships were no strings attached things, and definitely unsatisfactory. Suddenly she starts experiencing these nightly visits by a demon. The story though, starts when Victoria has already gotten used to with the demon’s visits. At first, it was said that she was scared but the demon would have sex with her no matter what. He was sometimes gentle, sometimes rough but never hurt her in his endeavor. Sometimes the pleasure is all about her and sometimes it’s just his own. He comes to her in many shapes; apart from various human ones, in forms that she imagined for a demon or forms that just turned her on (like that big, red and horned demon, I’ll leave you to read it how this shape pleasured her because it was something I never read, certainly would never have imagined myself! Lol). The only thing that gives him away is his glowing yellow eyes. Victoria has come to enjoy having sex with him. She even craves his touch at night, though in the broad daylight she doubts her sanity.
One thing the demon never did was to talk to her. He could read her mind, so if she wanted anything or any form, she’d get it if he was willing. One day, that changes. He comes to her in the form of a tall, broad shouldered man with sad brown eyes. He’s got the body of a man who is accustomed to rough physical labor. She notices the round scar on his neck though. The demon tells Victoria that he has a favor to ask. But after hot sex, he just vanishes as he usually does, never telling her what the favor was. We see some more of his visits in different shape and hot and dirty sex with Victoria loving every moment of it. Only now, he talks to her.
Something happens soon afterwards, leaving me pretty dumbfounded. That day, Victoria was in the elevator, headed for her office. There was another man with her who works another farm. Suddenly, Victoria hears a voice and instantly recognizes it. That and the yellow eyes. She knows her demon lover has possessed this man. Before she could even comprehend anything, he is all over her. The implication, as it was seen in the CC camera, spelled nothing but rape. The man is convicted with solid evidence but he later commits suicide. Victoria is shocked, confused. WTF just happened to her life? She’s financially compensated with a big amount but other than that, it seems ruined. She leaves the job, spending most of her days in her home, alone again. When the demon visits her next time, his answer is enigmatic. On this visit, the demon is dressed as a Roman soldier with a short body with thick, corded muscle. It seems like that man, Michael did something bad (even though he looked like an all around nice guy) and paid for it. The demon just made it so that Victoria gains something from it. It should’ve made me doubt him or hate him, but somehow I didn’t. Victoria is definitely not happy with this answer but she apparently has no control of her life right now.
Victoria, thinking better to keep her sanity (she’s still battling the sense that tells her this is crazy, the clash of reality and fantasy), decides to take up her older sister’s plea of moving in with her two young boys. She was going through a rough patch and needed the support. But to Victoria, it was a form of keeping the demon at bay so that he can’t torment her. But the demon warns her that nothing will stop him from coming to her.
On his next visit, the Demon comes as a beautiful Norseman with blonde hair; only in the place of pair of ice-blue eyes were his own yellow eyes. He reminds her of the favor and that he wants to take her to a journey of a lifetime. A journey that is about to take change her life.
Victoria finds herself in medieval Shrewsbury of England, in front of a small, cozy cottage. Apparently, this night, a young pair of lovers was there inside. The guy is big and broad with muscled body and the girl is a petit, dark haired beauty. Victoria doesn’t want to pry but her demon tells her that they won’t know. From the window, it appears that this is their wedding night. The guy, obviously a Blacksmith, if the things in his cottage are any indication, is gently wooing his bride, who was his childhood sweetheart, to let him make love to her. Jack, as he goes by, is very handsome. But when she sees his face, Victoria recognizes him immediately. This is one of her demon’s incarnations, the one with rope wound around the neck! Nothing now, though. This Jack is very much alive. Maggs is scared of what’s coming and Jack is a big man. Victoria decides to help Maggs and channels her own thoughts and direction for her so that she enjoys her first time. And in the process she finds herself in Maggs’s body, being pounded by Jack (that was HOT, I loved Jack!). She even feels the pain when Maggs loses her virginity as if it’s happening to her. When Jack finishes, his eyes glowing yellow, as if he knows that it’s Victoria and not Maggs he’s having sex with! Or maybe, they’re the same soul only in different bodies.
Victoria returns to the reality. It felt like a dream but when she checks her body, she finds evidence that proved that she was certainly not dreaming. Nevertheless, she’s very amazed and intrigued by who this couple is and what they mean to him.
When later, the demon comes to her as the Roman soldier, Victoria finds herself in the Roman era, dressed as a young concubine. She is now scantily clad, with a much shorter body and dark hair, in the middle of a room and Roman orgy. The demon is accompanying her. He works under Cestius, the General, the host this orgy. Lots of things were going on here, very raw, crude, loads of sex of every kind. Roman entertainment I guess! lol At one point, Cestius comes in with his own daughter, Julia. He wants Julia to have sex with one of the slaves who have been brought in to service the many guests; specifically the big Gaul man with red hair is the one in order to have a red haired baby. Victoria finds that she’s being called to ‘help’ the slave to… er, make it stand. The demon urges her on. Victoria can’t but get into her role, pleasuring the red-haired slave. Then he has sex with Julia in front of everyone present. Well, it was a mess of sort but somehow I was not disgusted by the way it was described. At the end, Victoria hears a scream, only to find that the demon has killed Cestius. When a stunned Victoria asks the demon what was that for, he says something like Cestius raped her while he was in chains, and he couldn’t do anything about it, calling Victoria ‘Maggs’.
WOW, that straight sent a shiver through my body because so far, I was as perplexed as Victoria about everything. After that, well, it was clear enough that the demon has some kind of attachment to Victoria or her other incarnations throughout the centuries. The pain and the misery certainly show through his yellow eyes. When her demon asks her about remembering something, Victoria can’t. Nothing in Victoria’s memory stands out. But one thing is certain, his visitations were not only to use her for his pleasure, to have dirty sex but it goes much deeper than that. Victoria asks him about what she needed to remember but the demon won’t give her a complete answer. It’s something she needs to figure out herself. But since she can’t remember anything, the demon is really disappointed.
After that, he stops visiting her. Maybe he wanted to leave her alone at last, I don’t know but when a few weeks pass without his visits, Victoria starts missing him greatly. It’s not just the sex, but everything else; his whole presence that lend an aura and a meaning to her lonely life. A desperate Victoria begins to worry and decides to summon the demon (he’s a demon so he can be summoned, right?) back. For that she needs something that can guide her. Victoria goes to this really old bookshop. On the outside it seemed deserted but when she was about to leave, an old man with white beard (like Merlin?? Lol) comes out and talks to her. Apparently the man had a bookshop here but just packed everything to move away as the business is not as it used to be. This man, Albert Magnus, seems to know what she’s looking for and gives her a book on the intro, summoning etc. of demons and other unearthly creatures. He wants the book returned so he gives Victoria his card.
At home, Victoria reads the book; then drawing circles, she starts her summoning process with different candles and incense, uttering various names of the demons. Since she didn’t know her demon’s name correctly, the results were a bit of a disaster. One brought a big tree demon. This should’ve been creepy but I found the whole confrontation with that demon and Victoria funny. He wanted to have sex with her but Victoria informs him that she’s already taken… umm sort of. Seems like this demon knows her demon, so he leaves her be. The next, she finds a harpy who craves shoes... yah, shoes! Victoria had to exchange a pair of her dirty shoes for a trip to hell. But the harpy doesn’t help her further, just lands her there. It seems Hell is how Victoria always imagined it might look like. Then the harpy explains that it’s all about her imagination. When the harpy flies away, Victoria meets another small, monkey like demon called Jasper. Her first meeting with Jasper was SO FUNNY, I couldn’t help laughing out loud! But Jasper proved to be of great help. His fetish is also... yep, you’re right, shoes! So much so that the description of shoes makes him want to... erm, lose himself........... *don’t look at me*
Moving on, Victoria asks Jasper to take her to her demon. Jasper knows him and leads her to some places. She finds herself in a battlefield, and discovers Marcus’s mutilated body. She’s overcome with grief to see him thus. Jasper first takes Victoria to Rome, and through incidents she finds out what happened to her as Alana and the demon as Marcus. It seems like they were doomed from the start to never have a happy ending. Oh that broke my heart! She even sees how horribly Alana died of Cestius’s tortures and how Marcus was chained and then was send to a battle that killed him in the end.
Then Jasper takes her to the medieval Norse land where Torgal, the handsome Viking used to live. She finds herself in a longhouse. The people there don’t recognize her so she lies about being someone’s slave or something. Then she finds out these people are holding someone here and the sound of beating coming from another part of the longhouse. Soon, the prisoner escapes... Torgal, only he’s not as beautiful as he used to be, battered and bruised as he is now. When he looks at her, she sees that the ice-blue eyes recognize her instantly. Somehow, they make an escape. It was already quite cold. In their shelter, Victoria begs him to let her help him but Torgal, who had the demon in him now, tells her that she’s only ‘making things worse’ by not looking at what she should be looking for. She shouldn’t be here in the first place, to see him this way, his incarnations and their brutal ends, something he has been living over and over again for millennia. Torgal tells her that he’ll send her back to the future. She can’t help him from what’s going to happen next; him dying in three days of an internal injury already going bad. His body would be found a few months later when the ice thaws. :( After a possessive kiss, Victoria finds that she’s back to her house. This particular story made me cry because I couldn’t imagine how badly things ended for Torgal. But there was another story yet to come that broke my heart... again.
After finding herself at her home, Victoria is desperate for answers. She tries to call Albert Magnus, only to find that there is no number in his card! When she calls him out loudly, her cell phone rings. Magnus gives her some useful tips but she has to find her own way. Victoria summons Jasper again, this time the little demon is scared of her demon. It seems like her demon has punished Jasper for helping her. But Victoria needs to know what happened to Jack because in all of her demon’s incarnations, Jack called out to her the most. His dark, intense eyes and his shining love for his Maggs. Victoria forces Jasper to take her to Shrewsbury.
In Shrewsbury, she finds herself as Maggs, busy doing the household chores. Memories flood in and Victoria knows what she’s expected to do. And then she sees Jack, working at his forge behind their little cottage and drinks in the sight of him. Finally, after so long… Things go well for a while and seems like Jack doesn’t recognize the ‘Victoria’ in her. But no matter, his love for his Maggs is shining always; in his grin, his sparkling dark eyes, in everything. Victoria thinks she can live in this century after all, if she has a man to love her this way and when the sex is SO HOT with him. Being Victoria helps because Maggs was still a bit hesitant about sex. Victoria’s memories help her become bold enough to go Jack crazy.
Jasper comes in one morning to warn her that bad things are coming and she should leave. But Victoria doesn’t listen to him. She’s drunk in her existence here. But....... *sigh* that ‘very bad thing’ comes in the form of the Lord and Master of that little village, a perv who loves banging or raping anything in skirts. No woman is safe from him unless it’s a child, woman too old or homely. It doesn’t matter if she’s someone’s daughter or wife or mother. Victoria/Maggs makes a very stupid mistake and catches the man’s eyes. I don’t even want to recount what happens to Maggs (Victoria feels every single thing she went through) and later, to Jack but that things take a gruesome turn. I felt sick, sad and miserable because my heart was breaking for them.
When Victoria is back to the present, exhausted from witnessing the past, sick to her stomach, feeling guilty for causing the deaths of three men who loved her, she finds Magnus waiting. Jasper, who was avoiding her before, is also here. Even though Magnus still tells her that it’s her journey, he suggests the demon loves her so much (or did in his human forms), that he can’t let go of the lives he has shared with her (or her other incarnations) in the past. The demon apparently has confided in Magnus, who thinks that his incarnations and histories without Victoria don’t matter. Obviously, he wants somehow to connect her with their shared pasts (those 3 forms) to let her know how they’ve been and what they’ve lost. And maybe, he wants her to do something (that favor?) so that things change for them in the future.
After her return from those journeys, Victoria can now see what her demon wanted to show her. Magnus emphasizes that she should stop feeling guilty for the past and start taking action; like doing things that will change the course of the history in a way, so that she can save her three loves from certain doom and death. Victoria realizes that this might be her only chance to return them their happy, long lives because now she knows what she can do to subtly change the flow of the incidents that triggered their downfall.
Oh, I was glued, GLUED to the story till the end and kinda giddy at this point, while Victoria journeys back, possessing the bodies of Alana, Danica (Torgal’s love) and Maggs to set things right. It was incredible to read that after each journey, she could visualize how that couple was finally able to spend a full life or at least was able to avert the imminent disaster, instead of dying so tragically without each-other. They had a chance at love and life which made me SO happy!
Back to the present, Victoria is still unhappy, thinking her demon might not return to her again. Then, oh the mother of all surprises! Albert Magnus... damn, I had a feeling! Even then I was grinning like an idiot to see him back. But the story just shuts there without any satisfying ending, or even a chapter to neatly tie things up. So I’m left with questions, like is the demon permanently back now? Has he become human again? Does he have a new name? What’s next for them? I seriously hope and pray that there’s a sequel in the process and out soon. I really need to know more of Victoria and his demon’s journeys.
I simply LOVED this unusual and complex love story. It had an odd combo; hot, dark and funny, all at the same time. My only other complain apart from the ending, was the need of a good edit. There were some typos and such. Don’t get me wrong, I was not bothered by them that much, still felt that with editing, Victoria's Demon Lover could be even better.
4.5 marvelous stars!
EDIT: I think a sequel is in progess, as this has a series title! YaY!!
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