Chapter 32
"I'm pleasantly surprised, Hermi…" The demoness's languid whisper poured into my ear like honey—paralyzing my brain and forcing other organs to pick up the slack…and by organs, I mean my heart, obviously. "Very pleasantly surprised…"
Dragging out the key word in a husky voice, playing with her inflections, Mel was threatening to make me pass out.
She had her arms around me from behind, one hand resting at my stomach while the other held my arm in place—and on top of all that, she'd put her flexible tail to work, slowly crawling up my leg, inching higher and higher.
Breathing was a struggle, my thoughts were a tangled mess, and my cardiovascular system was running at something close to full capacity. Thank God I wasn't literally dripping with sweat—credit where it's due to grandma's two sedative pills, three drops of Corvalol, and half a glass of bourbon. Yes, that was the charming cocktail Elizabeth Herby had mixed for her little sweetheart upon learning that I was going on a date with an actual girl.
It had been a little awkward, discussing all of it with grandma and Amanda, who had somehow attached herself to her social circle. But I didn't have anyone else to ask.
Sonar, when I mentioned the date and asked how I should handle myself, had offered the following wisdom:
"Fuck her good," he said. When I stared at him with what I'd generously call a stupefied expression, my friend just shrugged, tossing back another mouthful of nachos and sniffling constantly. "That's the advice. That's love. Ah, reminds me, back at Harvard there was this one girl…"
I didn't stick around for yet another one of his legendary stories about the glory days. I already knew every single one by heart. So I just waved at the bat and got out of there—though the crafty little mouse managed to have the last word anyway, hurling a pack of two dozen condoms after me as I left. Clearly overestimating my capabilities.
He even crossed himself on my way out.
So my advisors became grandma and Amanda instead. They at least threw out a couple of reasonable and interesting ideas, one of which I'd ended up using.
"Now bring them together… Like that… Try to get it right between them… Steady… There you go." The firm grip on my wrist eased slightly, and then fingers tipped with sharp little claws skittered along my arm from wrist to shoulder before dancing back down, sending a wave of goosebumps rolling across my entire body. "Don't rush… Breathe evenly… We have plenty of time…"
Swallowing a mouthful of thick saliva, I listened to the demoness's voice and let her guide me. Not only did I actually enjoy it, but whatever lingering instincts I'd inherited from the old Herman were perfectly willing to defer to someone more experienced, more adult, and more responsible than me—at least in this particular matter.
"Hold it firm, don't be afraid… Squeeze a little harder… Mmm, just like that." I'll admit, in that moment, I was fairly certain I blacked out when the half-demoness's little fangs closed around my earlobe, making it nearly impossible to concentrate. "Now use your finger… Gentle, but firm…"
"O-okay." Not even sure why I stuttered, I followed her instructions, exhaling slowly through my nose the way she'd taught me, and—
BANG!
"Yes-s-s… Come on, Hermi, put more into it… Every last one…" Mel's voice was swallowed up by a rapid string of shots as I squeezed the trigger like a madman, trying to drown myself in the oncoming surge of adrenaline—the kind that pours out of any guy the moment he gets a gun in his hands.
The roar of the Glock, the burning body pressed against my back, the scent of perfume and the girl herself… My head was completely gone. So the second I fired off the last round, barely observing the safety rules, I twisted in Mel's grip—turning to face her and pressing my lips against her slightly parted, smiling mouth.
At first the demoness was surprised. But after a second of confusion, you'd have thought she was trying to devour me whole. A wet, heated, passion-soaked kiss—our hands roaming each other's bodies, trying to grab hold of everything all at once.
Her firm, almost steel-hard thighs tensed under my fingers. I was gripping her so tightly it felt like I was leaving bruises on that perfect body—and she was giving just as good as she got.
Sharp claws traced a line along my ribs, sliding lower, catching on my belt. Her tail worked furiously against the inside of my thigh while her free hand boldly seized my wrist and placed it on her chest.
I wanted to squeeze harder, and as though she felt the urge, she pressed forward—tightening my grip herself, delivering to us both a mix of pleasure and pain. My fingers dug into the yielding flesh. Mel's white tank top began to ride up, bunched by my hands, revealing more and more of that crimson skin, which was already glistening with drops of sweat.
From her throat down to the bottom of her stomach, goosebumps broke out across her skin, and she exhaled a low, languid sigh every time my hands grabbed at—well, at everything.
For several minutes we kissed, sometimes biting each other's lips hard enough to hurt, clutching each other with bruising force, until the demoness—burning with desire from head to toe—finally released me from her grip.
"Did you have anything else planned for tonight?" Her tongue, noticeably longer than a normal person's, traced slowly across her lips, collecting what remained of our shared effort.
My gaze drifted across her face, slipping constantly to her swollen lips.
"There was a whole program lined up…" My eyes shifted from hers—bright, blazing like molten gold—to the heavy rise and fall of her chest. Under the pressure of my palm I felt a stiffened nipple, pleasantly teasing and only fanning the heat further. "Screw it."
"Yeah…"
Mel had been on the verge of opening a portal when she was interrupted by a polite, extremely quiet, and deeply embarrassed cough from somewhere to our left.
We turned our heads in unison.
There stood an absolutely adorable, thoroughly innocent creature, peeking at us from behind both hands pressed firmly over her face. Her face was genuinely on fire—her skin had turned such a remarkable color that even Mel raised an eyebrow, visibly impressed by the depth of the blush.
The poor girl was the shooting range's floor manager, who had come to bring us fresh weapons and hand out more ammunition. All those boxes of pistols were already laid out neatly on the table beside the shooting lane. The manager herself was breathing hard and deep and flustered, too afraid to say a single word.
"S-s-sorry… But b-before you leave, c-could you pay the b-bill?" By the end she'd managed to more or less stabilize her voice and even glanced over at us once—but her eyes immediately slid from our faces to the demoness's flushed body, then down to the very visible situation in my pants. "Oh Lord…"
"Uh. Yeah. That was… awkward." Running a hand through the hair at the back of my head, I reluctantly let Mel go, met by an equally disappointed look from the she-devil. She stared at the portal for a few more seconds, but then gathered herself and closed it, muttering something about letting things simmer.
"So, shall we continue, or—"
A phone call cut me off mid-sentence. Insistently—almost aggressively—the wretched phone blared across the entire shooting range, drawing every eye to us.
The moment I picked up, the reason for the urgency became clear.
"Hey, Waterbane." Our dispatcher audibly exhaled with relief when he heard my voice—on my day off, no less. "Sorry, I know you're in the middle of a romantic evening, but—"
"How do you know about that?"
I couldn't help it. The speed at which the gossip had reached the operator was frankly staggering.
"I mean, the whole office knows." Robert chuckled at something—probably whispering to someone nearby at the same time—and let a hint of slyness creep into his voice. "They're even running a betting pool. Again."
"Oh, for the love of—"
"Alright, you can be annoyed later." He switched to a businesslike tone in an instant and pushed the information to Mel's phone. "There's a robbery going down on the street right next to you, and all the heroes on the day-off shift are unavailable. So if you two could possibly…"
I looked at the half-demoness with a questioning glance. Without a moment's hesitation, she summoned her monstrous blade and gave it a precise, graceful swing in the cramped shooting stall.
"…Alright. We'll handle it."
---
"And you actually ended your date and went on the call?" Diva asked, staring at the horned girl with an expression of pure bewilderment, as Prism popped her bubble gum with a loud crack. "Why didn't you just tell him to go to hell? Things were going so well…"
In the deafening silence, beneath the groans of the other patrons who had foolishly tried to chat up the female half of Team Z, the four girls were shamelessly drinking everything the bar had to offer—because the losers were paying.
"You did the right thing," Kupé said with a solemn nod, using her ability to float up and retrieve a couple of bottles from the top shelf of the bar, which had been thoroughly wrecked by an earlier fight. "Honestly… I wouldn't have been able to hold myself back. The story alone was arousing. For the full picture, all it's missing is a couple of corpses."
"You should've just dragged Ginger back to your place and stopped overthinking it." Prism delivered her verdict with authority, exhaling sweet-smelling smoke toward the men lying at her feet. A pair of beaten-up guys didn't even twitch, knocked out cold, while the dark-skinned girl had her legs propped up on their backs and waited for any sign of movement, hoping to continue venting her irritation. "Tie him to the bed and ride him until morning under his begging whimpers for mercy, and then—the next day—shove him out the door buck naked, with your teeth marks on his ass and a couple bucks for the bus home. Hm. I think I just turned myself on."
"Isn't that a little much?" the she-devil asked.
"Whatever. Don't listen to them." Diva exploded, appreciating the irony that she was currently the most responsible and grounded person in this group. "You should've just ignored the call, and everything would've sorted itself out on its own… without any corpses or humiliation!"
"Boring…"
"Oh, you can shut your mouth… and wipe the vomit off your cheek." Diva threw a napkin at Kupé—earning a grateful look in return—then tilted her head back and silently implored whatever higher powers were listening to explain why idiots always got lucky in love, while she alone was forced to compete for a guy against the most popular, sexiest, and coolest heroine in the country. "Try again. Obviously, don't repeat the shooting range thing—but at least go to a movie or something. Sit in the back row. You can get away with all kinds of things under the noise. Just one tip—when he finishes, don't aim toward the lower rows. Let's just say I got a very unwelcome gift once sitting down front…"
"Hmm…"
The demoness's thoughtful silence was interpreted differently by each of them, and the tipsy girls threw themselves into convincing her.
"It'll be great, sweetie." Prism raised her bottle in a toast and took a generous swig, already mentally mapping out her own plans for the evening—which were shaping up to be rather obvious, mostly involving a particular vibration setting. "You can always just show up at his place. Just try not to make so much noise that you give grandma a heart attack. The old dear will lose her mind when she realizes her little grandson is going at it with a demoness in his bedroom…"
"True. You can always sneak into his place while he's asleep." A throwing knife snapped off the former assassin's fingers, severing the phone cord the bartender had been using to call law enforcement. "Knock him out and bring him to yours…"
"Why in God's name is it me—me!—who has to explain all this!?" Diva rubbed her aching temples and slumped back in her chair, feeling that one more comment like that and she'd simply hurl her bottle at these so-called advisors—and honestly, why had they assembled this particular group twice? "Nobody is kidnapping anyone! And don't sneak into his room—just ring the damn doorbell. That alone would already earn you some good-person points…"
"Hmm. You may have a point." Malévola, who had never been entirely certain she'd made the right call to begin with, downed the rest of her beer in one go, quickly straightened herself up, and vanished from the bar through a humming portal, leaving the trio blinking at one another.
"I didn't mean right this second!" Diva finally cracked and raised her voice, then growled something profane under her breath, stood up, and made her way toward the bar. She needed something stronger.
---
After such a bizarre day—a date gone sideways and an ending that left everything unresolved—I was caught completely off guard when the doorbell rang. Dragging myself out of bed, feeling a strange cocktail of leftover arousal, disappointment, and melancholy, I shuffled downstairs.
Grandma hadn't even heard it, lost in her fake wrestling again—or possibly passed out, having overdone it with the whiskey.
I made my way to the front door through the contemptuous stares of the cats. And I nearly lost my mind when, on the other side of it, stood a certain red-skinned someone.
"Mel?! What are you—did something happen?" I threw the door open, already ready to step outside, but the moment I asked my questions, my eyes drifted down to the long athletic jacket covering her from the waist down. Malévola, who wore her signature open outfit in summer and winter alike. "Uh… are you sick or something?"
"What? Why would you think that?" Thrown off, the girl looked herself over from head to toe, then spread her arms wide as if to demonstrate that everything was perfectly fine and I could verify that firsthand if I didn't believe her. "Everything's fine…"
"O-o-okay," I said, drawing out the syllable, my gaze sliding lower—and only then noticing that instead of her signature denim shorts, the demoness was wearing thick, unpatterned stockings that covered her crimson skin up to mid-thigh. "So what happened?"
My imagination went into overdrive, especially when that devious creature stepped closer and gently touched my cheek.
"I came to show you something." With one deft move, her tail caught the zipper pull, and the jacket fell open with a sharp sound—revealing the girl's stunning body in a surprisingly simple but no less devastating set of light blue underwear.
"Whoa." I breathed out, unable to look away, and stepped forward—feeling throughout my entire body how the demoness's smile was sharpening into something predatory, how her gaze was growing more openly hungry. Every line of her was coiled like she was about to strike…and I had absolutely no objections to that.
"Just to be clear—" She pulled the jacket down a little further, sliding it off to her forearms so it barely covered her lower back, then stepped right up against me, forcing me to tear my eyes away from her perfect body and look directly at her. "—I want to make it known that I am sexually available."
"Jackpot. Uh, I mean—" I lost my train of thought entirely under the soft, low laugh that curled out of her, and swallowed hard. "Really? I thought you wanted to wait a bit…"
"That was before I watched you handle your weapon so skillfully." She arched one eyebrow playfully, pushing my embarrassment and arousal to their absolute limits, then pressed herself against me, breathing hard through her mouth. "Just so you know—that was a euphemism. I'm seducing you."
"You could take my soul for all I care." Willpower—whatever that was. The last shred of rational thought insisting that I should pull this seductive demoness inside the house…
All of that was somewhere very far away, thoroughly buried under sheer, unapologetic want.
I let my hands loose and reached for Mel—but she was faster. The moment she saw me start to move, she shoved me through the doorway, one hand catching my head and the other grabbing lower.
"Where do you think you're going?" There was something animal in her voice, and even if I'd lost my mind and tried to say no, she simply wouldn't have recognized the word.
"Upstairs…" My hands dropped, gripping Malévola by the waist, and in response she pressed closer, angling one thigh right against me.
"Perfect." A portal yawned open behind me—and a moment later I was falling backward onto my own bed. One stray thought flickered through my head for just an instant—how does Mel know where my room is—but it vanished just as fast as it came, because the girl who had dropped on top of me clearly had no intention of waiting.
"I love being on top."
If You Like The Story Drop a Review
~Read Advanced Chapters on: p@treon/Amiii_
~Every 150 PS = Bonus Chapter!
~Push the Story forward with your [Power Stones]