Page 1 of The Misfit Mage and His Devilish Desires

1

Wally

Bez bucked against my hips, resistant and clearly a bit uncomfortable beneath me. I didn’t mean to be so rough. This wasn’t exactly a position I was used to. With my legs wrapped over his thighs and my arms tucked under his, I held Bez in place. This was the first time I’d been on top. As he fidgeted, I steadied my hold over him. Pulling my arms up while I kept them wrapped under his and pressed to the back of his head. It forced his back into a deeper arch.

I wanted to run my fingers through his shaggy black hair, play with it, tease him a bit by grabbing a fistful all the way to his neon orange roots. But Bez was already squirming, and something told me he wouldn’t react well to me yanking his head back like he did to me a thousand times over. No, that was something I enjoyed—even when I didn’t.

I pushed all my weight down and pinned him to the soft floormat. Bez bucked again, but it did nothing with my thighssqueezed over his. His muscles tensed, yet the warm skin of his back remained soft when pressed against my chest. When he flexed his arms, though, the muscles constricted against mine, and then he stretched them as far out as he could; his fingers gripped the matting of the floor and ripped through it once his essence transformed his human fingers into their more demonic claws. It didn’t help steady his position beneath me, merely a defiant need to resist. Bez grunted, biting back a feral groan.

Was I hurting him? I didn’t want to hurt Bez, but this felt too good. I couldn’t relent, not when I was this close to… I sucked my teeth, taking in a deep breath of all the Mythic residue in the atmosphere. It strengthened my body, fueling the mana my mortal coil contained, and sparked the devil essence that’d become entwined to my very being on a cellular level. The more magic I fed into the Diabolic power, the more it surged through my veins, strengthening me.

“Walter.” Bez ground his teeth so hard the crunch snapped in the air. “You probably think you’re hot stuff right now, don’t you?”

“Don’t ruin this for me, Bez.” I sighed. “You’re gonna ruin this for me, aren’t you?”

And just like that, one of Bez’s tails coiled around my throat and whipped me back, pulling me off Bez and knocking me to the ground. In a flash, Bez darted on top of me and pinned me to the floormat.

Fuck. Between his arms, his legs, and his three tails, I couldn’t wriggle loose for the life of me. Bez loved it. His heart pounded against my chest, faster with each second that passed, which made mine speed up, desiring to match his rhythmic pace. It was one of the few things I’d mastered purely on instinct, hence why we trained like this so I could navigate all my powers and learn to hone them at will.

I didn’t understand how wrestling was going to help me improve my Diabolic abilities, but I really enjoyed the homoerotic positions we found ourselves in each time. Plus, it was one of the few times Bez dressed down—no damn suit and tie. Only a pair of gray joggers that barely reached past his knees, and since he wore them baggy, they often left the deep V cut at hip bones exposed and the crack of his ass too. Not to mention, he always went with gray because he liked the way it framed his monster cock, though I believed some of that interest had to do with social media influence. He easily had a dozen gray sweatpants dick memes saved on his phone.

“Yield?” Bez grinned, cocky and carefree. But I could see him panting, using the Mythic residue around us to compensate for his state of exhaustion.

If I could summon my tail, I’d be able to break his hold around my throat. His tail coiled tighter, constricting my breathing—breathing I didn’t need but still had such a forced habit of taking. Or maybe I did need the oxygen. It was difficult to discern how much a mortal body fueled entirely by base insentient devil essence worked. How much of it was rudimentary based on my instinct and history, and how much was an actual requirement since the essence merged with me?

Bez thunked my head with the tip of his second tail while his third remained wrapped around my legs. “Gonna yield?”

My face burned from frustration and failure. “Yes.”

“Good boy.” Bez released me and leapt to his feet in a swift motion. He relished our sparring matches. And even though he darted throughout the training room at blurred speed, reassembling everything we’d knocked over, in a matter of seconds, I tracked his movements, each step like a collection of flickering still photos. Like a Claymation movie.

How come my senses worked automatically, observing the most minute details, but I couldn’t simply trigger other abilities?

“If it hadn’t been for your tails, I would’ve had you.”

Bez rolled his eyes. “Unlikely. Though, I admire the effort.”

“I was closer this time.” Not really. I barely felt the essence stirring inside me. It was there. It’d been there for over a year now, circulating throughout my body and doing its own damn thing. That said, what I did control had managed to nearly overpower Bez. Sort of.

“Do you wanna know where you messed up this time?”

“Got confident?”

“No—well, yes, because obviously, you’ll never best me.” Bez flashed a grin and strutted back toward me now that he’d returned everything to its proper place. “You’re still internalizing your Diabolic abilities.”

Since Bez cut the devil essence from his being and poured it into me, he’d made it his mission to teach me how to cultivate and control its every whim and make the power bend to my will alone. That hadn’t gone great, no matter how much we trained or I studied—not that there was a Diabolic devil-taming manual lying around.

As Bez lectured about ways one feels their essence, I let my eyes drift around the training room. He wasn’t the best teacher, or I wasn’t the best student. Okay, that was a lie. I was an amazing student. Top marks in nearly all my classes from kindergarten all the way through college and my magic academy.

Seriously, I’m a rockstar student.

Well, except for implementing theory into practice. Gaining the devil essence and my inability to master it bogged me down most days like a constant reminder of the years spent trying to wield my mage magics.

“When we’re training, you need to let loose, stop thinking, stop holding back, and just focus on eviscerating your opponent.”

“And what happens when I do eviscerate you?”

“Cute.”

---