Page 52 of The Misfit Mage and His Devilish Desires

A dress she burned away with a flick of her hand, changing the ashes into a new outfit that barely covered her. Bez’s outfit. From the warrior’s skirt to the identical set of gauntlets he’d picked as accessories. Everything about this body was meant to emulate Bez, down to the definition of her abs. Her. Hers.

“Question.” I grimaced. “You’ve taken on a more masculine form, but are you still—”

“I’m still the God Queen Emperess of Hell, this and any other I lay siege upon,” she spoke with a deep, surly voice but held a light lilt underneath. There was command and certainty entwined in the echo of her words.

“Glad we cleared that up.” I meekly went to step around her, inch my way closer to the door, which I was beginning to realize didn’t exist in this design.

Of course not. She’d magically transported us here.

“As intriguing as I find this—and flattered by the whole altering your form for aesthetic reasons—the intercourse part isn’t gonna work for me,” I flatly said, biting back a dozen tangents on the lack of preparation I had for parenthood or the fact I didn’t see parenthood in my future. “Plus, while the childbirth factor seems quite quick, there’s an eternal commitment.”

“Quick?” Lilith cocked her head; her curled ram horns framed her face in the same way they did Bez’s. “The intercourse alone could last months.”

“Months?” My jaw dropped. “But wait. You just…” I pointed to the sealed ceiling, gesturing to the demon she created in literal seconds.

“I have eons of experience,” she explained. “Since you don’t know anything about untangling your essence from your being, colliding it with the empty around yourself, shaping consciousness from the ether, or merging your entity with another’s.”

“I know plenty about merging my entity with someone else’s,” I muttered.

“Do not worry, though. I will fuck my seed into you, and you will spill your essence into me. A drop. A pure, undiluted piece of power meant to merge with my entity.”

“No,” I said. No edge or concern in my tone. As a devil, I had to hold myself on equal footing with Lilith. She brought me here as an equal. Even if the idea sent trembles through my entire body.

“No?” Lilith’s face crinkled with disgust like the word had clung to her tongue with a bad taste. “Fine. If you wish to carry the demon to term, I can renovate this portion of my domain during your stay. A devil-merged Diabolic is usually at least a century. The essence is quite fickle about merging, so you’ll need to stay close.”

“I can’t get pregnant.”

“You are a devil. You can do whatever you will. If your feeble mortal body says otherwise, then change it.” Lilith flexed her muscles, displaying her broad, firm chest. “Bodies are such limiting things. Do not allow one so simple in its construction to control you, my dear.”

“Okay, let me clarify. I’m not getting pregnant. I’m not having a baby. Not your baby. Not anyone’s baby.” My essence swelled in my chest, making my words breathy and fuming with fury. “And I’m not sleeping with you. I’m with Bez.”

“You would reject me for a demon pet?” Lilith hissed like the mere idea itself carried poison.

The air around us turned hot and dry, scorching my skin like I’d fallen into a desert.

“You would reject my proposition, my offering, my essence, after all I have done?” Lilith’s voice shifted, and the masculine form withered away as a more feminine serpentine form wriggled side to side. “I have granted you an audience with all my glory. I have given you a Devil’s Banquet in your honor. You, Walter Alden, a no-name devil, an abomination birthed not of the nothingness in the universe but of some second-rate pathetic realm barely functioning on the one planet in your vast dimension of unexplored territory.”

Lilith’s body blurred, rattling so quickly in place her image was difficult to take in. This wasn’t her true form, but it was the closest I’d seen by far. Similar to a gorgon with a humanoid upper half and a tail body. But her arms split apart and spread into thin-fleshed wings that spanned the length of the room. Her jaw cracked, and out spilled a hundred tendrils, each whipping around with gnarled teeth and hungry mouths.

“I have been nothing but accommodating.” Lilith raged, each mouth speaking the words in an echoed, repetitive loop. Or I assumed they spoke the same words as her many-mouthed tendrils spoke a different language from my world.

Had she taken the time to learn every single language, both mortal and Mythic, before inviting me here?

“I should kill you where you stand.”

“But you won’t.” I clenched my fists, channeling essence and puffing my chest with so much bravado I might actually get myself killed for arrogance. “You speak as if I’m weak, but we both know you’re hesitant. Much like myself. My limits, my potential, are unknown factors.”

“That so?” she hissed a hundred thousand times over that every dialect of my world reverberated throughout this shrinking room.

Literally shrinking. Lilith drew it in and forced us closer and closer without even moving.

My essence sprang from my pores defensively, coating my hands and feet in claws.

“Please.” Lilith’s voices knocked me back, the sheer force of the sound. “I could end you with a thought.”

She slithered across the room, turning away from me, revealing the long, jagged spikes lining from her neck to the tip of her tail.

“Killing you offers me nothing, though.” With a flap of her winged arms, Lilith tore open the wall. “However, taking the filth of your muck and offering it to your better… That will provide me what I’ve always craved.”

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