Caught in the Devils' Hand

by Ruby Duvall

  “Is it my turn?” Rosuke said in a sultry tone, leaning up again. She blinked in surprise, having become lost in her thoughts, and looked up at the self-confident grin on his face. “Seeing how happy Vallen is right now,” he began, his voice soft and still very deep, “I myself can’t wait.” He lifted his hand from where it was braced on the altar to lightly stroke himself and the movement made her look at his lap. Her mouth fell ajar.

  “Are you going to suck me dry too?” he whispered, his thumb brushing over the sensitive tip of his cock. “Are you going to watch me scream at the ceiling while I come between your lips?”

  “R-Rosuke,” she stuttered, a bit taken aback. Vallen had always been a fan of sexual banter, but Rosuke was so much more liberal with his bawdy comments.

  “It makes me sad. After this ritual is complete, you’ll be entirely Vallen’s again and I’ll have absolutely no excuse to touch you sexually,” he mourned, tilting his head so that his red hair spilled down one shoulder and onto his chest. “There are still so many things I want to do to you.”

  “How do you do it?” she asked, her voice light and breathless. She felt as if she were lightheaded and even felt a pang of shyness despite all that she had just done and despite her state of dress.

  “Years of practice,” Vallen answered, his voice sleepy. Rosuke slowly smiled then, beckoning her forward with his free hand.

  They were most definitely nearing the end of the ritual now. After obtaining the second “essence of man” from Rosuke, the fourth step was two final kisses, ending with a speech in Mahou that was short and somehow seemed much easier to remember now than it had yesterday.

  Still, she was growing nervous.

  She carefully walked around the other side of the altar, slowly coming closer to the red-haired demon waiting for her to kneel between his thighs. He eased his body to the edge of the altar, careful of the red cloth draped over it, and made room for her between his knees as he held out one hand to her. His rough but seemingly effeminate hand caressed its way down her arm from her shoulder to grip her elbow and gently guide her to him.

  “I’ll burn this into my memory,” he said, his eyes looking intensely at her. She swallowed, feeling pressured, but stepped between his thighs, her nearly see-through robe still clinging to her body from the joints of her elbows. She shrugged it off, setting it carefully on the altar next to Vallen, who was still trying to catch his breath.

  Her hands reached forward to touch Rosuke’s chest, her fingers brushing aside long locks of his red hair to press the pads of her thumbs to his nipples. She rubbed in slow circles, watching his eyes darken and tossed her hair back as she leaned down to kiss his right nipple, dark pink and stiff. He swiftly inhaled through his nose, leaning back on one hand to make his body more accessible.

  “Beautiful,” he whispered, watching as she traced a line of moisture from one nipple to the other with her tongue. She molded her mouth around his other nipple, pulling gently with her soft lips.

  Even as he closed his eyes with delight, he felt a trickle of jealousy down the line of his back, and he wasn’t sure at whom it was directed. He thought of how he wanted both Shumei and Vallen, wishing that it could be the three of them, but it seemed that Shumei and Vallen were deeply in love, and it was too late to intrude upon it.

  They would have each other, leaving him with no one, and he felt a pang of loneliness in his gut.

  Those thoughts flew right out of his head though when Shumei touched the super-sensitive limb jutting up from his pelvis. Her warm hand, gentle but firm, squeezed with just the right pressure as it slowly rubbed up and down. He felt his eyes dilate, and his blurry vision settled on her as she knelt on the floor. She pulled her mass of hair over one shoulder, knowing he would want to watch, and began to lean into him, her lips opening wider and wider the closer she came.

  He couldn’t get any air into his lungs. His breaths came in shuddering gulps, and he moaned when her lips touched him, the moan becoming shakier and louder the farther those lips traveled down the length of his cock. His hand settled on the back of her head as she pulled her lips back, sucking hard and coming nearly to the tip again before pushing back down. Her hand began to follow, and his entire body stiffened. His hips rolled slowly as he hissed, every muscle tight and subtly shaking.

  “Gods, this feels good,” he bellowed, his inhumanly low voice making the paper walls and doors shake in their frames just as Vallen’s had. He had wanted to hold out, to make this last as long as possible and remember it well, but he wondered if he could do it.

  She began to move faster, to suck harder, and he felt his eyes tear up. He gritted his teeth, groaned and growled through his tightly clenched jaw and fisted his hand in her hair.

  “By the gods…suck it.” He tried to control the pace more, to slow her down with his hand in her hair. She coughed, reaching up with one hand to gently remove his hand from her head.

  “Don’t choke her,” Vallen said, his voice soft in Rosuke’s ear. Rosuke gasped, looking over to his friend. He hadn’t even realized that Vallen had sat up. He was seated close now, his eyes intense as he watched his lover and best friend together.

  “Put your hands back and let it come naturally,” Vallen instructed, his face serious. Rosuke realized then that he was being told not to screw everything up. If Shumei couldn’t swallow everything, the spell would be a waste. Rosuke nodded in understanding, putting his hands back on the altar and looking down at Shumei again. She looked at him with sultry eyes and resumed what she had started, her eyes eventually closing as she sped up.

  “How does it feel?” Vallen whispered, so softly that Rosuke barely heard him. He grunted, his hips jerking upward involuntarily. His fingers curled, fisting in the fabric of the altar cloth. Her lips were tight and wet around him, pulling and pushing quickly since he wasn’t restricting her and he was breathing so hard that he knew a normal person would be hyperventilating.

  “How does it feel, Rosuke?” Vallen’s voice came again. “Tell her how it feels.”

  “It’s glorious!” he shouted, his voice breaking at the end. The walls shuddered again. He was going to explode, to give her everything he had. The burning heat quickly collected in his gut and began to rise up the shaft of his cock.

  “I’m gonna come!” he wheezed out, panting at the ceiling. He felt her mouth pause near the tip of his cock, her hand still rapidly pumping. His roar was loud but short, cut off at the end as the pleasure froze his vocal cords. The air in his lungs stopped, and his body slowly convulsed, twitching with each throb of pleasure.

  He came and came and came, the pleasure on his face obvious. When he finally gasped in some air, it was released as an agonized sob, and his body shuddered.

  Vallen watched as she calmly swallowed the spell component, one hand at the ready to make sure that absolutely nothing spilled out. She looked gorgeous in the midst of all this sex and magic, so different from the first night when he had met her. Then she was naïve and fearful. Now she was provocative and confident.

  Though he loved Rosuke like a brother and though he knew that yesterday and today had been necessary to save his life, he still felt the cold stab of jealousy in his chest, followed by a burning possessiveness that made him want to pull Shumei away from his friend and prevent him from ever touching her again, or even looking at her.

  Even as he felt traitorous for having such a negative feeling toward his friend, he consoled himself with the fact that it was highly unlikely for Rosuke to ever have any sexual claim on her again.

  From that night onward, she would be only his and he would be only hers.

  Never again would he take another woman. Never again would he even want another. She had his heart, his passions…even his soul, should this spell work. With the completion of the ritual, she would restore the purity of his immortal soul, making her something close to a god. He would love her until the day he died.

  Vallen caught Rosuke as the redhead collapsed backward much as he himself
had done only a few moments before. Rosuke panted in his arms, gulping once in a while as he slowly regained his breath. Vallen looked to where Shumei had risen to her feet, and watched with something like awe at the expression in her eyes.

  Something inside her had changed.

  She seemed to be growing more powerful with every second that passed that day, as if a confidence she hadn’t had even last night was growing exponentially within her.

  He watched as she leaned forward over the edge of the altar, her long, black hair falling with a barely audible sweep over her naked shoulders. She kissed him, her tongue gentle, and he eagerly responded, his eyes closing as their tongues shared the taste of sex, musky and subtle.

  Heat poured into his mouth, dripping hot and sticky down his throat and settling as a pool of warmth in his stomach. It began to spread from there, and the further it traveled throughout his torso and along his limbs, the sleepier and sleepier he became.

  “Sh-Shumei,” he whispered as she pulled her mouth away and he weakly sank down to the altar, unable to sit up anymore. His eyelids felt heavy and the last thing he saw was Rosuke reaching for his kiss.

  She turned her face and brought up one hand to lay on Rosuke’s chest as she kissed him in the same manner as Vallen. She could feel it happening. The magic was starting now that the spell component had been collected. She felt the heat travel from her mouth to his, just as it had happened with Vallen. Rosuke began to fall away from her just as she lifted her lips from his and he fell back to the altar to lie next to Vallen. They both looked delicious lying there, naked and satisfied.

  How the noblewoman could have finished the ceremony with such a sight before her, knowing what it would do to them…she would never understand.

  Once Rosuke’s eyes had closed, she stepped back, looking at the circle behind her. There was a spot she had to stand on and she carefully picked her way over to it, feeling the sizzle of power riding her skin as soon as she entered the circle’s ring.

  Both demons, now drunk on power, were lying prone on the altar, most likely asleep, as they had been when the noblewoman spilled the cup of their essence on the circle. It had been a symbol of womankind rejecting their lusts rather than accepting them, which was what Shumei had done by swallowing it. The blood spread on their stomachs had been symbolic of the death of their magic. Now, the Kiss of Power passed some of her magic into their bodies to germinate the start of the spell, which would begin with her next words.

  She clenched her hands in silent appeal.

  “Saa, noroi ga tokareru toki ga yattekita.” The words flowed easily from her lips, and the translation she had never known before seemed perfectly clear now.

  The time has come to undo this curse.

  “Kono kotoba wo motte, kanzen ni moto no ningen ni modoshiteyaru.”

  With these words, thou shall return fully human.

  “Kai!” she called out, hoping with everything she had. She clamped her eyes shut, drew her fists tighter and threw her head back, her face to the ceiling.

  The sizzling sensation surging over her skin grew exponentially, flowing over her body in waves. It wasn’t traveling upward, though, as it had been before. The flow had reversed itself and was now collecting in the circle. Her own magic, humming with energy, was feeding generous amounts of power into the current and she could feel an immense build-up forming, slowly filling in the lines of the circle like blood pumping through veins.

  The hum of her magic began to fill her ears, blocking out noise as it had done many times previously, so that all she could hear was the humming. She opened her eyes, wanting to watch the result, no matter if it was the desired one or not. If she didn’t see what happened, fixing any mistakes might not be possible.

  The room was bright—so bright that it was as if the sun were sitting like a lamp in the corner. The circle pulsed with energy, riding the beat of her heart. The two demons in the middle were still lying there, unable to move, and she resisted the urge to step into the center of the circle to check on them.

  She mustn’t move. Mustn’t even lift her foot off the floor.

  The humming grew louder and louder, roaring inside her head like the booming growl of a bear, the rumble of an earthquake, the deafening din of a giant waterfall.

  Please…

  He was lying in a river, completely submerged, but he could somehow still breathe…or rather, he didn’t need to breathe. Gentle hands washed him and he felt the sticky remains of blood sweeping away from his stomach. He opened his eyes, and through the shimmering surface of the river he saw the sun, bright and warm in a sky that boasted the same color as his eyes. He watched that glowing ball and smiled as love spilled into him the more time he spent under its rays. It seemed to grow bigger in the sky, spreading outward, and he realized that the sun was coming to him.

  It sank closer and closer to the river, so huge now that he could see nothing but bright light and the brightness was too divine to look upon anymore. When he shut his eyes, his eyelids burned red with the light of the sun upon his face and he felt a wonderful heat push against him. The water of the river burned away, evaporating into nothingness, so that all that was left was himself and the heat of the sun.

  The warmth pressed harder against him, particularly upon his navel, and he felt the prick of something sharp as he was pierced by all that warmth. The sun began to flow into him, to sink into his abdomen, to fill his body. His sex was erect and throbbing with heat. His limbs were outspread, floating in that warm space, and still the heat filled him, crammed itself into his body.

  Everything began to tingle, from the nape of his neck to the soles of his feet. His skin felt like it was burning under the sun’s light and his back arched as the scorching heat pumped into him, never-ending.

  “Welcome home,” a voice said close to his ear, and he could only croak in response, too great and overwhelming were the sensations.

  The last of the heat filled him, settling deep inside, and he felt his release against his abdomen and chest. He became aware of a smooth, hard surface against his back as the world fell into place around him, reminding him that he was still in the altar room.

  Shumei watched with awe as both demons gained another erection. They were panting for air as they writhed on the altar. The magic from the circle pushed its way into the middle and the circle’s lines began to fade as the bare area in the center filled with yellow light.

  Suddenly they grunted in their sleep and came at once together, their seed splashing them as if consecrating the ritual and bringing it to a close. She couldn’t help her gasp as their hair began to change color. Starting at the roots, a new color bled down the length of their hair, turning it black.

  She felt tears slip down her cheeks and knew at that moment that their magic had been granted to them once again. The Divine One had blessed them with it again, even after they had lost it.

  “Praise to the Divine One,” she whispered, blinking with unshed tears as the divine flame was abruptly extinguished.

  For a few seconds she couldn’t even see, so quickly had the extremely bright light faded, but the light of dusk was still visible, and as her pupils adjusted to the low light of the room, she found that her two subjects were finally moving again, trying to sit up from their prone position. She stood with her feet closer together as she brought her hands up to cover her mouth.

  Vallen was the first to sit up, his hair as dark as midnight, and he had never looked more handsome. Rosuke sat up next, his longer, wavier hair just as black as Vallen’s, and she admitted that he too looked better with his black hair.

  They looked at her as if in a trance, their mouths open with awe, and she wondered if they were as moved as she was, but then Vallen spoke.

  “Shumei…you…”

  “You are our empress,” Rosuke finished for him, the light in his eyes reverent as he looked upon her.

  She blinked, a small frown of confusion creasing her forehead.

  “What?” she asked, complet
ely perplexed. She had thought they would say something about being human again, about being magic-users again…about being happy.

  “I can feel it. We…we couldn’t feel it before because not only had we lost our magic but we also had demon status. Now though…we can feel it now and…” Rosuke began but couldn’t finish. She watched as a single tear slipped down his cheek.

  “And it’s so strong. It is the Pull of the Empress. I didn’t know it could feel so strong,” Vallen whispered. “I didn’t think I would ever feel it again.”

  “That…that can’t be true,” she said, her hands starting to shake as she pressed them to her chest.

  “It’s true. By the gods, it’s so true,” Rosuke declared.

  “I’m just a poor, unwanted girl. I’m a nobody,” she insisted, shaking her head.

  “You were chosen by the Divine One to be his Champion—to lead others like us in battle against the Dark One—to rule as empress over the land, for everything under the sun is under your rule,” Vallen asserted.

  “I don’t know anything about ruling! I don’t know nearly as much magic as I should. This can’t be possible!” she cried out. Tears flowed down her cheeks, and she felt the press of an immense exhaustion riding the coattails of her quickly abating adrenaline high.

  “Empress, you will learn,” Rosuke avowed, his face now full of joy.

  “We will teach you. We will help you rebuild your kingdom,” Vallen offered.

  “Don’t talk to me like that!” she sobbed, looking at Vallen with tear-filled eyes. “You sound more like a soldier rather than the one I love.”

  “Well…as a black-haired noble standing before his empress, first and foremost, I am one of your soldiers. We both are,” he asserted, gesturing to Rosuke with the jerk of his head.

  “I…I thought life would be simpler after this. I thought some of our problems would disappear,” she bemoaned, turning away.

  “You don’t have to do this by yourself. I am surprised that no other black-haired people had found you before we left your village. Your pull is very strong, and any black-haired magic-user would be sore-pressed to ignore its call. They will definitely find us soon, and you have me and Rosuke to help you for now.”