Sugar On Top

SUGAR ON TOP

By

Lady Tiger-eye

For Laryna6 because she’s so nice. In response to her request on the DMC Exchange Works. Unfortunately I didn’t quite do what you wanted. It’s lemon, and Sugar(Dante)’s on top. However he’s not half-naked; he’s all naked…

Alternate universe. Set after Devil May Cry 2. Dante returns to Vie du Marli at the request of Matier. He voluntarily agrees to participate in the Ritual of the God. He contests with Lady, Trish and Lucia who have also been called and agreed to the ceremony. He defeats each woman, but is taken by surprise and knocked senseless by Matier upon his return.

He awakes blindfolded, gagged and chained to an altar. In an orgiastic rite, he is intimate with many women, including the three who mean so much to him. At the end of the sacrament his throat is cut and his blood and semen spilled upon the soil of Vie du Marli to sanctify the ground. He recovers and learns that Sparda and Eva had participated in the ritual and that he and Vergil had been conceived at that time.

Matier predicts there will again be a major confrontation between the forces of Light and Darkness. She agrees to take the women, now pregnant, into her care and keeping as the Mother, thus preserving the line of Sparda and the hope of humanity in the future. Dante and Lady return to Devil May Cry to prepare for the conflict while Trish and Lucia remain on the island.

In Hell, the death of Mundus has freed Vergil from his captivity. He discards the armor and the identity of Nero Angelo and goes into hiding to nurse and recover his strength. He wages battle after battle to gain power and at last emerges victorious as the King of Hell. One thing continues to escape him. He cannot regain the Power of Sparda without the Perfect Amulet and the sword, Force Edge which remain in the keeping of Trish.

Hell’s prognosticators also predict the coming conflict. They forsee a victory for Vergil if he can acquire three things: a child conceived by the Ritual, the Amulet and Force Edge. Vergil realizes he is once again at odds with Dante. He gathers his forces and mounts an attack on Devil May Cry, hoping to turn or at least neutralize Dante and capture Lady.

Forewarned by Matier in a dream, Dante has placed his beloved Lady on a plane to Vie du Marli, only convincing her to go by promising to join her there. He confronts Vergil and all his hosts on the street outside of his shop. Vergil offers Dante a place as second-in-command of Hell in exchange for the whereabouts of the women and the magical items. Dante tells him to “Flock off.”

Battle ensues. Dante is overwhelmed by numbers and Devil May Cry is overrun and wrecked in an unsuccessful search for clues to the children and the relics of Sparda. Dante is dragged away to Hell, where he faces torture and a vicious sexual assault by Vergil in an attempt to make him betray those who depend upon him. Defiant for now, Dante knows the time will come when Vergil is able to break him. This story takes place shortly after Vergil’s assault, and features Nevan who has been taken as spoils of war by the elder Sparda twin.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Hell

Dante Sparda hung in his chains and hated. He hated Hell, he hated his brother, Vergil, he hated pain, and most of all he hated being naked. It was just so damned unnerving. Being naked when you wanted to was fine, being naked with someone you loved was better than fine, but being naked all the time was just plain stupid. It made you feel cold and unprotected. Vulnerable. Which was, of course, why Vergil had ordered him stripped in the first place.

Dante missed his leathers, missed his pizza, missed his women, and—God—what he’d give for a beer right now! He sighed. The women were as safe as he could make them. He’d back Matier against Vergil any day. He guessed there was no point caring about all the rest. He just felt sorry for himself. He was hungry, thirsty and freezing his ass off, and he figured he’d better get used to it.

At least they hadn’t broken his mind yet. He could still escape into daydreams. Closing his eyes he conjured a picture of his office: The dingy wooden walls with demon parts skewered onto them, the scarred wooden desk he could rest his booted feet on, the jukebox blasting out some ear-splitting rock. He was just debating which of the three best ladies in his life would join him for some quality time on the battered red leatherette couch when the door to his cell rattled.

Dante drew his knees up to his chest. He quickened his breathing and began to call on all the adrenalin he could muster to fight whatever might be coming through the door. It swung wide, and the room was flooded with a swirling flurry of black bats. Oh, shit! he thought, Nevan!

She swept into the tiny cell, all crackling voltage and voluptuous grace. The static energy she always gave off danced over his skin, sending little frissons of electricity sparking through him and making his treacherous gonads twitch. Dante glared at her.

“Hey, sugar.” Her voice coiled over him, soft and seductive, the best of rock and roll, rhythm and blues and wailing, heart-breaking folk ballad all rolled into one. Dante wanted to get lost in that voice, to hear it whisper, murmur, no scream his name. “I thought you might be getting hungry.”

She began directing a stream of imps who poured through the door carrying a table, chairs and dishes that steamed with exotic, desirable smells. Dante’s mouth flooded with saliva and his stomach twisted and growled. He had a moment’s admiration for the smooth way she directed the chaos of bats, imps and impedimenta. Then he remembered who she was and where they were.

“He sent you, didn’t he?” he demanded.

“Vergil?” She laughed, and Dante thought he might die from the pleasure. “Oh, no, sugar. I came all on my own.”

“I just bet you did,” Dante muttered. Then he said, “Aren’t you afraid of what he’ll do if he finds out you were here?”

“No, sugar. I’m too—useful. Besides, he likes me. And anyway what Vergil doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Go on now, kittens.” She hustled the imps and the majority of the bats out the door. It closed and locked behind them with a doomed and ominous click. She turned to him.

Dante drew back as she approached, but she only flashed him that 10,000 watt smile and sent a blaze of spell that jolted through the manacles around his wrists and caused them to open. The spell jumped through him as well, and Dante thought that was just damned unfair. He shook his wrists and got to his feet. Pride demanded he stand tall and defiant. Fear told him to be wary and protect everything he had. Nevan’s smile widened, and fury and lust pounded in his veins.

He’d always wanted her. From the moment he’d stepped through the door of that friggin’ opera house she’d haunted the back of his mind, teasing him with her siren’s voice and other-worldly laugh. On the long lonely nights when Lady was angry and wouldn’t talk to him, or Trish looked too much like Eva for his comfort or Lucia was just too innocent, adoring and eager, he would pull out the guitar Nevan had become when he’d defeated her.

His hands would cradle her, and his fingers would dance over her strings. Dante would hear her voice singing to him, tempting him, promising him the fulfillment of his wildest sexual desires. He would play like a crazy man until his heart broke and he shoved the guitar away from him, or until his will broke and his body erupted in violent physical release. Deep in his soul, Nevan scared the holy, living crap out of him.

“Aren’t you worried I’ll try to escape?” he asked just to prove he wasn’t afraid and he wasn’t cooperative.

She laughed again, and Dante cursed. “No. If you did get past me, sugar, Agni and Rudra are just outside the door. Then there’s Beowulf…”

“Let me guess, and Cerberus, too. The asshole,” he growled. He’d stopped calling Vergil a bastard when his brother had icily pointed out what that statement implied about Eva and Sparda. “He took everything, didn’t he? My clothes, my guitar, my weapons, even my damned cat and dog. The greedy shit. He’s got Alastor and Rebellion and Ifrit and my girls,” he mourned. “I hate to think about what he’s done to them.”

“Well, Alastor never has been too bright,” Nevan said in an apologetic tone. “But don’t worry, sugar. Ifrit's not one for cooperation and that other sword wasn’t named Rebellion for nothing. And as for Ebony and Ivory, not only will they not fire for him, they won’t even speak to him.”

It was the best news Dante’d had in days. “He hasn’t hurt them, has he?”

“He rages. He threatens to have them melted down. He just can’t quite bring himself to do it, though. He doesn’t want to believe there’s anything supernatural that won’t respond to him. Except you.”

Dante strode forward and grabbed Nevan’s upper arm. It was a mistake. Her magic washed over him, warm and enticing. It took everything he had to let her go.

“’Slowly, slowly, it’s too good to waste,’” she said, quoting the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

“I knew I never should have rented that movie.”

“Sit down, sugar. Eat.”

“I’m not ‘sugar,’” Dante snapped. “There’s nothing sweet about me. Just ask my brother.”

“All men are sugar to me,” she breathed. “Soft and dulcet and male.”

Nevan smiled. The devil in him, always stronger when he walked the halls of Hell, flooded to the surface. He felt his canines lengthen and knew his eyes had bled out to incandescent blue. He was hungry, so hungry…and for so much more than food. He wanted sex. And vengeance.

Dante reined himself in and carefully seated himself in one of the chairs. He looked at the red and silver brocade tablecloth, the solid silver plate, goblets and table service and laughed. “You don’t miss a trick, do you? Do you serve Vergil on blue and gold?”

“Of course, sugar. He expects it.”

She seated herself opposite him, her bats judiciously rearranging themselves to show a provocative length of leg. The wood of the table itself cried out as Dante sank his fingertips into it and squeezed. He swallowed hard. Nevan picked up a silver pitcher and poured from it into one of two goblets. “Drink.”

Dante took the goblet. It was plain water, he could smell it, but it was ice cold and it went down his parched throat with a pureness that was paradise. Nevan opened the other salvers and began to dish the food onto his plate.

“What’s in it?” he asked.

“Are you sure you want to know, sugar?” she purred.

Dante froze. Pure horror ran through him. Nevan laughed.

“It’s all right,” she soothed him. “There are no meats or vegetables in it you haven’t eaten before on Earth.”

In the end plain hunger won out over his mistrust. He couldn’t fight if he was starving, and God only knew when an opportunity like this one might come again. Dante began wolfing down the food. Nevan raised her eyebrows, and reluctantly he slowed, calling up table manners Eva had pounded into him so far in the past it might have been the Dark Ages. Nevan smiled and poured from a second pitcher into the second goblet. She gave herself a goblet as well, lifted it and murmured, “Slainté!”

Dante lifted his goblet and grinned. “Live long and prosper,” he shot back and drank. It wasn’t beer or gin, but it was alcoholic and it was good. Smooth and golden, it washed over his palate with a mind-numbing pleasure that made every hit of everything addictive he’d ever had pale by comparison.

“Great stuff,” he said. “Does Vergil know you’re giving it out to the prisoners?”

She twirled her goblet in her long supple fingers. “His cellarer and I are old friends.”

Dante snorted. “To old friends, then.”

Nevan made a moue. “And present company.”

Dante slugged down more of the drink and went back to the food. Silence reigned for a few minutes as they applied themselves to the meal. It was salty, spicy and all too delicious. “Sss good,” Dante slurred around a mouthful. “Not as good as the Mexican food over on forty-second street,” he lied, “but good.”

“Thank you, sugar,” she demurred. “I try my best.”

Dante found himself sucking down both water and the golden drink at a prodigious rate, even for him. “Damn, I’m gonna need a slop bucket later,” he muttered. “I just know it.”

“It’s all right, sugar.” Nevan’s smoky voice absolved him from all sins. “We all do.”

His thoughts were getting hazy. He looked at her, and the wanting crawled up the back of his throat and stole his breath. Realization tumbled over him, causing him to curse his naïveté, yet bringing with it an unreasoning sense of betrayal. He slammed his fist onto the table making the dishes jump. He began to laugh, a drunken, rueful laugh. Nevan laughed with him, her sultry feminine contralto a seductive counterpoint to his deeper masculine tones.

“Oh-h-h,” he drawled. “You did spike this stuff, didn’t you?”

“Of course, sugar. Surely you didn’t really think I wouldn’t?”

He closed his eyes against the whirling room. “What is it?” he demanded.

“Why, Ambrosia, sugar. What else?”

Ambrosia. The food of the gods, guaranteed to make a devil intoxicated and to inflame its libido. “You bitch,” he breathed.

She reached across the table and placed her hands over his. Dante trembled. “Yes, sugar, I’m a bitch, a witch, a slut, a whore. I’m the dark dream that comes to good little boys in the night, making them cry out with pleasure and leave nasty messes in their beds. I’m a devil, a demon, a succubus.”

“I ought to kill you,” he said.

“Why, sugar, I don’t think that’s what you really want to do.”

She rose, came around the table and seated herself on his lap. Dante shivered like the last leaf on a barren tree in a high autumn wind. Nevan put her hands on his shoulders and her lips next to his ear.

“Make love with me, sugar,” she whispered. “You know you want to.”

Her hair misted down around them in a veil of fiery rain. It spun and sparkled, the electricity lacing through it like the twinkling lights on a Christmas tree. Her fragrance cloaked him, and Dante drew it into his lungs as if it were air itself. Most of Hell stank, but Nevan smelled wonderful. She smelled of spice and sex and a tiny hint of smoke.

Dante shut his eyes yet again, and images flashed across his eyelids. The faces of his women danced through his consciousness in an ethereal parade: Lady with her glorious odd eyes, scarred nose and her incandescent intensity; Trish with his mother’s face, hair like gossamer gold and her smoldering sensuality; Lucia with her verdant eyes, café-au-lait skin and her ardent adoration.

They were on Vie du Marli now, safe in the keeping of Matier the Mother, the seed of Sparda growing within them, holding out a hope for the future of humanity in the days to come. He would die here in this barren, God-forsaken citadel fighting to distract Hell and hold it off of them for as long as he could. Fight and die for them, as his father had fought and died for his mother, Vergil and himself. He was doing all he could, and he knew it. But he was so alone, and some stupid, nonsensical part of him wanted so badly to live. If he took the only comfort he could find in this dark place, who the Hell would ever know or care besides the occult and midnight woman now within the reach of his arms.

Dante rubbed his cheek along Nevan’s like some great tomcat. “Lose the bats,” he commanded.

Nevan made a low amused noise in her throat, but the bats encasing the lower half of her body rose in a cloud to vanish into the black recesses toward the ceiling of the cell. The feel of her bare skin, warm and supple against him, made Dante’s heart skip a beat. Her mouth still next to his ear, she whispered, “Kiss me.”

Dante shifted her a bit on his lap, reached up and cupped her face in his hands. He ran his thumb over her lower lip. “Say please,” he murmured.

“Please,” she breathed, her lips nipping at the thumb.

“Pretty please.”

“Pretty please.” Nevan wiggled her backside, and the breath froze inside him.

When he could finally draw air again, he found he’d released her face to wrap his arms around her drawing her even closer to him. His mouth hovered inches from hers as he said, “Pretty please with su…”

“Pretty please with you on top, sugar,” she interrupted. Her magical, electrical breath ghosted over his lips, and he drew it down inside him to touch his innermost depths. His mouth closed over hers. Her head fell back and her body arched against his, pressing her breasts against the wall of his chest.

She had bared her throat to him, a demonic gesture of submission. The devil inside him skated perilously close, demanding he tear into that long, elegant column and prove his masculine right to claim her. He fought it down, placing his lips over the beating pulse below her jaw in a soft kiss, perversely holding on to the humanity of which he was so proud.

He strung a line of those kisses down her throat and over her collar bone, lingering a moment in that sweet hollow. Her breasts lay before him, and Dante reached up and brushed away the red strands which concealed only enough to tease a man.

“I wanted to do that the moment I first saw you,” he said. “How do you keep that hair in place over them?

“Why static electricity, what else, sugar?”

Dante crowed, “I knew it!”

“Knew what, sugar?”

He ran his thumbs over her nipples, and they hardened beneath his touch. “They’re red. My favorite color.”

He cupped the weight of one breast in his hand. Bending his head, he drew the nipple into his mouth. As he ran his tongue over it, it tasted hot and sweet, and he realized she had coated them with something, probably more Ambrosia. The knowledge only made him suckle harder. He was already high as a kite and hard as a blued steel rod. No more damage could be done that way.

Her breathing quickened, and he switched to the other breast. His free hand fell to caress the honeyed round of her hip. She was as tall as he was, something he rarely ran across in a woman. Her breasts were like soft, ripe nectarines, and her pelvis was rotund and purely feminine. No boy-slim, rail-thin model, she had substance. Dante wanted that substance, wanted her beneath him with her miles of legs wrapped around his waist.

He gathered her into his arms and stood. He wanted her beneath him, but he’d be damned if he asked her to lie on the cold, hard stone of the floor. Setting her on her feet, he reached over and jerked the scarlet and silver tablecloth off the table. Dishes, cups, tableware, food; it all went flying.

“Shit.” He cocked his head and gave Nevan a fractious look. “It always works for those bastards in the top hats.”

“It’s called magic, sugar.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, is that what it is? I though it was just hand-eye coordination.”

“Well, you’ve got plenty of that, sugar.”

“You bet I do.” He shook the cloth, making it billow and swirl before it settled on the floor at their feet.

He lay down on the fabric and held out his hands to her. Nevan gave her head a rebellious toss, but she came to him. Placing her on her back, he turned on his side and propped his head on one hand. With the other he began tracing her curves, smiling as she shivered and her red eyes went wide and dreamy.

He leaned over her, covering her mouth with his. He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, seeking entrance. When she denied him, his hand wandered to the titian curls at the junction of her thighs, and he slipped one finger inside her, parting her moist lips and skimming the sensitive nub he found there. She opened her mouth to cry out, and his tongue shot inside it. He swallowed her cry and set a rhythm with his tongue and his finger, gently thrusting them in and slowly drawing them out.

Nevan fought against him, and he felt her beginning to pull on his life-force as she tightened her legs, her succubus’ instincts seeking to control the pace of the seduction. In that moment Dante knew he was closer to losing his soul than he had ever been in his life. He let his demon out just enough to growl and graze her mouth with long, sharp fangs. She bled a little, and her dark demonic blood bit and burned his mouth and tongue.

He freed her mouth to drop kisses over her forehead, across her eyelids and down the arc of her cheek. He withdrew his finger, brought it to his mouth and suckled it as if it were a lollipop.

“Mmm.” His voice went husky when he spoke. “You call me ‘sugar,’ but I think you must be made of Ambrosia.”

“You’re closer to right than you ever want to know, sugar.”

He rose over her, using one hand on the inside of either thigh to draw her legs apart so he could kneel between them. Applying himself to her breasts again, he teased each one with his hands and mouth. He worked his way down, rubbing his cheek against the hollow of her stomach and dipping his tongue into her navel. Abruptly he raised his head and looked up at her.

“Are you one of the ones who can turn into a man as well as a woman?” he asked.

She chuckled, low and deep. “Why? Is that what you’d prefer, sugar?”

“No way,” he said. “Just curious.” He went back to his ministrations, not caring that she hadn’t really answered his question. Dante shifted his attentions to her inner thighs and was pleased to hear the sudden catch in her breath.

“You don’t have to pleasure me this way, sugar.”

“But I want to pleasure you this way,” he rumbled. “I want to make you scream for me the way you did when you were a guitar.”

“Sugar, I…”

He deliberately blew a soft puff of air over her secret parts and was rewarded by her gasp. Before she could recover and say more, he had set his mouth to her in that most intimate of kisses. He took his time, coaxing huffs and sighs and small cries from her as he explored her with his lips and teeth and tongue. She began to writhe beneath him, but he was merciless, driving her on toward the release he desired. When it came, he drank from her, finding her almost as intoxicating as the golden liquor she had plied him with earlier.

By the time it was finished, Dante burned. His blood pounded in his veins, his breath labored in his lungs and his loins ached. Both the devil and the man howled inside him, demanding he dominate her, force her to yield and grant him the right to place his seed inside her. With savage quickness he flipped her onto her stomach, kneeling behind her and drawing her to her knees. He put his cock at the cleft of her backside and cupped his hands around her breasts thumbing the nipples until they stood in hard peaks. He set his teeth to the flesh where her shoulder met her neck and bit down hard. Nevan shuddered in his arms and cried out his name.

The sound grabbed his heart and dragged him on. He soothed the bite with small kisses and gentle sweeps of his tongue that cleaned the acid blood from the wound. Dante bent her forward and ran two fingers into her hot wet depths. She was tight, so tight. Demon flesh always healed making encounters forever virginal. Her muscles clenched around his fingers hard enough make the devil bellow. He fought it down and worked her until she began to rock against him and make mindless mewing noises.

He traded his fingers for his cock, sinking himself deep within her, never slowing for an instant. The realization she was no fragile mortal, that he could not break her sang through him. He wanted her this animal way, no face to face connection, just heat and bodies and driving need. He thrust forward, and they both cried out in pleasure as the head of his cock brushed against her cervix. Some dim intelligent part of his mind, buried deep beneath the fire of desire, acknowledged the fact she had a womb, could nurture and bear nestlings.

Savage satisfaction shot through him at the thought. It would serve Vergil right if Dante populated the halls of Hell with tiny sons and daughters of Sparda clamoring to cause chaos and thirsting for blood. Crying for power the same way he and his brother had desired consanguine vengeance. Below him Nevan wailed her delight, and the sweet song of her screams gave him everything he’d hoped to gain from her. She convulsed around him, and Dante threw back his head in ecstasy. The screams tore from him as well, voicing his hardship until he emptied himself into her, flooded her with all his defiance, all his desire and all his despair.

They collapsed. Dante couldn’t move as the sheer carnality of it ran through him again and again leaving him shuddering with pleasure. At last she slipped away from him, turning in his arms to rain little kisses over him. Dante shut his eyes against her, clinging to the need to hold some part of himself separate from her. Nevan began to speak, her siren’s voice threading through his mind, wheedling him to listen to her and to take heed of her words.

“Dante, my sugar, my love,” she whispered. “Don’t give in to despair. There are those who are not happy with Vergil’s rule of Hell. Those who would prefer to see the other son of Sparda sit upon the throne.”

“Sit on the throne of Hell? You’ve got the wrong brother, babe. I’m Dante. You want Vergil.”

“Do I?”

“Talk sense.” He shivered as Nevan caressed his chest with her long clever hands. “I’m chained naked in a dungeon cell. Vergil has legions, spells, monsters, sorcerers. It’s impossible.”

“Perhaps not,” she cajoled.

For an instant Dante allowed himself to envision it. Hell sealed against the mortal world, his women and children safe. Himself seated on the throne, holding and using and dispensing power as he’d never been able to do before, a magnificent Nevan seated as a dark Queen beside him. Then his reality swamped him. He saw Eva’s body, lying in a pool of gore; the nightmare of Temen-ni-Gru rising brutally before him; the masses of blood, his, Vergil’s, Arkham’s, Lady’s spilled across the tower’s floors; Trish lashed to the cross, drained to nothingness; Lucia begging him to kill her before she could harm another.

He saw rampant battle, broken children and the woman who now lay beside him torn to sanguine bits. Vergil would not surrender and would show no mercy to any who gave to Dante in a cause. Dante cried out in horror. Pushing Nevan from him, he rolled onto his back and flung his forearm over his eyes, trying to shut out the vision.

The move was a mistake. In a heartbeat Nevan was atop him, pinning him to the floor. The strength in her grip was frightening, and the voracious speed with which her mouth fastened on his was a serpentine strike. Dante had thought himself drained, but the first brush of her lips sent a bolt through him that left his cock as hard as steel.

She mounted him with more brutality than finesse, impaling herself on him, drawing him ever deeper within her. Nevan held him captive there, her mouth and loins snaring him with sensual bliss stronger and surer than even Vergil’s Hell-forged chains. She posted atop him like the proverbial nightmare, devouring him with her kiss and draining him with her hips. For a moment death began to claim him, then the will that driven him to fight and survive after Eva’s murder, the indominatable will of a Son of Sparda, flared through him.

With a wrenching, terrible scream the devil inside him triggered. The transformation swept over him, carrying all before it. Nails lengthened, fangs sharpened and heavy horns burst free of his skull. His skin hardened to the red hot chitinous armor of an insectoid demon. With a blow he knocked her mouth free of his, banishing mortality. His hands fastened on her hips, and he pounded into her. A mortal woman would have perished, split in half by the assault, but Nevan only threw back her head and laughed for joy, riding the storm with all the skill of her kind.

Power poured off of them. Deadly lightning crackled through the room. The scent of ozone stabbed the air. Sorcery rose around them in a dome, rattling the door, sending furniture and dishes flying. The stone walls shook and chipped. Even the ceiling shuddered, sending a flood of frenzied bats swooping through the cell. Nevan’s climax drove him blind crazy. Dante redoubled his assault until his own release hammered through him proclaimed with a thrust and a roar.

A deafening silence descended, broken only by the sound of ragged breathing. She lay sprawled atop him, her warm weight a purveyor of satisfied lassitude. Nevan cupped his demon face in her hands and looked deep into his eyes.

“Even naked and in chains you have power,” she said. “Even assaulted and enslaved you rebel. You not only endure in Hell, Dante Sparda, you flourish.”

With something that resembled a sob, Dante slipped back into his human form. “All right.” His voice sounded raspy and grated on his ears. “You made your point.”

They lay entwined a moment longer. Dante’s arms wrapped around Nevan, his hands roving the silken skin of her shoulders and lower back in a lingering caress.

“You’d better leave,” he said. “This has been a party Vergil couldn’t fail to notice.”

Nevan chuckled, and Dante’s body responded in manner his tired mind found both desirable and dreadful.

“Vergil’s gone to Earth to vent his frustrations upon poor, undefended mortals. But you’re right, sugar. Our little tête-à-tête won’t have gone unnoticed.”

She rolled off of him and to her feet in a move of glorious, inhuman grace. Nevan shook out her hair and it fell into place, clinging once more to the curves of her breasts. She ran her hands palm down before the front of her body in a move that ended with a shake and a curling outward flick. The spell caught Dante, prickling over him in a cozy sensation. He found his body was as clean as if he had just stepped from a shower. A hint of Nevan’s smoky scent tingled in his nostrils.

“That’s handy,” he said.

“I told you, sugar, I’m useful.”

Her bats streamed to her, nestling lovingly around her hips, thighs and legs. She strolled to the door, and the roll of her hips left Dante with a mixture of appreciation and the heebie jeebies. Nevan opened the door and called, “It’s time, kittens.”

The imps slunk back in their eyes wide and wary as they took in the ruin of the cell. Dante lay on the tablecloth and tried to look nonchalant. The little devils began collecting the debris, scampering out the door with it as if Hell itself was after them. It took all of Dante’s fabled will to hold his pose and not break out laughing.

In the meantime, Nevan was deep in conversation with Agni. “Do you have it?”

“Yes,” the big devil rumbled. “How is he?”

“How is he?” echoed Agni’s brother and counterpart, Rudra in anxious tones.

“He’s as he always is,” said Nevan. “Splendid. Homeric.”

Deep growling chuckles followed her words. The relief in their mirth was a dart in Dante’s heart. He hadn’t thought they’d cared.

“I’ll be out shortly.” Nevan was closing the door, turning back to him. She held something in her hand, but kept it down at her side, shielded from his line of vision. Dante got to his feet.

“So,” he said, deliberately keeping his tone light, “it’s time to chain me up again, is it?”

Nevan smiled a provocative and vindictive smile. “No, sugar. I’m going to let Vergil take care of that when he gets back. I have something for you.”

She held out the item in her hand. It was a sinful little dagger with a slim and twisting blade slithering into a hilt shaped like a pair of golden wings. Its handle was a voluptuous woman with blood-red hair and green gemstone chips for eyes. Dante couldn’t keep the amusement and scorn from his face.

“And just what am I supposed to do with this?” he asked. “Tickle Vergil with it?”

Nevan laughed her shivery, water glass, faery laugh. “Her name is Spite. She may be small, but she has a wicked bite. Be careful of her blade and point, sugar. They carry something you’re all too familiar with.”

“And that is?”

“Why what bad little girls are made of, sugar. Ambrosia.”

Dante grinned a wide, feral grin at the picture of Vergil, frigid, controlled Vergil, with the fire of Ambrosia planted deep inside him, eating him up from within. He pulled Nevan close to him, taking infinite care not to prick her with Spite’s point. He kissed her, a long, lingering kiss that held hope and passion and promise.

When he reluctantly released her, he grinned again. “I think I’ve changed my mind.”

“Oh? Why is that, sugar?”

“I’ve decided I have some great luck with women.”

She smiled up at him and bounced her forefinger off the tip of his nose. He followed her to the door. She opened it and stepped outside.

“I suppose you have to lock it,” he said.

“I’m afraid so, sugar.” Nevan shut the door. The key clicked as it turned.

“Will you be back?” He couldn’t keep the wistfulness from his voice.

“Count on it, sugar.”

He watched her walk away, up the long dark hallway, chivying Agni and Rudra before her, arrogance in her straight back and defiance in her haughty step. “That’s some woman,” he murmured.

He turned back into the room, Spite in his hand. Walking over, he sat down beside the brocade tablecloth woven in his colors. Dante picked it up and began to tear strips from it using the dagger.

“Sorry, little lady,” he said to her. “I know this is not what you’re for. But my brother’s coming back, see, and before he does, you and I need to make me a pair of pants…”

Fin.