Sex is a Job Description? Ch. 17

"Whatever your plans are, my goal is to see their fruit fall and rot before ripening. It doesn't matter what they are. I will see them undone."

"Well," Ceria began, smirking. "You'll have to compare to a succubus in bed to sway his heart. She's already sunken her teeth into him."

"And I suppose you think that's the death knell to the fruits of my labors? That I would not be the object of his love?" If Ceria thought she would be jealous of how Tom swung around, then she was very mistaken.

"No, it's nothing like that." Ceria turned and started to leave. "At this rate, he'll lose interest in you, and with a succubus being his desire, thwarting my plans is just that much harder."

"As long as it is the body of another he turns to, out of choice or coercion, it is better than turning to you," Veronaa spat as her hair rose in preparation for action.

"We'll see how cooperative he is when he finds out how you're using him in your little game against me. He's bright enough to know by now that your interest in who he sleeps with, or doesn't, isn't entirely for his benefit." She paused at the door. "How easily a man's desire slips through your fingers."

Veronaa's jaw clenched and she felt her eyes growing fiercely bright with baleful contempt. "It is not wise to mock me, Ceria," she growled.

Ceria just nodded in agreement and smiled. "So it isn't, Veronaa, so it isn't."

Veronaa's eyes blazed like two suns in her skull, flaring to life with absolute hatred. Long talons raced from her fingertips and came to deadly points on each hand, making it impossible for her to close her hands into fists anymore. Her wings flanked her on both sides, spread wide in anger.

Her horns were like two curved blades arching from her head, sharper than the tip of the tail that curled like a snake ready to strike behind her. She crossed the room in moments and slammed the doors open with thunderous force.

"Ceria!" she roared, turning to the demon making her way down the hallway without a care in the world. Veronaa started after the woman, her rage building steadily. This bitch was going to pay with everything she was worth.

"Ceria!" she roared again, this time getting a response.

"Lusotan, deal with her."

Ceria disappeared around the corner and was replaced by the enormous visage of her favored general, Lusotan. Bedecked in armor and brandishing a spear longer than Veronaa's body, he was a fearsome sight to behold. His resolute obedience to his mistress almost rivaled that of Jerhme to her.

Veronaa swept her hand across the air in front of her, as if sweeping Lusotan out of her way. "Begone, Lusotan. That bitch is mine."

An armored fist slammed into her face before she could realize that it had even moved. Her feet left the floor as her body came off the ground and sailed across a large length of hallway before coming to a halt against the floor.

Her world spun as blood poured from her nose and soaked her ripped blue dress. With a snarl, she pushed herself up, but Lusotan was already upon her. His boot squashed her to the floor and pressed down so hard that she was struggling to breathe. She choked on blood as it travelled back through her sinuses into her throat.

"Show the mistress more respect. You are not so feared now that you cannot be dismissed entirely," the giant warned, looming over her like an avatar of punishment in full form. His eyes glowed with emotion.

After a moment more of bearing down upon her, he removed his foot from her chest and walked away. He didn't care to look back as she coughed violently and spat out the blood she was choking on. She was unable to move more than to turn on her side for several minutes as she slowly regained the ability to breathe freely.

Patiently, she regained her balance and returned to her room with the rage flowing out of her like a tide of radiation from a star. She passed the mirror hung on the wall to her right and stopped as she saw what she looked like.

Her face was covered in blood, smeared all across her cheek and a patina of it across her forehead. Her wings dragged behind her like discarded toys unwanted by a child. Her eyes smoldered like coals and had nearly reshaped to their normal form. Her dress was ripped and torn all over and hung loosely from her trembling frame.

She looked absolutely pathetic.

The mirror shattered as she drove a clawed hand through it and snarled in anger at her pathetic, defeated image. She tore the dress from her body and retracted her demonic extremities from view.

How dare Ceria say that to her. How dare she!

Veronaa dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands. Fingertips grasped at hair as she sought to pull it over her face to hide the growing tears in her eyes. Emotions broke free that she had not acknowledged in millennia and ravaged her body. She trembled violently and a sob escaped her choking throat.

She felt hot tears roll down her face and knew once it began that it wasn't going to stop. She moved to her bed and wrapped up in the sheets quietly, deciding it better to cry where it was comfortable than to do it on the floor. Blood and tears mingled in the fabric as her husband's choice to give his child another woman weighed down upon her.

"My love," she sobbed to nobody in particular. "Leave me. Put me not second in your heart. Just leave me."