The Candidate Rhyll Biest

      ‘Candidates eleven and twelve.’

      She strained to hear her number as the pairs were called, one instructor’s voice rocking the gym hall louder than the rest.

      Marchosias.

      All-knowing, all-seeing, he waited for a demon candidate to show weakness then plucked them from the course, declaring them unfit for his legion. His voice rumbled around the cavernous gym like the wake of an avalanche, alternately cajoling and hectoring, often irate.

      But in Marchosias’s case, appearance took precedence over voice.

      Arrestingly hard-faced with rust-brown skin, his left arm punctuated with ink in a jagged, chaotic stream of tattoo blacker than his close-cropped hair and scowl. Easily mistaken by a human for ‘tribal’, the sigils marked Marchosias’s place in the hierarchy of Hell – at the top, with all the other millennia-old arch-demons. Even without the sigils Vanth would have known his status. It was stamped, far deeper than any tattoo, in the arrogant tilt of his head, his acerbic tongue, the way his ochre gaze stripped her bare and found her clearly wanting.

      The only thing more humiliating than the sting of his cold glare was its effect on her. Only yesterday she was half-heartedly sucking the cock of a fellow student in preparation for the final Fornication 101 exam, wondering how soon class would end and what was for dinner, when the raw yolk of his stare fell on her and, bam, like that, a needy ache set up between her legs and, next she knew, she was hoovering every last drop of come from her partner in an urgent, frenzied motion as small, undignified whimpers crowded the cock in her throat for space.

      Unsettling stuff.

      But Marchosias was older than time itself, and, as the legion’s expert in leading humans astray, who could tell where his sway ended?

      She frowned as more and more names were called and she remained unpaired. Around her, students jogged on the spot and limbered up with their partners, preparing to get the most out of their fragile human forms over the hour-long exam.

      ‘Candidates twenty-six and twenty-three.’

      Unease tugged at her guts as the last remaining names were called out.

      She squinted at the instructors. Had they left her off the exam list? Where was her partner? Only a handful of instructors remained.

      Oh, no. A possibility so awful occurred to her that she had to close her eyes against the very idea. Surely not?

      Spit turning sour in her mouth, she opened her eyes and watched, appalled, as Marchosias approached.

      Her gaze lifted to his mile-wide shoulders then slid down the muscled torso straining his T-shirt. A thick belt sat above the sinful sweep of his lean hips like a black halo. Hard thighs drew her unwilling gaze to a denim bulge that concealed the downfall of many a candidate: Marchosias’s cock.

      According to demon lore, the monster was not overly long, but unusually thick.

      Her thighs clamped together involuntarily.

      How stupid of her: human form was affecting her brain. His cock would be the least of her problems. Thousands upon thousands of years old, he had to know human sexual tricks she couldn’t even begin to imagine. There was no way she could make him come while controlling her own body. She might as well give up right now on joining the legion.

      Months of instruction in human etiquette and culture flashed before her eyes, the wasted effort welling like a blister inside her. She and the other legion candidates were just a joke to the instructors, right down to the tacky faux high school gym setting conjured for training.

      Two large bare feet planted themselves in front of her on the navy-blue gym mats, and with misgiving she raised her eyes. Had he singled her out because of her moment of mirth during fellatio class? Surely not …

      Under the black wing of his brows, ochre eyes gleamed with amusement. Unlike her, he didn’t have to keep his eyes looking human.

      ‘Hmmm. Uneven class numbers are a bitch, aren’t they?’

      His rich baritone reverberated in her ears as her gaze darted around the gymnasium where the other students were in various stages of coupling, observed by grading instructors.

      She licked suddenly dry lips, her eyes on the other pairs. ‘What about a threesome? That has to be worth extra credit, surely?’

      He grinned, teeth flashing white against his deep tan. ‘Sorry. Wouldn’t be fair to the other students, would it?’

      Fair? What was fair about any of this?

      As hope drained from her, he conducted a leisurely inspection of her body from head to toe. Under his unblinking gaze, the human form she’d viewed as largely uninteresting took on a new dimension as his body subtly unfurled and stood to attention. Hmmm, her cheerleader outfit was obviously a good choice for the exam. Feeling a little more hopeful, she gave her pom-poms a tentative shake.

      A sneer curled his lip.

      Damn.

      An instructor wandered over, clipboard and pencil in hand, expression bored. ‘You two good to go?’

      ‘Screw off, I have this in hand.’

      The instructor stiffened. ‘Ah, apologies, arch-demon Marchosias.’

      She watched the demon scurry away and her courage threatened to leak out through her bare soles and dribble down between the gym mats.

      ‘Candidate twenty-nine, I’m waiting.’

      He didn’t even know her name, just the number written in felt-tip pen on her arm. Still, what was the name of a mere hundred-year-old demoness to him?

      Fear frothed just below her skin but she took a deep breath and forced her feet a step closer to his lean, taut body. She carefully avoided his gaze, focusing on his chest. Was it her imagination or was he suddenly bigger? A light buzz set up in her ears, chasing the memory of every lesson out her brain until she stared dumbfounded at the nipples punctuating his grey T-shirt. Where to start?

      Unpeeling, everything starts with the unpeeling. With a flourish she tossed her pom-poms over her shoulders, her panties behind them, and shimmied out of her tight sleeveless top. Not too fast. Would a bump and grind be out of place? He was no mere human, easily impressed by jiggling flesh. She decided to skip it, unzipped her skirt and let it fall in a puddle of crimson at her feet.

      A-ha, he wasn’t sneering now. In fact, his lips were slightly parted in a way she liked the look of.

      Now to unpeel him.

      If the exam had allowed changing to demon form she could have just shredded his T-shirt with a single swipe of her clawed hand. Instead she hooked a finger under its hem and crept her hand north, glacially slow, taking in the way his nostrils flared and the pulse jumped in his throat.

      The hem reached the prow of his nipples and would go no further as his arms remained stubbornly by his sides.

      She cleared her throat. ‘A little help here, please.’

      He raised one dark, haughty brow. ‘Help? This is not a social working bee, candidate twenty-nine, this is an exam.’

      ‘Fine,’ she huffed, and stepped in, grabbed him by the nape and buried his face in her cleavage. She twitched his T-shirt over his head as his long arms flailed for balance.

      He spluttered against her nipples, but when he straightened he was shirtless.

      Victory over a thousand-year-old demon was sweet and she savoured it, along with the smooth, tanned landscape of his chest and abs, and the sinful groove bracketing each hip in a graceful V shape that swept low to disappear down his waistband.