Page 29 of Let Me Win You

When I returned to Purgatory, Avar was furious and itching for a fight. I allowed him to tackle me to the ground beforehe finally calmed down a little. Luckily, I had managed to put Nicole to bed before he showed up. This whole situation could’ve been even more complicated had he seen her.

“What I mean is that you look different from how you did yesterday,” Nicole explained.

“Because yesterday, my appearance scared you.”

“It did,” she admitted. “The horns… The tail… It’s rather unusual, but I keep wondering, and it’s driving me insane… Which one is therealyou?”

She looked at me so intensely, I feared that there was only one right answer to that question. Tragically, I had no idea what that answer was.

“Which one do you want me to be?” I said.

I realized immediately it was a wrong thing to say. Her chest rose with a deep breath, and hope in her eyes dulled.

She thrust the basket my way. “Thank you for the food. It was delicious.”

“You liked it? I have more.” I gestured at the table under the tree. “Will you stay for dinner?”

“Thanks, but I already ate.” She pointed at the basket in my hand. “I washed the containers. So, you can just put them back in…” she glanced at my house, “wherever you normally store them.” She rubbed her left arm with her right hand, looking uncomfortably out of place. “I should go. I just wanted to thank you for the food and bring back the basket to save your ducks the trouble of fetching it.” She smiled. It was a tiny, barely-there grin. But shesmiled. “How did you train the ducks to provide delivery service for you?”

“Ducks are smarter than many people think,” I said, encouraged by her smile. “Living on my own and keeping to myself, I have enough time to train an elephant to dance ballet if I wanted to. Except that elephants don’t like my wetlands, but ducks are always around…” Maybe I should’ve stayed calm andnonchalant, but desperation got the best of me. “Stay, please,” I implored. “It doesn’t have to be dinner. We could just have dessert instead. Do you like key lime tarts?”

“Normally, I do.” She exhaled a brief laugh. “But I’ve eaten so many pastries in the past two days, I don’t think I’ll feel like having any for a while now.”

“I knew it.” I shook my head in dismay. “I tried to find a way to tell Kindness that humans need more than scones and tea for sustenance, but I couldn’t get close enough to the teahouse to talk.”

“Well, spirits eat for fun, not sustenance. It’s understandable that not everyone knows about every detail of human preferences. It’s okay, though. Kindness means well.”

She glanced back in the direction of the town, and I worried she was thinking about leaving again.

“You don’t have to eat the tarts,” I said quickly. “I have other, non-pastry, dishes. Pistachio dusted shrimp, scallops in a buttery lime sauce, roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon. Or we can just have some grapes and cheese with coffee?”

“Wow, where did you get all that food?” She took a step toward the table, which was in the opposite direction from the town, allowing me to exhale a breath in relief.

“I made it.”

“You can cook? Really?” She glanced at me in disbelief before turning her curious gaze back to the table.

“Why does it surprise you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that… Well, I have a hard time envisioning you in an apron by the stove.”

I lifted the tray with the small dishes with appetizers.

“Here.” I offered it to her. “I didn’t know what you like and made a little bit of everything. Tell me your favorite, and I’ll don the apron right now to make more of it for you.”

She bit her lip, eyeing the food on the tray.

“I’m not even hungry, but I want to try it all.” She picked up a shrimp, gingerly so as to not shake off the pistachio spice mix. “Mmm,” she moaned around the mouthful. “So good. I would’ve never expected the Sin of Envy to be such an accomplished cook.”

Her pleasure resonated through my entire being. My knees trembled, ready to merge into the tail, and I forced my mind to focus on keeping my current shape.

“Why not?” I swallowed hard, watching her sample a scallop next.

The tip of her tongue darted out to lick the buttery souse off her lips, and one of my cocks popped out from my crotch like a timer on a turkey.

“Fuck,”I cursed in my mind.

It was getting increasingly harder to control my cocksandmy tail. And now, my forehead itched, too, with my horns ready to sprout out.

---