NOVPUB"Call me a eunuch one more time..." Vergil spoke, his voice low as thunder before the storm "...and I'll drag you down to Hell, put you in a nail chair, and leave you sitting right in front of Sapphire. Smiling. And without a beauty filter."
His gaze was piercing, yet it wasn't pure anger per se. It was more like a primal curiosity that hung over his thoughts.
Of course, he was different so the look hit Aphrodite, which made her freeze. Literally.
Her shoulders shrugged, her breathing faltered, and the smile she'd maintained through sheer force of vanity turned into a nervous spasm.
"Hey! I've already helped you, okay?" she raised her trembling hands as if he were a Gestapo officer. "Then please go away! I... I promise I'll call you when Persephone is available, okay? You have the flower, you have the keywords, you have my trauma. We're even!"
The goddess of beauty, love, lust and sex... now looked more like a teenager who'd been caught fiddling with her mother's handbag.
Vergil just watched her. He didn't answer. The silence lengthened like the shadow of a blade across the throat. The room seemed to have been sucked into an icy vacuum - the kind of silence that only precedes either tragedy or evil laughter.
Aphrodite felt her skin tingle. One side of her wanted to explode, to turn into a light so intense that it would blind the man in front of her. The other side... was trying hard not to pee from nervousness.
'That bitch...' Vergil thought, clenching his fists. Not out of contempt. But out of restraint. His killer instinct was activated and that wasn't something you could turn off with a switch.
She was a goddess. A being who had once been worshipped in marble sculptures and sung by drunken poets by torchlight. But... she was also a goddess who almost pulverized his spine with a slap, yes, the blow she gave him... could have been fatal if he didn't have absurd regeneration. That's why, even now, she couldn't be treated as a joke. No matter how... imbecilic as it was.
'All in all, 107 bones were broken with just one "Divine Push"' he thought, running his tongue over his teeth. 'I can't underestimate her just because she acts like an influencer in emotional collapse.
Aphrodite tried to cover it up, but her hands were still shaking. One of them clutched a vase with wilted flowers as if it were an amulet of divine protection. The other slowly slid down to pick up a candy that had been there since Easter 1996. Anything to occupy her fingers.
The silence became leaden.
Until Vergil sighed loudly. A heavy sound, with a taste of disappointment and exhaustion mixed in.
"You don't even have my number. How are you going to call me?" he said, his voice slurred. It was a tone somewhere between irritation and incredulity.
"It's-it's true..." Aphrodite stammered, trying to pull herself together as she pulled her cell phone out of the deep cleavage between her perfect breasts.
Vergil narrowed his eyes. "Fucking exhibitionist..." he muttered quietly, like someone commenting on an earthquake in the middle of breakfast.
She smiled, without wasting a second. "Hm? Oh, please... I don't have any pockets! And these little babies here?" she said, running her hand over her own breasts with rehearsed naturalness.
"They're perfect. Would you like to take a look?" she added with a wink, pulling down her cleavage and revealing part of the shimmering tan of her sweaty skin. There was a scent of lotus flower and sin in the air.
Vergil looked away with an internal grunt.
"How about no?" he replied briefly, trying to contain the sudden wave of heat that ran up his spine. Something in him began to slip. As if his mind was being pulled by an unknown gravity.
'Shit! Am I... am I falling for her?" he thought, alarmed. He felt her ethereal energy sneaking like a veil over his will, testing, teasing.
Aphrodite bit her lower lip, her eyes sparking with curiosity.
"Mooh... I'm helping you, wise guy! The least you could do is feel something, even a little shiver." She pouted like a spoiled child, but her eyes seemed to scan his every micro-expression. "What kind of man are you? Do you have... zero desire? Zero emotion? A cold man with a model face? Please! Just a little warmth!" she crossed her arms, but the pose was more provocative than defensive.
"Are you bipolar?" Vergil asked, without even feigning politeness. One moment she looked like a panicked victim, the next like a hungry sexual predator.
"Bi-bi-bi... bi what?" Aphrodite frowned, genuinely confused.
'Definitely. Bipolar. Vergil confirmed internally with a sigh.
She rolled her eyes dramatically and muttered, almost contemptuously:
"You know what? If you want to take them in hand, you can. Seriously. I'm used to this world treating me like I'm just... meat. A body with an expensive perfume." There was pain in his voice, even if it was disguised as irony. "Here, give me your number," she said, looking at her cell phone again, trying to sound indifferent.
But before she knew it, Vergil disappeared from in front of her and appeared at her side, like a bolt of lightning.
His hand touched hers.
And Aphrodite's world... collapsed.
The physical contact - so banal, so simple - triggered an absurd reaction in her divine body. A crack went through her system, as if a bolt of lightning had entered her skin and exploded inside her veins. His eyes widened in a mixture of shock and ecstasy. Her legs gave way.
She dropped her cell phone with a dry thud.
Her body arched backwards, the muscles involuntarily tense like the strings of a lute about to burst. n𝚘𝚟𝚙𝚞𝚋.𝚌o𝚖
"Ahh ❤" A moan escaped, subtle, involuntary. Her breathing became irregular, panting, and the world spun around her as if she had taken a heavenly aphrodisiac. But no... it was just him, Vergil was completely normal.
It was just that damn touch.
"What... what have you done to me?!" she gasped, kneeling on the floor, her hands trembling, her pupils dilated. Her eyes searched his with desperation - not of fear, but of not understanding. Of finally, for the first time in ages, feeling something real.
Her senses were at war.
Her heart... once cold from not being touched... was now beating like a war drum. Her thighs trembled uncontrollably, the center of her body burned as if something were igniting inside. Her breasts instantly stiffened and her skin glistened with divine sweat. Every inch of her yearned, but not with carnal desire - it was something deeper, more ancestral. It was connection.
And that terrified her.
"That... that shouldn't happen!" she muttered in a flawed voice, trying to maintain some dignity. "That... what is that..."
Vergil, still holding his cell phone, watched Aphrodite on the floor as if he had witnessed something sacred - or perhaps, something dangerously profane. The silence between them was heavy, thick as incense smoke in a closed temple.
He didn't understand. He just touched her. A simple touch.
No intention, no spell, no calculated provocation.
Just... a touch.
And that was enough.
"You're... wet." he said, his voice low, almost a whisper, not of mockery, but of genuine astonishment.
Aphrodite froze. Her eyes, large and intense, turned to the floor. The humidity around her left no room for denial. Her body trembled, exhausted and ecstatic, as if she had been caught up in a storm of involuntary pleasure.
Her breathing, once rhythmic, now came in uneven, gasping waves. His mouth was ajar. His trembling hands clutching his belly as if trying to contain what was bubbling up from within.
'Did I... come? Just because he touched me?...'
There was a brief moment when everything around her became background noise. Because everything, absolutely everything, had been reduced to the heat that still pulsed in her body, echoing from Vergil's touch like a melody she didn't know she could hear.
She brought one of her hands to her mouth, almost like someone trying to keep quiet about a confession that shouldn't escape. Her eyes, for the first time in millennia, were watery.
Not from sadness. Not shame.
It was confusion. Vulnerability. And... something deeper. Something that she, the Goddess of Love, had never imagined she could experience in the flesh: pure desire, born of the soul - not the ego.
"But how..." she asked, her voice hoarse, low, as if the answer could break her entirely.
Vergil remained silent for another second, staring at the figure of the fallen goddess. She, who once exuded self-confidence and charm, now seemed fragile... human, even. But he couldn't let himself get carried away. Not there. Not now.
Calmly, he typed his number into the still glowing cell phone, the same one that had provoked such a reaction with just one touch. He entered his name as "Lucifer" and then dropped the device with precision on the store counter, without looking at it.
He turned to leave, careful of the floor.
His eyes went down for a moment, analyzing the damp traces around her - the traces of what the touch had caused. Without commenting, he took a small step to the side, avoiding the iridescent glow of the "juices of the goddess", respectful... but aware.
"Call me when Persephone shows up," he said in the same firm voice as before, already walking towards the exit.
But just as he passed her, a trembling hand grabbed his leg.
"TAKE ME WITH YOU!"
The plea ripped through the air.
Aphrodite, still kneeling, looked up with wide eyes. There was desperation in them. A desperation that even she didn't seem to fully understand.
"Are you going crazy? If I take you, I'm the one who dies! Or rather, we both die!" He said, trying to get rid of her by swinging his leg... she looked like a boy with her nails in his clothes...
"I don't care! Take me to my death! But take me with you!"
