"Cherry is better, as I shall shortly demonstrate." The demon chuckled. "Get that? demon-strate." But it became serious again when Prior did not laugh at the pun. "So you're still fighting it? Then we'll just brace against the portal and slide in a bit when it relaxes, so." And that slimy skinned-wood penis shoved, not hard but very firm and steady.

Prior kept his sphincter clenched, but the muscle was tiring. He remembered how starfish opened clams by exerting steady pull on the shells, until the clams could no longer hang on. In time that insistent pressure would wear him down, and he knew he would have no chance once the outer defense had been breached.

But Prehensile was finally ready. What luck that he had selected this particular organ this time! Prior curled it down between his legs, out of sight of the demon, then under his own hanging testicles, across behind those of the demon, and up. It looped in a three-quarter circle back toward the demon's rectal region. He was about to attack from the rear.

Now came the ticklish part. He had to make a good entry on the first thrust, before the demon realized what was happening. If that failed he would not have another chance, because his leverage was weak and his own rectum was on the verge of yielding.

Get ready... get set... THRUST!

Prehensile lunged forward, a striking snake, aiming blindly but with pretty good judgment for the supernatural anus. The azimuth and elevation and orientation were almost perfect; Prior felt the glancing contact of thorny buttocks, the bald alcove between them, the base of the crevice. He was driving for a hole-in-one!

Except—

Where was the aperture?

Up and down the veneer-polished crack Prehensile undulated, seeking its entrance—and there was none. From balls to backbone, the demon's bottom was sealed.

"Ha-ha!" the creature bellowed. "Thought you'd pull a fast one, eh? Well get this, dimwit: I saw your friggin' worm, I let you put it on, and I near busted out laughing. You can't get me with that! Know, oh mortal—I have no asshole! You can shove and slither all you want—you can tickle me but you'll never nudge my shit!"

It was all too true. Prior was sunk. The demon had only been playing with him, letting him think he had a chance.

"That little torment was for fucking my innocent little brother out of existence," the demon gloated. "Now I'm going to get even for what you did to my precious little sister, she of the small sweet ripe cherry."

It brought its hulking head around, at the same time cuffing Prior's frozen body sidewise. Its face was grotesque: tiny near-spaced eyes whose whites were blood-red (technically, cherry-red), purplish wiry hair, monstrous flaring nostrils, pointed ears, and a chin whose cleft surface sported two sprawling hairy warts.

But it was the mouth that horrified Prior. The lips were black and blotchy, peeling back to expose jagged animal teeth.

"You tried to ram my rectum, touch my twat," the demon said. "Well now you can fuck my face." It crunched those devastating dentures together loudly. "See—I'm giving you more chance than you ever gave my mistress!"

"I thought she was your little sister," Prior said, his eyes following the thing's clacking jaws. His poor member would have no chance at all in a beartrap like that. But he could not move even one hand to shove the mouth away or disconnect Prehensile.

"Same thing. It doesn't count when it's all in the family. Not that I ever could quite get into her tail, in man-form. In flea-form it was possible, but then it wasn't much fun."

If he whipped Prehensile aside, Prior thought, those jaws would follow, playing cat and mouse until there was no further room to retreat. No doubt that was what the demon wanted. But if he detumesced it, he would still be disarmed.

The Cherry Branch meant to bite off Prehensile, then sodomize Prior at leisure while he bled to death. And there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

"Use your bleached gray matter, whiteface!" Black called from a safe distance. "Is that the best you can do? I thought you were a real fucker!" And the big Negro blew his nose disdainfully.

Black wasn't even a fair-weather friend. He had expressed nothing but contempt for Prior all along. Now he was rubbing it in. Blowing his ebony nose, while Prior was getting demonically chewed and screwed.

Nose....

The demon's breath was hot upon Prior's scrotum. The huge teeth hovered near the quivering glans. The mouth came down, smiling evilly. Slowly, slowly, tantalizingly slowly....

Think... real fucker... nose....

Prior launched Prehensile forward, a rattlesnake. The tip bounced off the demon's stubby chin, scratched nauseatingly against the hairy warts, skated over the slimy upper teeth scraping away a channel of smegma-like plaque deposit, skidded on the cleft of the mottled upper lip....

And plunged at last into the gaping left nostril.

"Oomph!" the demon cried, jerking back.

But Prehensile followed, thrusting deeper, wedging a passage through the caked snot inside. Three inches, four, five! The force of it slammed the demon's head back against Prior's raised knees, stopping the retreat.

Six inches, and he was well settled in the sinus cavity, warm and soft and slick. "Go, go, go, gonads!" Prior grunted.

In and out his faithful penis thrust, heating the membranes by the friction of its travel while the demon howled and clawed futilely at it. Then the Cherry Branch got belatedly smart: took a deep breath, pinched shut its other nostril, closed its big mouth, and prepared to blow its nose violently. This was a blow-job that would finish Prior—

Suddenly the spasm came, sending its fluid coursing along the winding hose and into the demon's pressurized sinus.

"HA-CHOOO!" the demon sneezed in agony... and exploded into vapor. At that moment the spell abated, and Prior's limbs were free.

He had won again... by a nose. Thanks to Black's seeming insults, which were actually advice couched in a manner the demon would not understand and counter.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

They moved on down the cherry caverns. This time Prior kept himself prepared: he had Normal, the six-incher, connected and halfway turgid. That way he was halfway ready for anything. Halfassed, as Black put it. But he hoped he wouldn't meet the fourth Branch soon, because the struggle with the third had exhausted him, physically and chemically. He wasn't certain he could get a full erection, let alone ejaculate!

"Well!"

Prior and Black both jumped. A demoness lay before them, dusky, sultry and sexy. She was another branch of the Cherry Tree, all right, for her cherry was bright red and sparkled between her supple, leaf-green-shaded thighs.

"Sa-ay," Black said appreciatively. "Can anybody play? I wouldn't mind cornholing that brown beauty myself."

Prior wasn't sure of the legalities, but his limp member cast the deciding vote. He might get it up for this encounter, for the demoness was as luscious a piece as he had ever approached—but what if the next demon arrived on the scene too quickly? Sheer glandular fatigue would do him in when he faced the last branch! Black knew he was not eligible to approach the Spire itself—but that was not his purpose. He just wanted a good fuck, and he knew the risk entailed. "Okay by me," Prior said.

Black needed no further urging. "Now you stay out of it, the way I stayed out of yours," he cautioned. "I know she's a bitch, and she'll kill me if she can, but this here motherfuckin' horn will not be denied." And, indeed, his erection was impressive.

"Right," Prior said, realizing only now that it had not been indifference or cowardice that prevented Black from coming to his assistance before, but the man's own code of ethics. Three was a crowd, when it came to serious combat or fornication! Except for advice from the sidelines.