Oh, fuck! What was he asking me?
This couldn’t be true, could it? How could a creature I didn’t believe in, from a place I knew not to be true, come here and woo me with his wonderful eyes? How could he know my darkest, most illicit thoughts? It wasn’t possible. He simply had to be a trick, a figment of my own, sordid imagination.
“I adore that imagination.” Whoever he was, he winked, sending heat rushing to my face in a hot, embarrassing blush.
Oh, Christ, whatever he was, he could read my thoughts. He knew what I was thinking, what I wanted, what I needed—what I feared.
“So, which is it to be?” Those compelling green eyes twinkled. “Will you come with me by choice or coercion?”
The tension in my body was peaking, the energy rushing out to my limbs, demonstrating itself in an uncontrollable tremble.
“I don’t want to go with you.” I pushed the words out in one long rush of air. “This is my home, and it’s where I must stay. I need to write. I need to work.”
“You haven’t written properly for months, Penny. You can’t include reams of work with no conclusions. You can’t publish those efforts, and you know it.”
Sucking on my lip, my head lowered at the accusation. He was right. I hadn’t finished a damn thing.
“I can go back and finish them,” I whimpered, but even to me, my voice lacked conviction, and if I didn’t believe my words, who would? If I didn’t love my words, how could I expect my readers to?
“You’ll finish them.”
I inhaled at the certainty in his tone. I’d missed that surety as much as I’d missed the comforting caress of the man I’d worshipped. It was the confidence he’d given me, as well as the intimacy—those had made me the success I was—and without those things, I was nothing.
“No.” I heard the emotion in my voice and wanted to cringe.
Wasn’t it bad enough I’d been exposed to this fiend? Even if, as I hoped, this all turned out to be a colorful dream, this character knew me better than anyone I’d ever met. He knew my hopes, my dreams, and my desire for a future, as well, apparently, as the salacious aspirations that possessed me in the darkness. He was either a creature of my own design or—and this prospect was too terrifying to even contemplate—he was all the things he said he was.
A devil come from hell to tempt me.
To capture me.
“No, I won’t. I can’t. Can’t you see that?” My gaze drilled into him, my own intensity matching his. “Can’t you see I’ve tried everything. I drafted, I’ve revised, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing helps! I can’t move forward until I can complete a bloody book. You say you come from hell, and yet I can’t believe you, because I’m already there.” I threw my arms out, gesturing to the house around me—the one Jackson had adored, the host for so many of my successes.
“This is my own private hell, and I’m stuck here.” The tears came, hot and heavy, falling until I could scarcely see. “I’m stuck here until I can get back to what I know—what I’m good at.”
“Penny.” His tone had changed, becoming more like the ethereal voice I’d first heard in the corner of the room. “This is not hell, and you are not stuck. One way or another, you are coming with me tonight, and if you cannot make a choice, I will choose for you.”
Pulling in hot ribbons of air through my nostrils, I allowed my eyes to flutter shut as I tried to think. This was impossible. He kept telling me he was going to take me, and it was my choice how I went, but that was ridiculous! I wasn’t going anywhere, and I didn’t care who he was—what he was—he couldn’t make me.
None of this was real. I knew it wasn’t.
All I had to do was force myself to wake up, and I’d find myself slumped over my desk, like so many nights before or in the red, leather chair where Jackson had relaxed while I worked. I’d rouse there and laugh at all this—at the concept of a demon coming to take me.
Perhaps it would be the subject of a new novel? I’d never written in paranormal romance before, but maybe it was time for a change? All I had to do was write an ending for one story and send it off for publication, then I could write this one—a whole new chapter for P. J. King.
“Time to choose, Penny. This is your last chance.”
Opening my eyes, I noticed the room around me had shifted, the comforting wood panels and leather furniture morphing until it seemed as though the world was spinning, whirling in all directions like flashes of black and white before my eyes.
“Please! Please, make this stop!” It was all I could muster as the revolving increased, my instinct to curl up into a ball overruled by his rough growl.
“It stops when I say it stops, little human. You had your chance—the only chance I’m likely to offer you—and you refused to take it. So, now I choose, Penny.”
No!
I wasn’t sure if I said that aloud, but squeezing my eyes closed, I realized it didn’t matter. Either I was right and, I was about to wake up from the most absurd and intense dream for years, or he was right, and he already had me.
“Not he, Penny.” His taunting tone was a low vibration, making my breath catch and my nipples bead. “I am Lucien, progeny of Lucifer, and now, I am your master.”
Chapter Six
Lucien
Sweeping her up in my darkness, I took Penny to the one place I knew would be most fitting—the one she’d created in her head so many times before, the place she visited when those dark, torrid fantasies washed over her, taking control and bringing her to bitter, shameful climaxes. In her misery, she’d conjured a location better than anything I could have invented—bleak, dark, and barren. The room was black, likely a basement in some old house. The floor was cold and hard, the walls just as foreboding, and apart from the mattress strewn in one corner, that was it—the perfect stark concoction from her own twisted imagination, and the place she would stay until she performed—Penny’s new prison.
“Wh-where am I?” Her voice trembled with trepidation as blue eyes took in the full horror of her new world.
“You tell me.” I released her body and watched as she crumpled to a heap on the concrete before me. “This is, as they say, your party.”
“What?”
“It’s all yours,” I smirked, signaling to the dank walls around us. “One of the many rooms you’ve summoned from that mind of yours.”
“I’ve never written this.” There was conviction in her voice, and I turned back to look at her. I could just make out the blue pools of her irises in the half-light.
“No, that’s true, but you’ve been here before, haven’t you, Penny?”
Her lips parted, but there were no words. Instead, her thoughts rushed forward, screaming at the inhospitable reality.
I have been here. Oh God, he’s right, I have!
“When have you been here?” My voice was lulling but demanding, nonetheless. “Tell me.”
I can’t. Her head lowered toward the floor. Oh, fuck no, I can’t.
“You will,” I assured her. “If you ever want to leave it again.”