The Darkest Passion

Hell. No. “Come closer!” Stay away! “You want to do this.” You don’t want to do this.

Don’t calm, Lies repeated.

There was no time to analyze his demon’s odd behavior. One of those hairy legs swiped out. The tip was sharp, bladelike, and sliced his thigh. Maybe that tip had been dipped in poison, because the sting that next exploded through him sent him to his knees, causing his muscles to lock onto his bones, nearly breaking them in half.

“Do that again,” he rasped. Shut up, just shut up! He rarely despised his demon. Most days, he even liked the bastard. Was glad to be a stronger, harder soldier because of the little fiend. But not now. He wanted to curse that damned spider to everlasting hell.

Why he was so afraid of spiders, he didn’t know. The fear had simply always been there.

Another swipe of that leg. Another cut, this one on his back as he tried to spin away from impact. The sting spread quickly, his muscles twisting. The bones in his arm did break this time.

“Again,” he repeated, the word like an arrow as it left his clenched teeth. “Again.”

Don’t calm!

The spider stilled, its disgusting head tilting to the side. Watching him, studying him. Damn it! He couldn’t scramble away, was now locked in place.

“Stay!” Go! The thickness of his breath, beating against the too-close walls, echoed.

“Why do you say the opposite of what your expression tells me you mean?”

The voice came out of nowhere. Or maybe the spider was talking. Except he would have thought a spider that ugly would be male, and this voice had been pure femininity. Familiar somehow. Soft, yet strong. Relax, that voice said.

Lies sighed with contentment.

“Stay!” Gideon shouted to the beast. He wouldn’t be tricked into passivity like his demon.

Slowly, too slowly, the spider faded, shimmering out of view. Another trick. You have to—

A woman stepped from the ensuing murkiness. She was tall and lean, with shoulder-length black hair that possessed not a single curl or hint of wave. There was something as familiar about her face as there’d been about her voice.

Who was she?

She had eyes like black velvet, a regal nose and lips so red they were like thousands of tiny, freshly polished rubies that had been pressed together and cut into a heart. Her cheekbones were sharp, her chin stubborn, but by the gods, she was lovely. A warrior queen.

His heart continued its frantic beat, even as Lies uttered another of those sighs. The panic left him, leaving behind a white-hot fascination. A trick? Who cared! His mind had surely used his deepest fantasies to create her.

The sweat dried on his body, and the ice left his blood as a consuming fire washed through him, blistering everything it touched. So badly he wanted to reach out, to touch her, to caress her face and run his fingers through her hair. To know if she was as soft and silky as he thought she would be.

“Why do you say the opposite of what you mean?” she asked again.

“Don’t know,” he said, meaning that he did, in fact, know the answer. He could have lied in more detail, allowing her to decipher the truth, but a single thought had stopped him. What if she was Bait, a female sent to help destroy him?

Were Hunters now so powerful they could invade dreams?

Possible. Torin had visited him earlier and told him that Galen had an artifact, that the traitor had successfully bonded the demon of Distrust with a dark-haired female and— A dark-haired female?

He stiffened. Like the one he was staring at?

“Come to the dungeon,” she said. “Alone.”

“Who aren’t you?” he demanded.

“Who aren’t you?” she shot back.

Silence slithered between them, and anger filled those black eyes. Anger and still that churning curiosity.

“Come to the dungeon, or I’ll bring back the spider.” With that, she disappeared.

Gideon’s eyelids flew open, his conscious mind propelled from that dream-state as if riding a rocket.

“Thank the gods,” a frantic Paris said. “Finally.”

Gideon was panting. Unlike in his dream, his sweat was not dried. It poured off him, drenching him. Just like in his dream, however, his arm, thigh and back were throbbing, bleeding from where they’d been cut.

“What happened?” he demanded shakily. “Small, hairless mosquito…”

“Bad dream, as I feared.”

Fading sunlight trickled in through the only window in his room, but his overhead light was on, illuminating his friend. Paris’s hair was multihued, and each of those hues gleamed brightly. His skin was pale, yet it held the shimmer of a pearl.

Now, Gideon might have acted like a pussy, but Paris looked like one, he thought with the first threads of humor returning.

“You fell asleep before we could tell you not to and must’ve met our new guest.”

The girl. “Who isn’t our guest?”

“Scarlet’s her name, and she’s a Lord of the Underworld. Or Lordess, I guess.”

They’d actually found one of the missing links and brought her here? “What’s she not a keeper of?” He would have scrubbed a hand down his face to clear away the remnants of sleep, but couldn’t.

Paris sensed his need and wiped his eyes with the edge of his sleeve. “Nightmares, apparently. Pretty thing, if you like ’em rough, but evidently she’s as crazy as the Hunters.”

Nightmares. For some reason, the word alone was nearly enough to give his own demon an orgasm. And Gideon, well, he was suddenly wondering why the girl had seemed so familiar to him.

Stay, stay, stay, Lies demanded inside his mind.

“Olivia helped us capture her, and she’s locked in the dungeon,” Paris continued.

“She’s hurt, right?” he demanded, throwing his weakened legs over the side of the bed.

“What are you doing, man?”

Gideon managed to stand, swaying but thankfully not falling, his gaze sweeping over his body. He still wore those boxers, was dirty from the sweat and probably smelled.

It wasn’t vanity that propelled him unsteadily toward the bathroom, he told himself, but a sense of politeness. No reason to torture the girl—Scarlet, Paris claimed—when she had yet to do anything wrong. Well, kind of. His newest wounds hurt, dripping blood all over his clean floor. Her fault?

Aeron, housecleaner extraordinaire, would be pissed, a prospect that had his lips twitching. If nothing else, that’d be fun to watch. Aeron with a mop. Classic.

All the Lords had assigned chores. A great thing for his friends, sure, but Gideon kind of excelled at freeloading. A title he’d once worn with pride. Then Paris had guilted him into helping with the shopping. They’d taken turns, each going to the grocery once a week, Paris at the beginning of the week and Gideon at the end.

He wondered if someone else had taken over the chore since his injury and if so, what he’d have to do instead once he recovered fully. Probably help Aeron with maid-service.

His lips stopped twitching.

“So what’d she do to you?” Paris asked, sidling up to him and acting as his crutch the rest of the way to the bathroom. Once there, Paris even started the water. Scalding hot, just as Gideon liked it. “You mentioned a small, hairless mosquito and I gotta tell you, I have no idea what that means.”

With a little more help, Gideon managed to strip. He stepped under the spray. He’d never been modest and he knew Paris, who’d been with thousands and thousands of women, and even the occasional man over the years, wouldn’t care.

For a long while, he simply stood immobile, stubs braced on the wall in front of him, broken arm throbbing as the water poured over him, burning his face and body. Then his good wrist was captured, his bandage upturned and