by Devyn Quinn
Her seducer’s enchanting gaze skimmed her face. “Ah, a lady who wants a proper introduction, I see.”
His mouth wasn’t more than a foot away from hers. A thrill of anticipation raced up Nikki’s spine. His lips were so sensuously enticing that he had to be a terrific kisser. Somehow she just knew it.
She drew back from the temptation. Moving off him, she tucked the sheet around her body. “It would help knowing who’s pawing all over me.”
The flash of white teeth revealed a charming dimple on one side of his mouth. “I wasn’t pawing you, my dear. I was merely attempting to make you more comfortable.”
Nikki narrowed her eyes. “Comfortable, my ass,” she snorted. “You were taking advantage of a naked, sleeping woman.” Lust surged through her again. Somehow the idea wasn’t enough to douse the sparks of sexual appetite he’d ignited. In fact, it did just the opposite. Waitressing in bars inevitably led to a few one-night stands. This wasn’t exactly the first time she’d awakened beside a nameless stranger.
An unblinking kaleidoscope gaze met hers. “So I was.” He hesitated a beat. “If you wanted to whip me for it, I would let you.” His deep voice vibrated with innuendo.
Handsome and kinky. Hmm. Not a bad combination at all.
Arousal shimmied through her body all over again. Nikki glanced at him warily, tempted to play. First, she’d like to know who the hell he was. Knowing where she was might help too.
“Let’s take things one at a time,” she said. “I like to know who I’m abusing.”
A scowl crossed his face. “If you insist.”
Nikki smiled right back, refusing to be put off or intimidated. She’d played the games before, knew the rules well. If he expected to hit any more bases with her, he’d better start clarifying a few things. Identity, location, and an explanation of how she ended up naked in his bed would help a lot. If she liked the explanation, she might consider climbing back into that bed. If not, she wouldn’t let the door hit her on the ass on the way out.
Assuming any of this was real to begin with.
“I do,” she hammered in sweetly.
He hoisted himself into a sitting position and settled back against a pile of pillows. An immaculate white shirt hugged his shoulders and impossibly broad chest. Unbuttoned halfway, it revealed a nice slice of his chest. Perfectly creased slacks were well tailored to fit his narrow hips and long legs, and black leather boots covered his feet. He was the picture of casual elegance.
“Jackson.” A curt nod followed. “Jackson Sullivan at your service, darling Nikki.”
She frowned. “I guess I don’t need to introduce myself since you already know my name.”
Jackson’s gaze raked over her like a laser beam, seeing all and missing nothing. Primal heat simmered behind his gaze. “I know all about you, Nikki Malone.”
His blatant visual appraisal and statement sent an involuntary shiver racing across her bare skin. The delight burning in his eyes said he already knew her in the most intimate of ways. The way a man knew a woman he’d made love to.
Familiar warmth prickled the fine hairs at the back of Nikki’s neck. In her fantasies, Jackson was the kind of man she’d always dreamed of having. No doubt about it. He was a gorgeous hunk of man. If she’d met him under any other circumstances, she’d be fantasizing how he would look naked….
Attempting to quell desire, she clenched her fists until her fingernails dug into the sheet, already too sheer for her comfort. “That’s impossible,” she said. “I’ve never met you before in my life.”
He chuckled. “Well, you couldn’t have met me before,” he countered in a slow, exaggerated drawl. “Because only the dead can enter the seventh circle.”
His words caught her like a dash of icy water to the face. She stared at him, startled by his statement. It took only seconds for the meaning of his words to sink in. For the first time she noticed that his skin was unusually pale, as if he’d never been exposed to a single ray of the glaring sun. Strangely, it did nothing to detract from his attractiveness. He possessed the kind of electrifying beauty and masculinity only a generous god could impart, an otherworldly quality that set him well above the plane of ordinary men.
A chill prickled the fine hairs at the back of Nikki’s neck. Fear knotted her bowels, the knots growing painfully tighter. Jackson, as easy on the eyes as he was, must be crazy. There was no other believable explanation. Somehow she’d stumbled into the keep of a madman.
Nikki eased off the bed, moving slowly so as not to let on that he was scaring her shitless. “I think I need to get going.”
Leaving definitely seemed to be a good idea. Go where, though? Save for the sheet, she didn’t have on a single stitch of clothing. Still, she supposed she could make do given the emergency. Time to hotfoot it out of this bizarre place while the getting was good.
She glanced around, looking for the way out. The room with its huge four-poster bed, thick carpets, and elaborately masculine furnishings was swathed in the shadows cast by an illumination of no discernable or readily apparent source. Nevertheless, there was a door. And a door usually meant a way out.
Easily discerning her intent, Jackson’s smile widened. “You can’t.”
She stilled. “Why not?”
He waved a casual hand. “Don’t you still feel that bullet tearing up your guts?”
Wait a minute. That sounded eerily…familiar.
A frightening and familiar panic filled her. For a moment, she just stared at him, legs threatening to collapse under her. Her mind warred with his words.
A bullet? In my guts?
Soupy images from the recent past swam in front of Nikki’s wavering vision. She lowered her head, staring at her abdomen. There was no blood on the sheet, no wound that she could feel. Why would there be? How could there be?
And then it hit her.
Images of the Mexicans blasting Sammy to pieces suddenly flashed across her mind’s screen. Two and two were coming together awfully fast, and she didn’t like the equation. Strange as things were, they were beginning to make sense.
In a twisted and bizarre sort of way.
Her hand traveled to her mouth as she looked at the man who seemed to have hijacked all sense of reality and hidden it away from her. She choked down the rise of bile at the back of her throat. “Oh, God, no…”
Jackson scowled under scrutiny. “God has nothing to do with this place.” As he spoke, he reached over to the bedside table. Flicking open the lid of a silver box, he extracted a cigarette. The tip burst into flame seconds before it reached his lips. He took a quick drag, exhaling a white rush of smoke through flaring nostrils. “I quite assure you.”
His tone wasn’t reassuring. Neither was the fact that his cigarette was self-combustible.
Dumbfounded, Nikki stared at him. She desperately dug through the dark recesses of her mind. More had to be there. Any memory, however vague, would help. Then she saw her clothes draped across a chair. Something else too.
Sammy’s bloodstained backpack.
Two words escaped her numb lips. “The money—”
Focusing on the object of her damnation, more ghostly images unspooled, playing across her skull like a film badly mauled by the projector. But there was enough left to tell the story. The plan gone so terribly awry. Tearing through the desert. The car, low on gas. The lights in the distance offering the hope she’d find help.
No. She shook her head against the thought. I’m not…I can’t be. Her brain refused to process the reality that loomed like a vulture perched on a rock searching the desert sands for carrion. Human flesh. Rotting human flesh.
“You’re wrong,” she said slowly. “Sammy died. Not me.”
Jackson Sullivan slid off the bed. The man was a tower, all rippling muscle and sinew. Predatory heat driven by a visible edge of strength radiated off him in waves.
Nikki had to tip her head back to look into his eyes. Nearly six feet herself, she wasn’t what anyone would consider fragile. Sh
e could knock back a drink or send a fist flying with the best of them. Jackson Sullivan not only made her look small, he made her feel small. The top of her head barely came to the level of his shoulder.
Nostrils flaring with annoyance, he flicked the ashes off his cigarette. They vanished before hitting the floor. “No, I’m quite sure it was you. You’ve kicked it. Bit the dust. Taken a dirt nap. Pushed up daisies. The list goes on endlessly.”
Uh-huh. Nikki didn’t think he was being very damn funny at all. She frowned fiercely. “No need to be an asshole about it, Jack.”
He shrugged. “I’m not being an asshole, as you so crudely put it. I am just telling you the facts as they are. You’re dead, babe. Get over it.”
Nikki drew a deep breath and forcibly stopped herself from rolling her eyes at his elaborate theatrics. “Seems to me that crack you’re smoking has gone to your head. I’ve heard of date-rape drugs. You might be a hallucination for all I know.”
He stared at her, absorbing her declaration. The brutal knowledge of the insider permeated his gaze. “Hallucinations don’t make you cream and moan like a bitch in heat. Wet dreams, yes. But this isn’t a dream—and you know it.”
A subtle tremor buzzed through Nikki and her body trembled visibly in reaction. She clearly remembered her desire for him, evidenced by the insistent throb between her thighs. Better not think of that.
Her grip on the sheet clutched around her breasts tightened. “But I don’t feel dead,” she pointed out reasonably. “In fact, I feel perfectly fine.”
Jackson cocked a knowing brow. “That is one of the best benefits of death. All the sensations of living, and none of its nasty inconveniences.” He spread his hands expansively. “What’s not to like about the afterlife?”
Weird as the logic was, it made sense. However she’d made the change of location—whether by choice or not—she was here.
Nikki’s tongue immediately lodged in her cheek. “So who are you?” She eyed him suggestively from head to foot, repeating the once-over he’d given her. Turnabout was fair play. “My reward for being a good girl?”
Jackson shook his head, sending a tumble of sexy dark curls into his eyes. “I’m your punishment for being a bad girl.” Planting his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he ticked off his fingers. “Let me think. Of the capital vices that will get you sent here, you’ve already fallen to greed, envy”—with a knowing little grin, he wriggled all his fingers—“and lust. Well, I haven’t got enough fingers to count the times you’ve spread your legs for a man.” A knowing gleam lit his eyes. “Or should I make that last plural?”
Confronted with her sins, an uncomfortable sense of dismay filled her. True. True. And very, very true again.
Heat rose to her cheeks. “Like you weren’t trying to cop a feel, you letch,” she mumbled under her breath.
Jackson’s hand flew to his heart. “Ah, you wound me. That viper’s mouth of yours is very much alive, darling Nikki.”
Patience snapped. “I’m not your ‘darling.’” She drew a breath to steady herself. “So who do I have to screw to get out of this place?” She sniffed with disdain, adding in as a barbed aside, “You, I suppose.”
Taking one final draw off his cigarette, he flicked it toward the fireplace dominating one wall. Cracking flames burst to life, devouring the butt. They vanished as quickly as they’d arrived, without a trace. “Nobody leaves hell, Nikki. Ever. Once you arrive, there is no going back.”
Nikki blinked, startled by the supernatural display. The second one she’d witnessed but hadn’t yet computed. Now she did and her chest tightened painfully. Hell? Oh, Lord. She’d apparently jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Literally. Panic clutched in the most unpleasant of ways.
Without her being quite aware of his movement, Jackson glided closer. Looming over her, he reached out and caught her chin. Tilting her head back, he looked deeply into her eyes. His eyes, now the color of blazing hot copper, narrowed with nefarious intent. With a subtle flex, his strong hand threatened more pain.
An unbidden image of their bodies locked together in an intimate embrace washed through Nikki’s mind. He handled her like he owned her. Her heart tripped at the idea of being pinned beneath his massive body, his hips descending between her parted thighs, cock sliding into her sex with the purpose not only to claim, but to consume.
She shuddered under the onslaught of pure gut-twisting fear. No. God, this couldn’t be real. This crazy place had to be a figment of her fevered imagination.
But it wasn’t. Some terrible thing had just come knocking at the door of her eternity.
Jackson lifted her until only the tips of her toes touched the floor. One more inch and she’d be dangling. Fresh sparks of electricity sizzled through his touch. The hedonistic beast in him seeped into her blood, then penetrated to the marrow of her bones.
Nikki’s stomach fluttered and her knees went weak beneath her trembling weight. She couldn’t make a move even if she wanted to. His essence overpowered. Raw desire warred with terror, threatening to pull the air from her lungs.
Bending closer, his lips brushed her mouth. His breath mingled with hers, the moist heat caressing. She ached for his kiss, would welcome the taste of him. But why? She had no doubt that he’d abuse her, and in the worst of ways. It also didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out that he knew how to use that cock of his like a weapon.
Jackson’s voice, smooth as crushed gravel wrapped in velvet, broke into her turbulent thoughts. “Welcome to hell, Nikki Malone.” His fine mouth turned up in a lethally sensual smile as his grip tightened, ever so subtly. Tension throbbed between them.
A rush of adrenaline quickened her heartbeat. Judgment day had just arrived. No doubt that she definitely wouldn’t like the outcome. Her bowels knotted. She doubted praying for salvation would help. It appeared the devil himself had gotten his hands on her first.
And his threat was crystal clear: She’d pay dearly for her sins.
Over and over again.
2
Hovering on the edge, Nikki looked Jackson straight in the eye. Her eternal soul hung by a thread over the chasm of eternal damnation, and the fall seemed imminent.
“What are you going to do?” she breathed, voice thin and high.
Jackson chuckled. “Everything that is unspeakable.” His grip unexpectedly fell away.
Balanced so precariously, Nikki felt herself falling. Knees collapsing, she hit the floor in a heap. She struggled to sit up, fighting the sheet tangled around her body. More naked than covered, the thought to cover herself wasn’t a top priority on her list.
Jackson knelt. “You might as well know you belong to me now.” He snagged the sheet, tugging it slowly away from her. Each tug revealed another inch of vulnerable skin. “Any way I want to torment you—” More sheet vanished. “Well, that’s best left unsaid.”
The cover slipping away, Nikki felt goose bumps invade her exposed skin. Nausea welled up in the back of her throat. She felt a little disoriented, woozy. The idea of being some demon’s sex toy didn’t exactly make her day.
“I don’t deserve this,” she blurted. “Robbing those Mexicans wasn’t my idea.”
Jackson’s gaze skimmed the length of her body, following the lines of her long legs and slender torso, her breasts, then finally her face. His expression was one of utmost appreciation.
“Ah, the innocent doth protest. But you forget, darling Nikki, that the road to hell is paved with sinners on their knees begging for another chance. Greed, hand in hand with envy, is what cost you your soul.” He reached out, stroking her cheek. “But it isn’t as bad as it seems.”
She recoiled from his touch. Her vision blurred, and her throat throbbed painfully. No, she warned herself. No crying. Crumble now and she’d be lost. Instinct warned her that she must hang on to her strength. “Seems pretty bad to me,” she grated out.
“Not every soul on the way to hell passes through my care and keep.” He grinned. “Only the s
pecial ones.”
His words did nothing to ease the burden of a heart already heavy with remorse and regret. “How am I special?” The question threatened to hang on the lump clogging her throat. She almost didn’t ask. Maybe it would be better not knowing. Who wanted to know they’d earned enough brownie points to enter the infernal region of the damned?
Jackson tweaked the tip of her left breast, giving it a little tug. “If I told you, it would be no fun to find out.”
Nikki’s traitorous body reacted instantly. Her nipples tightened into hard little peaks. A sharp breath sent a tremble down her spine. Her cheeks warmed with acute humiliation as pleasure curled through her clit.
Oh, God. How humiliating to think that in the darkest recesses of her mind she might be looking forward to what Jackson threatened.
Their gazes connected. His burned hot, a knowing gleam lingering in the depths of his eyes. Oh, he knew exactly what he was going to do to her.
“That you intend to rape me repeatedly?” she hissed back.
He pretended to mull her words a moment. “I like to think of it more as forced seduction.”
Nikki looked at him incredulously. “You have to be kidding me,” she guffawed. Only the male sex could delude themselves into thinking that most women secretly desired to be handled the way a chimp handled a banana. Typical.
Jackson’s gaze drifted away from her face, traveling suggestively, uncomfortably, lower. “Not at all,” he said, perfectly serious. He reached out and cupped her breasts, squeezing their generous weight.
A soft gasp escaped her when erotic delight blazed straight down to her core. Her head dipped back as she subconsciously grappled with the enticing sensations. The bastard just knew how to excite her. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, his touch delivered several hard jabs to her libido. Muscles deep inside her vagina rippled with fierce appetite.
His thumbs circled her erect nipples, lightly flicking the tender nubs. “Besides, you can’t rape the willing.” He winked. “At least try to pretend you don’t like it, Nikki. Makes it more interesting for me.”