She looked to Teri and then back to me, a small pout on her lips. “Sorry.”

I groaned and gave Teri the evil eye.

“Don’t look at me like that, you devil.”

I bent down and gave Hope a last kiss. “I’ll see you tonight.”

She nabbed her lip and looked at me from under her lashes. “Maybe I can act out one of my fantasies.”

I smirk and pulled her closer. “What’s that, my naughty girl?”

Her lips were close to my ear, tickling the hairs on the back of my neck. “I want to service my customer.”

I groaned and squeezed her ass. She pulled away, blowing me a kiss before turning to catch up with Teri.

I knew the Devil and lust were in us both.

But if I was going to hell, the trip would be worth it with Hope by my side.

K.I. Lynn spent her life in the arts, everything from music to painting and ceramics, then to writing. Characters have always run around in her head, acting out their stories, but it wasn’t until later in life she would put them to pen. It would turn out to be the one thing she was really passionate about.

Since she began posting stories online, she’s garnered acclaim for her diverse stories and hard hitting writing style. Two stories and characters are never the same, her brain moving through different ideas faster than she can write them down as it also plots its quest for world domination…or cheese. Whichever is easier to obtain… Usually it’s cheese.

My ankles were shackled. The chain between them clicked when I rolled over, and the steel bit my anklebones when I rested my feet together.

My brain chemistry had been set for arousal at the touch of hard metal edges on my skin, and even though I felt a growing swirl of lust when I pressed my legs together, I was preoccupied. Deacon hadn’t put the leg irons on me, nor had I squeezed them tighter than I should, just to feel them holding me while he played me like a musician at an instrument.

I didn’t know what had happened.

The last thing I remembered was rain.

No. The last thing I remembered was being in scene with Deacon and entering subspace, outside of myself, where pleasure and pain merged.

No.

Nuzzling Snowcone as he huffed and clopped his hoof on the stable floor, I held his bit. I thought, he’s slow, it’s over, he’s slow, he’s old, it’s over, he won’t take the bit, he’s slow. My thoughts repeated as if they were stuck.

The last thing I remembered was hanging from the ceiling, listening to rain on the windows. It never rained in Los Angeles—unless it did, and then it rained like a holy hail of fuck yous.

The last thing I remembered was wet thighs. Feeling so sore I couldn’t sit. Thinking about fucking. Finding someone to fuck.

There was so much fucking.

The last thing I remembered was snorting a line of flake off Amanda’s tits.

And then?

Nothing.

Anxiety sat in my chest like a kinetic weight, but I wasn’t scared. I knew I wasn’t thinking right, that I was little more than a jumble of emotions and half sentences. I thought in colors, and saw in bursts of silence. The aggressive white light above illuminated the angles of the corners. The tight space and soft white walls were the product of some kind of regulating entity. Was I in prison? A hospital? Was I even in the United States? When would Deacon come for me?

Soon.

He’d come soon, and everything would be in control again.

Until then, I’d submit to the fog of my half-formed thoughts and nothing would go wrong.

“Do you know where you are?”

His voice was so gentle in powder blues and jazzy notes, but he was a stranger. I’d never heard a voice like that—thick and soft as heavy cream, a satin sheet on a bed of sand. I opened my eyes to bright white fog and a charcoal blur that must have been attached to the voice. Not a cop. Not a lawyer. Not an ER doc.

“No,” I croaked.

“I’m going to ask you some questions. All right?”

I nodded. I didn’t realize how quiet it was until the noise of the sheet rubbing against my ear sounded like an electric guitar amp set to eleven.

“Can you tell me your name?”

It wasn’t loud, that voice. Like Deacon’s, it had its own kind of authority, but unlike my master’s, it was gentle.

I cleared the frog from my throat. “Fiona.”

“Hi, Fiona. My name is Doctor Chapman. But you can call me Elliot.”

My eyes cleared a little. The charcoal smear turned into a beige oval with two green-grey dots for eyes and non-committally colored hair. His skin wrinkled around the eyes, but his mouth was young. He was either in his late twenties, or forty-ish, like Deacon. Or maybe somewhere in between.

“Good,” he said, crouching to meet my gaze. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Where do you live?”

That was a hard question, with its own complexity.

“The first thing that comes to mind,” the doctor said.

“Number three, Maundy Street.”

He nodded, so my answer must have been satisfactory. “Get cleaned up, get something to eat, then we can talk.”

I nodded, and the noise in my ear was less shocking. He stood and went for the white door with the little window at eye level.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“Westonwood Acres.”

They fed me in my room from a metal tray. I didn’t eat much. I was shown to a small bathroom, where I was expected to clean up and change out of one light blue jumpsuit into another. I had never been squeamish about germs or ickiness, but in the soft cotton of my mind, something seemed inherently wrong with the space, the room, the clothes.

Deacon would find me. He was probably in some office right now, demanding my release from the mental ward. He had a way of sniffing me out, even when I snuck away, as if he and I were connected by a vibrating fiber. No matter how far I went, no matter how fast, he knew. If there was anyone in the world I could count on, it was him. He was coming. All I had to do was behave long enough for him to arrive.

Just thinking of him, the bones of his wrist, the tendons tight on his forearms when he gripped my body, his growl—mine mine mine—sent a wave of pleasure between my legs.

I knew who I was. I was a celebrity without talent. I was an heiress. I was a whore. I was a party waiting to happen. I was an addict. I was his, and in that last definition—that I was owned by Deacon I knew my place in the chaos.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, the headache came like slowly tightening wrenches clamped to my temples and the back of my neck. As the pain bloomed, my mind cleared. Though I couldn’t remember shit any better than before, I gained the good sense to worry about it. I gained details. Cast-iron grates on the windows in a decorative pattern. No doorknob. Walls of suede microfiber. Cork floors. Soft wood bed with Egyptian cotton sheets.

There were people around me, but I felt more than saw them. Intuited their presence. How long had I been walking through plasma? Where was the other side?

The last thing I remembered… What was the last thing I remembered? It was Deacon in the kitchen of number three, sweatpants and no shirt, with his arms out. He was saying something. Pleading. He was telling me I had to kick. Kick? What did that mean? And was it the kitchen or the stables? Whatever space he was in was plagued by his raw pain. He was mad and resigned at the same time, two things I’d never seen from him.

Was that the last thing I remembered? Whatever it was must have landed me here.

There had been a dream with red and blue lights.

There had been a party, possibly before the lights, maybe after. I was on my hands and knees. I was high, so high, flooded with endorphins and knocking around subspace. My ache was dulled to pleasure, and I wanted something desperately.