Page 19 of Going to Hell
He stood in the center of the almost vacant space, his chest heaving like he’d run a mile.
“Please,” he said, slowly sinking to his knees. “Please be worthy.”
No fabrics concealed the stone walls or floors, and no ornate bed covered in gold-thread embroidered blankets waited. A simple mat lay on the floor against the opposite wall.
“Stay. Do not leave.” The low warning in his tone caught my attention, and I knew I couldn’t simply reject this room without some kind of consequence. What was I supposed to do then?
While my mind raced, I entered and surrendered the torch to the holder near the door. From there, I looked out at the darkness of the hall and contemplated what would happen when I closed myself in with him. The room was so different from the original one. Yet, bed or mat…I didn’t think the results would change. If he was in here with me, would I wake up and be the same person I’d been when I’d gone to sleep? Or, more importantly, would I wake up at all?
Lost in doubt, I didn’t realize how long I’d stood there until he walked past me. It caught me off guard enough that I looked up at his leanly muscled back and dark hair. The torchlight danced across his muscled shoulders as he paused in the hall and scanned both directions.
Gods, he was beautiful. My stomach tightened as I stared.
When he turned his head each way, I glimpsed eyes so dark brown they almost looked black and the profile of a handsomely chiseled jawline.
“What does she see?” he asked.
The guy who kept talking about my skin was as hot as sin and as tempting as Hell was not.
I itched to reach out and run my fingers down his back, and my hand lifted as if it had a will of its own. At the last second, I grabbed the edge of the door and slammed it shut. Then I slapped my hand over my mouth in shock. I hadn’t meant to do that.
In the hall, I heard his low chuckle.
“I like this game,” he said. His unexpected, loud burst of laughter scared the shit out of me, and I scrambled backward.
“My treasure!” he yelled.
Swallowing hard, I sat on the mat and hugged my knees to my chest. Without a doubt, he’d officially gone off the deep end.
And I was pretty sure he was pulling me in with him.
CHAPTERFIVE
“Look at her.Beauty. So much beauty. I am unworthy. I want. I need. Look at her skin.”
The nonsensical ramblings slowly penetrated my sleep. Disoriented and only half-awake, I opened my eyes and blinked at the deep red material hanging above me.
That wasn’t right. My ceiling was white.
I turned my head to the side and saw a table. Light glinted off of the brush’s golden handle. Gold? That wasn’t right either.
Memories collided and sent a jolt through me. I was in Hell. I’d fallen asleep on a mat conjured up by a crazy man who kept talking about my skin.
Bolting to a sitting position, I looked around the completely changed room, purposely ignoring the crazy-man pacing at the foot of the bed.
“She wakes. Oh, beauty. Oh, sun. Oh, radiance. I am struck and bleed with wanting.”
I scrambled from the bed, hoping that would quell some of the wanting and bleeding he was gibbering about, but froze when the urgent pressure in my bladder made me frown. What in the hell was I supposed to do about that? I hadn’t seen a single hint of plumbing in all my wandering.
“No, no. Poor choice.”
The brush, which I’d been blindly staring at, changed from gold to wood in front of my eyes.
“Simple, simple,” he said savagely, his shackles clinking.
In the polished golden disc, I saw him pull at his hair. His pectorals danced, and I blinked dazedly at the display before seeing the completely anguished expression on his face. Right. He wasn’t stable and really wanted to please me. Because I’d been staring at the brush when I frowned, he thought I wasn’t happy with it. And apparently, my happiness was tied to his happiness. A bit of yearning hit me in the chest as I quickly picked up the brush. I wished my happiness would matter to someone.
He froze, watching me.
