The Darkest Pleasure. Gena Showalter

She had trouble drawing in a breath, her airways too constricted.

      Don’t make a sound. The chains were cold and heavy, abrading. She tugged at them as her wild gaze circled the room. It was nicely furnished with overstuffed chairs, colorful beaded pillows and a mahogany vanity that boasted a square, gilt-edged mirror.

      Reyes’s doing? she wondered, not knowing what to think about that. He had kept her in comfort, too.

      No, not Reyes, she decided in the next instant. He wasn’t the kind of man to send others to do his dirty work. He would have been there, would have subdued her himself. So who had taken her? she wondered again. Friends of the man she’d…hurt, obviously. Those tattoos…

      Did the men mean to punish her for hurting him? Did they mean to rape her? Torture her? Oh, God. Did they think she was a hooker, too, and plan to sell her services?

      Tears burned in her eyes. Right now she was alone. She continued to work at the chains, minute after minute dragging by. Sweat poured from her and soaked the sheets underneath her. The more she moved, the more her clothing pulled away from the metal bands, no longer acting as a block. Soon her skin was sliced and blood oozed from her wrists and ankles.

      A knock sounded.

      Her heart skipped a beat, and she pursed her lips to silence a whimper. She stilled. Should she pretend to be asleep?

      The room’s only door creaked open, revealing a tall, average-looking male. She couldn’t force her eyelids to close. Could only stare at him, taking his measure. He wore a white button-down shirt and black slacks and looked to be in his late thirties. He had brown hair, which was combed from his face. His eyes were large, green like hers. He appeared very professional, very unmurderer-like. Calm, perhaps even friendly.

      That didn’t lessen her terror.

      Danika swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. Not a sound. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. Don’t reveal fear. In, out, she breathed, slowly, each intake and exhalation precise.

      “Good. You’re awake.” With barely a pause, the man added, “Relax, my dear. I have no plans to hurt you.”

      “Unchain me, then.” The pleading quality of her voice stripped away every effort she’d made to appear strong.

      “I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely upset. “The chains are a necessity.”

      “Just let me go and—”

      He held up one hand, silencing her. “I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of time. My name is Dean Stefano. My friends call me Stefano, so I hope that you will, as well. You are Danika Ford.”

      “Let me go. Please.”

      “I will, just not yet.” His brows disappeared into his hairline. “Let’s cut to the heart of the matter, shall we? What do you know about the Lords of the Underworld?”

      The Lords? This was about her other kidnapping? A crazed laugh escaped her. What kind of shit had Reyes and company dragged her into?

      “Tell me.”

      “Nothing,” she said, because she didn’t know what kind of answer Stefano wanted. “I know nothing about any Lords.”

      Irritation flickered in his eyes. “Lying will only get you in trouble, my dear. So let’s try again. You stayed with a group of men in Budapest. Not just any men, but unquestionably the most violent men the world has ever seen. Yet they didn’t harm you. And if they didn’t harm you, that means they considered you a friend.”

      “They’re monsters,” she said, and prayed that was what he wanted to hear. “I hate them. I don’t know why they kept me, and I don’t know why they let me go. Amusement, maybe.” Truth and hate blared from every syllable. “Let me go. Please. I didn’t mean to hurt… It was an accident and I…” Tears once again stung her eyes.

      Stefano sighed. “We kept you drugged while we decided what to do with you. Drugged yet safe. You took a strong soldier from us, Danika, one of our best. We miss Kevin terribly. His wife hasn’t stopped crying since I told her of his demise; she refuses to eat and prays for death so that she can join him. You owe us now, don’t you agree?”

      As he’d probably hoped, his words filled her with white-hot guilt and that guilt cut deeper than the shackles. “Please. I just want to go home.” Not that she had a home anymore. She laughed again, feeling a little crazed and a lot shaky. Dizzy. “Please.”

      Stefano’s expression didn’t soften. “The Lords—Maddox, Lucien, Reyes, Sabin, Gideon, they call themselves. Shall I go on? They are demons, created in the heavens yet spawned from hell itself. Did you know that?”

      She blinked, breath congealing in her lungs. “D-demons?” A few months ago, she would have rolled her eyes at him. Now, she nodded. That explained so much. She’d seen her captors’ faces morph into skeletal beings. She’d been flown through the city cradled in the arms of a winged man. She’d seen fangs elongate and claws sharpen. She’d heard growls and screams of pain and torture.

      Demons. Like the ones in her dreams, her secret paintings. Had she somehow known, even as a little girl, that she’d end up in Budapest with Reyes and his friends? Then later, with this man? Had the nightmares she’d always battled been a means of preparing her for this?

      “Yes. Oh, yes. You believe. You see the truth.” Stefano stalked toward her, hate radiating from him. That hate transformed him from calm and friendly to menacing beast. “Death is a demon. Destruction is a demon. Disease is a demon. Every evil deed the world has ever known, every evil that has ever transpired, can be traced to their doorstep.”

      The closer he came to her, the more she shrank into the mattress. “Wh-what does this have to do with me?”

      “So no one you’ve loved has died? Nothing you’ve owned has been destroyed? No one has ever lied to you? Sickness has never plagued you?”

      “I—I—” She didn’t know what to say.

      “Still aren’t convinced of their treachery? One of those demons seduced my wife. She was all that was pure and right and never would have betrayed me on her own. Yet somehow, some way, the very demon spawn who tricked her into bed convinced her that she was evil, that she needed to die. So she killed herself, and I was the one to find her body hanging from the rafters of our garage.” Each word sharpened his voice. His jaw had become granite.

      Danika knew the pain of discovering a loved one dead. She’d been the one to find her grandfather after his heart attack, and the image of his pale, lifeless body still haunted her, tainting the memories of the vital man he’d once been. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

      Stefano gulped, seemed to gather his composure around himself. “That loss gave me a purpose in life—one I share with thousands of others around the globe. While the Lords are darkness, we are light, and we were not meant to endure the evil they have brought into this world. Our world,” he added. He closed his eyes as if he could taste the delicious flavor of his hope. “Once we capture the Lords and contain their evil once and for all, things will be as they were always meant to be. Beautiful…peaceful. Perfect.”

      Keep him talking. Keep his thoughts off you. “Why capture? Why not kill them?”

      Slowly his eyelids cracked open, the happy glaze already fading from his irises. He stared at her, seeming to probe her soul. The sensation was eerie. “Killing them frees the demons inside them, allowing those vile beasts to roam the earth crazed and unfettered. We need man and spirit bound together.” He shrugged as if he didn’t care, but his gaze razored. “Until we find the box, that is.”

      “Box?” Trying to appear relaxed, she wiggled her wrists against the chains. They were still too tight, but her skin was wet with sweat. If she could just slip free… She could, what? Run? Demons were chasing her family. Not humans. Would her loved ones ever truly be safe?

      “Pandora’s