Desert of the Damned (8 page)

He stroked her hair, her back and then slid his hand down over her ass. Her pussy responded, a traitor to her better judgment. She shuddered. His hand slipped between the crease of her buttocks and she resisted the urge to spread her legs wider for him.

“My hypnosis skills are better than I thought. I didn’t mean to scare you, Amy. This was all for your pleasure and fun.” He started to untie her wrists.

She sighed heavily and tried to sit back on her heels but her ankles were too far back. “I don’t understand you,” she snapped as she reached over to undo her ankles but couldn’t reach. “Dante, finish untying me!” Glancing over her shoulder to shoot him a 42

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look, she noticed he was naked too. He looked away from her, staring far away, his brows in a deep frown.

He stood up and moved toward her ankles but hesitated to release her. “Don’t I please you?” he whispered with a sad tone. He sounded hurt.

Rustling in nearby bushes made her jump and tug against her restraints. “What’s that?”

“An owl or a raccoon. Nothing to worry about.” Dante kept staring at the bush.

“You don’t like how I—”

“Dante, I’m finished with your games. As I said in your office, it’s best we end this.

Now let me up.”

He didn’t move or say anything. Fear flooded her thoughts again. Then she realized why he must be hesitating. His reputation at work. Should she be concerned for her immediate safety? “If you’re worried about work, I can keep my professional and personal life separate. I wouldn’t say anything about our relationship.”

Still no movement or words.

She glanced up at him over her shoulder. He seemed miles away. For a moment, his body blurred and shrank down into the form of a coyote. The animal raised his head as if sniffing the air, then the form blurred and he was Dante again, naked and bronzed and muscular. He turned and looked down at her as if seeing her for the first time.

“Dante, you’re scaring me now. Please untie my ankles.”

Her heart rate, which had been somewhat calm considering she had been staked to the ground, jumped to an alarming pace. Was she hallucinating, or had she been drugged?

“Sorry, Amy.” His words sounded forced and insincere.

Her body shivered, more from fear than the cold. He hadn’t made a fire this evening. She missed the warmth, the glow. She missed the warmth and playfulness of his body. The fire had summoned her before. What had he used to draw her out there?

Something had changed between them, something had changed in him. He’d crossed a line and she knew she wouldn’t feel the same about him. He was creeping her out.

Defusing the heavy atmosphere might help to keep the situation from getting out of hand. “It’s okay, Dante. Some women don’t do well with surprises.” She tried to keep her tone light.

He groaned. “Oh, Amy, I did scare you. I’m so sorry.” He untied her ankles, then leaned close to her ear and whispered a rapid stream of foreign words in a preternatural voice. Amy caught her breath. The next moment she was flat on her back and Dante was perched above her on hands and knees, her body was humming with need. “Do you want to go now?” he said, smiling and breathless.

Her pussy throbbed. “What? Go? No, not yet,” Amy said. Her eyes squeezed shut then opened in an attempt to clear her mind. What had they been talking about?

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“You think I don’t want you?” Dante asked. “Here.” He took her free hand and wrapped it around his thick penis. “You don’t know how much I want you, Amy.” His cock twitched in eagerness in her hand.

“I’m aching for you.” She shook her head. Her thoughts were fuzzy. Hadn’t they agreed to stop seeing each other? Leaning onto one arm, he lowered himself onto her.

He grasped her hand and stretched it above her head. With his aroused cock he rubbed the smooth end against her slick pussy. She inhaled sharply and raised her hips to increase the pressure of his cock.

Groaning, he took her mouth, kissing her hard, plunging his tongue deep. Between gasping breaths he said, “I’ll give you what you want, Amy.” Was it desperation or arrogant control? She wasn’t sure.

This was what she had wanted for weeks and now she felt like he was forcing himself to do something he didn’t want. He straddled her. His erection hard and tight against his flat abdomen. The moonlight defined the curved of his biceps and chest muscles, a thin sheen of sweat glistening on his tanned skin. She was about to remind him of protection when she noticed his jaw clenching. “Dante?”

“Mmmm?” He didn’t look at her.

“You look awesome in the moonlight,” she said and at the same time felt like she was forgetting to tell him something else, something important.

He smiled and palmed her breasts with both hands. His cock was hard and she was ready to suck it or have him fuck her and soon. Gliding her hands over his shoulders and arms, she resisted the urge to pull him down on top of her. “Dante. It’s okay if you’re not ready for this. Besides, we should use protection anyway.”

He didn’t say anything. Instead he leaned up and slid his hand between her legs, stroking her clit. She moaned and shuddered as sensations rippled through her body.

“You’re beautiful,” he said in a raspy tone. “Don’t worry, I want this and I have protection.” He swung his leg over her and stood up, walking over to a pile of clothes.

As he dug into his pockets, she took in a deep breath. This whole evening seemed surreal like she was drifting through a sexual dream. Her body and her needs were overriding her objections and common sense. Maybe she and Dante weren’t meant for each other but they both wanted release tonight. Tomorrow might be the end but for tonight, she would have him.

The desert wind stirred the dried brush, then Amy heard a strange sound. “I must be losing my mind but the wind tonight sounds like the ocean. Maybe I’m homesick.”

Dante jumped to his feet, staring out into the desert, his hand fisting just beneath his nebula stone pendant.

“What is it? What do you see?” she asked. She breathed in the night air. Sea salt.

She chuckled. “I am crazy. Now I smell the ocean. What is—”

“Shhh.” Dante held up a hand. “Sorry, Amy.” He rushed over to her and knelt beside her, kissing her mouth quickly then whispered those strange words again. Amy closed her eyes and opened them to the blaring alarm clock. She was in her bed. It was a 44

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dream, after all. The images of the sexual dream bounced around in her mind.

Although turned-on by the memories, she was relieved it had only been a dream.

As she reached out to turn off the alarm, she noticed the rope burns on her wrists.

* * * * *

Dante ran along a dried creek bed, following the sound of crashing waves. Damn her, he still had time. And by interrupting him, Gwyllain wasted the valuable chi he was in the middle of collecting. Didn’t she understand his predicament?

Without Amy, he would have a difficult time meeting the demoness’s needs.

Finding another with an aura as strong as Amy’s would be nearly impossible with so little time left. Amy was rare. He didn’t think she knew how much chi she radiated. The chi given off during her orgasms had kept him from killing humans. Only a week and a half left and his cycle of offerings would be up and another of Gwyllain’s minions would be the Drone and Dante could continue his life on the Earth plane. Damn Gwyllain. She could’ve waited.

When the creek made a ninety-degree turn, he saw the shimmering disturbance between two large boulders on the far riverbank. The rift looked like heat waves rising in the desert but it was too cool a night for that to happen here. As he approached, he felt the pull. In a last-minute desperate decision he backed away and zigzagged around the area, looking for creatures, large or small, to draw more energy upon. He managed to find a couple of bats, a field mouse and a rabbit. All four dropped as he touched his stone. They were dead and he had a fraction more chi. Better not to come back empty-handed.

An unseen force yanked him off his feet and dragged him through the portal before he had a chance to take a breath. He was plunged into a reeling darkness.

When the dizziness faded, Dante opened his eyes. A sickening free-fall sensation clutched at his gut as he stared over a rocky precipice at skyscraper height above crashing ocean waves, his feet just inch away from the crumpling edge.

His muscles froze into stiff knots. Damn Gwyllain. The demoness knew of his fear of heights, which could only mean her disappointment. Unless her lover, Tarik, was responsible for his abrupt appearance into Anartia.

Slowly he reached for the nebula stone pendant around his neck. It was gone!

He glanced down to the jagged rocks below and bile crept up to his throat. Without his pendant, if he fell…

He didn’t dare turn around. One slip on the loose stones and he’d be an unrecognizable mess, chum for the fish, as the tide took his broken remains out to sea.

In Gwyllain’s world, immortality would end if he died a mortal’s death.
Move. Take one
step back and the rest will be easy.
But Dante couldn’t force himself to move.

Gwyllain and Tarik’s affair was discovered by her jealous husband—the Ruler, called Cragen. Cragen sought a unique punishment for such betrayal. Tarik was the 45

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ruler’s lead engineer who was designing an alternative universe—something small about the size of a large island where he and Gwyllain could meet for their secret affair.

Cragen had another engineer finish the design so that the secret hideaway became the lovers’ prison and an eternal exile. His wife and her lover were bound to this exile, having to maintain the stability of the artificial universe with acquired life energy transferred through sexual encounters—frequent sexual encounters.

Immortality was a gift that Gwyllain had given Dante but although he could live on Earth for long cycles, he was as much a prisoner to this exile world as Tarik and Gwyllain.

Glancing around at the once-beautiful island world surrounded by a calm sea, Dante frowned at Anartia’s awful state. The sky roiled with violent storm clouds and the wind assaulted his naked body so hard his skin stung and his eyes watered. Of course Gwyllain would summon him here, naked and vulnerable. It was her way of exerting her domination, her control and if she felt it was deserved, a little punishment.

His instincts told him he was in for some behavioral modification.

With great effort he avoided looking at the ocean below. Hell, he hated heights and hated that she had such control to yank him out of the Earth plane into her fragmented dimension. How was he supposed to supply her with the chi energy that she craved and needed to maintain her world when she pulled tricks like this?

He breathed in the damp, salt air, wishing he was back in his desert, his domain.

What was Amy thinking of him right now after he left abruptly in the middle of their rendezvous? Despite his technique for clearing her short-term memory, he wondered if he’d rushed and if she could remember anything.

Before Gwyllain arrived, he was going to get off this cliff. He twisted slightly, forcing himself to step back a fraction of inch, but the stones slid beneath his bare feet.

Move, damn it.
He swallowed but it felt like he was trying to force down a walnut.

Carefully, he shuffled his feet back a few small steps. The gravel rolled down the incline and disappeared over the edge. Images of his body tumbling over the cliff flashed in his mind. He forced himself to look at the horizon and not at the crashing waves. Then a hand gripped the back of his neck. His sphincter tightened.

“Don’t you like the view?” Gwyllain asked. Her shrill laughter pissed him off. He bit off a retort. She wouldn’t push him over this edge, would she?

“I liked the view of where I was a few moments ago. The chi draw was high on this subject, would’ve been, except my fucking was interrupted.” She tightened the pressure on his neck and shoved him closer toward the edge.
Stupid move. Don’t piss off the
demoness while standing on a cliff.

Still holding him with one hand, she dangled his nebula stone necklace in front of his face. “Looking for this?” She laughed a wild, evil laugh.

“What am I supposed to do without it?” Dante tried to keep his voice level and without an edge of anger. Show her anger and Gwyllain knew how to punish and put 46

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an end to her minions. “I can’t go through the portal without it and I can’t transfer the chi I’ve assimilated.”

“Time is running out. My sun sets soon.” She pointed to the low-hanging red sun, mostly covered in black clouds. “That’s less than two Earth weeks left and you’ve been diddling with this woman when you could’ve killed her for the largest take. And you’ve been collecting miniscule chi amounts with animals. Such a waste of time.” Her other hand began to stroke his buttocks, sliding her fingers along his crack. Still, she wouldn’t let him move away from the edge. Below, the waves crashed on the sharp rocks, salty spray licked at his skin. This was not the time to ask why she had summoned him back to be a Drone so early. He wasn’t due to give his offering for another fifty years. He didn’t even know how many Drones lived as he did on the Earth plane—immortals whose only task was to provide life energy to Gwyllain every one hundred years.

She laughed that shrill laugh again and pressed her body against his back. He felt the whisper-thin material that covered her voluminous breasts and probably clung like a skin to the rest of her body. She either wore a bodysuit outfit or a long tight dress, neither leaving anything to the imagination. The material shimmered like eelskin in blues, greens or reds. He wondered what she wore right now and felt his cock twitch.

Once she absorbed his collected chi, all would be well for a time, the sea of Anartia would calm, the skies clear and the land again yield a profusion of vegetation. Then he could return to the desert. Appease the gods. An offering of chi to propitiate the gods.