Free Darkness Captured by Delilah Devlin

feasting—that was more what I imagined. But your chamber here … you …” She stopped because the last thing she wanted to do was give him praise, however pleased and bonelessly relaxed she was.
    “If you obey me in all things,” he said, reaching over to lift a lock of her damp hair, “you will never know anything other than pleasure.”
    “I’m not big into obedience,” she said, although it was only partly a lie. Submission was a game for her. The only way she could find her pleasure. However, obedience as a rule was something she demanded of others.
    “Perhaps you haven’t found your true master,” he murmured.
    “You think you’re him?” she said, anger beginning to warm her.
    His features hardened, darkening as shadows deepened around his eyes and beneath his sharp cheekbones. He wound the lock around his finger until it tugged her scalp. “I know what you need. I will provide it.”
    “Because you want me happy?” she snarled.
    “Because I want you unharmed.”
    Gabriella didn’t need his constant reminders of the dangers lurking beyond the door. “Happiness isn’t important?”
    “You will be satisfied, endlessly so. It will be enough.”
    The way he said it, as though from personal experience, provoked a moment’s sympathy, which she crushed ruthlessly a moment later. The Master himself was pitiless, and she had no doubts he’d use her womanly feelings to his advantage if she let him. “That’s enough for you? Satisfaction?”
    “I serve my purpose. So shall you.”
    “And my purpose … I’m guessing … is to satisfy you?” Gabriella’s eyes filled with her frustration. “Tell me, can’t you find other women to give you service here?” she bit out.
    He dropped the silky lock, which remained coiled against her shoulder. “Of course, but my appetites are not easily appeased. And I’ve had a steady diet of demon whores and the damned,” he said, some strong emotion tightening his voice. “I would taste something … pure.”
    Gabriella sat up, clutching the cover to her breasts. Not for modesty’s sake, because that was long gone, but because she was beginning to shiver. “I’m … not … pure.”
    His lips curved in a thin-lipped, almost reptilian grin. “You aren’t chaste by any stretch of the imagination. But you are living and untouched, for now, by the evil that permeates this place.”
    “Do you think I can stay that way, living here?”
    “I will protect you, but you must never leave this room, this tower, unaccompanied. The cost would be too great.”
    “What would happen outside that door?”
    His expression tightened more, but he didn’t respond.
    “You won’t tell me? You’ll wait until I find out for myself?”
    “If you obey me, you will never know,” he said, enunciating each word as though she were dim-witted.
    Gabriella drew a deep breath, frustrated with the conversation. She needed clues to what she’d face when she escaped. “I won’t always be such an easy conquest. You’re new. You intrigue me. For now. But I’ll get bored eventually. And you won’t be able to keep me in this cage. I don’t belong here. I’ll want to return home.”
    “You followed your curiosity here. Your arrogance brought you to me. You won’t be bored. Neither will you be alone when I am not here.” His face hardened. “You’ll be entertained, prepared for each time I enter this chamber, brought to a fever pitch but left wanting. You’ll beg me for release each and every time.”
    “You’re an ass. Those creepy vines won’t continue to do it for me.”
    The sudden easing of his expression into amusement infuriated her. He knew something. And then she felt it. A touch that slid along her skin, like flanges cut from velvet, across her back and over the tops of her buttocks.
    She reached behind her and rubbed her skin, trying to knock away whatever invisible thing was stroking her, but it wasn’t solid, and kept working on her skin beneath the hands that