Page 121 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

Snow lifted a brow. “You’re not…”

I nodded, and she grinned.

“Be careful, and for the love of the gods, please have fun,” she said, kissing my cheek. “You’re a free, beautiful, young woman who should only be enjoying herself.”

Reggie lifted his glass of elixir. “Cheers to that!”

As soon as I’d grabbed Reggie’s arm and began walking toward the guarded staircase, my neck seared. Rune’s glare aimed at my back had me flushed, an ache between my thighs. The energy inside of me echoed the dark force below my feet as if they were one and the same.

56

SCARLETT

Surrounded by sex and violence, excited energy buzzed beneath my skin. The first room was spacious, glamorous and dark, lit with red lighting. Both vampires and mortals were either watching or engaged in depraved acts, using the various furniture and kinky contraptions spread out across the space.

To my left, a nude woman was bound and spread on an X-shaped cross. A fully clothed turned man was artfully wielding a flogger, twirling it in his hand as the leather straps landed on the woman’s breasts in a rhythmic pattern. She moaned and clenched her fists. Fang marks lined her neck, chest, and arms.

In a nearby corner, Maize, one of the friendlier courtesans, was with two men on a black bed low to the ground. One of them was feeding from her wrist while the other was clamped on her neck as he fucked her. Her eyes were glazed over and teeming with ecstasy, her bliss so potent I could feel it across the room.

I should’ve been overwhelmed, confused by all this strange, perverted equipment and the sensory overload of all the moans and writhing bodies. But just like I did upstairs, in this den of depravity, I felt strangely comfortable.

No, not comfortable. I felt powerful.

As Reggie tentatively pulled me further into the room, I noticed heads turning one by one. The woman on the cross fell out of her relaxed, floaty headspace to appraise me. And the man with the flogger lost his rhythm, pausing to turn all the way around to follow her stare. Even Maize and her men somehow lost focus on each other to pin their attention on me.

I pictured what they saw in my own mind. My long brunette waves, my petite stature in the deep red dress that highlighted my curves, the blue eyes I’d always been told were intensely captivating. I leaned into that intensity, the flow of magick and energy that floated around the room. I pulled it inward, my vision, scent, and hearing becoming sharper, my mind both at ease and alert, churning with excitement and blooming euphoria.

In Crescent Haven, I’d been different in a way that made me close myself up and go inward, make myself smaller. In Odessa, my uniqueness felt like a secret power, an asset, a weapon. I was not helpless. I was not powerless. I was the game master, not a pawn on someone else’s board.

Some continued to stare. Others slowly returned to their activities with renewed vigor. The repressed, dark side of me knew intuitively they were now imagining that I was the mortal beneath them, the one they had bound and helpless, the woman they bit into and whose essence they drank.

When my instincts to hide and feel shame arose, they were easier to ignore. Especially when I remembered the blonde woman touching Rune, his eyes on me as he allowed it.

Reggie turned to face me, satisfaction leaking from his every feature. “You have no idea how long everyone has waited for you to grace the dungeon with your presence.”

My eyes widened in surprise. “Really? People talk about me like that? Down here?”

Reggie raised a brow, pinning me with a look of disbelief. “Obviously.” When I struggled to collect my thoughts, he laughed and continued. “You ever wonder why so many of your regulars stay upstairs, pining for your attention, only to disappear in the blink of an eye? This is where they come. You’re very good at working people to their breaking point and then becoming entirely untouchable. It’s a bit maddening.”

I smiled.

Reggie laughed again, shaking a finger at me. “You’re wicked, you know that?”

There was so much power down here, like a great flood of desire that lit up my every nerve as it swept through the room in rippling waves. I shrugged at Reggie, unable to remember how to play coy. Or recall the dark side of my skills. The empty place was far in the distance now. I was too full, too high, soaring above the clouds.

“Do you know why vampires need places like Odessa, and especially its underground?” he asked me, over the low hum of ambient, erotic music and the chorus of moans, cries, and thumps and slaps of impact.

“Other than to feed?” I asked.

Reggie looked around the room for a moment before returning to my eyes. “We’re violent, hedonistic creatures, Scarlett. We’re immortal, which makes us hard to please, difficult to intrigue and excite. We must have outlets for our shadow selves, or our urges will build up and send us right into bloodlust. We commit acts of sin here so that we don’t do it out there, in ways that are far less acceptable.”

Was that why Rune’s proclivities were entirely fucked-up? Because he’d been around so long that he found satisfaction from only the most twisted, intense, and depraved?

Wait. Then what was my excuse?

“Mortals have a shadow too,” Reggie said softly. “That place under the floorboards you shove all of your shame, guilt, repressed desires, darkest urges… If mortals don’t find ways to release that pressure, they can boil over the same as us. Just a touch less violently.”

I knew the exact moment Rune entered the space. It was also the same moment a striking turned man and woman approached us. I recognized them as regulars, though they never stayed upstairs long. With the blatant lust in their eyes, I could instantly tell they weren’t a part of Rune’s inner circle who already knew I was off-limits.

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