Page 88 of What Happens at Nightfall

“You okay?” she asked, pulling back a little.

“Yes. Great. Better than okay.” He kissed her to prove it.

Her arms wrapped around his neck. Lace scratched against his chest. It really was an excellent bra, although it would be even more excellent off. The clasp gave easily and Jess shrugged out of the scrap of lace.

You could wrap it around her neck, suggested the voice. Asphyxiation. Very erotic.

Adam felt a little sick. He didn’t watch that kind of porn.

Or your hands. Wrap your hands around her throat. She’ll love it.

Adam broke off a highly complex kiss, pulling back. “Jess—wait.”

“Huh?” She looked so beautiful, naked except for the matching black lace panties. Adam wanted to run his hands along the curve of her waist, bury his face in the wonder of her hair.

“Nothing,” he said thickly, and leaned over to kiss the side of her neck.

There’d been that article in the Times, on the rise of erotic strangulation among college students. He’d been entirely weirded out and vowed never to let Melinda date ever. Maybe that was where these images were coming from.

Adam blotted it all out and focused on Jess, nuzzling the skin behind her ear, gasping as her hands explored the convenient opening of his boxers. The blood was roaring in his ears—like the water around a gondola as a woman’s arms were held behind her back and her cloak was ripped from her shoulders.

Use her, use her, take her, take her, chanted someone in Adam’s ear.

What the hell?

Adam sat up abruptly and fumbled for the bedside light. Jess blinked at him, holding up a hand to shield her eyes.

“Adam? What is it?” Her cheeks were flushed, her lips very red. She looked soft and tousled and Adam wanted nothing more than to just roll her back on the bed.

You can have her, hissed the voice. Have her now. Have her every possible way and then some. I can give you ideas . . .

Adam scooted away as far as he could get, without actually falling off the side of the bed. “We can’t. We can’t do this.”

Jess slowly levered herself up to a sitting position. “We can’t do this? What do you mean we can’t do this?”

“This. Us. Bed.” Adam was aware that he seemed to have lost his capacity for speech. The sight of her did that to him. “Me. You. Now.”

“I thought you were enjoying me you now,” Jess said sharply. She shoved her hair back from her face. “You certainly seemed to be enjoying me you now.”

Adam was suddenly very aware that his chest was bare and his boxers had flying pigs on them. It was like the Garden of Eden after the whole snake thing. He felt very naked and very cold. “It’s not me. I mean it’s not you. I mean— I think the demon is making us do it.”

“The demon,” said Jess flatly. She reached for the sheet and gave it a sharp tug.

Adam swallowed hard as she pulled the sheet up around her chest. “The demon. He’s here. He’s been—well, he’s been saying things. Well, not saying exactly. It’s more—images. I think—I think he wants us to, um, get jiggy with it.”

“Get jiggy with it?”

Adam couldn’t blame her for looking at him like that. “Sleep together, engage in coitus, make the beast with two backs.”

He couldn’t quite explain why he couldn’t say it straight out. Part of it was having kids. Part of it was because he suspected the terms the demon would use were much, much more frank—and he didn’t want to think of it that way. Not with Jess. Not at all.

Jess’s fingers were white in the folds of the sheet. “He wants this. Not you.”

“Of course I want to! But not like this.” Not with the demon whispering in his ear, tainting everything, turning desire to lust and lust to something dark and degrading, urging pain and abuse. “I want it to be just us.”

“It is just us! Who else do you see here?” Jess flung out an arm, her gesture encompassing the small, spartan room. There was an accordion-style closet and an IKEA chest of drawers. “Never mind. You don’t have to come up with more excuses. I get it.”

“No. No, you don’t.” Adam reached out for her hand, but the second his finger brushed her wrist he could feel the sizzle of it, the lust, like a burning, the images flooding him, not his, never his. Orgies and brothels and frat parties gone wrong. Take her, use her, the thing chanted in his head.