Two
DESCENT
“Ready, palomita?”
Asmodeus extended his arm like a gentleman offering a stroll through a garden rather than a descent into temptation.
Celia hooked her elbow through his, surprised by the warmth radiating through his suit jacket.
Genuine warmth, real flesh, despite every rational part of her mind insisting he couldn’t be what he claimed.
“What does that mean?” she asked, unsure if he would respond to her inquiry.
“I simply call you what you are. Palomita, my little dove. Pequena profesora, my little professor. No offense meant. It is simply how I see you.”
It feels almost... endearing, she thought as they moved through Oubliette’s main floor toward a black marble staircase that curved down into shadows.
The club hummed around them with whispered conversations and silk-soft laughter, but it felt distant now—background music to her own racing heartbeat.
You signed the contract. No turning back now.
“The contract,” she said as their footsteps echoed against marble, “how did you write it?”
“With a pen and ink,” Asmodeus said with a smirk.
“No, I mean... the clauses within the contract are perfect. Exactly as I would have written them, exactly what—”
“What you desired, palomita?”
Warmth flooded her face. “Yes.”
How Asmodeus had known exactly what she wanted, exactly what she needed to give into this carnal fantasy, was a mystery. But the terms were clear: no actual pain, just primal force; to be chased until caught; to be taken; and to have complete and total control as to when to stop.
Assuming that glow-in-the-dark temporary tattoo he slapped on your wrist actually works.
She was compelled to ask, “This um... emergency rune, as you called it. How does it work?”
“?Nerviosa, pequena profesora?” His voice held amusement but no mockery. “That is good. Fear sharpens pleasure. But you need not worry on account of the rune. It will work, or else I shall carve out mine own heart and gift it to you as recompense.”
The staircase spiraled down past the second level, past the third, into depths that seemed improbable.
Each level they passed glowed with its own particular flavor of carnal pleasure: glimpses of rooms where beautiful people explored desires with artistic precision.
The stairwell ended at a solid black iron door inscribed with the Italian phrase, “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’entrate. ” Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Celia stifled a laugh at how cheesy and cliché it seemed for the line from Dante’s Inferno to be carved into the door of a sex dungeon. She asked, “Rather ominous for a house of pleasure, isn’t it?”
“No. Not ominous,” Asmodeus said as he waved a hand at the door. It opened on its own, creaking on thick iron hinges. “Within my House, desires are made manifest. There is no need for hope when you have certainty.”
She nodded as she stepped through the threshold into a long hallway.
There was a sudden gust of warm wind at her back, a heat that urged her forward.
A corridor stretched ahead, illuminated with smokeless torches in iron sconces and lined with doors.
Each door was different: some atavistic, heavy wood studded with iron, others sleek modern surfaces that reflected the torchlight like mirrors.
Behind each one, Celia imagined, someone else’s deepest fantasy played out.
How many people have walked this hallway? How many have signed contracts like yours?
Asmodeus fell in step beside her, the large door creaking closed behind them. “Palomita, your hunter will pursue with single-minded determination until you activate your rune. You may activate your rune at any time and for any reason. Do you understand?”
Her face felt hot. Why does everything this man says sound so sexy?
“I... yes. I understand.”
“Good. Then your hunter will not stop until this lights up.” He brushed his thumb across the rune on her wrist, making it flare with soft light.
They continued onward, the warm breeze occasionally rising to sharp gusts of wind despite the fact that they were deep underground.
The walls along the hall were carved stone, no longer the silk-and-velvet luxury of the upper floors.
They had passed countless doors recessed into those stone walls, each one made from a different material in a different style. No two doors appeared to be the same.
“Your hunter,” Asmodeus said, “you are certain this is what you want?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
“Why a leshy?”
The question caught her off guard. She had spent so many hours lost in her fantasies, but she’d never thought to examine the reasons for her desires aloud, even to herself, and certainly never to another person. “I...” She swallowed hard. “I am unsure. I suppose...”
“Yes,” Asmodeus prompted gently.
“I suppose I find them beautiful, in a savage... terrifying way.”
“That,” he said as he turned to look at her, “has been one of the most honest things you have said all evening, pequena profesora.”
She looked at him and said, “When it catches me…”
“Si?”
“I want to be taken by a man. A beautiful man.”
Asmodeus smiled, sharp teeth gleaming in torchlight. “Transformation. The beast becomes the beauty. Very romantic, palomita.”
“It’s not romantic,” she protested, though her pulse quickened. “It’s primal. Base. Nothing romantic about it.”
“If you say so.”
Asmodeus stopped in front of a door that looked like it belonged to a medieval castle: dark wood bound with iron, with a handle worn smooth by age and use.
“Once you step inside, it will feel completely real. Your mind will know it’s a fantasy, but your body will experience every sensation as if it were happening. ”
She stared at the door. Beyond it lay everything she’d dreamed of and been too ashamed to pursue. “How long will I be inside?”
“Until you are satiated.” His golden eyes held hers. “Or until you wish for your rune to bring you out. Celia... is this what you want?” Asmodeus asked, his hand on the door handle.
No. Yes. I don’t know.
But that was a lie. She did know. She’d known since she began her academic career in occult and folklore studies and first read about heroines fleeing through moonlit forests: pursued by dark figures who caught them, claimed them, and loved them despite their protests.
She’d known every time she’d touched herself to fantasies of being overpowered, taken, used.
She’d known the moment she discovered rumors of this place from the dusty footnote of an academic text.
“This is what I want.”
Asmodeus turned the handle. The door swung open on silent hinges.
Warm mist rolled out like breath on a cold morning.
Not the sticky humid air of the club, nor the freezing winter chill from outside; this was comforting, fresh, and earthy.
Through the doorway, Celia glimpsed trees; tall, dark shapes that stretched up toward a ceiling she couldn’t see.
Moonlight filtered through fog, painting everything silver.
How is this possible?
She stepped through the threshold. The scent of damp earth and growing things filled her nose. Real earth, real plants. The sound of wind through leaves whispered from the darkness beyond.
“How,” she breathed, “is it actually a forest?”
She turned to ask Asmodeus how they’d built such a thing in the basement of a club, but the space behind her was empty.
No Asmodeus.
No doorway.
She was alone in the dark, in a forest, under a full moon, and surrounded by nothing but trees and fog.
Cool earth pressed against bare feet, soft and yielding between her toes.
Celia looked down at herself and blinked.
Gone were her gray slacks and pressed button-down.
Instead, she wore nothing but a white slip that barely reached her thighs; torn at the hem, the fabric was so thin that moonlight rendered it nearly transparent.
How? When had she changed clothes? When had—
A growl rumbled through the forest. Low, distant, but unmistakably real.
Her breath caught. The fantasy had begun.
Fog rolled between ancient oaks and silver birches like living silk, transforming the forest into something from a Gothic novel.
Moonlight spilled through the canopy in broken streams, creating pools of silver and shadow that shifted with each breath of wind.
The trees rose impossibly tall around her, their branches intertwining overhead like cathedral arches.
Beautiful. Terrifying. Perfect.
Her heart hammered against her ribs with a mixture of fear and carnal hunger, a primal urge that had been locked away behind years of careful academic composure.
This was what she’d dreamt of since she first discovered stories of heroines fleeing through moonlit forests: the hunt, the delicious and joyous fear of being prey.
Warmth surrounded her skin despite the winter chill she’d felt outside Oubliette.
Here, the air held spring’s sweet promise, caressing her bare arms and legs with invisible fingers.
She shivered. Physics meant nothing in fantasyland, apparently.
Good thing, too, since she’d completely forgotten to negotiate shoes into her contract, and the soft forest floor welcomed her bare feet with the give of moss and fallen leaves.
Another growl echoed through the trees, closer this time. Definitely closer.
He’s coming for you.
Her body responded to the sound with a jolt of heat that started low in her belly and spread outward like wildfire.
A laugh bubbled up from her throat, high and breathless.
Not nervousness, but exhilaration. She’d spent years analyzing the psychology of the chase in Gothic literature, the symbolism of pursuit and capture, the transformation of fear into desire.
Now she was living it.
She took a step forward, then another, choosing her direction at random.
The fog parted around her movement like water, creating momentary clearings before closing again in her wake.
Each step sent warmth shooting up from the earth through her legs, as if the forest itself recognized what she needed.
Run. The word whispered through her mind with primal urgency. Run, or he’ll catch you.
But wasn’t that the point? To be caught? To be claimed?
The contradictory desires warred in her chest; the thirst for being chased battling against the hunger to be captured. Her academic mind tried to catalog the competing impulses, to understand the psychology at work, but her body had already made its choice.
She ran.
Tree branches whipped past as she plunged deeper into the forest, her slip catching on thorns that left tiny tears in the fabric.
The fog seemed to guide her path, opening corridors between the trees while obscuring others.
Her feet found purchase on roots and stones with impossible sureness, as if the forest conspired to help her flight.
Behind her, something large moved through the underbrush. Not clumsy. Deliberate. Controlled. Hunting.
Heat pooled between her thighs with each footfall.
This was it. This was what she’d craved in every secret midnight fantasy, what she’d found in the pages of every dark romance she’d hidden behind academic texts; the thrill of being hunted by something powerful, something that wanted her with single-minded intensity.
Her breath came in short gasps that had nothing to do with exertion.
Each gulp of air seemed to feed the fire building in her core.
She could feel him back there: watching, waiting, letting her believe she might escape before he closed the distance.
The game was as much about the chase as it was the capture.
How close is he?
She risked a glance over her shoulder and thought she caught a brief glimpse of a leshy between the trees: impossibly tall, impossibly muscular, bark instead of skin, moss and leaves in place of hair and beard.
That’s impossible. Isn’t it?
Even at this distance, she felt his attention like heat against her skin. Leshy or not, the knowledge that she was being watched, being desired, being hunted, sent electricity racing through her.
Her nipples hardened against the gossamer fabric of her slip. The silk rubbed against sensitive skin with each movement, a constant reminder of her body’s arousal. She was wet already, trembling and slick with want.
The trees thinned ahead, revealing a clearing bathed in silver moonlight. She broke free of the forest’s embrace and stumbled to a halt in the center of the open space, chest heaving, slip clinging to her soft curves dampened with perspiration.
The clearing was silent.
No wind, no rustling leaves, no distant growls. Just her own ragged breathing and the thunder of her pulse. She scanned the treeline, searching for a face among the trunks and branches.
He’s here.
The certainty settled over her like a blanket.
Somewhere at the edge of the trees surrounding the clearing, her hunter waited.
Her leshy. Watching her stand exposed in the moonlight, her body outlined through transparent silk, her arousal obvious in the way she trembled, in the way moonlight glistened off her slick thighs.
Let him look. Let him see what he’d done to her with nothing more than the promise of pursuit. She was already his, and they both knew it. The only question was how long he’d make her wait before he claimed what was already given.
Another growl, louder now, rolled across the clearing like thunder.
Celia smiled in the darkness and ran.