Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

1

In 1964, someone stayed awake for eleven days. He set the world record for the longest time a human has gone without sleep. He did it for science.

Today was my third day staying awake, although my body was fighting me every step of the way and on the verge of shutting down.

I was doing it to avoid sex dreams.

But it was getting harder and harder to keep my eyes open, and I was snowed into my apartment on a Friday night with no power. My only friend was three hundred miles up the coast and had her own problems to deal with, so I couldn't call and ask her to keep me awake. Besides, what would be my excuse? At this point, I was so exhausted I might end up admitting the truth to her, and then she would either laugh at me or question my sanity. I already knew what she would say. You idiot, you get top-tier porn for free in your head every night, and you're complaining?

She wouldn't understand. In her world, everything was simple. Men were hot. Sex was good. Hot men giving good sex in dreams without the baggage of being real with real life problems, fantastic. There were no cons there. She would slap me over the phone for daring to complain. There were kids starving to death somewhere, and I was whining that my phantom stalker kept trying to get me off.

It would only make it worse if I admitted to her that the sex dreams... weren't actually sex. It was sexual, though. There was no denying the dark, choking, scorching-hot energy that bound me whenever that dark figure moved in the shadows, teasing and taunting as it solidified. Whatever that was, whoever that was in my dreams that tormented me every time I fell asleep, it was all too clear what they wanted. Even in the beginning when they hadn't yet started touching me, I had sensed the dark, heavy hunger, the craving, the all-consuming need. And then it came closer every night, growing larger and darker, hands pushing apart my thighs and settling between them...

If I didn't believe in the supernatural, I wouldn't have been so afraid. That dark, looming shape with glowing crimson eyes, tall and broad and larger than life, would have just been another nightmare, something I could brush off in the morning after calming myself down. Maybe I would have even enjoyed it.

But I knew the truth.

The man haunting my dreams might be real.

If he was even a man at all.

Stay awake.

Stay awake.

No matter what.

I had long ago burned any bridges that might have led to help, not that I needed it -- and not that I would trust them in the first place. I could do this alone. I didn't need the nosey vultures and mercenaries who had only ever pretended to help to get what they wanted, or the liars and cons who had betrayed my family in the worst way imaginable. There was a reason I had escaped my grandmother's legacy. I wouldn't let it go to waste, either.

Not even to get help for the shadowy man standing in my doorway.

"No," I snapped. "I'm not asleep. You can't touch me when I'm awake."

Those were the rules. As long as that thing was what I suspected it was, a sleeping curse, then there was nothing it could do to me. If I didn't meet the conditions, I was home free.

I conveniently ignored the fact that it that were true, I wouldn't be able to see the dark figure at all. I wouldn't be talking to myself and telling it no, because I wouldn't be seeing it at all.

Oh, God, no.

Had I already fallen asleep? No -- no! I had lit every candle in the apartment including both enormous ones I had bought for far too much money yesterday in the middle of the snowstorm. The power was out, but my apartment should be as bright as the sun with the twenty-odd flames lighting it up. I was safe. I was awake. I wouldn't have let myself fall asleep. Hadn't I just been running to the kitchen to put on another carafe of coffee when I didn't even drink the stuff?

That was it. I had to keep moving. Off to the kitchen, ignore the shadowed figure -- and all would be fine.

But my body froze. Locked. Like there were cords of steel running through my entire body and holding me still like a mannequin. And all of a sudden, I realized I wasn't standing, but lying on my back in bed.

Oh, my God. It was happening again. The sleep paralysis. The dream. The nightmare--

Even my throat refused to work, no scream, no words, not a single sound. It was all I could do to keep breathing.

The figure stepped through the doorway. Every night before this one for the last month, my room had been dark, masking my phantom stalker in a hazy shroud. But the light of the candle on my dresser cast its flickering illumination tonight, bathing the intruder in a soft glow and revealing his features for the first time.

The weak light revealed a muscular chest, broad shoulders... muscular and broad everywhere, actually. The sculpted body that took another slow step toward the bed was godlike. It wasn't just beautiful. It was powerful. I had known this thing was strong from the times it had managed to touch me, but I had held out hope until now that I could fight it if only I had the iron will.

I had been stupid. There was no way I could fight that. I had to get away, run, escape--

It slid onto the foot of the bed, and the candlelight revealed the erect cock standing at attention between the invader's muscled thighs. Oh, God. Recently, this man -- no, creature, I had to remember this wasn't a real man -- had even managed to touch me with his damn dick, trying so hard to slide it between my parted legs. It had gotten closer and closer every night, sliding the hardened, heated length against my calf, then my knee, then my inner thighs. Tonight, too, it would do the same.

But surely I had to have one more night, one more chance. It wouldn't be able to go all the way tonight. And then in the morning when I awoke, I would let the relief sink in before I went and really found a solution this time, just like all the other mornings before. I knew it. I would be fine. It would be okay--

And then I remembered that had been four nights ago, and I hadn't slept since. For sleeping curses, the longer you resisted, the harder you fell when you finally succumbed. The three nights I had suffered and forced myself to stay awake... I would pay them back threefold now, if not more.

As if reading my thoughts, the figure smiled, revealing white fangs that gleamed too bright in the darkness. The crimson slits that were its eyes widened slightly as it grinned.

And then it spoke.

Oh, God.

"I've been waiting for you," he rasped. "Tonight, you're mine."