...He buries his face in my neck, and starts doing barbaric things with lips and teeth and tongue. This does nothing to help the situation. I think the skimpy, leather panties I’m wearing under this sarong thingy just melted.

“Stop it!” I pound my fists on his shoulders.

And hurt my hands. Ow. God knows it doesn’t even slow him. I doubt you could dent him with a battle-axe.

Warm breath tickles my skin with his words. “I can’t stop. You have me under that power of yours, woman. I’m mad with desire for you.”

There! What did I say about him being possessed? I was right. He’s even chuckling about it, darn him. Worse yet, I’m afraid I may be possessed, too. Granted, I was madly in love with Jeff even before this, but for me to be so aroused now, under these circumstances, is pretty damn mind-boggling. I’m in a dangerous, dank, dark, stinky dungeon, for heaven’s sake, and I’m still more than half hoping he’ll shove me against the wall and fuck me blind. After all, I can’t see squat down here, anyway, so what the hell difference would it make?

No, no… That’s not a good idea, I know it’s not. Even if it were, we don’t have the time.

I twist my face to the side as his mouth swoops down for another kiss. Uh-uh, none of that. One more kiss and it’ll all be over.

“Listen, you…you barbarian, we have got to cut the crap, and get on with the search. Isn’t that what we agreed, that the search comes first? Do you want to ‘cease to exist’ in an hour or less? I sure as bloody hell don’t!”

I really should learn to watch my mouth. No sooner do I say “bloody hell” than it breaks loose upon us.

“Sonofabitch,” Khondor-Jeff curses, and I don’t blame him.

Suddenly, we’re hemmed in from all sides, the center of a bizarre feeding frenzy, but our assailants aren’t after meat or blood. Carnal hunger steams the air. Dozens of hot hands clutch me—fiery fingers pinching and probing, taking lewd liberties. Snaky tongues flick over my flesh, and panting voices whisper dark, dirty things. An evil, erotic assault.

The passage is packed with unseen perverts. Sultry forms crush in close. Human forms, and naked—I sense that much—but not unseen because of the blackness. And not really human, either, I realize. When I throw a punch into the crowd, my fist slices through empty space. I figured it would, but I had to try just to be certain. Now I am. These wretched things would be invisible even if we had floodlights down here.

They slither around us and even between us, yet without pushing us apart. I still feel Jeff pressed against me, one arm hard about my waist, while the other swings out to connect with nothing. (He had to try, too, of course.) The creatures can move through us as though we were water, invade our garments, occupy the same space we’re in at the same time. They can touch us, but we can’t touch them. And their hands and mouths are everywhere at once. They squeeze my ass, nibble my breasts, claw down my belly, and nose between my thighs.

“Arrgh…” Jeff makes a strangling noise in his throat. “Something is groping my balls. I suppose it’s too much to hope that it’s you.”

“Nope, sorry. They’re ghosts. Sort of.”

And they’re all my fault. I don’t know how I’m going to explain them to him. God, this is embarrassing. The more so because, as much as I hate to admit it, the assault is turning me on. I can’t help it. Our ghostly gropers exude a pungent musk that stimulates the libido, while weakening one’s will to resist them. That’s the odor I couldn’t identify—but I should have. Jeff and I were probably already under its influence when the fiends hit.

“They’re lust-wraiths. I—ahem—created them for our game a while back,” I confess with a cough. “But I never had the nerve to introduce them into the action.”

“Uh-huh,” Jeff says. “And why not?”

I was afraid he’d ask that. I’d heave a sigh, but my breathing is labored enough as it is.

“Because they’re kinky, and there’s only one way to banish them, which might have taken things in a direction I assumed you wouldn’t want to go.”

“Such as?”

He’s not making this easy, is he? In fact, I think he’s amused by my discomfort. He’s certainly adding to my arousal. Maybe he figures that, with all the other hands on me, I won’t notice, but I can damn sure tell the ones fondling my boobs right now are his. No one has hands like Jeff. His thumbs trace my cleavage and brush outward, dip into my bodice…circle both nipples till they pucker into tight peaks.