Page 29 of Diamonds (Aces Underground #2)

Usually it’s the man making this speech to a starry-eyed girl. I’ve never been on the receiving end of it. Certainly not in such a poetic way.

It’s fine by me.

Because when she touched my arm, Mad Maddox perked his ears up, roused from his slumber.

And Mad Maddox doesn’t care what game we play, as long as he gets his chips down.

“I understand perfectly, Rouge.”

She smiles. “I’m glad that’s squared away. Just one more thing.” She reaches into her cleavage and produces a small crimson satin pouch. She opens it. “Look inside.”

Not a chore. Whatever gets my hard dick inside Rouge’s pussy fastest.

I take a peek. Inside are a half-dozen thin, dried-up mushrooms.

“You are familiar, Maddox, with psilocybin?”

I scratch the side of my head. “Of course. Magic mushrooms.”

“Magic indeed.” She runs her long fingernails along the side of the pouch. “As you know, Maddox, I enjoy dabbling in the sciences. Lately I’ve been fascinated by botany. Particularly how easily plants and fungi can be genetically mutated to produce differing effects.”

I rub at the back of my neck. “So… Have these shrooms been manipulated?”

“A gold star for you.” She pulls out a single mushroom. “I was able to isolate the part of the psilocybin that enhances feelings of pleasure, of purest ecstasy, and augment it. These mushrooms will make any sexual act feel a hundred times more pleasurable than you could ever dream.”

Holy shit. I get to fuck Rouge and it’s going to feel a hundred times better than normal?

But… It doesn’t feel right.

“Respectfully, I’d rather experience you naturally, Rouge. I don’t think I need any sort of mental alteration to enjoy an evening with you.”

She frowns, returning the mushroom back to the pouch. “That is my second condition if you wish to take me to bed, Mr. Hathaway. You asked me my price all those years ago. That is it. If it’s too much, you’re welcome to court one of the servers, or even my sister, if you desire her.”

I have to take the mushroom?

“That’s seriously the only option?”

“I’ll take a dose as well. You won’t be flying solo.”

I mull it over. That sounds…fair? I guess?

This whole thing feels fishy. But Mad Maddox is roaring beneath my flesh.

He’s hungry.

Get your hands on that woman at any price , he’s saying.

It’s a win-win. You’ll get to take her to bed, and it will feel even more awesome than it would normally.

Go on, Maddox.

Do it.

Do it.

Fucking do it.

“All right,” I say. “If that’s your condition, I’ll take the mushroom.”

“Wonderful.” She reopens the pouch, hands me a mushroom. “Consume it. Now.”

I bite my lip, darting my gaze around.

“You need not worry about any legal ramifications, Maddox. You’re hardly the first person to enjoy a recreational drug at Aces Underground.”

Fair enough. I’m sure half the people here are on Molly.

I pop the mushroom in my mouth. It’s bitter, and I swallow it quickly.

“Open your mouth,” Rouge instructs.

I do so.

“Lift your tongue, please.”

Again, I obey.

She examines my mouth and then takes a step back. “You may close your mouth. I just have to make sure that you weren’t trying to cheek it away. Can’t be too careful these days. I’m sure you understand.”

“Sure, Rouge.”

She grabs my hand. “Come with me to my office.”

She leads me to the red door at the end of the Hearts section labeled “Rouge.” She opens the door and…

And—

My vision blurs. Not in a normal way, but as if television static is taking over my field of vision.

I’m lost in a blinding snowstorm, a turbulent cyclone, a flock of wild birds.

Then it clears.

And I’m in a magnificent four poster bed, hard as a rock. Rouge bouncing on my dick, her pussy outlined with the same rubies she wears all over her body. Her huge tits flopping up and down, and she’s pinching them, her mouth open and her head hanging back.

Fuck. It does feel good. It feels fucking transcendent.

In and out, in and out, in and out…

And then the static again. I’m lost. This time I’m in the middle of an eight-way intersection, cars whizzing past me. Every time I cross, another horn blares at me. Penetrates my body. Rips my muscles from my bones, shreds my organs, stretches my nerves to their limit ? —

I blink three times, and I’m back in the four-poster. Rouge is licking up and down my cock, sucking it like a fucking Hoover. She then works my balls, my inner thighs.

And then her tongue lands right between my ass cheeks.

Holy shit. Holy ever-loving shit.

The ceiling opens up onto a soaring vista. A beautiful mountaintop, with a delicate spring trickling around my feet. The buzz of birdsong in my ears. I’m lying naked in the soft grass, feeling it brush against my skin, the warm sun enveloping me totally.

It’s getting warmer. Too warm. Hot.

I’m burning. Boiling. My skin is literally bubbling.

I blink again. Three times always seems to do the trick.

Back in the bed. Rouge is on her hands and knees. I’m fucking her in her ass.

Fuck. So tight. So good. So... So…

I’m stuck.

I’m in a desert. Surrounded by white sand.

Excepts it’s not white sand… I bend over and slide my fingers through.

Tiny diamonds.

I take a handful. I’ll pocket them. Sell them when I get home.

But I don’t have pockets. I’m naked.

And I’m slowly sinking into the diamonds.

They’re digging into my skin, burrowing into me like tiny little gremlins. Their tiny teeth gnaw at me, consume me from the inside out.

And… And…

“Maddox? You look thirsty.”

I’m back in the four-poster bed. Rouge is lying next to me, stroking her fingers up and down my nude body. Her eyes keep changing sizes, and I can swear her pussy is winking at me.

I breathe in, but I can’t speak.

“Your throat is dry. Here.” Rouge gets up, goes to a small sixties-style refrigerator. Red, of course, and next to a large safe in the same color. She returns with a goblet of red liquid. “Drink.”

I behold the glass. Swallow several times, enough to lubricate my throat to rasp out the words “Bloody Mary?”

She sits next to me. “Bloody Mary. The first true queen of England. Do you know why she was called that?”

I shake my head.

“Her father was Henry the eighth—you’ve undoubtedly heard of his six wives.

He was the one who started the Church of England, mostly to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, Mary’s mother.

When Mary took power, she restored Catholicism as the state religion and executed anyone she could find who remained clinging to Protestantism.

” Her eyes light up with crimson fire. “Burned them at the stake.”

I try swallowing again. I don’t really want a drink right now, not with whatever the fuck is going through my system.

“Elizabeth the first took over upon Mary’s death and reversed the decision.” Rouge grins. Her teeth are made of the same diamonds that were burrowing into my flesh. “Of course, she couldn’t unburn the ashes of the dead Protestants that lay at Mary’s feet.”

I close my eyes and rub at my forehead. Why is Rouge talking about this?

“You’re not speaking, Maddox. Drink what I gave you. You’ll feel better.”

I hold up the glass of red liquid. Smell it.

It doesn’t smell like a Bloody Mary. It smells like…something familiar.

“Drink, Maddox.” She pushes the glass to my lips. “Drink.”

I look at Rouge. Her eyebrows are raised. I think I can hear them giggling at me.

“Drink, Maddox. Drink, in remembrance of me.”

I obey. My throat is dry. Probably a side effect from the shrooms.

The liquid is thick. Viscous.

This isn’t tomato juice.

It has a metallic taste… Like…

Like blood.

I stare at the glass, and it slips from my grip. Falls to the floor. Breaks into a million pieces. Creates a giant red puddle.

Wild laughter bounces off the walls of the room, penetrates my body, blurs my vision…

And I’m on a canoe, paddling upstream through it. Through a river of thickest blood. I look behind me. I’m about to go down a waterfall.

A bloodfall.

But no matter how hard I paddle, I can’t stop the boat.

I finally relent, fall down the scarlet cascade.

The static returns. Tiny little gnats buzzing in my ear. Entering my skull. Flying in and out of my eyes, my nose, my mouth.

It isn’t real. None of this is real.

Or is it?

* * *

To this day, I don’t know the answer.

What happened with Rouge that night… I don’t know what was real and what was fabricated by the mind-altering mushrooms.

I mean… The swarm of gnats, the desert of diamonds, the blinding snowstorm. Those weren’t real.

I know we fucked. That part was pretty damned good.

But the goblet of blood that Rouge commanded me to drink…

That I was never sure of.

For years I dismissed it as part of the trip brought on by the shrooms.

All I know is that I kept Rouge at arm’s length after that night.

What if it actually happened? It felt real in the moment, but then I started hallucinating again right after. The waterfall of blood.

Hell, I was hallucinating while it was going on. I saw her eyes light on fire, her eyebrows laugh, her pussy wink at me.

Now that I know what Rouge is capable of doing, that particular vision doesn’t seem that farfetched.

I kept going back to the club because I thought it wasn’t real. I enjoyed going to the club, and I just avoided Rouge when I could.

Even now, I don’t know with a hundred percent certainty that what I experienced was real.

But if it was… If Rouge truly handed me a cup of blood and told me to drink it…

If she’s the one behind May’s decapitated head in the park by the airport…

Then she’s into some really dark shit.

I’m going to figure out her part in all of this.

And then I’m going to do everything in my power to stop her.