Negotiate with the telepathic daemon

You sip your wine and consider your options. It feels strange to sit naked in a crowded tavern, but no stranger than the snarling, burping, chattering clientèle that fills the tavern. The wine warms you, giving you courage and relaxing your fears. You are staring down into the opaque red liquid filling the cup when you feel cold, slender fingers slide over your shoulders.

"We did not finish our conversation," the icy voice of the telepathic daemon sounds within your head. You tense up and turn on your stool to find the gaunt, gray-fleshed daemon with the black eyes looming over you. What you took to be a simple tunic seems to be rather a pelt covered in silver-edged scales. You push away the daemon's hands.

"Do not touch me," you warn.

"Of course," says the daemon, again, purely within your mind. "I only desired your attention."

"Speaking into my mind certainly works."

His lipless mouth curls into a smile.

"You are unmarked," his cold voice rings in your head. "Not a **** escaped or bound to geas. How many reds to acquire the pleasure of your flesh?"

"I am not for sale," you say defiantly.

"For sale? No. To borrow, for a time, to use and return." He reaches out a hand. You shrink away from it, but do not stop him from caressing your cheek with his strange, soft fingertips. You shiver at the faint electric crackle of pleasure. "Eight reds for you."

You feel a mercenary rush as you entertain his offer. You do not know much of the value of the daemonic coins, but you have seen one of the red metal coins exchanged for several bottles of drink. What else could you buy with them? Could you buy your freedom?

"I want out," you say to him.

"So we are negotiating?" His voice becomes warmer within your mind. "There are paths out of every predicament, even the this realm, but these are dangerous and difficult. I know of an easier way you might rejoin the living."

"How?" you ask, unconsciously taking a step closer to the daemon. His cold hands grasp yours and he pulls your toward him. The scale of his tunic rubs against your nipples. You feel a pleasant warmth suffuse your body, like warm honey poured from your mind and out into every spot of you.

"Come with me, to my manor, and I will show you the way." He begins to walk you towards the door to the tavern. Your legs are weak and it is almost impossible to resist him. "My carriage awaits us."

His carriage waits in the cobbled road outside the tavern, a thing of black iron and slots from which glows a ghostly blue light. A black-cloaked driver sits atop the carriage. There are no horses nor any other creature that might provide locomotion. The door to the carriage opens as you approach. In your warm, dreamy pleasure, you see the swirling blue lights within the carriage as something beautiful. But your instincts warn you to stop.

"Wait," you say, summoning the will and courage to halt in the road. "We have not agreed upon a price. Nor your demands."

"The temporary pleasure of your flesh," whispers the voice in your head. "Two nights and I will see to it you return to the mortal realm."

"One night," you counter.

That lipless smile spreads on his face once more.

"Done," he says and ushers you into the carriage.

You sit across from him on a comfortable leather bench. There is a faint smell of a storm in the air and the blue lights gather in a hemisphere on the inner ceiling of the carriage. You sense the vehicle begin to move without a noise. The black-eyed daemon smiles and stares at you, his hands folded in his lap.

"What is your name?" you ask.

"Not for you to know, but you may address me as Rex."

"Very well, Rex," you say. For a while longer you sit in silence with him watching. You fidget and wonder what it is he wants. You blurt out, "Shall I pleasure you here in the carriage?"

"Of course," says Rex.

He moves his hands from his lap and lifts the edge of his scaled tunic. He wears no trousers and his very thin legs are crowned with only more pale gray flesh. This joint, this soft-skinned pit, begins to wriggle before your eyes. A dark red tendril curls out from his flesh. It is perhaps ten inches in length, smooth and glistening, and no fatter than the quill of a goose feather. It moves with a slow, almost hypnotic side-to-side motion, as if beckoning you closer.