The air in the garden was thick with heat—not the infernal flames of Hell, but a fevered, sultry warmth that curled around Asher and Jeremy like invisible silk. Fragrance clung to their skin, intoxicating and dizzying. The room pulsed with erotic rhythm, as if the very walls breathed desire.
Jeremy took a trembling step back, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Every movement of the men around them was calculated, fluid, impossibly graceful. They came closer—circling like wolves cloaked in velvet, wearing nothing but their hunger.
"Asher..." Jeremy murmured, his voice husky with confusion and tension. "I think we're in the mouth of something that doesn't just chew. It just... devours."
One of the figures stepped forward, his body glistening with a sheen of oil, muscles shifting like liquid gold under taut, flawless skin. His eyes—violet and smoldering—held Jeremy's gaze with an ancient, feral hunger. Without speaking, he reached out, running the back of his fingers down Jeremy's cheek, to his throat, then to the bare skin exposed above his collar. Jeremy's breath caught.
"Do you feel it?" the man whispered, his voice as smooth as velvet dipped in wine. "This place knows what you crave. What you hide."
Another male approached Asher. He was taller, with raven-black hair cascading over his shoulders and a slow, predatory smirk on his lips. He moved in close, his chest brushing Asher's, the heat of his body electric. Asher clenched his fists but didn't move. Not yet.
"You reek of divinity," the man purred. "But even angels have appetites... Don't they?"
Asher's jaw tightened. "What is this place?"
"A garden of truths," the first man answered, now tracing Jeremy's wrist with ghost-like touches. "Where illusions are peeled away like robes... slowly, teasingly."
Jeremy's knees buckled slightly as the man pressed against him—firm, sculpted flesh meeting his own in a dance of friction. It wasn't just physical; it was psychic. He could feel desire being pulled from him like thread from cloth. Memories of longing. Nights of loneliness. Every shameful fantasy he'd ever buried. All laid bare.
He shivered—and hated how much his body responded.
Asher shoved the man touching him aside—not roughly, but enough to force distance.
"Jeremy, don't listen. This isn't real. This is crafted. It's made to weaken us. To seduce us."
"Isn't that the point of desire?" a third voice chimed in—another male, impossibly beautiful, reclining lazily on a swing made of roses and iron chains. "To surrender willingly? Not to force... not to conquer... but to tempt."
He rose from the swing, his hair the color of sunlight and his smile sharper than a knife hidden in silk.
"We are not demons," he said, voice like falling honey. "We are indulgence. We are what your flesh cries out for when no one is listening."
Jeremy's lips parted. "Why me?"
"Because you have been starved," the golden-haired man said, stepping closer. "You've been denied touch. Affection. You've built walls so high around your truth that even your own reflection cannot reach you."
"And Asher..." he turned, eyes glinting. "You are no better. You fear the ache you feel for him. You drown it in holy duty. But down here? There are no rules. No god. No shame. Just skin."
Asher stood firm, but Jeremy saw the flicker of something behind his emerald eyes. Not weakness—temptation.
"Asher," Jeremy whispered, "what if this is what we are now? What if we're already too deep in?"
"No," Asher said, voice hardening. "We're not lost. Not yet."
But then the golden-haired man raised a hand—and the illusion intensified.
Suddenly, Jeremy was no longer clothed. His body—bare, vulnerable—stood in the center of the garden. The men reached for him, not with violence, but reverence. Fingers ghosted over his chest, down his back, along his thighs. Their touches were maddeningly soft, igniting nerve endings he didn't know existed.
Jeremy gasped—his skin erupting in fire.
Asher snarled and surged forward, wrapping his arms around Jeremy and covering him protectively.
"Enough!" he roared.
And then—the world cracked.
A shimmer ran through the garden like a glitch in reality. The flowers turned to ash. The perfume soured. The beautiful men snarled, revealing forked tongues and eyes of fire. The illusion faded... revealing the rot beneath.
They were still in Hell.
The Pleasure Garden had been a cage dressed in silk.
A voice echoed—deep, echoing, and cruelly amused.
"You broke the spell faster than I thought, Asher," said the Devil himself, though his form remained unseen. "But you tasted it. You wanted it."
Jeremy pressed his face into Asher's shoulder, breathing heavily. "Let's get the hell out of here... before I change my mind."
Asher looked up into the sky of writhing darkness.
"We'll find the Gatekeeper," he muttered. "And we'll escape this place. Together."
But in the shadows, the Devil smiled.
They had resisted the garden.
But the next trial would not be so easily overcome.
Who the hell comes to the devil's territory and escapes unscathed; impossible feat.