Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
The collection of letters flooded forth and made another drawing out of the scramble. But what was shown to her… made no sense at all.
“The golden arches?” she said with confusion.
CHAPTER FOUR
Caldwell Insurance Building
13th and Trade Streets
Downtown Caldwell
The demon Devina shot up off her satin pillows with a scream trapped in her throat. As she panted in the dim glow of her lair, she put her hand to her heart. Behind her sternum, the pounding was so heavy, she felt like a fifties cartoon who was in love. Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa.
Where the fuck was he—
Instantly, she was calmed.
Against the backdrop of her racks of haute couture clothes, standing tall, proud, and incredibly naked, her one true love was facing away from her and focused on the display of her Birkin collection. As usual, the ass view of him was every bit as delicious as the full frontal, his blond hair gleaming under the subdued ceiling lights, his shoulders marked with bright red claw marks from her nails, his tight little tuchus a perfect set of buns fresh out of the oven.
And just as delicious.
Which explained her teeth marks on the golden globe to the left.
Just a dream. It had only been a dream, she thought as she eased back against the headboard and pulled the covers off her bare breasts. Her nipples were red and swollen from him working on them and her sex was a low-level throb between her legs.
She had black-and-blue marks in so many places.
From when he’d held her down.
He was a demon lover, for sure, and not just in descriptive title. The male was everything she had ever wanted, all but custom designed to her specifications, and for a moment, she glanced down her racks of blouses, skirts, dresses, and trousers… to the far corner, where a municipal trash bin sat, lonely and out of place.
She had put the Book on top of the thing because that collection of incantations had been insolent and unresponsive and had needed a reminder that but for her pulling it out of the remains of that house fire, it would have ended up in a landfill. Goddamn, that entity had been a pain in the ass.
But she’d needed it.
And hey, the spell had worked, hadn’t it. To get her true love, she’d had to project how she wanted herself to be adored and then she’d had to go out into the world and ruin someone else’s love. Both parts had been really simple, as it turned out. And the fact that Lassiter had been the one that she’d fucked while fucking him? A very satisfying BOGO.
Who knew that taking someone’s virginity could rob him of—
“Why the hell are you keeping this one?”
As her lover spoke up, Devina was not feeling the tone. But then her male twisted around on his hips, and the top half of him put in an appearance. His shoulders and pecs were Michelangelo-molded, and his six-pack was right out of Men’s Health. His face, though, was what really captured her attention. He was model-beautiful, with high cheekbones and a square jaw, his lips molded with a sensuous curl to the top and a prominent plumpness on the bottom, his brows arching in arrogance, his pale hair waving back from a broad, intelligent forehead.
His eyes were his most epic feature, however. Deeply set and heavily lashed, his pupils were an all-wrong, resonant blue, and what should have been a colored iris was a jet-black rim that seemed to crowd into the center.
They were unlike anything she’d ever seen.
Then again, so was the rest of him. And it wasn’t just the physical components.
It was the aura of evil that emanated from him.
“The purse is destroyed,” he said impatiently. Like she was stupid. “Why are you keeping it.”
Devina narrowed her eyes and curbed her enthusiasm.
No, the Himalayan Birkin 35 with the diamond hardware was not destroyed. Yes, it had been subjected to fire, its toasted crocodile skin still releasing a whiff of barbecue, its white, gray, and brown pattern mottled with ash, its handles no longer in a perfect set of arches. But the bag remained at the top of her collection of Hermès’s most exclusive purses.
“You should be more respectful,” she said in a tight voice. “That is what brought you to me.”
The Book’s spell had started with her having to choose something of great personal importance and stare at it with all the love she wanted herself to be regarded with—and she’d picked the ruined masterpiece not only because it was the holy grail of all purses, but because she was ugly, too. Marred. Nasty. How had T. Swift put it in the good ol’ days? A nightmare dressed like a daydream.
And all of the other men and males she’d ever wanted had known it.
So yes, the Birkin had been her object, and she’d trained her eyes on everything that was ruined—and let her heart fly with the soul-defining emotion she’d been cheated of.