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)
So what the hell had she done to him?
That was the question he’d been asking himself ever since he’d been called out of his father’s Dhunhd, brought back to Caldwell, and delivered to her. Like he’d been conjured out of thin air by the female, dial-a-date style.
And he was beginning to suspect that was what had happened. She wasn’t a vampire, and she certainly wasn’t human—and sometimes, when he deliberately refused her, the way her eyes narrowed and turned into pits of murder, he was pretty fucking sure he knew what he was fucking.
She was a demon.
As the word reoccurred in his brain, he focused on her breast. She wore a suit of skin, just like he did—and what do you know, he was in no hurry to find out what she really looked like underneath the window dressing.
Yes, his lover was a demon, and she was compelling him to be with her. That had to be it—because lurking behind this made-no-sense obsession he had for her, he remained his true self: The hunter, the killer, the destroyer, all the essentials of who he was were still there, he just couldn’t seem to access his motivations or power—
Go. You’re free.
Lash snapped his head back toward the lair’s steel-reinforced door. As his upper lip peeled off his fangs, he waited for the voice to come again. But that was stupid.
It was his own—
Go NOW. You’re free.
Lash sat up slowly, rising from the hips like an OG vampire coming off the tufted quilt of his coffin. After checking to make sure the demon was still asleep, he shifted his legs out of the satin sheets. Under his bare feet, the floor was cold through the plush rug, and when he stood up, the air seemed to swirl around him—to the point where he looked down at himself.
A fine mist had formed around his ankles, and as it made like a tiny hurricane, it doubled and redoubled in size, the fog ascending up his calves, his knees… his pelvis.
Go now, you’re free. HURRY.
He didn’t intend on fighting the order, but as his free will surged, a flood of intention and planning momentarily blinded him—and he didn’t realize he was in movement.
In fact, he was floating toward the door on a wave of that mist, sure as if it were a conveyor belt.
As he reached the steel barrier of the lair, his fangs tingled and his body throbbed with aggression. Just as he began to penetrate through the door’s molecules, he glanced back at the bed. The female was still asleep, but she was twitching, her long, smooth legs kicking underneath the sheeting, her hand clawing at the pillow—then her head flipped over and she looked right at him.
Or would have looked at him, if she could have. Her eyes were closed, her beautiful face twisted into a grimace.
As he remembered what she tasted like, a stir of sexual instinct made him pause.
She’ll be here, he thought. Anytime he wanted.
Turning back to the door, he passed through and hated the acidic, clingy sensation—but compared to the tortures of Dhunhd, it was nothing he couldn’t endure.
And then he was on the other side.
The basement corridor was a straight shot of concrete in both directions, all kinds of closed doors with corporate logos offering nothing of interest. He chose left for no particular reason because either way would take him to the outside world—
The security guard came sauntering around the corner down at the far end, his cell phone up in his hands, the soft squawk suggesting he was listening to a game. Uniformed, dark-haired, in his early twenties—and out to fucking lunch: The whistled tune that percolated up from him, a little ditty that was discordant and disorganized with an unreliable beat, suggested he was lax about more than just doing his rounds properly.
The dumbshit was about to walk right into an intruder.
As the mist that had carried Lash through the door dissipated from his naked body, the scent of the human became very apparent, and with proximity also came an assessment of the potential for a good fight. There was none. The kid was fit in the manner of youth rather than activity—no paunch yet, but the shoulders were unremarkable and so were the pecs.
Not that that would matter.
When Lash was done with him.
CHAPTER SIX
What the hell.”
As the words on Eddie’s mind were spoken out loud, he himself leaned in closer to the windshield. Which was not hard to do. The Mini had all of the vertical loft of a Converse All Star, and forget about legroom. He was wearing his knees as earrings and bent into a crouch. If the airbag ever went off? His nose was going to get punched through the back of his skull.
“Are you seeing that?” Adrian demanded as he took his foot off the gas—and then, like it wasn’t perfectly clear what he was talking about, the other angel jabbed his forefinger forward. “That.”