Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
As her head rolled back and forth on his pillow, she stared up at the ceiling above. Tears came to her eyes, and they were hot down her temples. It was so good to just feel… good.
And Dev’s body was incredibly powerful as he started to pound into her again, and she only wanted him to go even harder—
As if he knew that, he pushed his torso up off her, the muscles of his chest flexing, his abdominals clenching and releasing as he dug into her in waves. Angling her pelvis, she linked her legs over his lower body and swept her hands down his ribs. He was a male animal, in the throes of mating, and she wanted to receive everything he had to give her. On a primordial level, this was just so right—
Another release snapped inside of her and she arched up, her breasts rising, her breath stopping, her eyes seeing stars.
Like, actual stars.
She’d always assumed that was something for novels and movies…
Dev continued to pump, a growl coming out of him, and then he pitched forward, his face once again in her hair, his exhale a roar in her ear, the scent and feel of him taking over everything—
Click.
Click.
He was still ejaculating into her when they both looked to his door. The handle was turning slowly, as if someone were quietly testing the lock.
She’d never seen a human move so fast.
One moment, he was on top of her and coming; the next, he was grabbing a gun out of his bedside table and pushing her off the far side of the mattress. She landed with a thump right next to where she happened to have thrown her clothes.
Scrambling to get dressed, she peeked over the bed.
Dev was naked and advancing toward the door like it was second nature to him, the gun up and steady, his stare fixated on the panel, his magnificent body carved with muscle and power.
And that was when she smelled it.
The sweet, sickly stench of a lesser.
Closing her eyes, she could only guess that the slayer had caught her own scent somehow—so she had brought the enemy right to his door. Literally.
“Dev.”
He shook his head with a jerk. Then he glanced over his shoulder. “Dematerialize.”
Lyric blinked. “What.”
“Now’s not the time. I know what you are.” He nodded toward the window. “Crack that and go.”
A sudden, tingling awareness came over her, a warning that the reality she had thought she knew was not what had been going on—
All at once, a buffering hit the air around him, some kind of aura emanating out from his body before retreating.
Abruptly, he was fully clothed. And that was when it happened. As he glanced back at her, she met his eyes… and realized they were navy blue with a black rim, a color combination she had never seen before. For all the times she had looked at his face, for all the times they’d stared at each other, the color of his irises had never registered.
It was the one detail she had never seen about him, she suddenly realized.
And while she was grappling with that—and so much more—he said in a voice that cracked with regret, “I’m sorry, Lyric.”
He sounded the same, maybe deeper somehow—and as she narrowed her eyes on him, her instincts screamed that he was… not human. Not human, at all. In fact, he was nothing she had ever encountered before, not vampire or Shadow, not even a symphath.
He had just hidden behind a mask of being human.
“Go.”
Right behind her, the blackout drapes parted without anyone touching them, and the window sash lifted on its own. “Fuck, will you just leave—”
The door was kicked open, and the lesser on the far side locked on her, a smile on its pasty face, two guns up front and center, in its palms.
“Gotcha,” it said.
Except then its pale eyes shifted over to Dev. Instantly, everything changed, the weapons lowering, an expression of confusion taking the place of all that satisfaction.
And then the words she’d never forget:
“Holy shit, your father’s been looking for you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Some ten blocks away, Shuli was in full pursuit of the enemy, and his two boys were with him. They were very careful about the trail, though, because none of them were supposed to be in the field tonight.
Grief. Injury recovery. Yada, yada, yada.
Except they had work to do. This pair of lessers they’d tracked starting down on Twentieth Avenue had been on a slow walk—but for only a block or so. Before there could be any proper interception, the shorter of the slayers had checked his phone, said something that didn’t carry, and things had suddenly sped up as the enemy had taken off at a quick jog to the north and west.
If the goal was to get one and work it over for intel, anything more than a solo lesser was complicated and unnecessarily dangerous. So the plan had been to try to split the pair up, with L.W. doing the abducting.