Page 12 of Claimed
It’s a match made in paradise.
Annoyed more with myself than anything else, I stalk deeper into the penthouse, seeking quiet. Solitude.
My room for my stay is blessedly empty. I seal the door with a unique mix of hellfire and magick no one knows I have.
The other side of my bloodline.
The crimson cast is crisp, perfect. I eye it for a long moment before I strip the suit from my body and slip into dark jeans and a midnight tee from my duffel. Adding thick boots, leather bracers to my wrists, and a thick collar around my throat, I open the door to my personal balcony and walk to the rail.
Miami sprawls in every direction. Gleaming towers, bright lights, and cars. It’s a cornucopia of Sin. Of flesh and greed.
I could stand on the damn balcony and sate the need still heating my gut just from the emotions filling the air.
But I have no desire to.
And that’s the problem.
Ever since I met Lilah, my damn sex drive has gone in fucking reverse. No easy feat for a bastard Asmodean. I want her. Only her. But more than I want to lay her beneath me, I want to kiss her full lips. Just once.
I want to wind my hands in her thick hair, to hear her gasp againstmymouth.
But it will never fucking happen and I need to get over it.
All the sex over the last few months hasn’t eased the want of her. No rebound can sate the desire still boiling in my tainted veins. And I’m beginning to think nothing will.
I climb onto the rail and summon my portal with a snap of my fingers.
It glows a step in front of me, shimmering crimson and darkness in a wide orb. The day I learned to create it is still etched in my mind. My skin.
The old wounds ache with phantom kisses from the blade. For a long, thumping beat of my heart, I miss the pain. The punishment and its simplicity.
Thatworld I understood. Do as I was told and live to see another day. Another client.
But here, with the one thing I have ever wanted ripped from my grasp before I ever got to experience it … Earth is closer to Hell than Hell was.
I climb into my portal and seal it shut around me before jetting off into the city.
In a world so full of sin, there has to be a distraction worth my time somewhere. And I have every intention of finding it before I must re-don the mask I so hate to wear.
Chapter 4
Onyx
The warehouse sits far from the main roadway. I crouch in the narrow section of trees closest to the water. The soft roll of incoming tide helps to hide every rustle of brush around me. My breathing. Even the steady drum of my heart.
Clad in a diving suit, I slip a set of binoculars from the waterproof pouch at my waist and peer through the lenses.
The auction hosts left the bay doors up as fork lifts wheel in pallets bound with clear wrap, wooden crates tightly sealed, and folding chairs. Security moves everywhere. Men and women—some with shining irises, others that look like hardened criminals—carry matte rifles across their chests, their focus affixed on every corner of the otherwise dimly lit inlet.
I count the windows and doors. Committing every entrance and exit to memory. If things go bad and someone else buys the cases, I will need to get out fast and track them.
Slipping the binoculars back into my belt, I slide backward from the brush and ease into the warm water.
The tide is stronger now; the flow forcing me to work to make it back towards the roadway. Careful to keep my movements sure but steady, I swim the last quarter of a mile to where I climbed in.
Heaving myself out onto a narrow section of jagged rock, I climb the short embankment up to my rental and undress fast. The wetsuit goes in a special bag in the trunk. One already packed with a familiar assortment of my favorite toys.
I stand in the warm night air in a lace thong and a matching bra as I slip an ultra-short skirt over my hips. The material is skin tight, hugging my body with every move. I rub my hands down the clingy material before tugging a rock tank top on.
