Page 61 of Claimed
With a steadying sigh, I offer him my hands.
His grip is calloused but sure. Solid. “Nothing is broken,” he says as he tracks over my hands and arms with his odd amber irises. “Just the scrapes. Do you want me to heal them?”
I stare. “You can do that?”
He raises his gaze to mine. “I can.”
“Please.”
His nod is brief. Slowly, his hands curl mine into fists. He pressed them together, cupping my skin in his warm hold. Soft amber and gold light plays around him before centering in his palms. Through his fingers.
A slight sheen dances out from his back, like a heat wave on pavement. But the shape is not small.
And not human.
He eases back and drapes his arms on his massive thighs. “There.”
I open my hands. The skin is perfect again. No marks. Even the scar along my thumb from the jewel heist last summer is gone. I flex my fingers. “How—” I look up at him. “What are you?”
His smile is tight. “See you later, Onyx.” He climbs to his feet and starts off down the sidewalk behind me.
“Horan. Wait.”
He stops and faces me.
I climb to my feet. “Thank you,” I say fast, “for healing me.”
His head gives a brief incline. “Of course.” When he starts walking again, I don’t call after him. I let him go until the corner swallows him up.
Because I know what he is.
Horan is an angel.
And Caine is a demon.
A delirious laugh bubbles up my throat.
I stuff my knuckles into my mouth and start walking as fast as to hail a cab.
Chapter 22
Caine
I adjust my cuffs and trail through the crowd. The soft chatter and tinkle of champagne flutes is enough to make me want to choke someone. But I keep my expression bored and arrogant.
In a matter of hours, the design district has been transformed into a twilight paradise of palms, warm air, and extravagant art and light displays. Supes and humans intermingle in a press of fake smiles and bodies from one walk to the other.
I search the throng again.
Helios remains with his entourage near the auction host. His guards are copycats from the ones he had at the auction. They project death without doing anything threatening.
A part of me is tempted to see just how many of them it would take.
It is not the first dark thought in the last few hours. It’s even the thousandth.
My fucking head is riddled with them, all on a current of rage that I can’t shake.
Onyx’s distance shouldn’t bother me, but it does. Her dismissal is a hard pill to swallow and I don’t understand why.
