Page 2 of Siren Sins
Numbly I found myself at a carousel that screeched as it carried luggage around the semi-circle of rusted equipment. Even though we were inside, the air smelled of salt and grains of sand glinted in the tiles’ cracks. People waited about in groups and the air hummed with excitement as if Miami were a place of dreams.
Sonya had been my dream, and now I was trapped in a nightmare without her. But she’d sentenced David to die. His death was a horror permanently etched into my brain. If she’d only talked to me—I shook myself. There was no point in rehashing a relationship that I could never mend. Sonya needed sexual energy to survive, and she could only get that from men. Even if she was bi and could swing both ways, I couldn’t. Being with Sonya would mean that she’d need to have a guy. And if I was going to allow that, I would want to participate. But just the mere thought of it sent chills up my spine.
Besides those issues, I was human now. Even if Sonya couldn’t feed off of women, a succubus could still kill. It was too dangerous—even if it was just to say goodbye.
“Excuse me, Miss?” a man with kind eyes said.
I blinked at him. “Yes?”
He scratched the back of his head as if he were trying to remember something. “Have I seen you before?”
I gave him a raised brow. Instinctually, I pushed a thought at him togo away. He was being seriously creepy and annoying, but when he patiently waited for me to reply, I sighed. “No. I don’t believe so. I haven’t been in Miami since I was a kid.”
He frowned, not seeming convinced. He looked like he could have been my mom’s age, had she still been alive. She’d been killed in the fire that had also taken Sonya’s mom. It’s how we’d met and probably why we’d had such a close bond. No one else could have understood that kind of pain to not only lose a mother, but to lose the only other person in the world who knew what it was like to have your specific supernatural powers. Now that I was human, I missed her even more. She would have known what to do.
My bag appeared, a cheery red and pink striped suitcase that now held everything I owned. I wiggled past the man that was blocking me in between two pillars and waved him off. “See you around.”
He called after me, but I grabbed my bag and got the hell out of there.
My small wad of cash secure in my pocket, I made the sweltering walk to the taxi service and frowned. There was no way I was going to blow everything I had on a ride.
The man appeared again, this time with a sheepish smile. “I remember you now,” he said. “You’re Lily’s girl.”
I froze. My mom had never mentioned a friend in Miami. But as I slowly turned to take a better look at the man with attractively disheveled hair, he smiled and let a gleam of blue filter into his eyes.
He was a muse—and since there were only three male muses in existence, there was a good chance he was my father.
Shanghai
Sonya
“You’re taking me to freaking Shanghai?” I shrieked. Not that a trip to Shanghai didn’t sound cool as hell, but come on. The last thing I wanted to do was be kidnapped by the Incubus King to be a sex slave for his baby maker wife under threat of my soulmate being tortured if I didn’t comply. Actually, if it weren’t for the kidnapping and torture part, that sounded pretty good.
“You’ll love it,” Derek promised with a smile that made my thighs clench. After everything he’d done to me, my mind was still muck around him. Without the help of the resistant made of Silvia’s blood, I was little better than one of his human thralls.
My fingers twitched, wanting to go for the single resistant that his wife had given me as a parting gift. The knobby pill had its own little case in my pocket and I wanted to rip it out and digest its disgusting contents, if anything just to spit in Derek’s face.
I made a fist, reminding myself with what living brain cells I had left that there would be an opportunity to get away from him. I’d need the resistant to do it, but not now.
A gleaming silver airplane was proof that this was not the best time to plot an escape. A wide-open asphalt sea spread behind its slick tires. I turned to gaze over my shoulder at more of the man-made desert. But this time I saw that I wasn’t alone. A string of women, eyes glazed as they watched Derek, stood in a neat row. They weren’t bound, but they all stood with their hands clasped behind them.
“I require a few… snacks, before we get to Shanghai,” Derek informed me.
I blinked at him, my surprise shaking me from my own lust for him. He was going to kill those girls. “Snacks?”
His thumb caressed my chin. “Yes. I had to go into an angel’s den to retrieve you, my dear. That cost me dearly. I have needs to replenish.” His gaze raked over the row of women and his lip curled with distaste. “There was short notice for so many, I’ll admit. They’re not all my type, but I didn’t want the police looking for them until we were already well on our way out of the country. A king must sacrifice for his people, now and then.”
My hand reached for him of its own accord. I hated myself when I wrapped my fingers around his collar and pulled myself closer to him. “I hope I was worth it, myKing.”
He smirked and his mouth made the most attractive of curves.
My tongue wet my lips and I wanted to lift on my toes and taste him. He smelled delicious and it was taking all of my willpower to keep my sanity.
My chest burned with the Blood Stone as I drew from it. My sexual need tripled around Derek, and the only thing that kept me from throwing myself at him was the nourishment I gleaned from my necklace, as well as the reminding itch of my runes telling me that I was not meant for him. He’d played his role, now it was time for me to find my four.
His eyes dipped to the pulsing red gem at my neck as I drew on the power of the Blond Stone. “Clever,” he murmured as he pressed his fingers into the small of my back. I arched against my will at his touch. “Come,” he commanded, “my wife is anxious to see you again.”
Shifting in my seat, I glared at the two men who held me captive and tried to ignore the rising sounds of moans coming from the rear compartment of the plane.
