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He claimed victory in defeat, his lips taking hers aggressively, his tongue thrusting into her mouth, giving no quarter as he overwhelmed her with sensation. Mine, his kiss claimed, and in that instant she couldn’t fight it, couldn’t deny it.
Heat poured into her, the clash of wills forgotten as lust coursed through her veins like lava running down a mountainside, scorching and consuming everything in its path.
Need didn’t accurately define what she felt. Even lust was too tame a word.
A moan escaped and the sound fed his hunger. Arms and wings tightened around her. Carnal images flooded her mind, scenes of them together, his memories or her own pulled from the depths of her subconscious, she couldn’t be sure, only that they made her shiver and crave the feel of naked skin to naked skin, hunger to have his body joined to hers.
She whimpered when his lips left hers, a protest against the loss of them. His eyes glittered, his features once again arrogant and commanding. “Do you still wish to leave our home, Sajia?”
“Yes,” she said, despite the desperate ache of desire.
“Then we will go to the red zone. But rather than looking for the man who made the charm and trying to bargain with him for his client’s name, there’s a better way to locate the scion.”
“How?”
She wouldn’t have thought Addai could appear more dangerous than she’d already seen him, more hardened and ruthless and forbidding, but whatever he had in mind made it so.
After a long pause, he said, “I know of a Finder, but getting access to her will require dealing with the vice lord Rimmon. He’s not quite my enemy, though neither is he an ally.”
Addai?
??s hand once again cupped her cheek, his thumb rubbing over lips swollen from their kiss. “We’ll go to him, but only if you let me handle the negotiations, Sajia.”
His voice held no possibility of compromise. She acquiesced with a nod. “Where will he be?”
“His club.” Addai’s sharp smile returned. “He calls it Temptation.”
FOUR
Temptation. The club stood with the other Victorians on a street lined with them. Sajia knew of them, of course. But even if she hadn’t, their nature and the kinds of people drawn to them were revealed in names like Sinners and Greed and Envy.
Bouncers guarded their entrances. Some of the clubs were member-only, reserved for the elite and wealthy, while others served a broader public. The vices they catered to varied, but all of them closed at dark, locking their patrons in for the night.
Vampires hunted these streets after the sun set. As did Weres and feral dogs, ghouls and any number of supernatural beings.
Her attention returned to the immaculately restored home in front of her. Even in the days before The Last War, this would have belonged to someone wealthy, someone with the money and inclination to preserve a historical building designed by a famous architect.
Unlike the thick-necked men in leather or jeans who guarded the entrances of the other clubs, the men on either side of the doorway here wore expensive suits. They looked like elegant gentlemen, though Sajia didn’t doubt for a moment that they were armed and very, very deadly.
“Will we be able to get in to see Rimmon?” she asked.
Addai laughed, his hand moving from its possessive grip on her upper arm to settle at the center of her back like a heated brand. “Of course.”
He urged her forward with a stroke to her spine. “Don’t forget your promise, beloved. Allow me to handle things here, and regardless of any perceived danger, keep your knives sheathed. A threat of harm to you and it would be nothing for me to slaughter everyone in the club if that’s what it took to assure myself you were safe.”
Heat flowed through her, mixed equally with icy fear. She glanced at his face with its stunning beauty, savored the endearment and the depth of his feelings even as spikes of primal terror skittered through her at having such a ruthless, powerful being lay claim to her.
The bouncers remained on either side of the doors until she and Addai were nearly at the entrance. Then they each took a step, as though they would block them from entering rather than admit them.
“We will pass unchallenged,” Addai said in a tone that slid through Sajia’s mind like a faint echo.
The men turned simultaneously. In a synchronized movement, they opened the doors, saying nothing as Addai and Sajia stepped into the club.
Hashish and burning opium scented the air. A beautiful woman in an elegant gown and wearing gloves that reached her elbows left her place on a spiraling staircase. “Take us to Rimmon,” Addai told her, and like the bouncers outside the club, she obeyed without protest.
Sajia shivered, glad she was immune to his command. Glad he wasn’t able to enthrall her with his voice.
The woman’s dress left her back bare. A slit in the skirt revealed glimpses of her labia with each step she took.
