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Leon’s eyes flickered back down the hall, pausing at whatever noise he’d heard, before turning his skeptical gaze back on me. “So you’re here to sneak around in Kent Hadleigh’s own house? To search for a weapon?”
“Yes,” I said, folding my arms—although the motion didn’t have as much petulant impact when I was pinned by my throat to the wall. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“Help you—” He gave a single, hard laugh. “I’ll help you over my knee is what I’ll do.”
His hold tightened again, and another whimper squeaked out of me, this one sharp in anticipation. His free hand moved down, settled near my hip then gripped my ass,before giving it a sharp spank.
His grip choked my sharp intake of breath at the sting. “I knew I should have marked you,” he growled. “I’m not a jealous being, Rae, but I don’t like to see you play without being marked as mine before anyone else.” His eyes flickered down, then his head lowered too. He pushed up my sweater, kissing slowly, tenderly along my breasts above my bra, before biting my flesh hard enough to make me yelp.
“I told you I wanted to pierce these,” he said. “You’d look so good with my metal in you.”
How much that idea scared me only made it hotter. Imagining him piercing my nipples to “mark” me was making me wet, and without even realizing what I was doing, I ground my hips up against him. The stimulation was just enough to make me shudder before he shoved me back against the wall again.
“Was thatyes,please do it?” he said. “Or am I just imagining how goddamn eager you are?”
Fuck, I wanted him—neededhim, right here, right now. These weeks without him had felt like an eternity. But I couldn’t forget where we were, and I couldn’t forget what I’d come here for.
“If you help me find my way around the house, you can mark me,” I said softly. His eyes narrowed, his jaw hardening as he considered my offer.
“Mm, that’s a very naughty offering, Rae.” He was so close I could barely breathe—it took all my self-control not to wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him again, taste him again. “I don’t want you in this house.”
“We’ll be quick,” I said.
“Why do you think there’s anything at all in this house that’s worth risking your life for?”
“You said Kent had magical artifacts. If he has a charm to protect him from you, maybe he has something to protect me from the God.” His eyes had narrowed. He didn’t like it, but I wasn’t wrong. “Help me find it. Because if I’m not going to enroll in your Demonic Protection Plan, I needsomethingto defend myself.”
He didn’t look happy as he glared from behind his mask, but finally his expression softened. “So I help you find Kent’s stash and I get to pierce those cute little nipples, yeah? That’s the deal?”
I gulped, but I still had enough alcohol in my system to sound completely confident as I said, “Yeah. That’s the deal.”
“Alright then. Stay quiet, and stay close.”
We crept up the stairway, emerging onto the upper floor near some kind of secondary living room with a covered pool table and large, thickly cushioned white chairs. It was a good thing the party had managed to stay contained to the front of the house. There was no way we could have managed this if the guests had spread out. But the upper floor was dark, all the lights off and the doors closed.
A clear indication that no one was meant to be up here.
I was itching to open every door, but Leon knew where he was going. The hall ended at a cross, and Leon headed to the right, taking us along another glass-walled hall with a view out over the dark yard. The house was so big that the thump of the music seemed vastly distant now. I kept expecting to feel my phone buzz in my pocket; Inaya would start wondering where I was soon. Hopefully she was distracted enough—drunk enough—to forget about me for a little longer.
The hall ended at a set of gray double doors. Leon held a finger to his mouth in warning before he took a long and careful look at the doorknobs, then at the crack between the doors.
“What are you looking for?” I whispered, only to have him wave his hand at me yet again to be quiet. Slowly, he opened the door, cracking it just an inch before the tension went out of his shoulders and he pushed it open the rest of the way.
“Checking for any protective magic,” he said. “Would really be a stupid way to go if you escaped the God only to be killed instantly for touching a doorknob.”
The knowledge that there were spells that could kill with just a touch had me stepping much more cautiously through the doorway. The bedroom was spacious, with gleaming wood floors and a large white rug. Everything was in monochromatic tones, from the gray sheets to the white pillows, and the black curtains pulled back on the far glass wall.
Leon quietly shut the door behind us, glaring around the room as if it personally offended him. “Never thought I’d find myself creeping back in here again. Hate this room.”
“Were you in here often?”
“Once or twice, and that was too many. Kent had a thing for administering punishments while he was lounging around in here. I suppose it was a relaxing pastime for him to magically break a few of my bones when I fucked up his orders.”
It was grim to imagine such a luxurious space being used for something so sinister. It was even harder to imagine Leon under someone else’s command: he had so much power, so much overwhelming strength that the thought of him being ordered around by a mere human sounded ludicrous.
But even a powerful demon could be broken with pain.
Everything in here looked expensive: the modern glass and steel chandelier overhead, the black marble fireplace beneath the massive flatscreen, the huge painting in a gilded frame above the bed. It depicted a woman standing in the midst of a stormy sea, her arm outstretched with a dagger pointed toward the sky. Black tentacles were coiled around her arm, as if to grasp the knife with her. It looked like it could have been painted in the Renaissance, beautiful and dramatic. But it wasn’t a weapon.
