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“Valen,” she breathed.
Hunger slammed into him with shocking force. He had no need to feed. His hunger was to taste her sweet blood. To join them together in the most primitive way possible.
With an effort he battled back his urge to sink his fangs in her flesh, although he wasn’t going to concede defeat. It didn’t matter how long it was going to take. Eventually Peri Sanguis would accept that they were destined to be together.
“You can be consumed without losing who you are,” he assured her.
“You’re a vampire.”
Valen frowned. Where was she going with this?
“True,” he slowly agreed.
“A member of the Cabal.”
His hands stroked up the curve of her spine, keeping her tightly pressed against him. “Again, true.”
“You conquer and move on. It’s your nature.”
Valen valiantly squashed the urge to laugh at her accusation. She was right. He was a conqueror. He’d battled his way through the Cabal to claim one of the largest, most powerful Gyres in the world. And he continued to battle the demons who challenged his authority. But any hope of walking away from Peri had been destroyed the moment she’d looked him square in the eye and told him that she would never bend her knee.
“I’m not certain I could conquer you even if I wanted to,” he admitted in dry tones. “And I have no intention of moving on. I’m comfortably settled in my lair.”
She arched a brow. “You call a towering skyscraper in Manhattan a lair?”
He held her gaze, deliberately misunderstanding her teasing. “For now, it’s a lair. It won’t be a home until I discover someone to share it with me.”
Her lips parted, as if her words were lodged in her throat. He lowered his head, savoring the sense that he’d managed to knock her off-balance, but before he could take advantage, there was a loud chirp from his phone.
Muttering a curse, Valen lowered his arms and took a step backward. Regret stabbed through him. His body craved to have her in his arms. In his bed… To have space between them was physically painful.
“Saved by the bell,” he murmured, pulling out his phone to glance at the screen.
As expected, it was a text from his assistant. He moved toward the desk to switch on the computer, his movements stiff. His lips twisted into a wry smile. Vampires didn’t age, but he was fairly certain Peri Sanguis was shaving years off his life.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
“Renee has the information I requested.”
He remained standing as he pressed his finger on the keyboard. The computer would be heavily protected with a variety of passcodes, but his fingerprint should allow him to access his own accounts. A second later he was downloading the file his assistant had sent.
“What did she find?” Peri moved to stand next to him, the heat of her body cloaking him in a scented promise.
With an effort Valen forced himself to concentrate on the screen, which was flickering with a grainy black-and-white image.
“She sent the security video from the gift shop across the street from the Masque Salon.”
“Seriously?” She leaned forward, studying the image that revealed the narrow cobblestone road and the edge of the building that housed the Masque Salon. It wasn’t a perfect angle, but it did capture the front door. “Does the gift shop know she has it?”
“Micha does.” His tone assured her that the approval of the Cabal leader was all that mattered.
Next to him, Peri shook her head. “Vampires.”
Valen ignored her exasperation. “This goes back two weeks.”
Pressing a key to start the video, they watched in silence as the first day passed with customers entering and leaving the gift shop. It wasn’t until that night that the lights across the street were switched on and a man in a suit stepped out to open the shutters on the windows.
“That’s the dead man,” Peri murmured. “He was a lot larger before he was sucked dry by the magic.”
