With that, she was gone.
And the Claiming only ever got stronger.
She wouldn’t, as it would turn out, try to kill me the next time she saw me.
And she did see me again.
And again.
Anytime she got an itch that her toys or the demonslayer boys couldn’t scratch properly.
Me? Well, my pride stood no chance against the Claiming. I was helpless to do anything but hop-to when she demanded it, to give her the solid fucking she was searching for, then get rejected by her.
Again and again.
Each time, the pain of the separation grew stronger and stronger, until the world lost any bright spots, any light.
Then, the worst possible thing happened.
The little glimpses I’d been able to savor—the tidbits I shared as she went through her day—suddenly stopped.
It was the deepest, darkest time in my life following that.
A part of me had been terrified that she’d died.
Until I felt a tingling again once late at night. As, I imagined, she slept. And when she did, she couldn’t block me anymore.
What followed then, well, I can’t say I am proud of that.
I’d followed that tingling sensation around the area as it got stronger and stronger, finding her asleep in a hotel room.
I’d watched from outside the window as she’d tossed and turned in bed, making her kick off the blankets, leaving her legs completely bare and her ass just barely covered by a swatch of panties.
Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, I’d projected myself toward those fragmented mental images I’d seen in her head. Until, inevitably, I’d gotten to watch as she’d writhed and cried out for me.
I’d stopped myself there.
I couldn’t claim I’d ever been moral. I had no soul, after all. But there were things in the human realm that I’d seen time and time again through the decades. And I’d seen the consequences of them enough to build my own sort of moral code about it all.
Which meant I drew the line at us having dream-sex in our minds when she wasn’t aware I was there projecting it onto her, knowing it was a fine line between that and the feeling of rape.
So I’d retreated back out of her mind, closed my eyes, and pressed my forehead to the wall beside her window until I could think past the desire inside before heading home.
It became a cycle after that, though. When the wall she’d put up between us lowered, I always followed like a helpless fucking lovesick puppy.
Sometimes, when the wall fell, it was just because she was tired or upset.
Other times, it was because she was calling me.
I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t going to come the next time she called.
But the fact of the matter was, I always did.
So when I felt the wall fall right in the middle of the party, I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t going. I even took a long swig of my beer.
In the end, though, the Claiming would always win.
She would always get what she needed from me.
Because I was helpless but to give it.
No matter how much it was fucking killing me.
So I walked out of the back door, climbed on my bike, and followed her call.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dale
He moved into the doorway like a fantasy come to life.
It never failed to hit me hard just how attracted I was to him.
I’d never experienced anything like it before in my life. It was an all-consuming reaction whenever I saw him. I could feel a tingle from my scalp to my toes.
He was, objectively, insanely good-looking.
Tall, fit, with his square face with deep indents under his cheekbones, a wide mouth, a thin, but proportionate nose, rounded eyes. He had long, dark hair that was silky to the touch, and I always found myself touching it, running my fingers through it, pulling it when things got heated up.
But what was most striking about him was his eyes.
See, he had one warm brown eye, and one green one.
Yet both eyes had flecks of red in them.
When those eyes gazed at me with that intense look in them—that look I tried to tell myself was only desire, not something deeper—I swear something inside me melted.
Melted.
It was part of the reason I tried to meet him in places that were dark. Because those eyes, I was convinced, would be my undoing.
And I very much needed to not be, well, undone.
By a damned demon.
Minos stood in the doorway for a long moment, almost like he was waiting for me to come to him.
Damn if everything inside me didn’t want to walk over to him. Hell, crawl over to him.
My body was thrumming with need, was begging to be near him.
But I had to keep my feet planted. I had to make him come to me. The only thing that was keeping this situation even mildly under control was the fact that I never made the first move.