Lora Leigh - Primal

“I’m inquiring on behalf of one of my masters,” she said, “trying to find out the name of someone skilled enough in the use of magic to create a token allowing a human with blood obligations to hide.”

The clerk’s lips pulled back. Smile or grimace or show of distaste, it tightened his skin and accentuated the shape of his skull. “Visit the Wainwright witches for that answer. You’ll find them in Oakland. But be prepared to pay for the information. Nothing comes without cost where they’re concerned.”

Sajia thanked him and turned away from the counter just as a man entered the shop. At the sight of him her heart flip-flopped in her chest, seeming to stop and then race forward in wild abandon, torn between fear and desire.

He was mesmerizing. The face of a god—

Or a fallen angel like those painted on canvas, created in the imaginations of artists who’d lived well before mankind developed the technology to destroy the world.

Black hair and equally black irises. Carved perfection and carnal sin.

She wet her lips without being aware of it until his gaze dropped to them, hungry and fierce and commanding.

“Sajia,” he said, her name turned into a caress, into images of naked bodies stretched out on silky sheets, lips and hands exploring without inhibition, mesmerizing her until she forced the erotic pictures from her mind.

How he knew her name, she didn’t know. But unless he’d been sent by The Master to assist her, she had no time for him.

He blocked her exit, leaving her no choice other than to approach him. Sajia stepped forward, fear and desire both trying to cloud her thoughts and narrow her reality until it contained only him.

The rush of emotion nearly drove Addai to his knees. Thousands of years hadn’t prepared him for the reality of this moment.

Sajia . It was as though she’d stepped out of the past, her form and face exactly as he remembered them, her soul calling to his in haunting song and the promise of ecstasy.

How the Djinn had managed it, he didn’t know and didn’t care. All that mattered was that she’d been returned to him.

Despite his fantasies of their first meeting, he felt no disappointment at the quick pass of fear from her eyes. The desire he saw in her expression, and sensed like a heated stroke along the length of his body, more than satisfied him.

His thoughts flashed ahead, mentally enfolding her in arms and wings and willing them to the mountain home he’d prepared for her. He reached out, expecting her to take his hand. “Come.”

Denial flashed through her eyes, exciting him until fantasy and reality collided with a single question. “Did The Master send you?”

A blink. A full opening of his senses and Addai recoiled in horror. She was human. Worse if the purposeful scarring of her arm read true. A servant bound to vampires.

Rage whipped through him at the betrayal—the same black abyss of fury that had once led him to send his brother into a slavery lasting thousands of years. And yet even in his fury, desire overrode revulsion and the call of her spirit to his had him grabbing her bare wrist and jerking her closer.

She reacted instantly, drawing a knife he hadn’t bothered noting and pressing it to his belly as if she’d gut him where he stood. His cock responded with a hard throb. His body accepting, craving her even as his mind rebelled.

The blade tip slid through the thin shirt he’d willed into existence, breaking skin. And the release of his blood undid a masking spell, revealed the ice blue sigils scrawled across her forehead like a thorn crown, and around her wrists like manacles. Angelic symbols of binding not visible to any mortal. A script placed there by one of his kind, the power necessary to turn flesh into a living prison the telltale signature of only one ally working with the Djinn.

Addai’s heart sang. She wasn’t human as he’d thought seconds before, but Djinn trapped in a human form, returned to him as promised.

His eyes noted it then, the thin, tight chain worn around her neck like a collar. Sigils etched into the gold and holding knowledge he could only guess at, the pendant, scorpion shaped. The mark of her Djinn House and symbol of a protector. The identification of her soul’s nature.

“Release me,” she said.

Never . But he held the words and complied only so he could better take her measure.

“Did The Master send you?” she asked again.

He fought the pulling back of his lips in a savage smile promising retribution. She would call no one else master . Only him.

Addai glanced at the scarring on her arm and recognized the sigil as a farmer recognizes a dung beetle before stepping on it. Tucci.

Not allies.

Yet , the voice of reason managing to suppress his urge to kill.

If he was to achieve his goal, seeing the return of the Djinn and the control of this world taken so he could live openly with Sajia and know their children would be safe, then he couldn’t afford war on another front, especially with vampires.

Addai suppressed a curse as the message delivered by Irial, the reminder from Iyar en Batrael that all things were part of the weave, took on new meaning.

Sajia would be a foundling placed in the world. Delivered into the hands of humans and her reality shaped by them, her loyalty given to them—and worse, to a vampire scion.

“I’m here for you,” he said, an ambiguous answer.

She frowned in response but drew the knife away from his skin. His testicles pulled tight in protest at the loss of contact, in anticipation of reclaiming it.

Once fear had served as challenge and erotic excitement. But now he found implied violence had the same effect.

She would submit. She would find pleasure in calling him master.

“Shall we go?” he asked, eyes flicking in the direction of the counter and the man behind it.

She sheathed the knife. “Yes.”

They left the shop and though she tried to hide her weakness, he was so finely attuned to her that he caught the sigh of relief and the subtle relaxing of her body. Magic of the kind found in the occult shop was anathema to the Djinn. Few could work it, and many found it sickening to be in its presence.

A few steps away she stopped and turned to him, hands resting on the hilts of her knives.

He smiled in challenge, daring her to pull them from their sheaths.

“Has Corinne been found?”

Addai made the connection immediately, between the question and Sajia’s position as bajaran . His smile faded to a frown, and his amusement flashed to irritation at seeing an inevitable delay before he could take her to his bed.

“No.”

“Then why am I being summoned back to the estate?”

“Did I say as much? I said only that I am here for you. And I am. Did you discover anything useful at the shop?”

“I’ve never seen you before.”

He shrugged. “I am Addai.”

“I don’t know that name. Prove you serve the Tuccis.”

His smile returned, as sharp as one of her knives. He’d spent no time among the Tucci, but it was his business to know the lineage of all the vampire families in San Francisco. Even without the prospect of alliance, he would have gathered the information. Like the Djinn, vampires were natural enemies, but unlike the Djinn, the origin of their conflict began elsewhere, on a long-dead planet light-years away.

Dismissing the threat of Sajia’s weapons, Addai placed his hands on her waist to prevent her from taking a step backward. It was torment and paradise at the same time to feel her beneath his palms.

He leaned forward, mouth drawing close to hers as if to share a secret, though his intent was to claim a taste of what belonged to him. “Sajia,” he whispered, touching his lips to hers, sharing breath and life and spirit, as was the Djinn way, as had been their way so many thousands of years ago.