Save him, Balz told himself. Save—
And yet he glanced back at the door that had opened for him. The pull to proceed inside, to enter and be lost in the darkness, was like a tangible stroke over all of his skin, a beckoning that was food to a starving male, cash to the poor, recovery to the terminal. Something was in there for him that would save him, save him from—
Syphon screamed again, and the sound of the bloody agony snapped Balz out of the thrall. With a gasp, he wrenched around and grabbed for his forty.
That was when the perfume came.
The smell was grape-ish and deep, an old fragrance that he had scented back in the eighties, on females in the species who were above him socially, on women outside of the species who lived in cities and walked the night streets on the arms of men in tuxedos.
Poison by Dior. He’d looked up the name because he’d loved it so much—
Even before he turned his head back to the void, he knew what he was going to see in the darkness.
He was not wrong.
From out of a black hole, the brunette of his dreams appeared, and she was magically beautiful, unreal yet solid.
“It’s you . . .” he breathed.
As she smiled at him, Syphon screamed again, but it was as if her presence turned down the volume on everything else on the planet—including his cousin.
What was happening over the staircase suddenly seemed like the dream instead of her.
“Miss me?” Her voice was heaven, absolute heaven, in his ears . . . a symphony mixed with a marching band, seasoned with hip-hop and some jazz. “I missed you. It feels like forever since we were together. Why don’t you come inside, I have a bed we could use—”
Syphon screamed even louder.
“Don’t worry about him.” She licked her red lips like she was anticipating what Balz’s cock would taste like. “He’s got nothing to do with us.”
His woman stepped back into the darkness and beckoned him with her blood red fingernail. “Come with me, Balthazar, and I will show you pleasure you have never known and riches that will make even you stop stealing. No more hollow places to fill with the objects of others, no more itch that cannot be scratched. You will finally be sated. You will finally find the peace that has eluded you. With me, you can rest, Balthazar.”
Tears speared into his eyes. “How do you know me,” he whispered.
“Silly male, I’ve been inside you. Did you think I wasn’t walking your halls and trying out your furniture while I was there? Lonely place, your soul, and I’ve seen a lot of them. But you don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’ll be with you every step of the way from now on. All you have to do is come to me now.”
The decision was made before he was aware of arriving at a conclusion: His body took a step forward. And another.
Balz didn’t look back at his cousin.
He was powerless to deny this female.
Anything.
• • •
As Mae dematerialized, Sahvage rearranged his erection in his pants and went back into the cottage.
Shutting things up, he looked around the heavy hutch through to the back and saw that the cellar door was open. But Tallah wasn’t in the kitchen or moving around upstairs.
Clearly, she was back in the cellar, something forgotten or required in her underground quarters, and he was guessing it had to do with her outfit. The old female certainly stayed true to her glymera roots. Even though she wasn’t living in a mansion, she dressed the part. She’d come out for Monopoly looking like she was going to a formal event—and it was kind of sweet the way she blushed whenever she looked at him.
A little sad, too.
And it was obvious how much she meant to Mae, and vice versa. No wonder that Book was such a topic of discussion. If there were any lives worth preserving with dark magic? Tallah would be on the list.
He glanced over at the dirty dishes that were left.
But God, that stew had been awful.
Determined to be useful and not just decorative, he took over where Mae had left off, picking up her soggy, soapy paper towel wad and going to work on the remaining stuff in the sink. How Tallah had managed to use seven hundred thousand pots and pans was a mystery. There had been all of two root vegetables and a couple handfuls of meat in that liquid-cement broth.
As he washed and rinsed, he thought about Mae standing against that bathroom door, her eyes on his hand job like it was the most amazing thing she had ever seen. Fucking hell, he’d felt like he’d had a palm full of gold as she’d watched him, but when he’d learned that she was . . .