Page 121 of Veil of Death and Shadow

When he took a step closer, I felt a deep rumble vibrate against my back.

Kieran’s chest was pressed up against me, and when he wrapped his arm around my waist, tugging me to him, my stomach tightened.

He was hard. This place was affecting him just as much as it was me.

“I’m—no thank you,” I said, my voice lower and hoarser than I was used to. With trembling fingers, I held the picture of Sora with him. “Have you seen this girl?”

The man’s eyebrows raised in surprise as he studied the image. “So, she is your type then?”

“I—what?” Shaking my head, I hastily added, “No. I’m looking for her. Or a woman named Lav, I think. Is she here?”

“I haven’t seen the girl in your picture but,” his lips curved into a salacious grin as his stare dipped back to my face, “I did see Lav go into that room,” he pointed to the third door on the left, “perhaps an hour or two ago. It’s hard to say. I have a habit of losing time down here.”

“Thank you,” I said, grabbing the picture back from his reluctant grip. “Have a good night.”

When I started to move towards the room he’d indicated, my legs shaking with fear or need or some combination of both, he grabbed my wrist.

Kieran tried to rip the man away from me, but his fingers simply slipped straight through him unnoticed by the demon entirely.

“You can’t go in there,” the man said. “Not without being invited by all consenting guests inside.” He nodded towards an empty table. “You will need to wait until they are done.”

Wait? For how long?

He’d said Lav had gone in an hour or two ago, hadn’t he? How much longer could she take? And what . . . what exactly was she doing in there?

“Grab a drink,” the man said, setting his eyes on another man across the room who was unabashedly checking him out. “Try to enjoy yourself in the meantime.”

Kieran’s dark glare didn’t budge from the demon until he was well across the room. Only when the two men embraced, their hands greedily roving over each other, did the tension ease from his body—and even then, only slightly.

“Well,” I said, my voice as shaky as my legs, “I guess we wait.”

“You shouldn’t stay here,” he said, the lines of his jaw stiff enough to cut ice. “It’s not safe.”

“I’m not leaving until I have a lead on Sora.” I made my way toward the bar, done with the debate, and ordered a water with as much confidence as I could muster. Could the demons down here smell the human on me? I wasn’t entirely sure how that worked. And I didn’t want to get thrown out of here before speaking to this Lav lady.

Devoting most of my focus to keeping my hands still enough to keep the water in my glass, I walked towards a small table in a dark corner, one with a good view of the door the vampire was apparently on the other side of.

“I just need to try and blend in,” I said, scooting gracelessly into the deep booth, “go unnoticed.”

Kieran’s stare speared through me. “That’s not possible.”

But he sat down next to me anyway, his posture rigid and the usual indifference he wore like a mask abandoned for something stuck somewhere between fear and something else I couldn’t quite parse.

What did he have to fear? He was already dead.

I took a sip of the water and groaned at the sensation of it. I’d forgotten how amazing water tasted here, how intoxicating itfelt to drink. To be alive. And down here, where the power of the place seemed to practically pulse, the whole room breathing with it, the sensations were only amplified.

Kieran stiffened next to me, his eyes locked on my lips.

I wiped them over with the back of my hand, checking to see if I’d missed my mouth.

He dropped his gaze, but his expression only looked more strained. He hissed. “You had to wear that fucking dress, didn’t you?”

I looked down at myself. “What’s the matter with my dress?”

“Nothing,” he grunted. “That’s the problem.”

A loud moan echoed through the room, followed by another, and the two men on the small stage, who I’d somehow forgotten about entirely, spilled their cum on and inside the woman.

---