Worse, the superior senses he depended on were muted by the strange atmosphere.
He couldn’t smell a damned thing beyond the acrid stench of brimstone, his sight was limited to the cavern spread before him, and he couldn’t detect if they were alone or if there were a thousand demonic souls preparing to attack.
He had spent the last four hundred years being the predator, not the prey.
He didn’t like feeling vulnerable.
In fact, it made him downright pissy.
Just like Kata’s supreme indifference to him made him pissy.
What was wrong with the female?
He was the one forced to come rushing to her rescue despite her intimate past with a Jinn. And yet she was treating him as if he were an unwelcomed intruder, while he . . .
He what?
Uriel grimaced.
Why deny it? He was plagued with a brutal urge to protect the luscious gypsy. An urge that was nearly as powerful as his unwanted desire. Such instincts were dangerous in a vampire. It indicated a bond with the female he wasn’t prepared to accept.
He wanted to believe it was a spell. Or maybe an insidious Jinn trick.
A pity it felt so painfully real.
Frustration spilled through him. Wasn’t it bad enough he’d waltzed right into a trap that had sucked him straight into hell? Now he had to be obsessed with the woman entirely responsible for his current troubles?
Indifferent to his annoyance, Kata wound her way through the lava that could so easily destroy her fragile flesh.