by Michele Hauf
“Jack Harris,” the murk gurgled. Murks always sounded as if they were cycling through a mouthful of rocks. “I’ve a message for you.”
Oh, really? Jack lifted his forefinger because that was the only part of him that didn’t ache or feel broken.
The murk’s skinless foot crushed Jack’s ear. His skull became a part of the road. “Get to work,” it mumbled. “Ba’al Beryth grows impatient.”
“Your master is impatient?” Jack managed to say. “Try putting off sex with a gorgeous bird for no reason other than morals. Get off me, you sodding bit!”
He grabbed the ankle portion of the murk, slimy and ribbed with visible arteries, but it was too quick. Running for the brick wall, the murk ran up it with ease, apexed and looked down to Jack.
Oh, sod it. Jack knew what was coming.
Lifting his battered body, Jack achieved a girlie push-up before the wind huffed out of him. The murk landed on his back, feeling like the proverbial piano dropped upon him.
“Jack!”
The weight disappeared from Jack’s body and he rolled to his back. Tracking the walls and the sky, he saw no sign of the beastly henchman.
“That’s right,” he called. “You run! I was just about to kick your ugly arse.”
“Jack?”
Mersey plunged to the ground beside him. The lightness of her presence, coupled with her gorgeous fruity scent did silly things to Jack’s brain. His vision blurred, and he inhaled deeply, taking Mersey deep into him.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and then passed out.
Chapter 15
W hen Jack had hit the wall, the jar to his bones had done no more damage than tear a few muscles. But when a murk stepped on your face, then things went pear-shaped.
He couldn’t breathe through his nose. It felt like a goose egg, tender, the shell easily cracked if merely touched. The taste of tuppence trickled along the back of his throat—blood.
“I think you broke your nose.”
“I didn’t,” he muttered to the soft, feminine voice that spoke outside the periphery of his pain. “A murk did.”
“Why would a demon henchman be after you, Jack?”
He could make a guess. What troubled him was this woman’s obvious knowledge of all things creepy. Yet, to move beyond the troubling feeling, he did like that she was in the know. Of course, she would be.
“Sit tight,” she said. “I’ve some plasters in the loo.”
Ah. So, he was inside, lying on something—Jack stretched his fingers across the surface—silky. A bed. Her bed. He was in Mersey Bane’s bedroom. With a broken nose and a death wish.
Could opportunity have presented itself in a more twisted manner?
“I suppose a man who’s killed any dozens of demons would bring their wrath upon him,” she said, returning to his side.
Jack wasn’t able to open his eyes. Or maybe he could, but even his eyelids ached, so he kept them shut.
“But the murk didn’t kill you.” Something cool touched his nose, making him flinch. “So it must have given you a warning. Or did I get there before it could tear you in half?”
She was determined to make him smile and then his nose would really hurt.
“I’m going to put some wadding in your nostrils. I don’t think it’s broken.” She tentatively touched the bridge of his nose. “You’ll have to stop by Casualty to be sure. Don’t worry, Jack, I’ll be your Nurse Nightingale,” she pronounced much too gaily.
He may have blacked out during the procedure. All Jack knew was when next he heard a woman’s voice she was standing farther away, perhaps down the hall, and was humming a tune. Clinks of metal against glass clued him his Nightingale must be gathering more supplies. Pushing up on the bed, Jack opened his eyes, to find he lay entombed in a strange yet marvelous world.
Deep purple walls sparkled with iridescence and overhead a crystal chandelier provided more glamour. A stone gargoyle crouched disapprovingly over the doorway, its hollow eyes taking in the intruder on the bed. The bedspread was also purple and matched the many lavish pillows stacked before the black iron headboard.
Jack closed his eyes, wishing briefly that if he clicked his heels he would end up back at his own flat.
“You’re up?”
He stretched his neck from side to side, testing the aches, and knowing most were minor.
“I thought I’d put some saline on all the scrapes,” Mersey said, sitting on the bed next to him. Plopped herself right beside him like a faery princess lording over her inner chamber. Wielding a cotton-tipped swab, she examined his arm.
Jack opened his mouth to speak, but instead tilted his head down and nestled his cheek aside Mersey’s shoulder. The tickling stroke of her fingers along his forehead appeased the aches. Here in her purple treasure box, the real world did not exist. That freaky, fickle world that shouldn’t have been populated with strange creatures, and yet, was.
“You going to be okay, love?”
He knew it was an endearment used overmuch by his countrymen, yet for some reason, the word love really worked a number on Jack. It claimed the softer part of him that needed the tenderness she seemed very willing to offer.
He curled around and embraced Mersey, landing them both upon the stacks of pillows, and prepared to kiss her, when her horrified expression stopped him inches from her lips.
“What?” he murmured.
She pointed to his nose. “I find you sexy and all, Jack, but really, the battered look isn’t working for me right now.”
He prodded carefully at his nose. Ah. The wadding. And surely his face was black and blue.
“Sorry.” He rolled to his back and stared up at the purple ceiling that sported a constellation of glinting diamantés.
“Ouch.” He flinched as she began to touch a cotton swab to the wounds along his arms. Scrapes from sliding down the face of a brick wall.
“So is it true?” Mersey asked. She dipped a new swab into the bottle of saline. “That you tracked me down to apologize?”
He sat up and that allowed Mersey to tend his back. A glance to the floor spied his shirt, bloodied and torn, tossed over the head of a seated stone lion near the bedroom door. A quick exit felt necessary, if only to escape the woman’s assumption. But he was surprisingly weak.
“I’m sorry for the way things went. Earlier, during our…date. You don’t deserve to be treated that way, Mersey. And, I should have been upfront with you right away. Though, we are trained to be covert.”
It hadn’t been a date; he’d gone into it with the intention of discovering more about the Cadre, and now he had that info.
But it cut him to know it had been gained at Mersey’s expense.
“That’s enough, please, sweet.” Right. Caution using that word love, no matter the context. “There’s only so much torture a man can take in one sitting.”
Mersey closed the bottle and set it on the dresser, which looked like something out of a medieval castle with dark stain and ornate iron fixings.
She leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. Her thin grey T-shirt made Jack very aware that there was no bra underneath. Black sweats stopped just below her knees. And look at those bare toes. How many times had they come so close to shagging? And now here he sat on the woman’s bed!
She wanted to have sex with him? He was ready.
“So, uh…” He slid forward across the satin comforter.
“No.” Mersey swung her arms down and marched out of the room.
“No? No, what?”
Jack jumped off the bed, and almost collapsed. So maybe he was hurting more than he’d suspected. His quads felt shredded, but with careful balance and wincing through the pain, he stood and walked out after her.
“What do you mean, no? You won’t accept my apology?”
“Oh, I accept. And I understand you couldn’t reveal who you worked for. But I won’t have sex with you, hotshot, so don’t even ask.”
“That’s—you think I came here to
have sex with you? Woman, you were the one gung-ho to get into my trousers just last night. What’s changed?”
“Besides the fact that you’re P-Cell?”
He shrugged a palm over his scalp. Stating the obvious wasn’t fair. Nor were those big green cat’s eyes and the defiant pout. Had she thought he was going to proposition her? His thoughts had strayed, but—
“It needs to be done for the right reasons,” Mersey said. Spying a thick, comfy sofa, Jack collapsed into it.
“Oh, no you don’t.” She grabbed his hand and tugged. “You’re leaving.”
“But—This is not what I intended to happen. Mersey, I came here to apologize, trust me.”
“Fine. Accepted. Now you need to leave before I do something I’ll regret.”
She thought she’d do something she would regret? Christ, what kind of man had he become?
“Jack?”
He couldn’t summon a genial response. He tugged out the wadding from his nose and crumpled it in his fist. Obviously he needed some rest, time to think, before he could stand his own against this indecisive Nightingale of the purple treasure box.
“I understand. It’s not right…between us. I’ll see myself out.”
“Sure. See you…whenever,” she said. The door closed. And Jack stood in the hallway, swaying. What had just happened? He’d apologized. He’d given her the truth, yet for some reason, his truth had put her off.
Or maybe it was the way he was delivering it?
Jack turned and pounded on the door. “I’m sorry, Mersey.”
Pushing away from the door, he wavered and then caught himself against the stairway railing. He didn’t need Casualty, but what he did need wasn’t interested—
The door opened and Mersey stood there with arms crossed over her chest. “Come back inside.”
Chapter 16
“I didn’t want to push you,” Jack offered. “I know this situation is as strange as it gets. You asking me for sex. Me implying we could have sex. Not a hint of romance in the air. But…there should be. I like you, Mersey. More than like you.”
“Really?”
Mersey was everything he had never expected to find attractive. So why, every time he shared the same air with her, did his better senses flee and his body parts take charge?
And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything with this woman without offering more. Like his real feelings. He did like her. Even knowing Mersey but a few days, Jack knew she was something special in his life.
“I like you very much, Jack. You accept me. And I feel needed by you.”
She touched one of the scrapes on his arm. “And you make me forget a lot of my worries, and just feel free. Freedom is all I’ve ever craved.”
“You don’t have freedom?” Anger stirred, warming his neck. Jack made a fist. “Mersey, is someone keeping you under their thumb? Has it to do with…” The Cadre? But she didn’t know he knew.
“Not like that,” Mersey said. “I’ve grown up in a place where I was watched after, guided and taught. I always felt as if I were being trained to serve. Which I was. But I’m not beholden to anyone. I took this flat a few years ago, thinking to gain independence. Yet, I always seem to gravitate back to what I know, because this place has never felt like home.”
“This treasure box doesn’t feel like home to you?”
“A girl can’t sit alone in a treasure box, Jack. She needs…someone.”
So she was lonely. A feeling Jack could relate to. If he allowed himself to move beyond duty and vengeance. There was a big open empty spot in his life labeled Relationships and Emotional Connection. He’d ignored it well enough—until now.
“You don’t feel lonely now, do you?”
“A little.” Mersey bowed her head and nudged it against his chest. He stroked his fingers through her hair.
“Do you think I’m a bit off?” she wondered. “I can’t seem to make up my mind about you, Jack. I want to be this perfect, prim girl who wouldn’t dream to invite strangers to kiss her in dark warehouses, and yet, a bigger part of me just wants to grab you and never let go. Like if I don’t hold on, you’ll slip away, never to be seen again.”
Clasping her hand in his, Jack kissed her knuckles, remarking the rings felt like cool liquid stone.
“It’s not a bad feeling to have,” he offered. “Never letting go.”
“I’ve been let go of a lot,” she whispered. “I can never seem to hold on to anything meaningful.”
Dipping his head, he kissed her forehead, then skated down to her dark, shadowed eyelids. Salty there, for he guessed that was a tear just at the corner of her eye.
“Don’t cry, Mersey. There must be something in your life that gives you meaning. Your capturing demons, for instance. You must do it for a purpose, or else you’d never take the risk.”
“It’s just something I’ve always done. But I do enjoy it, and it does satisfy. But lately, I need to be satisfied on a different level.”
“Such as?”
She fluttered her lashes.
Ah. Jack was no idiot, and that flirtatious look didn’t need words to get its meaning across.
“Will you stay with me, Jack?”
The question was not innocent. She didn’t intend to get out the blankets and make a nest for him on her sofa. The woman sought satisfaction. And for all they had gone round and struggled and fought about, he couldn’t think of a single reason to deny her now. Or himself.
“I thought the battered look wasn’t working for you?” he whispered. She smirked and began to unbutton his shirt. “I’ve changed my mind. There’s nothing about you that could turn me off, Jack. It’s like you’re this huge magnet, and even if I get brushed away, I end up snapping right back to your side.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Don’t say anything. Just get this shirt off. It’s in the way.”
Mersey led Jack back into her bedroom and they plunged half-dressed onto the slippery purple satin. The stone gargoyle observed stoically as their kisses and murmurs blended into the twilight. The gray T-shirt completely removed, it slid to the floor. One moment Jack was at Mersey’s mouth, kissing her, learning the shape of her lips upon his, the next he explored the faint lemon trail down the curve of her neck. Her breasts sat heavily in his cupped palms. They tasted like Mersey, sweet yet spiced with a wicked tease. He lashed the bead of her nipple with his tongue then played his lips across the hard, slippery nub.
Mersey reacted with sighs and mewls and—the strangest thing—the heels of her palms kneaded against his shoulders in a steady pace. When he neared the edge of the red, crescent-moon mark upon her left breast, it momentarily drew him up from the heady enchantments that threatened to blind him to reality. The mark wasn’t raised, but sat flush on her pale skin at the apex of her breast, and was red like a brand.
“Were you…born with this?”
“Yes.” She gasped and blew long hairs from her face. Cheeks flushed deeply, she fluttered her lashes and the tip of her pink tongue dashed out to taste Jack’s last kiss. “All natural-born familiars have it. It’s a remnant from our feline ancestors who served witches.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not at all. Feels good when you touch it.”
He breathed softly over her breast and touched his tongue to the crescent mark. Mersey gasped and arched her back. Her entire body reacted to the touch, much as if she’d just had an orgasm.
“Oh, Jack.” She slipped her fingers over his scalp and coaxed him forward for another lick. “It’s like we’ve found each other.”
“Two strangers, yet familiar to the touch.” He kissed her breast and pulled down her hand to trace his scar. “But I think you’re the one who found me.”
“You have a mark, too?”
“It’s from when I was a kid. But I can feel the demon in it now. When you touch it—oh!”
“I think it works the same way mine does,” she said on an elated huff.
“Does i
t feel like I’m stroking you…?”
“You mean my cock? Pretty bloody similar, if not—oh, mercy—better. Mersey!”
It seemed a ridiculous idea, but when the orgasm streaked through his system at the same time it captured Mersey in a shuddering quake, Jack knew he had found something made only for him. He hadn’t even put himself inside her, and he’d just had an orgasm. By mere touch. How was that possible?
Mersey sighed against his chest. Her smile curved above the scar. A dash of her tongue drew up another shudder to scintillate across his flesh.
“What the bloody gorgeous hell was that?” she asked on a breathy exhale.
“Haven’t a clue.” Jack kissed her mark and then licked it. “Want to do it again?”
“I’m all yours, hotshot.”
Her leg twined between his and nudged gently against his cock. So hard, and still concealed in his trousers.
“Let’s get naked,” Mersey suggested, “and see how far we can push it.”
“You are reading my mind, little girl.”
“I’m not your little girl, Jack.”
He nuzzled into her soft dark hair, pooled about her collarbone. “I like you that way. Small and girlie and something I can hold in my arms to protect. I know you don’t need protection—”
“I like that you want to protect me.” She unzipped his trousers and slid them down his hips. “But you know I can handle myself.”
Her fingers clasped firmly about his cock. “You can certainly handle something.”
“I can’t close my fingers around it. Am I doing this right?”
Sweet little girl. Jack closed his fingers around hers to teach her the pace. “Slow and steady, love. That’s good.”
“Jack,” she whispered in his ear. The hint of a giggle tickled his cheek.
“You’re very big. I don’t know if we’ll fit.”
“We can stop?” Please, don’t take me seriously. “If you’re not sure?”
“No.” A lash of her tongue under his jaw steered his mouth back to hers. She nipped his lower lip, all the while never losing pace with her strokes. “I want you. All of you.”
Mounting him, she took charge, directing him there, to the unreal heat of her mons. He knew immediately they would be a tight fit, and so held her by the hips to slowly direct her onto him. Shudders, as uncontrollable as her sweet kitten purrs, racked his body as she enveloped him completely.