by Harley James
He rolled on top of the man, bearing down with his forearm on the guy’s windpipe. “You’ve cocked up with the wrong chap, blighter.”
The man managed to spit in Nate’s face at the same moment pixie girl kicked Nate in the jaw where he’d been nailed with the tire iron. Nate’s head snapped back, but he managed to maintain pressure on the pinned, but still-swinging scoundrel. The scrapper was almost as savage as some of the nasty-assed Rephaim he’d tangled with a few weeks ago.
Pixie girl grabbed Nate’s hair and yanked. “Where do you have Jessie, you creeper!”
What? This was about—
“No! Get off him, Nate, you’re killing him!”
Jessie?
She was running out the front door toward him, her blanket flapping open and her pussy—
Mine.
He was suddenly weightless. Then—
Hot waves of nausea spiked through his gut as he was thrown to his back, his head cracking against the decorative boulder next to the driveway. Over the ringing in his ears he heard Jessie scream as the tattooed freak fell on him with more crushing blows.
“Dante, stop! Stop it!”
Nate used the man’s momentary distraction to spring to his feet and bull charge the bastard back against the portico pillar. He reached out with his Earth element to awaken the shrubbery next to them. Scalawag was gonna find out how sharp those rose thorns were if he didn’t calm his shit down in three, two—
Jessie put one hand on Nate, one on his tattooed adversary, and…
Her blanket dropped.
“Jessica, for fuck’s sake!” Nate reached down to swipe the blanket because like hell he’d let this thug see his woman in all her naked glor—
The man’s knee crunched into Nate’s nose and blood rained down onto the flagstone in dark pools.
“Dante, enough! Cheese and rice, stop this right now, both of you, stupid shits!” Jessie turned on pixie girl who was laying the blanket across Jessie’s shoulders. “Emily, what’s going on?”
Nate straightened, breathing through the pain that seemed to pulse over every inch of his skin. He grabbed Jessie’s hand and yanked her toward him. She went willingly into the crook of his shoulder. It soothed his rage, and seemed to make both of the strangers physically back down.
That confused Nate. He looked from Dante to Jessie. He had to know. “Are you lovers?”
Tattoo man barked a laugh, then wheezed and spit blood.
“Dante?” Jessie sputtered. “Are you kidding me? No! We’ve been friends since grade school.”
Nate felt like beating his chest. He smirked at tattoo man. Dante gave him a double bird.
“God save me from testosterone! Stop this ridiculous posturing!” Jessie turned to the little hooligan with the shortest, blondest hair Nate had ever seen on a woman. “Em, what are you guys doing here? Seriously. What the hell?”
Pixie girl’s icy glare would freeze the bark off a lesser man. Nate winked at her, then fought a grimace as his cheek and eye muscles burned. Pixie girl made a rude sound at him and looked at Jessie. “What the hell right back’atcha, Jess! You promised you’d text every sixty minutes!”
Jessie’s mad vanished instantly. “Oh, crap.”
“Really, Blaze? That’s all you got for us after this fucker crushed my windpipe and ripped my nose ring? Fuck this. I’m out of here.” Tattoo guy’s voice resonated deep with a faint Irish lilt.
Now that Nate wasn’t locked in mortal combat with him, he noted the man’s ear gauges, goatee, and wild dark hair that was short on the sides, and long and ratted up top.
“Dante, wait.” Jessie lunged for the man, but Nate didn’t release her hand. She jerked around, her mouth opening with a likely threat, but he beat her to it.
“You’re welcome to talk to them. But I swear, Jessie, if that blanket drops in front of Dante one more time, I’m going savage on his arse.”
“They’re my friends. Do you even know what those are?”
He absorbed her glower like fuel for his fire. Hell’s bells, she made him nuts. He released her hand, though he almost chewed through his cheek in the lead-up to it.
As she ran down the driveway, that goddamned blanket exposed her rear bits with every bare footfall. His inner man-beast rose up with a vengeance.
“You would do well to remember the terms of our contract, Jessica.” His voice rang out in the night like a baby’s wail in a holy chapel at midnight mass. Jessie’s friends looked at him like he’d lost his mind. Jessie’s pursed lips and glaring eyes said she’d chop him into tiny pieces if she had access to a sharp implement.
Well, that was fine with him. Murderous intent he could handle.
It was these blasted murky feelings that made him green about the gills. The sooner he got this vanishing scar mystery solved, the sooner he could enjoy his week with Jessie, and then move on to the next decadent adventure life offered.
Chapter 13
Monday, October 27, 9 pm
Jessie drove up Nate’s long driveway four hours later than she told him she’d be back. Her heart pounded, in fear or anticipation she couldn’t tell. Maybe both.
It had been a miserable afternoon—more arguing with Emily, failing her Legal Research test, enduring snickers and slut-shaming from a table of female undergrads whose ringleader had picked up and read the gist of her and Nate’s contract when it had fluttered from her folder to the floor in the campus’s memorial union. She’d tried to swipe it away immediately, but the rail-thin busybody had honed in on the ‘companion’ terminology, drawing her own lurid conclusions. What if the co-ed was malicious enough to report it to the Law School Dean? Jessie’s entire career could be over before it even began. She would also probably go to jail. Pay fines. Humiliate Gramma and Grandpa, sending them both into a tailspin of stress-related health emergencies.
Horrors.
After that episode, she’d needed to be alone. She couldn’t go to Gramma’s or Dante’s or even her own damn apartment for fear Nate would come looking for her. She wanted to hold Scourge and cry into his smooth fur, but she couldn’t even indulge in that simple comfort because Scourge was staying with Mason, and no way could she go there either. Not after glutting herself on his enemy’s fierce then tender, all-night lovemaking.
Two nights in a row.
Ever since Em and Dante had left Saturday night, Nate had been like a man consumed, imprinting himself on her heart and soul. Forty-eight hours later, she ached all over. Scandalous, yet she could hardly think of anything else.
She’d driven from the university to Minnehaha Park hoping the fresh air would steady her. She’d hiked, gazed at the falls, thrown rocks off the bridge, and sat on picnic tabletops, staying much later than was wise, dusk having long since fallen. But something kept her from returning to the man she was beginning to obsess over. Things about him like how his voice sounded in the dark, how his eyes would twinkle as though lit from within by something not entirely human, the damned dimple that should be thoroughly boyish but steadfastly refused to be that innocent…
His targeted questions in an effort to know her better, and his arrogant, self-abasement to hide himself from her. He made her wonder and sigh and worry and…
Yearn.
During the four hours she’d been tardy, Nate had left five voicemails and twelve texts. Not only that but multiple staff from Mirage had texted asking what was going on with her and the boss man because he had apparently lost his composure when no one had any answers about her whereabouts.
She hadn’t responded to anyone.
She put her car in park twenty feet from Nate’s garage, sighing into the silence as the engine quieted. As she reached for her messenger bag in the passenger seat, the mansion’s front door opened. Her gut twisted in a dozen coils to see Nate’s body backlit in the doorway, the warm foyer lights casting his face in shadows.
He waited there, hands balled into fists at his sides, unmoving like he was hewn from stone as she exited the car, her pulse hammeri
ng so hard against her neck she was almost light-headed.
Say something.
No. He was not her almighty master that she should have to feel like a truant.
His heavy gaze though.
She couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt them roving over her, searching, cataloguing, judging. What conclusions he came to, though, she couldn’t say. But the sensation was thick and palpable in the dry breezy night.
She stopped five feet from the portico. Closer now, she could see the heavy, dark lashes that framed his eyes, the tautness of his face, could feel the strange mix of energies coming off him. She swallowed a couple times before she spoke. “Have I nullified the parameters of our contract?”
“Are you unwell?”
She almost laughed. “In mind or body?”
“If you are downtrodden or ill, it is my responsibility to provide for your care.”
This time she did laugh. The comment was so absurdly story-bookish. “No one is responsible for anyone else’s happiness.” Still the comment warmed her.
“Maybe not, but I would like to try. You should have returned my calls.”
“I know.”
They looked at each other for a long moment. How was it that she could not really know him, yet feel like she could share her grimmest secret with him, and he’d not think less of her? That he would lay down with her darkness and never shame her the way she’d let those critical co-eds creep under her heart and lay their barbs. That he could take away all her worries and fears about her family and future with a flick of his wrist.
She wanted to trust…
Her eyes filled.
“Jessie.” He moved from the doorway, lifting her in his arms before she could even wipe her tattle-tale tears away. She tucked her face into his warm neck and wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he walked briskly into the house and slammed the door behind them with his foot. He carried her all the way upstairs into her bathroom where he sat her on the white leather vanity stool, knelt between her legs on the marble floor and kissed her tear tracks until they were fully spent. Her fingers delved into his thick hair, pulling him to her in silent entreaty. Their lips met, a soothing seduction that layered tinder, kindling, logs in a perfect arrangement until her body grew aflame, comfortable and restless at once. His mouth slanted, full-bodied, hungry across hers, his fingernails scoring her hips before sliding up to shape her breasts as he translated her sighs and coaxed her shadows to tiptoe into the light.
She was coming to crave this unconditional acceptance.
Her neck arched as his teeth nipped the tender skin below her jaw. “Nate, I need.”
He stood her up, unzipped her jeans, and peeled them slowly down her legs. She cast herself into his care as he removed each piece of her clothing until she stood naked. She drank in the reverence in his eyes as he gazed at her, trailing his knuckles from her neck down over a peaked nipple, across her belly to the smooth skin where her thigh met her body, next to the carefully shaped strip of hair.
Her hands sought his chest where his heart thudded as steadily as the massive grandfather clock in his library. She began to unbutton his shirt when he traced his broad finger along her seam, gathering wetness before sliding back up at such a deliberate pace her legs began to tremble, her breath to hitch. He did it over and over, and all she could do was grasp at the folds of his shirt to steady herself as his eyes burned into hers. The fingers of his other hand curled under her ass, tilting her hips to open her further.
“Sit down, Jess.” His low voice promised iniquity.
She could only obey.
The bench was cool beneath her buttocks, a respite from the heat of Nate’s clever fingers. He followed her down, pressing her thighs wide with his palms. His ardent gaze pinned her. “Grab hold of my hair and direct me. Use me.”
Her fingers slid into his dark hair as his head lowered, a gasp dropping from her lips as his mouth met her body full-on. A wave of obscene pleasure contracted her calves, her feet arching to her toes on the floor tiles. His broad tongue stroked, curling at the tip, as her hands guided him, encouraged by his growls of approval every time she pulled his hair.
Lord, the sounds. Moans, groans, wet sucking. Her entire body burned from the wicked things he was doing and the indecent picture they presented in the mirror on the opposite wall.
He pushed her back against the edge of the counter, his hand splayed wide on her solar plexus. Through hooded eyes, she peered into the mirror—his hand so masculine as it flexed, biting into her breasts. Her climax hit fast, hard, breathless. He shifted his hands to her buttocks to support her through her intoxicating finish.
She curled her chest down over his head, breathing against his sweaty temple as he pressed delicate kisses against her inner thighs, his fingers running soothing circles against her lower back. A thick knot began to weave in her throat. No one had ever made her feel so special. His manner bordered on overbearing, and she had disappointed him by not communicating with him, but all he’d wanted was connection. “I’m sorry I didn’t call,” she whispered.
The hitch in her voice solidified his growing conclusion. Even if his scar came back—which he was beginning to greatly doubt after talking to a couple other Guardians—one week with her wouldn’t be enough.
He slowly stood—forcing his muscles to ignore the charge and race of his pulse—and gathered her as close as possible, wrapping her in his arms, kissing every part of her his lips could physically reach. Her grasping hands and limb tremors expressed gratitude and uncertainty. He cupped her head in his palms. She opened her eyes, and his pulse climbed higher. There was trust in her gaze, and for once in his existence, he worried about what that meant.
He’d never lived up to someone’s trust. I will surely fail.
She was looking at him, and he was supposed to say something. Supposed to tell her how much he wanted to keep her by his side. How much these peculiar new feelings were tying him up inside. How he didn’t know what to do with them.
Her gaze said she wanted to put her faith him, but he didn’t know how to be the kind of man who deserved a woman’s trust. If he ended up doing what he’d always done, how would he be able to erase the memory of these beautiful hours so he could sleep at night?
Erase the memories of the pain he’ll cause her.
Jessie wasn’t like the others he’d exploited who were as selfish as he. She wasn’t innocent so much as…
Honorable.
It wasn’t a principle he had much experience with.
A little of the light died in her eyes at his continued silence. It stabbed at him. He brought his forehead to hers. “I never want to hurt you.”
She tilted her chin up so their noses touched. “You say that like it’s bound to happen,” she whispered.
“I…” He couldn’t breathe in the bubble they’d created. He leaned back, watching his hands as they slid down her cheeks to her neck, then shoulders where they kneaded at the tension that was growing once again. If he looked into her eyes, he’d promise things that would make him weak. Things that might distract him from his demon-hunting duties. “I’m not used to thinking of others. Not used to…caring.” He turned away, a strange sick heat crawling up his neck. What a foolish thing to say. He gritted his teeth as he sank to one knee by the bathtub and opened the tap, turning away from her perceptive gaze.
His skin was so prickly that he startled when her hands came to rest on his shoulders. Her voice settled some of his unease. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I agreed to this week, but I think it may end up being one of the best adventures I’ll ever have. And I want you to know, I’m grateful for fairytale moments like these.”
Her arms wrapped around his shoulders from behind, her breasts pressed into his back. He closed his eyes and grasped her hands in front of his heart. Steam from the tub rose around them and clung to his clothes. She shifted, her teeth nipping his ear. His cock pulsed, straining painfully at his trousers.
“I
want you, Nate.”
He groaned as he swiveled, stood, and swept her in his arms in one fluid motion. His mouth fastened hotly to hers for an aching moment before he lowered her into the tub, soaking his shirtsleeves so he wouldn’t drop her even an inch.
She sighed, then stretched languidly as she settled into the supple contours of the custom-made tub. Her breasts bobbed at the water’s surface, the rosy hue of her areolas more lovely than the pink of a sun-soaked horizon at day’s end.
“You are a temptress like no other.”
“Not tempting enough, apparently. You aren’t joining me?”
His gaze dropped to the strip of hair between her legs. “I am in torment with want of you, Jessica.”
Her calves slid together sinuously beneath the water. “Then?”
He forced his gaze from her sweet pussy to her face. Her smile was both shy and inviting. He wiped perspiration from his hairline, then walked to the counter where he lit three candles and dimmed the lights. “You naughty siren. Would you have me ruin my perfect plans?”
Her eyebrows rose. “What plans?”
“You could have found out hours ago. But now, you’ll just have to wait.” He turned toward the doorway, but swung back when the water sloshed violently. She stood in the center of the tub, water streaming down her curves, reflecting the contours of her voluptuous form, more breathtaking than Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.
“You’re really not going to join me?”
His heart leapt at the dismay in her tone. “This will be the most alone-time you’ll have for the next four days. Enjoy it while lasts because by the time I’m through with your body, you won’t ever want to live without me.”
A delectable cream and herb aroma filled Jessie’s nose when her bare toes hit the bottom stair. She re-tied the flimsy belt of the sheer black robe Nate had laid out on her bed, and slowly made her way to the kitchen, unable to keep a nervous smile from her lips. The foyer and hallway lanterns cast gauzy light against the wainscot walls, the languid disposition of the house coaxing her back to the relaxed mood she’d had in the tub.