by Lori Sjoberg
“Where’s Dmitri?”
“Back at your cabin.” Jack closed the balcony door, muffling the sounds of the ocean. “He said he had to contact some guy named Samuel.”
Ah, yes. The big boss would want to assume immediate custody of the demon’s soul. She had no idea what the process entailed since Dmitri never bothered to share the details. But if it felt anything close to what she’d experience earlier, Dmitri had her deepest sympathies.
“He also said to call him if you need anything.”
She considered calling for a change of clothes and a new choker. But if she called he’d come back and would probably insist she return with him to her cabin. And since she didn’t want to be anywhere in the immediate vicinity when Samuel made his appearance, she’d just stay put for the time being.
Jack leaned against the sliding glass door, the lines of his face etched deep with exhaustion. Eyes closed, he scrubbed a hand across his face, smearing blood from the cut on his forehead.
“A shower might put the spring back into your step,” Ruby suggested. “At the very least, it’ll get the demon goop out of your hair.”
His eyes cracked open. “I look that bad, huh?”
“Let’s just say you’re not looking your usual sexy self.” She sank down on one of the chairs, stretched her long legs out in front of her. Fatigue swept over the length of her body, and she covered her mouth to stifle a yawn.
Jack snorted. “All right, you win.” His voice softened, and the tenderness in his eyes touched a part of her she rarely acknowledged. “I’ll be out in a couple. In the meantime, why don’t you order drinks from room service?”
“Sounds good to me. Would you mind if I also ordered something to eat? I’m starving.” Plus, the additional calories would accelerate her body’s recovery process.
“After what we just went though, you can order any damn thing you want.” He gave her a smile, the one that made her extra tingly inside, and then disappeared behind the bathroom door.
A couple minutes turned into ten before Ruby heard the water in the shower cut off. Two more minutes and Jack emerged from the bathroom, hair wet and a towel draped around his hips. The sight of all that toned, tanned flesh came close to making her mouth water.
“Sorry, I forgot to bring a change of clothes in with me.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of gray boxer briefs.
“Nothing for you to be sorry about. I’m enjoying the view.” When his gaze cut in her direction, she flashed him an impudent grin. “Why don’t you drop that towel and do a little dance for me?”
Jack rolled his eyes. Another drawer, and he had fresh jeans and a T-shirt. “What did you order?”
“Chivas on the rocks for you, a tequila sunrise for me, fried mozzarella sticks, and a double order of chili cheese nachos. Oh, and two slices of key lime pie.” She checked the clock on the nightstand. “It should be here any time now.”
He stopped what he was doing and stared at her. “That’s a lot of food, Beulah.”
“I’m hungry.” Her stomach gurgled in agreement. “My body burns a lot of calories when it’s repairing damage. If I don’t eat soon, I’ll probably start gnawing on my fingers.”
Like clockwork, someone knocked on the door.
“Don’t get up,” he said. “I’ll get it.”
“But you’re not presentable.”
“Which will stop room service from trying to come inside.” He pointed to the dark stain on the carpet. “If they see that, they might start asking questions.”
He strode to the door before she could voice any further objections. A short time later, he wheeled a small food cart into the room and closed the door behind him. Pushing the cart next to Ruby’s chair, he removed the dome covering the first plate. The smell of deep-fried mozzarella filled the air, making her stomach audibly growl. Another plate, and the scent of chili cheese nachos had her close to drooling.
“Dig in,” Jack said as he turned back toward the door.
“Wait, where are you going?”
He glanced down at the towel around his waist. “To get dressed. I’ll be right back.”
He dropped the towel on his way to the bathroom, treating her to a glimpse of his cute little backside before disappearing behind the bathroom door.
Jack emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, fully dressed and feeling a lot closer to human. A dull ache stretched across his rib cage, a persistent reminder of their earlier encounter with the demon.
The memory of Glen striking Ruby still made his temper flare. As much as he hated to admit it, Gilrov had given him the burst of strength and energy needed to hold his own against the demon. He’d felt Gilrov’s rage as strongly as his own, just as he’d felt Gilrov’s distress when the demon tried to take control of Ruby’s body. Together, they’d worked in concert to protect what Jack considered his.
He caught sight of her sitting by the room service cart. She’d already polished off the mozzarella sticks and was putting a sizable dent in the chili cheese nachos. Her drink was half empty, the slice of orange still wedged against the rim.
“Boy, you weren’t kidding about being hungry.”
She swallowed a bite and licked her fingers before answering. “I left you some nachos. If you want, you can have my slice of pie.”
“No, that’s okay. I’m really not hungry.” He took the seat beside hers, their knees touching when he grabbed a nacho from the basket. He scooped up a glob of chili and popped it all in his mouth. “Mm. Those are pretty good.” Maybe he was a little hungry after all.
“A good scrap always sparks my appetite.” She picked up her glass and sipped her drink. With her free hand, she stroked the collar circling her neck.
“Why did you put the choker back on?” He’d been dying to ask ever since she came out of the bathroom wearing it. After everything they’d just been though, maybe she’d actually give him a straight answer. “It doesn’t exactly go with the outfit.”
Instead, she disappointed him with a shrug. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve been wearing them for so long I kind of feel naked without one.”
“Something tells me there’s more to it than that. Am I right?”
She matched his gaze over the space of a few heartbeats, her expression marked with indecision. For once, her emotions were brutally transparent. Pain. Fear. Anxiety. Would she finally trust him with the truth?
Silence stretched tight between them. After what seemed like forever she let out a weary sigh and said, “My kind bear the scars from the actions that claimed our mortality. If the marks are someplace visible, we have to find ways to make them less noticeable to avoid unwanted attention.”
She swirled the ice in her glass before taking another sip. When she set the glass back on the cart, it was almost empty.
“I never told you what happened to the animals who brutalized my sister.” Her eyes turned dark and distant as she leaned back against her chair. When she spoke again, her accent had thickened. “Growing up, I heard a lot of stories about the McAllister brothers. Their daddy was the town sheriff, and he always turned a blind eye to the trouble they caused. Sometimes it was petty stuff like stealing pop from the corner grocery or tipping Mr. Branford’s cows, but other times …” Her voice trailed off. “Sheriff McAllister refused to arrest them for what they did to Suzie. He said it was a case of boys being boys.”
Ruby looked up and met Jack’s gaze, her face filled with pain and anger. “She was only fourteen years old,” she said through gritted teeth. “I should have warned her to stay away from those boys. If I had, she never would have accepted a ride home from them.”
“What happened to her wasn’t your fault, you know.”
“Oh, I know. Ultimately, the blame lands squarely on Jed and Darrell McAllister. But she was my little sister, and it was my responsibility to watch out for her.” The tremor in her voice broke his heart. She swallowed hard, the choker bobbing up and down with the movement. “I failed to protect her, but I refused to sta
nd by and let them get away with what they’d done.”
The full weight of her words registered in Jack’s mind. “You killed them.”
She gave a curt nod. “I followed them into the woods when they went camping the next weekend and hunted them down like dogs. Shot one at close range with my daddy’s rifle. The other one I hit about thirty yards out. I had to use a second shot to finish him off. Then I left their bodies in the woods to rot.” Back and forth, back and forth, her fingers traced a line across her throat. “If Mr. Akins hadn’t seen me leaving the campgrounds, I might have gotten away with it.”
She took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. “I lost my mortality because of what I did to the McAllister brothers. It’s also the grounds for my damnation.” The muscles along her jaw flexed. Her hands shook as she reached behind her neck, unfastened the clasp holding the choker in place. After a moment’s hesitation, she drew the material away.
From ear to ear, the ugly ridge of scar tissue stretched across her throat.
“Every time I look at it, it reminds me of who I was and what I lost.” Her lips twisted into something too bitter to count as a smile. “Pretty repulsive, isn’t it?”
Jack shook his head. “No. I don’t think it’s repulsive at all.” He reached out and traced the line with the tips of his fingers, the scar tissue raised against the skin along her neck.
Ruby’s brow creased with confusion. “How can you say that?”
“Because I view your scar in a different light.” His hand skimmed past her neck, cupped the side of her face. “The way I see it, that line across your neck symbolizes the chain of events that brought you to this place and time. To me.”
“And you’d welcome that, after what I just told you?” She looked at him as if he’d lost his marbles. “I’m an unrepentant murderer.”
“Yes, you are. There’s no point in denying the fact. But the truth of the matter is some people deserve to die. That’s just unconscious knowledge.” He could only imagine what he would have done if placed in a similar situation. Just the thought of someone violating his sisters made his vision flash red. In all likelihood, he would have committed a much more gruesome variation of the exact same act.
“But I—”
He interrupted her sentence with a gentle kiss to her lips. “No buts. From what you told me before, you wouldn’t have been brought back as a reaper if your soul hadn’t been judged redeemable. Am I right?”
She nodded, her bottom lip trembling.
“Well, then. It sounds like someone, somewhere, carried the same low opinion of the McAllister brothers. Who knows how many other women you spared from the same fate or worse?” A tear tracked down her cheek, and he wiped it away with his thumb. “You broke the rules, Beulah, but you broke them for a damn good reason.”
She sniffed, blinked back tears. “Why are you doing all this?”
“Doing what?”
“Being so … nice to me.” Unspoken emotion swam in her eyes.
“You should be enjoying your cruise instead of dealing with all this.”
Leaning close, he kissed her brow, her cheeks, the tip of her nose. When he kissed her lips, he felt something far more potent than desire. “Isn’t it obvious?”
Ruby woke in the dead of night, groggy and disoriented. It took a few moments to gain her bearings and remember where she was, whose bed she currently occupied.
She’d broken her normal pattern with Jack. Up to this point she’d made a practice of never spending the night in a man’s bed. To her, the act was far too intimate and meant way too much—much more than she was willing to give.
So then why had she stayed? She honestly didn’t know, and she really didn’t want to delve too deep to find an honest answer. She’d much rather enjoy the time they had left before the ship reached its final destination.
Still sluggish with sleep, she reached for Jack but found his side of the bed empty.
“Jack?”
She rolled over, her eyes scanning the darkened cabin. It didn’t take long to find him, his broad masculine frame silhouetted against the light of the full moon, standing naked on the balcony. His hands gripped the rail as he stared out at the open ocean, stock-still and silent.
Ruby slipped out from beneath the covers and crossed the room. “What are you doing out there?” she asked, stopping short of the doorway to the balcony.
“Nothing. Just enjoying the night air.” When he turned to face her, she noticed a faint trace of silver rimming his eyes. “It seems Gilrov has an affinity for the open ocean.”
“He’s talking to you?”
“Not quite.” His voice sounded guarded, unsure. “It’s difficult to explain, but I’m becoming more … aware of him. Of his likes and dislikes. Aside from …” Now he looked downright uncomfortable. He lifted a shoulder, averted his gaze. “Well, you know.”
“I get the gist.” She didn’t comprehend the particulars—had no way of grasping the complex relationship between man and demon—so she didn’t press him for details. All that mattered was his growing sense of equilibrium, the potential for peace after so many years of chaos.
He motioned for her to join him. “The view’s spectacular tonight. You really ought to see this.”
Before she had the chance to say no, he reached for her hand and gently pulled her through the doorway to the balcony. The humid ocean air caressed her bare skin, tangled the long strands of her hair. Flooded her mind with darkness from the past.
The effect wasn’t lost on Jack. “Shit, I’m sorry.” His mouth set in a grim slash. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, it’s … it’s okay.”
She took a tentative step toward the balcony’s edge. A cold shiver raced up her spine as she stared down at the choppy waters below. “We’re moving again.”
“Yeah, Dmitri must have fixed whatever he did to the ship’s engines.”
Ruby’s heart pounded in her chest as events from the past flashed through her mind. Her left hand instinctively reached for her neck, her fingers tracing the exposed ridge of scar tissue. She hadn’t bothered to put the choker back on before going to bed, another first for her.
“After I got arrested, the sheriff wanted to hang me in my cell. Make it look like a suicide,” she said, not sure why she was dredging up bad memories, but doing it anyway. For some reason she wanted to tell him—needed to tell him—the rest of her sordid story, of how she became what she was. “But his deputy told him folks might start asking questions. It’d be better if I just disappeared. So they waited until nightfall and took me out to sea on old man Jenning’s fishing boat.”
Jack wrapped his arms around her, easing her back against his chest. He felt warm, and strong, and solid, a tangible reminder that the past could no longer inflict physical pain. He pressed a kiss against her hair. “You don’t have to tell me this.”
“I know.” And maybe that’s why she wanted to. She relaxed against his chest, her fingers still stroking the scar that marred her neck.
“Once they got the boat out far enough, Sheriff McAllister slit my throat with a chunking knife and shoved me overboard.” She swallowed hard, trying not to think about the sting of the blade or her sudden shocking inability to breathe. The cold Atlantic waters, engulfing her body and flooding her lungs. She let out a long, shuddering exhale and Jack’s grip tightened. “I broke the surface once before I lost consciousness.”
Time had faded many of the details, but the greatest hits still rang clear in her mind. The pain. The terror. The rage and regrets.
Jack didn’t say anything right away. His arms remained locked around her waist, his muscles taut and unyielding. “Thank you for sharing that with me,” he finally said, his voice a strained murmur. There was a distinct edge of anger in his words, a barely contained outrage on her behalf that she found touching. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
“Honey, you have no idea,” she said, aiming for indifference but missing it by a mile.
“No w
onder you had such a bad attitude about going on this cruise. Every time you look over the rail, you remember that moment, don’t you?” He kissed the outer curve of her ear, the wet heat from his tongue dimming her recollection of that muggy August evening. “I think we need to replace those bad memories with something a little more…pleasant.” His hands skimmed up her torso, cupped her breasts. A soft moan escaped her lips when his thumbs brushed against her nipples.
She tried to turn around, but he held her firmly in place.
“Not yet,” he said, his words warm against her ear. He nibbled her earlobe, and when she squirmed she found him already aroused. “Relax.” Mouth moving lower, his teeth grazed the skin just below her jaw. “Don’t think. Just feel.”
She closed her eyes, focusing on the heat of his mouth at the hollow of her throat, the light scrape of teeth against sensitive skin. His hands were still at her breasts, stroking, caressing, sparking a hunger that started low and flared like wildfire.
“Listen to the sound of the ocean,” he murmured, his voice going all deep and husky. “Feel the wind washing over that beautiful body of yours.”
Heat swelled between her legs. Her knees felt weak, like they were about to buckle, so she reached for the rail and held on for dear life.
“Don’t worry.” His mouth moved lower, pressed open-mouthed kisses against her shoulder. His jaw was rough with stubble, and she couldn’t help but think about how wonderful it would feel against other parts of her body. “I would never let you fall.”
One of his hands skimmed lower, pausing for a moment to circle her belly button before resuming its journey, not stopping until it slipped between her legs. His fingers stroked her sex and she gasped.
“You’re so wet.” The words came out in a low carnal growl. Over and around, his fingers traced invisible patterns that quickened her pulse and had her close to hyperventilating. “So wet. Just for me.”
“Just for you.” Pleasure drenched her senses when he slipped two fingers inside her and stroked. Her mouth fell open as her hips began to roll, and her entire body trembled. Then his thumb found her clit, circling in an exquisite rhythm that nearly turned her bones to jelly.