“Can’t you see I was talking to him fir—” The vampire’s words died out the second Maureen leaned over me, materialized a blade, and held it to the vamp’s throat.
“Didn’t he say not to touch him or he’d stake you?” Maureen asked nonchalantly, rubbing my chest idly as she did. “Get the fuck out of here, or I’ll stake you.”
The vampire bared her fangs before rushing off. Maureen sat back on her stool. “Don’t think I’m not upset that you threatened her,” she murmured. “Molly, I need a drink!” she yelled at the bartender.
I sent her a bewildered squint. “You’re mad I threatened the vampire?”
“That’s how we started off, you threatening to kill me when you could… You’re not allowed to do that anymore. I can’t have you falling for everyone you threatened, now can I? I’m not about sharing.”
I found myself smiling. “You’re a bossy Little Monster, aren’t you?”
Her eyes widened. They twinkled so beautifully. There was something so hopeful in the expression she tried to mask through furrowed eyebrows. “Did you say Little Monster?” She searched my eyes. “Are you starting to remember?”
I shrugged. “I dream of you,” I admitted, “and nothing else.” The black tightly fitted shirt and jeans she wore clung to her every curve and trapped my mind. It was torturous seeing her shape, yet unable to see her bare. I needed to see every inch of her…again. “I don’t know anything beyond the fact that I’m restless and bound to follow you when you leave here.” I took the glass in front of her and swallowed her drink.
“Isabella’s coven leader or whatever they call her, Melinda, told me there was no point in getting a memory spell for you. She said all entities were more or less the same. Our bodies heal themselves. We fight off spells and wards like a human’s immune system does sickness. Melinda also explained the reason the collar was of no use for immortals like us. Sure, it’d work for a while, but every second it stayed on our body, our power was already working to get rid of it. She said the same with your memories…” Maureen shook her head with a sigh. “All I’m saying is that you got an hour left in this day—almost an entire day you’ve forgotten about me. You have some nerve, Jack…” Her words were harsh, but her voice was meek and unhappy. She glanced down at the bar, not meeting my eyes as her hand snuck out and slipped into mine. I watched as red tinged the side of her face and neck. “…to go and let some witch steal our memories—”
I didn’t know why I did, I just knew I wanted to. Lifting her face by the chin, I pressed my lips to hers, silencing her. And she let me. She tasted of everything beautiful, sinful, and sweet. Maureen opened her mouth and let me probe her further, slipping my tongue inside.
And everything—every experience, every emotion, every touch and yearning I had for Maureen came pouring back all at once. The memories synchronized with every hungry kiss. She murmured something against my mouth, and I held back a laugh. I was positive she was still grumbling about my memories.
“I don’t care how good his lips taste, I’ll make him suffer long and hard for forgetting me.”
My eyes popped open. Did I just hear Maureen talking?
“I promise to be a little nicer once he remembers… He deserves it…”
Did I? I smirked.
“Why does he feel so good? All mine…”
I could hear the dreamy sigh in which she said it. Dragging my lips from hers, I studied her.
“Why is he looking at me like that? Does he remember something besides how much he loves fucking me? Preferably that he loves me? Oh, fuck. I don’t even know if he loves me. Dammit. If he made me fall, he better have fallen too.”
She sat taller and wiped a finger across her swollen lips. “Any day now,” she hissed at me, then yelled at Molly to get her another drink since I drank her last one. “It’s been a long day.”
“It’s only been a day and I miss you this much already, Jack.”
Maureen sniffed quietly, grabbed the drink the moment Molly set it down, and finished it in one gulp.
“Shit! My throat has that itchy feel to it… Am I going to cry? God forbid, didn’t I do enough in front of my family? I’m just going to leave before I do…”
“When you feel like remembering me completely, come and grovel,” she told me as she rose from the stool, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her into my lap. She fell against my chest, and her ass hit my erection.
“You know I can hear your thoughts, my Little Monster?” I asked and then blew into her ear.
She shivered.
“What did you expect me to do? I remembered you in a day. I spent all those hours fighting to remember why the dark-haired beauty was the star of all my dreams and the light of all my wants. Doesn’t that count for anything? No number of spells, potions, or even fate could keep me away from you for long.”
Maureen trembled in my arms, not meeting my eyes. Possibly not wanting me, or anyone else, to see her tears. I reached for the portal chip in my jeans and ported us to her couch. Still in my lap, she finally let out her agony. I wrapped my arms around her tightly.
“You remember,” she whimpered.
“I’m sorry.” I kissed her shoulder blade and said, “I couldn’t stop the witch from exploding the vial in my neck.” Pausing for a moment, I added, “I’m sorry that I failed in protecting the humans.” With that admission of guilt, I dropped my head against her shoulder.
She twisted around, still crying, and wrapped my head in her embrace, pressing it against her breasts. “We all failed,” she whispered sadly. “But we won’t fail all of them.”
“I can’t lose you,” I told her as I kissed her chest through her shirt. “I’d go to the Devil and beg for your life before I’d let you die.”
She sucked in a breath, then leaned back. “Would you now?” she asked, and even with the pleased glint in her eyes, I knew there were no more barriers between us. “Sebastian wasn’t lying. We truly receive each other’s thoughts sometimes…”
“I’ve been sleeping for so long, waiting to find you all this time, just so I can love you.” I cupped her cheek in my palm.
She closed her eyes, leaned into my palm, and placed her hand over mine. “I love you. Thank you for being so easy to love.” “And great at fucking me.”
I chuckled, pulling her close. “I hear you loud and clear.” I nuzzled her neck, sliding my hands down to her ass.
“I don’t think so,” she started, but I cut her off with another kiss. She pulled away. “No, you shall go without tonight for daring to forget about me!”
I gripped her ass tighter until she hissed. “Lie to me again,” I told her. She laughed and rocked against my aching cock. “If you must lie, let it only be with me. No matter how much you pride yourself, Maureen, you always give me your truths.”
“I know,” she whispered. “You told me already, remember?” She cupped my face and brought it to hers. “I have no reason to lie to you now, Jack. You know everything there is to know about my heart and soul. I’ll give the shitty things to you.”
“They’re not shitty,” I corrected her.
“I guess not. I must not be entirely bad if I get to feel this way for someone.” She raked her hands through my hair. “I didn’t think I’d get to experience this, but I’m so fucking glad I do.”
“You’re precious.” I kissed the tip of her nose. “You and your pride were the end of the plague-dropper, and now everything to the man whose lap you sit on. Let me hold you as my most important treasure. All that I have and want begins and ends with you.”
She kissed me again, seeping out her love and burrowing it into my soul. Our souls touched while our essences sparked around one another. Her bright orange rolled into my blackness like an unwavering caress.
I leaned back. “Are you still upset?”
She exhaled, placing her forehead against mine. “Yes, but only because I’ll have to live with the undeniable grief of knowing what it felt like, for a day, what it would feel like to lose y
ou.”
“I’d always find you.”
“I’d always come to you,” she whispered. “You don’t always have to be the one to act first.”
Lowering my mouth to her neck, I hovered below her ear. “It doesn’t always have to be a bad thing for me to come find you. I don’t mind if you run every now and again because you’re nothing but obedient after a good push and pull.” She shuddered. “I’m going to take you to bed, and then I’m going to hold you there all night.”
“Only hold?”
I nodded. “Only hold.” I lifted her into my arms and carried her to bed. “That is, until we’re rested. Even if you’re to punish me for forgetting, you won’t be able to keep me from burying myself inside you.” I examined the dark circles underneath her eyes. “You didn’t sleep well without me either, did you?”
She laid her head against my chest. “I didn’t sleep any of those twenty-three hours without you.”
“I spent mine dreaming of what I was missing, then I found her,” I told her. “Let us rest.”
Maureen let me place her on the bed, and then she beckoned for me to join her beneath the blankets. In the crook of my arm, pride fell asleep. It didn’t mean it would always sleep, but with me, my Little Monster found reprieve.
Chapter 33
Maureen
“Come on, Jack,” I huffed. “Help me out here.”
The only response I got was the full extent of his weight pressed on me as we crumbled to my bedroom floor.
“Jack.” I tapped his shoulders, tracing the curve of his eyelashes with my gaze as I did. “Jack.” I found myself smiling the longer I stared down at him. “I can’t lift you up into the bed by myself. You’ve got to stop overdoing it.”
No response.
This was us every day for the last week since the incident in New York. He saved as many people as he could from the pestilence brought on by the end. Afterward, I’d carry him back to our house—Jackal’s life was with me now so of course my home was his. I had to get Barron to help me carry him yesterday.
There was no point in telling Jackal we could take a break for a day. He wouldn’t. Not when it was my life on the line.
I stroked his head lovingly before grabbing the blanket off the bed and snuggling up beside him, placing one of his giant arms around my waist as I covered us. I rested when Jack rested just so that we had more time together. Sometimes I’d do my Reaper work while he slept like this, then come back and rest with him a little before he awakened. Him waking up was what I looked forward to the most.
Later, I awakened with his giant palm pawing at my breast as he nuzzled my neck. “Mm,” I mumbled and pushed my ass against him.
“Wonder what I’ll hear from your mind today?” he mused affectionally.
Having our minds linked randomly at any given moment was bizarre, there was no other way to put it. There was no hiding your deepest fears when you couldn’t protect your own thoughts in your head—that was what I might have thought before I met Jackal, or maybe even a week ago when we first heard each other’s thoughts. But now being inside his head—the small moments I got to—was beautiful.
“She’s beautiful. The slope of her back, the curve of her thighs, the roundness of her ass.”
“She’s mine… How am I so lucky? Do I deserve this amount of happiness? I don’t think I do, but I’m never letting her go all the same.”
“Look at her trying to resist me.”
No, Jack, you’re the beautiful one, I wanted to say each time I heard his thoughts. In there, I was painted so prettily. Held so high. Broken down into all these pieces that made me who I was—I heard all the ways he saw me, even when I was being unreasonable—he adored it. Even when I was mean—it only made him want to ravish me. When he knew I was sad—he was sad.
I didn’t belong to anyone, but I was his. I didn’t understand how that worked, but it was real. I was me, and I was always going to live for me. But Jackal? He laid claim to the only parts I could give away—my heart and bitter soul. He thought they were something special, but I didn’t agree. On the other hand, I knew his heart and soul were extraordinary, and he gave them to me. To me.
The other night, he foolishly said, “There’s no me without you.”
Those absurd words made my cold, dark heart pitter-patter against his beating heart. But then I heard his thoughts and realized something. Jackal was it. He was my soulmate.
I spent years thinking I’d never get this, get what my parents had. It was one thing to see it all your life, but it was another to feel it. Until love found you, there was no way of truly understanding it. Only then, could you believe it existed. You might say you didn’t want it—like I did—but when it found you, there was no telling it to go away. It wasn’t until I met Jackal that I knew why I didn’t think I wanted it. No one had made me feel romance but him.
Pulling me off the floor, Jackal laid me on top of him. He ripped off our clothes. Always rushing had become a routine for us. I figured in another hundred years maybe we would get more chances to take our time. Maybe I’d get around to teaching him how to be better at foreplay. Jackal had no problem with fucking, but his lack of experience showed in other areas. He was plenty attentive, though, about learning how my body came unglued.
But then maybe taking our time with things like foreplay wasn’t meant for us. Rough and slow, fast and rough, frenzied and bruising. We were wild with each other—for one another.
But sensual and slow with him? Oh, how I was falling in love with that as well.
“Do you want me to make eggs?” Jackal asked after the first round. I was still lying on top of him—still on the floor.
I lifted my head and smiled. “Want me to make us something better?” I asked him.
“Only if you show me how,” came his response. I taught him how to make eggs yesterday. Jackal preferred when I cooked him something instead of materializing food. So he bargained to learn how for us when I didn’t want to. What he already knew was that I didn’t mind doing it for him. My secret was long out after the mind reading, nonetheless, Jackal wanted to do something for me. Perhaps, he wanted ways to spoil me like I did him by feeding him.
It was a strange yet fascinating sensation learning to live with someone you desperately wanted to make happy. But that was how I knew I loved this life. I loved Jackal for making all these new things so easy and fun.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I know.” I grinned and then said it back with my thoughts. “I love you.”
Harvest and his group, however, were still a problem. New troubles came to the human world every day. A world that was still ending.
But with Jackal, when there was a chance to rest and a time not to worry, I got lost in him. I began to paint our future—wondering what we will be once we’d stopped Harvest and the Devil from ascending to the human world.
I didn’t know what our future would be, but I was already smiling in anticipation.
Wrath
Book Three
(title undecided)
Sneak Peek
Thump… Thump… Thump…
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Since forever, my heart had never been on my side. One second its beats were too slow, and I became lethargic and hazy. Other times, it was too fast until it smothered me.
The fluorescent lights flickered in and out.
“She’s going into cardiac arrest!”
Oh, they weren’t flickering, I was the one fading in and out.
I’m dying.
“Defibrillator!”
That was why it didn’t hurt. I recognized this cloud of nothingness. Two years ago, when I was sixteen, this happened.
Congenital heart defect.
My heart was born this way. But until two years ago, I’d lived a pretty normal life with it. My case wasn’t bad… Until it was. I needed a heart transplant. I was now second in line for one, but as my mind fought to stay coherent, I knew I’d never survive until then.
So close… Yet impossible for this heart of mine.
I shouldn’t care that I was dying. As an orphan, I’d bounced around foster homes all my life. Too much trouble this heart of mine. Too many check-ups, restrictions, and medications. And then, the Pattisons found me when I was twelve, and I’d been a burden to them ever since.
I didn’t care about anything if I were honest. I only ever wanted to skate. I hadn’t been able to do that since my first heart attack.
I shouldn’t care that I was dying, but I’d had an insatiable thirst for life ever since I was a child—alone, tossed aside and forgotten. I loved waking up each day. Even now as my life drained from me, I fought to open my eyes. Everything above me was a blur—heads fading in and out, the lights etching black dots in my visions.
I was truly dying.
The world was falling apart. Sicknesses and unnatural weather phenomena had the entire religious community talking about the end being near.
But this dying girl was desperately clinging to life.
If the world must end, I wanted to die with it, not before it.
Not that I was a believer or a disbeliever—I simply wasn’t sure what to think. I was just Gwendolyn Dolson, an eighteen-year-old ice skating fan. I liked my coffee black. I wore flip-flops year round in all sorts of weather. I—
“We’re losing her!”
But I could hear them!
That was always the most bone-chilling part. Please, no! My eyes were too heavy for me to keep open. But there was no pain, and it was even more frightening because it felt good—tranquil. Did everyone die this way? Aware like me, yet unable to do anything?
No!
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Again!”
My body surged out of the hospital bed, and with it my eyes flittered open for a fraction of a second. Long enough for ice to fill my veins. What was that?
Standing near my bed was a towering figure draped completely in black. I only saw the figure because it stood so much taller than the doctors and nurses around me. Cloak and hood? Can’t be right. Only I couldn’t open my eyes again to see, and as panic kick-started my heart beating, I realized maybe I didn’t want to. Oh, Jesus, was I already dead? Why did I have a strange knowing pinch in my gut telling me that the figure was here for me?
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