“I would have kept my mouth shut.”
He growled in her ear, the purr making her shiver. “Hah. We both know that’s crap, honey. Know what the first thing you would’ve done was if you’d found out? Found a way to stick your nose in where it didn’t belong just like you did tonight. Jesus, Ella. You could have been killed. That nut Franklin is crazy. We knew he’d stop at almost nothing to sell those wolves. We also had to find out where he had them hidden—we just couldn’t figure it out until I did by mistake. You in the middle of that, with the possibility your father was amongst those full-bloods, would have been disastrous.”
Her eyes filled with tears again but she wiped them away. “IknowIknowIknow. I’m sorry. How was I supposed to know he was harboring werewolves? It’s like claiming Lola has white tigers and Penn and Teller in her attic. I just had to figure out what that smell was.”
Tugging at her nipple, Crosby admonished even as his hands loved her. “You weren’t just tracking that smell. You were fishing for info on Marina Preston.”
Okay. Guilty. She squirmed up against him, feeling totally guilt-free about being naked with him for the first time since his accident. “But after all the months of subterfuge and late nights, and close-mouthed nonsense, not to mention the happy-go-lucky amnesiac you were, I needed to know what was going on. Each day got harder and harder when I knew if you finally remembered, we’d be right back to a very bad place. I just wanted to get it over with so I didn’t have to keep torturing myself.”
“Morton told me you agreed to be my nurse so Max and the pack would grant you a divorce. Is that true?”
Ella took a deep breath and nodded. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t let what happened go. I knew you weren’t telling me the truth about something. I thought maybe a fresh start would help me forget.”
His grip tightened on her when he slid his hand to her waist. His words were hushed and solemn. “The pressure of the whole mess was killing me. Add in the fact that Marina took to me like a duck to water, and I was doing almost nothing but holding her hand the entire way while we made this deal, and trying to figure out what Franklin was up to, stressed me out to the point where keeping my mouth shut was the only way to keep you out of danger. I think we both know if I kept explaining away all those late nights, and I added Marina to the mix, you would have come looking.”
Her sigh was dreamy and light when his fingers caressed the outside of her thigh. “I sort of did.”
This time, Crosby chuckled. “Like I could forget? It was me who came home and found every last thing I owned outside on the front lawn, wasn’t it?”
She kissed her way along his forearm, willing her lips to heal the wounds she’d inflicted. “I’m sorry. Swear I’ll buy you more clubs. You were trying to save my father. You found my father, Crosby. Nothing, absolutely nothing can ever make up for the stress I caused you because you were looking after me.”
Lifting her chin, he turned her head to face him. “I think there are some things that might come close.”
Ella flipped back over, nose-to-nose, kissed his lips soundly and smiled, filled with relief and love—more love than she could ever express. “Anything. Absolutely anything.”
Crosby wiggled his eyebrows. “Ménage?”
“Eff you.”
He laughed, deep and hearty. “That’ll work too.”
Without another word, Ella slid along Crosby’s chest, trailing her tongue across his abdomen, finding the ridges of each of his hard abs along the way until she reached the head of his cock.
He drove his hands into her hair, cradling her head close to his skin and hissing when she finally drew his cock into her mouth, engulfing him deeply. She swirled her tongue over each vein, licked at the heat he emanated, smiled to herself when he wrapped a thigh around her back and arched into her with a forceful press upward.
His hot moan filled her with pride, his hard hands drove her insane when he dragged her away from his shaft and pulled her back to the top of the bed.
Rolling, she was back on her side again and pulled forcefully against his length. He wound her hair in his hand and tugged it so her back bowed, forcing her ass to settle at his cock.
She lifted her leg willingly, wrapping it around his calves, and when Crosby entered her, knowing she was his wife, his life mate, renewed her connection to him—sealed her fate.
She was Crosby’s, and he said as much as he drove into her passage, slick and swollen. “This,” he husked, slipping his hand between her thighs, “is mine. Never forget you’re mine, Ella. Never.”
“Never,” she gasped out, rocking against him.
They climaxed simultaneously, in the explosive chemistry they couldn’t help but create when they were together. Her orgasm was long and sweet, mingled with a completion she hadn’t felt in months, and as they rode it out, Ella clung to her mate.
His chest crashed against her back, hers hitched in jerky upward motions. Crosby gripped her shoulders and kept her tight against him. “Jesus.”
“Yeah. Him,” she said on a raspy chuckle, finally expressing a thought that had niggled at her since he’d saved her from Little. “So when did you get your memory back, mister?”
“The night before last.”
“And you didn’t tell me why?”
“Because I couldn’t get away from you, Nurse Ratched. I had to have the proof in hand before I was going to tell you anything. I wanted to be sure Little was taken care of and your father was safe before I ever opened my mouth. Besides, our bed is really comfortable. My office couch? Not so much. No way in hell was I going back to sleeping on that piece of plywood before I at least got a word in edgewise in my defense.”
More remorse for time lost reared its ugly head, twisting her heart. “I missed you, Crosby Nash.”
He rolled her over, his green eyes dark with emotion when they captured hers. He ran a tender hand down the side of her cheek. “I missed you, too, Mrs. Nash. Don’t ever do that again. It blew.”
“I hated every second,” she agreed, wrapping her arms around him, her hands caressing his broad back.
“Really? I had some seconds that weren’t so bad,” he teased against her lips, reaching over her head to grab his phone. His fingers flew over the keys in a text.
“Really? Maybe you might want to relive those seconds back at your office then?” she answered, sugary-sweet.
“It’s a pretty nice office.”
“Oh yeah? Do you think you could live there for the rest of your life?”
“Without you?”
“Well, why would I live at your office when I have satellite TV and a big sunken tub right here? Yeah, without me, Crosby Nash.”
“Oh. Then forget it, Ella Stills—Nash.”
“Good answer,” she cooed against his mouth, loving the freedom to indulge in his lips whenever she wanted from now on.
“The only answer.”
“Yeah,” she said on a deep sigh of satisfaction. “The only one.”
Her phone beeped and she groaned, arching her neck into the kisses he was trailing over her flesh.
“Maybe you should answer that, honey?”
She shook her head in an absolute no. “No. I just want to be in this bed with you.”
“But what if it’s important—maybe it’s about your dad.”
She was up in a shot, grabbing her phone and sliding it open. “No. Not my dad. It’s just a stupid tweet.”
“But maybe it’s an important tweet.”
Oh—he knew about Hairofthedog. Shit. “Look, let me explain Hairofthedog. I was just hoping to move forward because I was sure you were more interested in Barbie and her Dream House and Corvette. I was convinced Max and the pack were making you stay with me, and I didn’t want that.”
Crosby smiled wide. “Look at the tweet, honey.”
“Are you going to yell? Because I’d deserve it.”
“Just look.”
She scrolled down to the message and paused, her breath caught in her th
roat.
Hairofthedog: @EllaBelle I love you, Ella.
And then it all came back in a rush of warmth settling deep in her heart. The tweets when she was at Marina’s and the confession that he was her Twitter-fair. She’d forgotten all about that after Franklin had clobbered her and the subsequent revelations. “You were Hairofthedog all this time? You?”
His grin was crooked. “Well, you wouldn’t talk to me, so I thought I’d talk to you. I found you on Twitter and started doing just that.”
“So that’s where you were for two weeks? With me?” she asked on a giggle. “Damn it, Crosby. I thought I’d been dumped again. Good thing you’ve got all that expert lovemaking on your side, or I’d clunk you on your head again. Not funny, mister.”
Hauling her over top of him, he nipped her jaw. “Know what’s funnier?”
“Can’t think of anything right now.”
“I was, in my amnesiac state, jealous of myself.”
Her head fell back and her guffaw was loud. “All that gushing I did about his tweets… Ugh. I can’t believe it was you.”
Crosby plucked the phone from her hand and chucked it to the end of the bed. “It will always be me, Ella. Always.”
Pulling him tightly to her, she bobbed her head before falling into his embrace. “It’ll always be you, Crosby. Always,” she whispered back, putting all her heart and soul into her words.
And it was from that day on.
Crosby and Ella.
Always.
The End
Preview another book by this author
The Accidental Familiar
Accidentally Paranormal Series, Book 14
Dakota Cassidy
Chapter 1
“You’re talking. Like talking-talking, as in your mouth is moving and words are coming out. Words, I might add, that make total sense.”
“Totally fucked-up, right?”
Poppy McGuillicuddy snorted. So totally. “How is it even possible that you’re talking to me?”
“You have three choices.”
She gulped in the chilled autumn air, inhaling the scent of damp fur and the lingering stench of cheap booze before she sat up straighter and looked the talking cat in the eye (the talking cat).
“Okay, give me my choices. I’m listening.”
The tiny, round black cat began to pace the length of the brick garden wall they’d sat upon when Poppy had demanded she needed air after their “accident”.
The cat stretched, arching its rippling spine, the blue-black of its fur shimmering under the street lamp at the end of the driveway. “First, I just have to make mention. Cooler than coolio costume. Big KISS fan here.”
Poppy preened, fluffing her Afro wig and puffing out her chest to accent the shirt she wore, nude in color with glued-on patches of cotton balls she’d dyed black to mimic copious amounts of chest hair.
“Thanks. I worked extra hard on the star over my eye. Rock and roll hootchie-koo.”
“It totally shows. I’d know you were Paul Stanley if I was blind. Kudos for not going with the obvious choice, too.”
She flapped a hand at the cat and smiled at how clever she’d felt when she’d put this crazy costume together. “Gene’s so overdone. Plus, there’s the tongue thing, you know? I’m just not qualified. Anyway, where were we?”
“Choices,” the cat repeated.
“Right.”
“So let me lay this out for you in list form. You sure you’re ready?”
“Probably not, but I feel like choices are probably moot.”
The feline dipped its shiny, dark head. “No truer words. So here it is in a nutshell. Option one: you can hear me talking to you because you’re fuckin’ nuts. Two: you’re on drugs or have been drugged, which wouldn’t surprise me with that crowd of bananapants stoners in there at that lame excuse for a Halloween party. Three: I’m really talking to you.”
Poppy looked off toward her best friend’s house, sitting just behind the garden wall, and shivered. “I don’t like any of those categories, Alex. Can I have another?”
“Jeopardy doesn’t work that way, Poppy, and you know it,” the cat scolded. “Alex Trebek would be so insulted.”
She gaped at the cat. “How do you know my name?”
The cat scoffed, sitting up straight and affecting a jaunty pose. “Well, it went something like this: ‘Yo, yo, yo, girlz and booooyz! This is Poppy M to the C to the Guill-i-cudd-E in da house, spinnin’ you some oldies but goodies tonight! Who all remembers this mad-ass hit by the Spin Doooctooooors?’ So see? It wasn’t like you kept your name some big secret.”
Right. Her Run DMC impression. She’d been DJ-ing at her old friend Mel’s party before all this had gone down. And what had gone down during that party was nutters. Everything was nutters.
So she said as much to the cat as she rubbed her hands together to keep them warm. “This is insane.”
“Or maybe you are,” the feline offered, dry with sarcasm, sitting back on its haunches and eyeballing her with those wide green orbs.
Poppy cocked her head, remembering the cat’s words. “Insanity… That was one of the choices you laid out, right?”
“Yep. Because sometimes if you’re crazy, it goes hand and hand with delusions. Maybe I’m just a delusion you’ve cooked up in your nutbag head.”
Right. Maybe this was all a delusion. She wasn’t prone to them that she knew of, but how would you know you were having delusions if you were delusional?
She looked down at her phone and the number the cat had told her to call when it realized something was terribly out of whack and talked her into coming outside to handle their little indiscretion with less Blink-182 and Rick James blaring in their ears.
Poppy picked up her phone, letting her feline companion hear the endless drone of ringing on the other end. “I don’t think anyone’s going to pick up. Maybe I dialed the wrong—”
“This is Nina Blackman-Statleon of OOPS, for all your dramatic, life-altering emergency paranormal needs. Recently PA-and ratchety-ass, bag-o’-old-crusty-Paranormal-Council-bones approved as a legitimate source for the stickier paranormal events in your life. So, do tell. How can I help your pathetic, whiny soul today?”
Before Poppy was able to ask what all this talk about crisis and crusty-bones approved business was about, someone cut off the woman on the other end of the line.
“Nina!” a woman with a melodic voice chastised in the background. “Stop that! That could be a real client on the other end in dire need!”
“What, Fakey-Locks? Like they’re not pathetic when they’re all needy and clingy? Please. You asked me to answer the phones tonight, and that’s what I’m doin’. Just shut your over-glossed lips and let me handle this.”
Poppy waivered, rethinking the cat’s nutball suggestion to ring up this hotline called OOPS, one alleging it offered help when you were in paranormal crisis.
But the cat had told her to call this number as if the number itself were a lifeline to God. The talking cat said this was who to call—nay, it had insisted these were the people to bring into this so-called mess.
“Well speak, for catnip’s sake!” the persistent feline urged, nudging her elbow with its peculiarly round head. “We don’t have all stinkin’ night. We need to get this shit straightened out before Familiar Central sends someone in. It won’t look good if we dawdle. You don’t want to look bad in front of your new superiors, do you, Spin Doctor?”
“Poppy!” she blurted out her name, because for some reason it seemed important she be known as something more than the DJ. “My name is Poppy. DJ-ing is just something I do on the side for a little extra cash,” she stated with as much clarity as one could muster when having a conversation with a house pet.
“It’ll be Shit On A Stick if you don’t get crackin’.” The cat’s tail swished in an agitated semi-circle over the surface of the bricks again. “Now talk!” it hissed.
“Hellooo? You’ve got twenty GD seconds before I use my internal
GPS and hunt your ass down for crank calling me,” the woman named Nina groused. “I’m gonna start counting now. One…”
Poppy closed her eyes and took a shaky, deep breath of the cold night air, trying to sort through the bits and pieces about familiars and superiors and focus on the fact that this person on the other end of the line was supposed to help her.
With a trembling hand, Poppy finally held the phone up to her ear. “Um, hello?” she whispered into the phone, attempting a calm tone.
No one was going to retell this horror story someday and call Poppy McGuillicuddy a chicken-shit. Not on your life. When witnesses retold this harrowing tale, it would always be prefaced by how brave she’d been.
“I said, how the eff can I help you?” the voice belonging to Nina, the OOPS operator, growled.
Okay, so forget valor. Shit, shit, shit. This was a mistake. A big mistake.
But the cat, the damn talking cat, nudged Poppy again and shouted over the screech of Run DMC still blaring from inside her best friend’s house, “Tell that crabby-AF, pale-faced beast of the female persuasion it’s her friggin’ reluctant-as-hell familiar calling!”
She looked down at the tiny cat with the round head and eyes the color and shape of green marbles and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming.
In and out, Poppy. Breathe in and out. Don’t panic.
“Yo?” Nina prodded, still growling and quite clearly annoyed.
Finally composed, she waded into the conversation pool carefully, because the person on the other end of the phone sounded like everything would be much less explosive if you spoke delicately.
“Your talking cat said I should call you at this number. Did I mention your cat talks? Like, it actually talks. Can I ask you something before we shift into high gear and get to the root of my phone call to you?”
There was a long sigh and then the cantankerous woman said, “You get one question. After that, I get annoyed as all hell, and if you don’t like me now—which, based on my past history with first impressions, I’m guessin’ you’re not a fucking fan yet—then you sure as shit won’t like me when I’m aggravated.”
Bad Case of Loving You Page 11