“You shall find a darling woman of…” Bell and Petúr stared at each other, eyes wide. “Heart.”
He recalled Grappling Hook yelling something about he’d never claim the human woman. Grapple knows.
“We’ll find the portal.”
Petúr jerked around to see Wyndi sitting on the edge of her seat, hair mussed, bee stung lips red and pursed, with tears streaming down her face. The sight of her, his Darlingheart, along with the sound of her sweet voice, set his heart to pound in his chest double time.
Chapter Seven
Wyndi lost her breath when Petúr grabbed her up from the chair, clutching her to his chest as if he’d never let her go. Although, before she could make the point she needed air, he bounced her into the cradle of his strong arms, and carried her out of Bell’s room.
“Vibe,” he said, passing him in haste. “Make sure Bell gets something to eat for breakfast, and have Byte check on the progress of the nano when he goes to change her bandages.”
“Uh. Okay,” said Vibe.
“Where are we going?” Wyndi asked.
“My room.” Five rapid heartbeats later, they were inside his bedroom with Petúr kicking the door closed behind them. “I need to know something,” he said in his honey tones.
Wyndi glanced up at him from under her lashes, and shivered. He was staring at her with eyes glinting gold. The braid he wore in his hair dangled down the right side of his cheek, tickling her.
“What do you want to know?”
“This.”
Petúr bent his head, slanted his mouth over hers, tongue tasting the line of her lips until she parted them on an intake of breath. When their flesh met, she closed her eyes. Fireworks exploded inside her head, the luminous sparks floating, then falling, falling, and transitioning into a force crashing down over her—a title wave of longing. She moaned, tasting the summer sky, morning dew, the sweetness of rainbows, sultry nights, and rain storms.
Mind whirling, her body shifting, she was lying on her back, fingers tangled into the nape of Petúr’s satiny hair, the other hand pressed against the steely strength of his shirt-covered chest. Every part of her became aware of him on some sort of molecular level. Yet nothing could have prepared her for what she experienced when he tucked himself between her thighs and groaned. Heat slammed into her core. Her stomach quivered. Her panties dampened. An inferno. Yes, surely it must be an inferno which lapped at her skin while their tongues tangled into infinity.
****
Petúr was lost in an ocean of sensation, wave after wave, pulling him under. The connection to this woman beneath him was undeniable. Everything about Wyndi filled him up until there was nothing but her. Her taste. Her touch. Her scent. His chest expanded.
Damn, her scent. She tasted better than the cotton candy fragrance that wafted from her skin. Skin. Oh, yes, skin. That’s what he needed, to feel her soft skin against his.
“Wyndi.” He breathed, saddened to break the kiss, reaching over his shoulder, yanking the material of his shirt, lifting up with the other hand, and pulling the garment from over his head. “I must feel your flesh against mine.”
Her tongue darted out, licking her lips. Was she nervous? Well, he’d be the balm to soothe those nerves. He focused on her mouth. Those delicious lips were kiss swollen and moist, making his cock strain even more against the constraint of his pants.
“Okay,” she said in a small, breathy voice, the lids covering her blue eyes at half-mast.
He reached for the hem of the too big nightshirt covering the body he had to see, lifting until he revealed her little white panties and lacy bra covered breasts. Blood raced through his veins. He wanted to do everything with her. To her. Touch all over. Taste every inch of her. Put his fingers and cock into the tight, warm sheath he knew was awaiting him.
Take her. Hell yeah. Those two words became a chant within his mind. He wanted to take his woman in every position he could imagine and then some. His woman? Yes. Yes she was his, or would be. Slow your roll. You don’t want to scare her. He had to maintain. He couldn’t go at her like some out of control beast.
Leaning down, he kissed between the creamy mounds of her cleavage, skimmed his cheek across the apex of her right breast, watching goose bumps scatter across her flesh in a wanton invitation. Unable to stop himself from licking her, he lapped at her in one, long, lingering stroke, from the top edge of the bra, up her collarbone, only stopping because the material he’d lifted hindered his progress being bunched around her neck.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered. “You taste so good.”
She shook, and he wanted her shakes.
“I do?”
“Yes,” he answered, feeling her warm palms slide down his biceps. Even that tantalized him. “I’m already addicted.” He went to his elbows, slid his hands under her shoulder blades, arching her up, dropped his head, grabbed the flimsy middle of her bra with his teeth, bit, and tugged, ripping it free.
“Oh!” she uttered.
Moving the material aside with his nose, he pulled back enough to see her, soaking every bit of her pink and white flesh in with his eyes, before flicking a rosebud nipple with the tip of his tongue.
“Petúr.” He reveled in the sound of his name falling from her lips, and sucked the nipple he’d been teasing into his mouth. “Mm…We should stop.” He lightly bit. Swirled his tongue around the aroused nub. “Oh…Never mind. Don’t stop,” she uttered, as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
“Never stop. No.” He sounded like a Neanderthal, but just then, when Wyndi pressed herself into his erection, he didn’t care.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Someone’s pounding on the door,” Wyndi said.
Petúr kissed her other breast. “Ignore them. They’ll go away.”
“Wait.” The delicate hands roving over his shoulders pressed. “It might be about Bell.”
“Big guy,” Dash called through the door. “I hate to interrupt, but Tera and Byte say we have visitors this morning.” A pause. “Visitors in the way of surveyors over by the ticket booth.”
Petúr stiffened, and not in a good way. “Coming!” he shouted, and again, he wasn’t coming in a good way either.
He stared down into Wyndi’s face. “I’ve got to go handle this.”
“Dash said ‘surveyors.’ As in, land surveyors?”
Extricating himself from her was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “Yes.”
He stood and glanced over his shoulder at her, wanting to whimper when she yanked the shirt down over her torso, covering her delectable breasts.
“Maybe the city is—”
“The city of Oceanport sold Neverland to your father.”
She sat up in a shot, and he had to admit Wyndi looked good in his bed.
“What?”
“Your father bought Neverland. This place is now part of Darlinghart, Inc.”
She dropped her chin, autumn hair falling to obscure her face. “His beach front condo project,” she muttered under her breath. “I knew he’d been working on something.” She glanced up at him, blue eyes sad. “I didn’t know this was the land. God. I’m so sorry, Petúr.”
“Don’t be,” he said, in a much harsher tone than he ever wanted to use with her.
“What are you going to do?”
“For now, scare off the surveyors,” he said, turning from her, and stomping out his bedroom door.
****
Wyndi was experiencing a mishmash of emotions and shaking from lingering need. Her skin still tingled from Petúr’s touch, and she wanted to hold onto every sensation, like the way his large hands felt upon her body. His kiss. The warmth of his mouth. The mastery of his tongue. The way he made her feel hot and wanting. Yet her mind kept going to the anger apparent on his face when he spoke of her father buying Neverland.
Her poor warrior. Was he really hers? Yes, she decided. There would be no denying the instantaneous, heated connection between them. No denying how much she wanted him. And how could she dis
allow the passion in his kiss? She caressed her mouth with her fingertips. She couldn’t.
There was also no refuting Petúr was a warrior to his core. Capable. Strong. Stoic. Yet, she’d seen moments of boy-like vulnerability. Sadness within the depths of his eyes. Longing. Those emotions he worked at hiding away made a lot of sense. When Wyndi heard Bell tell him about Illia, his mother, how he’d been left behind as a newborn baby, never knowing of her. He grew up never knowing of his home, and her own heart ached for him. By his own admission, he’d always felt different. An outcast.
Wyndi bit at the inside of her cheek and shook her head. How he’d survived, she didn’t know, but he had. He’d thrived even. And, now, the one place he clearly loved, the place he’d made his home, was being threatened by her father.
She rolled out of bed, brushing her fingers through her hair, and setting her chin. “Screw that.”
She would do something about her father and his newest pet project. She couldn’t see Petúr and the others homeless. She just couldn’t.
Wyndi marched, with determined barefooted steps, into the room everyone referred to as the control center, where Tera and Byte were sitting in office chairs in front of a wall of monitors. Her attention bounced to those monitors, seeing men in white hardhats scatter when something huge and dark shot past them in a blur overhead. She heard a noise akin to a sonic boom. Panicked shouts. Saw their surveying equipment and some of those white hats tumble from an unseen wind an instant before a thick fog rolled in. And was that Vibe, strolling over to one of the men who cowered behind the old ticket booth?
Her eyes narrowed. Yeah. It was, Vibe. Obviously, the twins had the amusement park rigged with cameras as well as listening devices.
“Don’t hurt me,” the man said, voice shaky.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Vibe.
Where was Petúr? He had to be in the mix somewhere, but she didn’t see him.
Pulling her attention away from what was going on outside, she blurted out, “Do you guys have a telephone in here?”
Tera glanced over his shoulder. “Hi ya, doll.”
Her brow crinkled. “Er…Hi.”
“What do you need a phone for?” asked Byte, not bothering to glance in her direction.
“I lost my purse and laptop last night in the ruckus outside my bar. My cell phone was in my purse and I need to make a call,” she said.
“We’ve got your laptop and your purse.” Tera pointed to a desk butted up against the far wall. “Vibe brought it to us last night.”
She smiled, bounding over to snag up her purse, then frowned when she didn’t find her phone inside. “No phone,” she uttered. She tapped her foot. “Can I use yours? I need to make a call,” she said again.
“To whom?” asked Byte.
“My father.”
Byte turned around at that. “Why would you need to call Cromwell Darlingheart?”
“You know he’s my father?”
He nodded. “Of course. Petúr told us.”
She bit at the inside of her cheek. “I want to call and tell him to call off the surveyors.”
“No need,” said Tera. “Those pesky humans will be gone soon enough.”
“Yeah,” said Byte.
She glowered at them. “I’m a human.”
“We know, doll.” Tera’s nostrils worked. “No getting around that fact.”
Wyndi put her hands on her hips. “What’s that suppose to mean?”
“Just that we could smell you from a mile away.”
She frowned. “Smell me?”
“Oh, absolutely, doll,” said Tera.
“So, not only do I smell, but I’m pesky?”
“Never said that.” Tera elbowed his brother. “Did I, Byte?”
“Nope,” said Byte, shaking his head. “He never said you were pesky. Just that you smell.”
Wyndi sniffed the ends of her hair. Her shoulder. “What do I smell like?”
“Candy. Sugar sweet.”
Candy wasn’t a bad scent as scents go she supposed.
“Mm,” Tera agreed.
“All right, all right,” she said. She needed to get this conversation back on track. “I don’t really care if you consider me pesky or not, or if I smell like candy.”
“Reek actually,” Byte said. “You reek of candy.”
She sighed. Exasperated. “Fine.”
“Not sure reek’s the right term, Byte,” said Tera. “Reek indicates something bad, and her odor—”
“Odor,” Byte said, laughing. “As if odor is any better than reek.”
“Odor’s better than stink. Or stench.”
“True,” said Byte. “Her smell, while strong, isn’t unpleasant.”
“Ah. I know.” Tera clapped. “How about wonderfully odoriferous?”
“Okay,” Wyndi interjected, holding up her hand. “I don’t care about your word choices to describe what I smell like. What I really care about is a—”
“No phones,” said Byte, face serious now.
Tera nodded. “Yep. What he said.”
“Oh come on, you guys. You expect me to believe that, with all the technology in this place, including the internet?” She eyed the computer screen just to the right of Tera where a set of golf clubs on Ebay took center stage.
“What?” said Tera, catching her gaze. “I like to golf. What’s wrong with that?”
She rolled her eyes. “You want me to believe you don’t have a phone? Not even a cell phone?”
“Believe what you will, luv,” said Byte. “But, no phone until Petúr decides what he’s going to do about you.”
Do about me?
Chapter Eight
Vapor and Vibe flanked Petúr as they headed back to the castle, the two of them doing a fist bump with each other. “Way to make those old dudes shake in their boots, Vape.”
“Shake? More like piss their pants.” Vapor laughed before woo-hooing. “God. I love this scare the humans shit.”
“I may have,” said Vibe, Wink. Wink. “implanted the suggestion Neverland was haunted. So I doubt we see those surveyors again.”
“Don’t celebrate our victory too soon,” said Petúr. “We may have scared off Cromwell’s men this time, but more will come.”
Vibe glanced at Petúr from the corner of his eye. “Speaking of our old buddy. What are you going to do about his daughter?”
“Something I imagine she’s not going to like.”
****
“You can’t do this,” Wyndi insisted, stomping her foot in the middle of the kitchen.
“I can, and I will,” Petúr said, eyes burning like liquid gold.
Dash started studying the newspaper he hadn’t been reading. And was Tera whistling as he walked off? Men.
“I refuse to be some kind of prisoner, Petúr.”
“On that note,” said Firefox, placing a massive bowl of scrambled eggs in the middle of the table. “I’m outta here.”
Petúr made a derisive sound, glancing down at her. “Prisoner? Really?”
“Okay. Maybe not a prisoner in the actual sense of the word, but—”
“I’m freakin’ hungry,” said Vapor, grabbing up a plate of bacon. “So, you two fight away. I’m still eating.”
“Me, too,” said Byte. “Pass the toast, Vape my man.”
“Grapple is after you, Wyndi.” Petúr said, ignoring all of his brothers. “And in case you’ve forgotten the incident in your parking lot, he’s not someone who you want on your trail.”
“No,” she said, quietly, picturing the swarm of darklings coming out of the shadows. A shiver spiraled down her spine. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“I can better protect you here.”
“I can’t stay in Neverland indefinitely, Petúr. I have a business to run, and I can’t go missing without word.”
He crossed his arms, biceps bulging. Get a grip, she thought. They were having an argument in the middle of the kitchen, with witnesses. Was it weird she wanted to lick the r
ight well-formed muscle and then the left?
“You’re not leaving the castle,” he said, lines of tension branching out from the corners of his devastatingly gorgeous eyes. “End of story.”
The man was stubborn. Well, two could play that game.
She crossed her arms, doubting the gesture to be as impressive. “I at least need to go home for a little while.”
He gave one terse shake of his head. “Not happening.”
“I won’t stay long. I’ll do what I need to then come back.”
“Nope.”
Wyndi heaved a sighed. Exasperated. “I need to make some calls, get my assistant manager to fill in at the bar, have Sven cover for Bell, and shift servers around on the floor.” She glanced down at herself. “Not to mention, I don’t have any clothing here and I can’t flit around in your Tshirts all the time.”
He smirked, glancing down the length of her body. “Why not? I enjoy the way you look in my Tshirts.”
She quickly looked around to see the others not really paying attention, or maybe they were good at hiding the fact they actually were taking in every moment of their quarrel.
Her cheeks flamed. “Get serious, Petúr.”
“I assure you, I am serious.”
More heat danced over her skin by the way he was watching her.
“But—”
“Vibe will pay a visit to Jolly Roger’s. You’re away on business for your father. At least, that’s what everyone will believe.”
“And Bell?”
“Out sick,” he said. “Vibe will make sure her shift is covered.”
She set her chin, hands on hips. “And my father? Is Vibe going to scramble my father’s brains, too?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “What do you mean, too?”
“I wasn’t mugged in that alley, was I?”
“No,” he said in a quiet tone. “One of the darklings was after you.” She blinked, the memory coming forward in her mind of a ghoul with a forked tongue. “I’m sorry, but I was trying to protect you from remembering something most would consider a nightmare.”
“And trying to keep me from knowing about you and the others, too.”
“Yes,” he said. “But, now you know, and I promise Vibe will never change your memories again.”
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