Morrie stood at the top of the stairs as I stormed out, and sighed.
I punched him in the arm as I went past. It was the safest option. Much safer than… other options.
Mina waited in the hallway as I descended the staircase. Her coat hung open, exposing a crimson jersey dress that hugged her curves and plunged at the neckline in a way that made my chest ache. When she saw me, her whole face broke into a grin, and it was as if a ray of sunlight shot straight through my veins. No one had ever looked at me like that before. Not even Cathy.
“Right. Let’s get this over with,” I grumbled, looking away from her, afraid that she’d read my devotion in my features. Mina tossed me my coat and scarf and looped her arm in mine. I didn’t need the extra layers. Her touch warmed the darkest, coldest corners of my soul.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we stepped into the bleak night. “I hope it’s not a movie. I hate all the people crunching popcorn and talking, and the music is always too loud—”
“Relax, Grandpa, it’s like you think I don’t know you.” Mina hitched a giant square bag filled with clanking objects over her shoulder. “Trust me. This date is Heathcliff-friendly.”
She led me across the green and down to the edge of the village, over the rolling hills to the edge of a small wood. I sucked in the frigid air, my lungs hurting as the cold touched them. My shoulders unhunched, my muscles relaxed. The weight of Nevermore, of my responsibilities, of trying to be someone I wasn’t, slipped away.
I didn’t know why Mr. Simson wanted us to wait for her or why he thought Mina was so important, but I knew one thing for a fact – whatever evil that threatened her would have to get through me first, and I was six feet of pure rage and gypsy violence.
“This is King’s Copse,” Mina was saying, sweeping her gloved hand around the wood. “Of course, when the King actually used to hunt here, the wood covered all the surrounding hills. But most of it was cleared during the 19th and 20th centuries, and only this small section remains.”
The name sounded familiar. I’d heard Mina and Morrie discussing it in relation to their murder investigation. “Doesn’t this belong to the gent whose wife you reckon killed the old bint?”
“Grey Lachlan? Yeah, he’s the developer. But I’m not sure he did it. Mrs. Ellis believes the Lachlans are innocent, and I’m starting to agree. I mean, poisoning someone is a pretty extreme way to deal with a local planning committee, and killing Mrs. Scarlett isn’t exactly going to change the rest of the committee’s mind. I’m wondering about Dorothy Ingram – she’s head of the church committee and believed the Banned Book Club was sinful. As for trespassing, it’s a wood. It’s not like it’s got security guards. Kids from the village and the housing estate have been coming here for years. I used to spend a lot of warm summer evenings down by the stream.”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” I pulled my collar up as a gust of icy wind bit into my skin. “It’s not a warm summer’s evening.”
“Hush. Man up.” Mina’s teeth chattered, and she leaned into my body. I swallowed hard as I pulled her against me, swallowing her tiny figure in my bulk. She felt so perfect in my arms, like I’d been missing a limb and she’d just slotted it back into place. “I want to show you something.”
Mina broke away from me and stepped down the path. Immediately, she ran into trouble. She kept trying to lead the way but she couldn’t see in the gloom. Stupid, infuriating, fierce and beautiful woman, she’s going to fall and break her bloody neck.
I couldn’t fucking take it. I couldn’t watch her struggle like this, knowing I had the power to help. I slipped my fingers into hers – the softness of her tiny hands between my large, clumsy fingers stuttering my heart – and I led the way down the path. The tension in Mina’s body slipped away the deeper we delved, as inch by inch she made the choice to trust me, to trust this burning, needy thing that raged between us.
She’s losing a piece of herself, and finding it again in me. I know a little of what that feels like.
Mina could never know how much she had become the light in my darkness. But at least, for a while, I could pretend I was hers.
I helped her down a rocky slope, and we found ourselves standing on the banks of a rambling stream. Water lapped against smooth stones and the trees bent overhead, revealing the pale moon through their tangled branches. Round boulders had banked up here from eons past when the gentle brook had been a raging torrent, and the rocks formed a scoop in the landscape, sheltered somewhat from the wind and the noise of the road.
Mina stepped to the edge of the water, holding her arms wide. “You can’t see this place from the road, and most people go the other way because there’s a flat area that’s nicer for sitting. Ashley and I used to skip school and walk out here. We’d listen to punk songs on an old Discman and draw fashion sketches. Once, we even went skinny-dipping in the stream.”
I didn’t like her dancing on the edge of the water like that. Her shoes were not designed for such rambling. I grabbed Mina’s hips, holding her steady, arresting her gaze with mine. She froze, trapped in my grip.
I swallowed. Skinny-dipping.
And although I tried to hold back the visions – the imaginings of a wicked, unloved boy – I saw it all as if it happened in front of me.
That red dress of hers flung against the stones.
Mina’s naked skin, pale in the moonlight, kissed by the darkness.
Her arms, wrapped around my neck, a noose of my own making.
Those green eyes burning in mine as we burned up in each other’s fire.
If Mina felt my dick pressing against her thigh, if the ferocity of my presence terrified her, she gave no indication. She stood proud and defiant, staring me down, daring me to voice my dark desires, to make real my feeble imaginings.
And I craved her all the more for her bravado.
Mina smiled, breaking the spell. “Don’t get excited – it was a disaster. Turns out, the stream’s only about knee deep, so we just waddled around in the buff. Then something bit Ashley’s foot, and I got this ugly red rash from the weeds that didn’t disappear for a week. I’ve never gone skinny-dipping since. Can you see a long, flat rock anywhere?”
“Over here.” I dropped my grip on her. The sudden absence of her touch twisted in my gut like a knife. I stepped away and took a moment to collect myself before leading her over to the rock she described. Mina felt around the edges with her hands, satisfying herself it was the rock she remembered. She unrolled a blanket over the rock, then laid out jars and containers – bread, cheese, meat, grapes, doughnuts. A bottle of wine – the kind of cheap plonk that would have sent Morrie into paroxysms of horror.
“You thought of everything.” I was having a hard time breathing as I took in what she’d prepared for us. For me. She prepared every detail of this date for me and me alone. No one had ever spared a thought for Heathcliff Earnshaw before, not even Cathy, who saw me only as an extension of herself, whose love, I knew from a distance, was made of selfishness and spite.
But Mina… Mina saw me, truly saw me. A lump rose in my throat even as my dick pushed against my waistband, whispering dark thoughts to me. Twice, the knife slipped from my fingers, laying cuts across my skin. The pain drew me back to the present, back to this crisp night and the beautiful woman who thought I was worth sharing it with.
“I’m quite clever, you know.” Mina handed me a plastic cup filled with wine, and I passed her bread and cheese I’d prepared with a shaking hand.
“Don’t say that. You sound like Morrie. I don’t want to think about Morrie tonight.” The shirt he’d chosen for me pulled across my shoulders. It seemed that no matter how much I tried to escape him, Morrie’s presence would always loom over me.
“Did I choose the perfect spot for our date?” Mina sipped her bubbly.
“You did.” I leaned closer, breathing in her orange blossom scent, made sweeter by the saccharine wine staining her lips. “I didn’t even know about this wood. If I ha
d, I’d probably come more often. I don’t get out into nature as much as I should.”
“Is it because it reminds you of Wuthering Heights?”
My body stiffened at the mention of that place. But unlike with Quoth and Morrie, I found I wanted to talk about it with her. As if… talking made Wuthering Heights part of the story that brought me to her as this broken, wild man she somehow found it in her heart to cherish. “Probably. It’s more that the England of my world doesn’t exist here, not for me – the moors were the last true wild place, ethereal and menacing in equal measure. Their wild beauty hid danger and memory and a dream that withered into dust.”
“The moors still exist, you know. You could go back there and be close to her memory.”
I stiffened. This conversation was taking a turn toward things I didn’t – I couldn’t – discuss. And the only way I could think of avoiding it was to listen to my throbbing dick, which didn’t seem smart. “I cannot.”
“Why not? Sell the shop. Buy a cottage in the middle of nowhere. You’d never have to see a customer again—”
“Don’t say such things, Mina.” Give me strength. I tipped the entire cup down my throat. Where’s my whisky when I need it? “Don’t think I haven’t considered it.”
“Then why do you stay? Surely one of the other fictional characters could run the shop, someone who’s better with people. There’s nothing to keep you here—”
“You’re here.”
“But I’ve only been here a few weeks. You could have gone before that.”
We’d officially moved into dangerous territory. I cast my eyes to the sky, dull panic settling in my chest. If Morrie were here, he’d know how to get out of talking about this. A memory flashed in my mind – a pair of pouty lips looming dangerously close, a dare hissed in the darkness, a tension that cut the air like a knife... Scratch that, Morrie’s way of avoiding difficult subjects leaves much to be desired. “I have a duty,” I said, stalling for time.
“To Mr. Simson? But why?”
“Because of you!” I yelled. I leaped away from her, scattering food across the rocks. My whole body clamored to run, to be free of the hold she already had on my heart. “Why must you ask so many bloody questions?”
“I don’t know, why do you never give me a straight bloody answer? You can’t just drop a bombshell like that and expect me not to ask more. Why because of me?”
Fine. You want to know? I’ll give you the truth. Every last fucking inch of it.
No, no. My cock throbbed against my trousers. Don’t think about giving inches now.
I drew in a shuddering breath. “Mr. Simson told me to wait for a girl to return to the shop. He said this girl was extremely important to all of us, and that she was in great danger, and we were to keep her safe. He described you. Or at least, we’re pretty sure it was you. That blind codger’s description wasn’t exactly resplendent with visual detail. But when you walked into the shop and told that story about how you used to spend all your time there as a child, and Quoth realized you could hear his thoughts, we guessed he meant you.”
Mina’s voice rose as she took this in. “And that’s why you gave me the job. Because Mr. Simson told you to. This is insane. Why would Mr. Simson ask you to wait for me?”
“I know as much as you do, which is nothing. Morrie’s current assumption is that Mr. Simson used the master bedroom to travel into the bookshop’s future and see that you were in danger. He’s desperate to try it himself.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Is that why Quoth is following me home every night and sitting at the foot of my bed? Because you all think I’m in danger? What kind of peril am I in that I can’t handle myself?”
“He didn’t elaborate.”
“Well, you can stop bloody protecting me. I don’t need it.”
My whole body trembled with the force of holding back what I wanted to do to her. “Not going to happen. Danger follows you around like a curse. Not a single person died in Nevermore Bookshop until you showed up. We’re not taking chances. One of us has been near you every moment from the time you walked into the shop. We take turns, making sure you’re always safe.”
Mina shot to her feet, facing me with wild eyes. “You can’t just spy on me without telling me!”
“I’m telling you now.”
“You should have told me the first day. This is my life. I had a right to know.”
“Not just your life.” Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck fuck. How could she not know what she did to me? Her lips curled back into a scowl that drove me crazy. Rage looked so bloody fine on Mina Wilde. “This danger will come down on all our heads.”
“If I’m such a bloody danger to you all,” Mina screamed into my face, “then why bother keeping me around?”
“Mina.”
The veneer of control fell away, and all that I was, all the darkness and fire I tried to hide from her blazed under the moonlight, aching and surging and raging to consume us both.
Step back now. I’m warning you.
“Just fire me, Heathcliff. Rip off the Band-Aid. You don’t even like me, anyway. You’re just doing this out of some misguided sense of duty to Mr. Simson. Well, I’m not anyone’s pity project. You’d be better off if I never came into your life. You’d be—”
“Oh, fuck it.” The words tumbled out of my mouth as I crushed my lips to hers.
Mina’s body melted against mine. That was the only way to describe it. Like she and I were molten metal being poured into a singular mold. Her mouth against mine was hot and demanding, taking the rage and fire I fed her and flinging it back at me.
She sucked my lower lip, those green eyes reflecting the moonlight, cloaked in feral need. A moan escaped from the dark place inside me, rumbling in her mouth as she swallowed my pain and demanded more, more, more.
Weeks of pent-up frustration flowed between us, as with hands and mouth and tongues we said all those things we’d tiptoed around for too long.
My arms went around her, clutching her against me as I poured my passion and my rage into her, and like the wild woman she was, she begged for more. I laid her down across the rock, my hands roaming over her tiny, perfect body, pawing like an animal, exploring with wild abandon. She rolled her head to the side, her chest heaving and a whimper escaping her lips as she responded to my touch.
“Mina, do you want me to stop?” I growled, the fire of her roaring in my veins.
My hands slid underneath her, tugging at the jersey dress to reveal the warm, supple skin and the raw and wild woman beneath.
“Fuck no.” Her body shuddered with need.
“Good.” I threw the dress over her head, yanked down her leggings, and divid between her legs.
From the Author
The Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries are some of the most joyful and personal books I’ve written, for a number of reasons. I’ve poured my love of literature into these characters, and tried to convey the power of stories to transform our lives – both the stories we read and the ones we tell ourselves.
For Mina, books saved her when she was lonely and vulnerable, and now, when she returns to Argleton, books – and their hot fictional heroes – are going to get her through her biggest challenge yet.
You might not know this, but I’m legally blind. Unlike Mina, my eyesight didn’t fade over time. I was born with the genetic condition achromatopsia, which means my eyes lack the millions of cone cells required to recognise colours and perceive depth. I’m completely colour blind, light sensitive with poor depth perception, I squint and blink all the time, and struggle to make eye contact. I’m so short-sighted I’m considered legally blind. I will never drive a car, fly and aeroplane, or comprehend the radiant beauty of a rainbow.
As a kid, I was bullied relentlessly because I was different. I had wonky eyes and an overactive imagination and I sucked at sport. Other kids taunted me because I couldn’t do the things they did.
I thought I was a freak, destined never to have any friends.
I exp
ected to be alone forever.
I found solace in books, and in music. I lost myself in worlds that took me far away from my small town and the people who hated me. In those worlds, it was okay to be different. I became the unlikely heroine of my own story, and unlikely heroines got to have all sorts of adventures.
As I grew older, I experienced discrimination in a similar way Mina did. I felt both the pull of outrage and the push of inevitability. If someone says I can’t do a job, are they right? Our world goes out of its way to tell us that people who are different should be pushed aside.
Fuck that.
Sometimes life shuts you out of opportunities, of things you deserve. Sometimes working hard isn’t enough. It sucks and it hurts, but there’s only two ways to proceed – you can curl up and wither away, or you can make your own opportunities.
Four years ago when I published my first Steffanie Holmes book, I had no idea where it would lead. Now I got to write books every day. I’m able to tell Mina’s story, and part of my own story, too.
There are so many people who’ve supported me and believed in me, even when I struggled to believe in myself. My parents, Mother and Father Metal, and my sis, Belinda, for their unfaltering support.
The writers with whom I’ve celebrated and commiserated – the peeps on Dirty Discourse, the fab ladies of Romance Writers of New Zealand, my reverse harem babes – Bri, Katya, Elaina, Kit. Thank you for teaching me that when one of us succeeds, it lifts everyone up.
To my friends, the bogans, my extended family, my brothers and sisters of metal. I apologise for the volume of our shenanigans that end up in my books.
Always, to my cantankerous drummer husband, who is everything to me. Every hero I write is a piece of you and what you mean to me.
And lastly, to you, my readers, for going on this journey with me. I love you more than words can say.
If you’re enjoying the literary references in Nevermore, check out my new dark reverse harem bully romance series, Broken Muses of Manderley Academy. Book 1 is Ghosted and it’s a classic gothic tale of ghosts and betrayal, creepy old houses and three beautifully haunted guys with dark secrets. Plus, a kickass curvy heroine. You will LOVE it.
Welcome to Nevermore Bookshop Page 70