They made a second turn, and he was surprised when she turned onto Russell and pulled into the parking lot of the plaza he’d been heading toward. This must be my lucky day. A beautiful woman and my new store. He watched as she got out and went to the front of the shop and inserted a key, then unlocked the door.
Hell yeah! Grinning, he got out of the car and walked up, gently pushed open the door, and stood looking down the barrel of a .357 Magnum. “Hey, whoa!” He threw up his hands and froze.
“Who the hell are you, and why did you follow me from the club?”
“I did not follow you from the club. And if you’ll put the gun down, I’ll tell you who I am.” He never moved, just eyed the gun.
She didn’t lower it an inch. “Tell me, or I’ll fill you full of holes.”
Balan couldn’t help the fact that the situation turned him on, but she looked so fierce for the tiny thing she was. I am one sick demon. “Look. My name is Balan, and I work at the club. I’m a friend of Anais and Wolfe. You can call them since you know her brother, and they will vouch for me. I’m not following you. I went to your old location and was told by a homeless woman that you’d moved. So here I am.” While it wasn’t the total truth, he had followed her from the light, it was close enough to pass. He hoped.
“I saw you at the club, but you weren’t dressed like the others.” She reluctantly lowered the weapon but refused to turn her back on him.
Chapter Four
“As you can tell, I’m in street clothes. We don’t exactly go around dressed in our costumes in public.” He chuckled and began to relax a bit. He knew he could have stopped her—he was much bigger and stronger—but if he didn’t have to tip his hand as to what he was, he didn’t plan on doing it. “Do you own the shop?”
“Yeah, I do. I’m just getting things finished up so I can have an official grand opening.” She moved behind the counter and picked up several stacked boxes from the floor, then bent for more.
Balan’s eyes glazed over as he saw the last two boxes. They were his favorite, and he knew he had to have them. “Hey, sell me the two boxes of Fireballs.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.
“Nope. They’re the only two I have in stock and don’t want to order any more till after I’m open.” She didn’t bother looking at him. Every time she did, all she could think of is how he’d look naked. She just knew that if he worked at the club, he had to be ripped. And hung like a bull too, probably. She shivered at the direction her naughty thoughts were going.
“Hey, come on. I drove all over the city looking for you, and now you tell me you won’t serve me? A soon-to-be-loyal customer?”
Jenna looked over the edge of the counter at him in shock. She’d never heard a grown man almost beg for candy. “What’s your issue?”
“I don’t have an issue. I just like Fireballs.” He felt like he had to defend himself.
“Sounds like an issue to me.” She stood with the final boxes and arranged them in the display case after ripping off the lids. “Soon-to-be-loyal customer, huh?”
“Yeah, but if you’re always going to be this rude, then I can find another place to shop.” Balan was feeling a little pissy after being told no. He wasn’t used to it and didn’t like it one bit. Women never said no to him.
“I am not rude.” She stood with hands on hips glaring at him.
He watched anger cross her face and felt like pulling her into a kiss that would curl her toes. There was something incredibly sexy about this woman when she was mad. Yep, I’m one sick, fucking demon. “Okay, okay. I concede.” He threw his hands up again to make his point. “So, will you please sell me at least one of the boxes?”
Jenna took her time answering. “I guess I could sell you one.” She took a sealed box and slid it across the counter and gave him the price she paid for wholesale. “So, what’s your name?”
“Balan. Yours?” He paid for his purchase and stepped back. He hoped she’d want to keep talking. He liked the cadence of her voice and wondered where she was from.
“Jenna, and before you say a word, I know I talk funny.”
“I wouldn’t call it funny at all. Pretty is a much better word, but then I love Southern drawls.” He smiled at her.
“Well, then you’re one in a million. Where I’m from, they either have it or make fun of it. No in-between.”
“Where are you from?” He opened the box and took out a piece to pop in his mouth.
“A little town in Virginia. It’s so remote, you have to go over a mountain to get into it.” She smiled back and let herself relax. “You?”
“Right here in Vegas.” He couldn’t exactly tell her the truth. Yeah,’cause I really want her to run screaming into the night. Or in this case, the morning.
“Ah, okay.” Jenna had a sudden feeling he was lying, but since she didn’t know him well enough, she couldn’t be sure. However, her gut was rarely wrong. “So, what do you do at the club, and how do you know Louis?”
Balan felt his anger rise fast. He had no idea why it kept happening when he thought about her and Anais’s brother hugging. Down, boy. There’s no reason to feel this way. “I’m one of the fetish masters.”
She snorted. “Hell, I know that. What do you do?”
“I’m the demon of lust.”
“Okay. I get that you work there, and I get that your persona is a demon of lust, but what do you do?” She sighed. It was like talking to a toddler.
He frowned at her before answering. “I make women scream with multiple orgasms.” He looked at her as if daring her to ask again.
“Oh.” She looked away and felt her face turning red. Her imagination spun some wild fantasies as to how he could make a woman have multiples, much less have them screaming from so many.
“You’re blushing, Jenna.” He loved watching the red go from her face to down her neck and disappear at her shirt. He’d love nothing more than to open that shirt to see how far it went. And lick her from head to toe. He shook himself to stop the wayward thoughts before he managed to get a hard-on from hell.
“I guess I am.” She laughed. “Okay, let’s change the subject. How is it that a grown-assed man is hooked on Fireball candy? I would have figured you for the liquor more than the candy.”
“I love to lick her. That’s one of the many ways I can make a woman scream in pleasure.” He’d purposely misquoted what she’d said. He was rewarded by her face and neck going a shade deeper and chuckled.
She gasped and raised her hands to cover her chest. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?” he asked.
“Changing my words. It’s not polite conversation since I don’t know you.” She had to make him stop talking like he was, or he’d know pretty quick she was interested in finding out how long it would take him to make her scream. Her nipples were already hard as rocks and poking against her shirt.
“True, but it’s so much fun to watch that pretty shade of red creep down your neck.” He couldn’t help himself. He loved flirting, and she was so much fun.
Chapter Five
“I really need to get back to work. You have your candy, so please feel free to leave.” She was so embarrassed. She knew her wayward thoughts were going to get her into trouble someday, and now seemed to be that day.
“Oh, but I don’t want to leave. We’re having a nice conversation, and I’m enjoying it so.”
Jenna handed him the box and moved around the counter and to the door. She held it open for him to exit the shop and waited. She looked at him, but he was staring at her chest with a huge smile. “I need to get back to work. I have a whole store to get ready before the grand opening in three days and very little time to get it all done.” She muttered under her breath, “If I even can.”
“Of course,” he said as he passed her on the way out. He brushed against her and felt her hard, little nipples against his arm, and it took everything in him not to moan. Dammit! I won’t be able to think of anything else the rest of the day. “If you stop in at
the club tonight, I’ll buy you a drink to celebrate the new shop and how I plan on becoming a very loyal customer.”
She watched him leave and climb into his car before shutting and locking the door behind her. “Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?” She leaned against it for several minutes to catch her breath, then went back to work. She had a lot to do.
The boxes in the back room stood as tall as she was, and she wondered how she was going to get it all done in time with only two days before a soft opening and then the big day itself. “Maybe I should have put him to work instead of running him off.” She sighed and started unpacking.
If things hadn’t gone so wrong at her last job, she might not be here now. Although she was happy, she also missed her old coworkers. They’d been a tight-knit bunch, and considering their line of work, they had to be. Each one relied on the other so none of them would get hurt. The woman she’d shared the closest bond with had been killed by the perp they’d been chasing one night, about two years ago. Since then, she had quit her job and moved around from town to town, ending up in Vegas.
When she’d first arrived, she connected with an old friend from back in Louisiana. He’d come out to get away from a hunter, who he had inadvertently introduced to his sister. The rest is history, as they say. Jenna was excited to have found the perfect opportunity to become her own boss and even found a nice little track house in the ’burbs–well, what passed for suburbs in Vegas.
The storefront was in a rundown part of the city, but the price was too good to pass up. Then before she could think of reopening in the old building, this new one had become available in a much nicer part of town. I never in a million years thought I’d own a candy shop, especially in Las Vegas. How things have changed over the last two years. Who would have thought I’d end up here? She went to work unpacking boxes, tried to set up shelving, and kept moving from one project to another with no real plan.
“Oh my God, there is no way I can get everything done in time.” She stood in the middle of the huge storeroom and almost cried. Her phone rang at that moment, and she had to take a deep breath to pull herself together. She must have taken too long because she heard a rather insistent banging on the front door. “Hold your damned horses. I’m coming.”
She threw open the blinds and gasped when she saw several people on the other side of the locked door. She opened it and just stood there.
“Well? Are you gonna let us in so we can help you get ready for your grand opening or not?” Louis asked.
“How did you know?”
“Balan called Anais, and she called the rest of us.”
“Where do you want us to start?” Anais hugged her and walked in, followed by her husband.
“Uh.” She didn’t know what to say, just looked at the people who had walked inside.
Anais pulled her to the counter and asked about a floor plan.
“Yes, I have that.” She bent down to grab the layout, then gave it to the other woman. She’d had it drawn up when the ideas started churning in her head once she’d signed the paperwork purchasing the business. “Here ya go.”
“May I start giving some orders? I’m good at this.” Anais took the plans and laughed.
“Absolutely.” Jenna felt as if a huge boulder had been lifted off her shoulders. She wasn’t used to having help, other than her old coworkers.
The group started with the first room, placing furniture and filling the shelves. Anais told Jenna she had the next day off and could stay after the others had left. She could help with the decorating, but her plan for the group was to set up the big stuff and fill shelves in each room.
“I have to tell you; I absolutely love this idea of the multiple rooms!” Louis told her as he carried a stack of boxes to the second room to unpack.
“I know. I can’t wait for the big day. I’ve seen your ads popping up everywhere,” Wolfe said.
“Thank goodness. I was a bit worried when I placed them. I was told by a marketing firm that the billboards were in the wrong spots to be seen and that the online ads were in the wrong places too.”
Anais shook her head. “I hate those firms. They will do their damnedest to bully you into going through them.” She carried another stack of boxes and went into the third room. “Hey, Jenna, can you come here please?”
“Yeah, no problem. What’s up?” she asked.
“We have more furniture than rooms, I think.” She handed the boxes to one of the young men who normally played a submissive at C. PB Delight. He’d introduced himself as Noah.
“There should be four kids-themed rooms, and the adults only room, plus the lobby on the blueprints. Hang on, I’ll grab them off the counter.” She hurried out to find the plans and almost bumped into Balan. “Oh, I didn’t know you’d come back.”
“Yep. I’m here. So, tell me what you want me to do.”
He was flirting again, and she knew it. Oh, I have lots of things I’d like to tell you to do. “Um, well I guess Louis needs some help with the inventory in room two.”
That was the last thing Balan wanted to hear. He still didn’t like the thought of Jenna being close to the little werewolf. Something about it made him want to punch the guy in the face.
Chapter Six
“Or you can help Anais and Wolfe in the back.”
“Yeah, that’s the one I’m picking. Unless you need help up here?” He was hinting and hoping she’d pick up on it. He’d driven away and knew he couldn’t leave her to do all that work by herself, so he’d called in reinforcements. However, he didn’t think about the fact that Anais would bring her brother along. What the hell is wrong with me? It’s not like we’re a couple. Hell, I sleep with different women on a steady basis at the club. Sex is sex, right?
“Nope. I’m good up here,” Jenna said and went back to Anais with the plans.
Balan walked out and found Wolfe sitting on the floor of a room decorated to look like the movie, Bedknobs and Broomsticks. He smiled, thinking to himself that the book was much better than the movie. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself. Where ya been? We’ve been working our asses off.”
“I had something to take care of first. I came right back afterward.” He grabbed a box from the stack, found the display it went in, and started to unpack it. “How did you find so many people?”
“It wasn’t hard. Turns out that almost everybody at the club likes Jenna. She often brings cookies when she comes by.” Wolfe laughed.
“I’d like to taste her cookies.” Balan mumbled, thinking it was too low for his friend to have heard.
“I figured you would.”
He whipped around and gaped at Wolfe. “How the hell did you hear that?”
“I can do lots of things now that I used to not be able to do,” he said mysteriously.
“Oh, really? Like what?” Balan hoped to change the subject.
“Like, I know you have the hots for our new candy shop owner and you just met her. Like, since being with Anais, I can hear, see, and smell so much better than before.”
“How the hell is that possible?”
“Not sure, and I’m not gonna knock it. I rather like knowing when my mate is in heat. Her scent drives me insane.” Wolfe waggled his eyebrows and laughed.
“TMI, buddy.” Balan laughed along with him and continued to unpack boxes. “Where did she come up with the themes for these rooms?”
“I think they were her favorite childhood books or movies,” Anais said as she walked in and handed them both more boxes. “We still have the Hobbit room, the Borrowers room, and my personal favorite, the Scooby-Doo room to do, guys, so hurry up in here.” She grinned and left.
The men looked at each other and laughed, then went back to work. She was right after all. They still had several hours of work ahead of them if they were going to make the grand opening deadline.
“Anais, I can’t thank you enough for all the help today.” Jenna stood, looking around the main lobby in amazement.
“It’
s what friends do, and you became my friend when you saved my idiot brother from the hunter before Wolfe.”
“Did he ever tell you the whole story of that night?”
“Hell no. He probably figured I’d bust his chops if he did,” Anais said and laughed.
“As well you should. I have never seen a male so addicted to women.” She went on to tell the story of how she found Louis in a hotel room in New Orleans on Mardi Gras. Turned out she was the wife of a voodoo priest, and he was about to put a curse on the young man’s genitals so they would never “rise to the occasion” again—so he wouldn’t be able to entice another man’s wife to her ruin. “Yeah, the priest was pretty old-fashioned, and I’m not entirely sure he wasn’t as old as he claimed when I went to talk to him.”
“How old did he say?” Anais was caught up in the tale and laughing because she could see her brother doing all of it.
“He claimed to be over a hundred years old, which would totally explain the way he talked. His speech pattern was very old-fashioned, but he did a little demonstration. I’m gonna admit, it scared the hell outta me. He was one powerful old dude.”
“Why would you be scared of him? Louis told me you were a powerful witch in your own right.”
Jenna didn’t have a chance to answer because Balan, Wolfe, and the others all filed into the room at the same time.
“Is something wrong?” Anais asked.
“Nope. We’re all done with the first three rooms. Ready to move on to the last one and whatever that fifth room is going to be.” Louis replied and then took a good look at his sister and friend. “What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t say anything.” Jenna tried for the innocent look and apparently failed.
“Oh my God, you told her about the priest, didn’t you?”
“Well.” She wasn’t going to try denying it, but she didn’t have to come right out and admit it either.
Fireballs & Familiars Page 2