Jonah nodded. “How did you manage to jam the mop handle into its mouth?”
He wanted to know how she did it? “When he opened his mouth I jammed my arm and the handle inside. I pushed it through the back of its throat.”
“Yuck.”
He wasn’t incorrect in his wording. It had been pretty disgusting. She could still hear the tearing of skin and the puncturing of the muscles and bone. Still, she’d do it in a second again to put that creature down.
“It was necessary.”
“No. What was necessary was for you to help Dodie get the people out and then run away. But that’s not possible. I know that. You need to be in the thick of these things. It’s just who you are—I have to respect that.” He shook his head, some of the fire fading from his gaze, replaced by a wariness she’d not seen projected from him before. Jonah looked down as if he didn’t want to meet her gaze straight on. “But I’m in love with you. You’re important to me, vital even. And I wish you didn’t have such an easy time throwing yourself into danger as if your life didn’t matter.”
She took a step forward and then whacked him in the arm. “How dare you. You took a blood oath promising to spend your life fighting evil. Do you think you’re the only one capable of feeling something like that? I almost died when a demon went after me. I think I’m entitled to want to rid the world of them too.”
“You are.”
She was? Well, she knew that but hearing him admit it was an entirely different thing all together. Mindy opened her mouth to speak and closed it. What was she supposed to say when he agreed with her?
“And,” he continued, “given that I know you need to be a part of this, I have to make sure you’re a part of it with me.”
He pulled out a piece of paper and held it out to her. “I did something before I left Chicago. Well, a few things and, thanks to Foy, I was able to get it done quickly.”
She stared at his outstretched hand. Every once in a while she would have a sudden sense that her life was about to shift in a significant way. It didn’t happen with any regularity. The day her boyfriend had been murdered had seemed like any normal twenty-four hours until everything fell apart.
But seeing the piece of paper in Jonah’s hand, she knew that everything would change as soon as she looked at it.
“Gotta love Foy and his connections. What would we all do without him?” She stalled. It was cowardly and she knew it. Killing a hellhound had been easier than this.
“Take it, sweetheart. It won’t bite and if you don’t like what’s on it, I can undo it. There’s no pressure. Just an offer.”
She snatched the white paper from his fingers before she could change her mind and opened it up to read it.
It took her a second to realize what she stared at. It was the deed to his parents’ house, only it had been transformed into some kind of organization that had both their names on it.
“I don’t understand.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “Well, it turns out I’m pretty loaded. My parents’ estate, what was left after their defenses, still proved to be pretty substantial. Foy’s been keeping it in trust for me, waiting for me to deal with the truths of my life.”
“That was nice of him.” Foy did a lot of things very silently.
“Right. So I decided to take the house and make use of it. Not so long ago, the place was used to do horrible things. Now it can be to make people who have been through a demonic ordeal get better.” He shrugged. “As you did somehow without any help.”
She swallowed. This was a huge gesture. He wanted to make this amazing place and he’d put her down as co-director of it with him. Tears threatened to spill in her eyes.
“You’re a survivor too, Jonah.”
He touched the side of her face and she nearly melted to the floor in a puddle of mush. “Do you want to do this with me? I mean, of course, there will be fighting involved. Demons aren’t going to just leave us alone. We both, apparently, draw them to us like flies to a peach pie. But there can be other parts of life too. Right?”
“Yes.” She nodded. There could be lots of parts of life and she wanted to have them all with him.
Because she couldn’t control herself, she threw herself into his arms. He caught her and seconds later they were kissing. His mouth was warm and so familiar that it reminded her how much she had missed having his lips on her own.
“Is that a yes?” He pulled back to look at her.
“Yes, it’s a yes.” She kissed him again. “I want to do all of that with you. This is what I wanted, to be your partner.”
“Mindy.” He said her name like a prayer and shivers traveled up her spine. “I want you to be more than my partner. I want you to be my everything.”
“I don’t know what that means but I like the sound of everything. It sounds…lovely.”
He laughed and she relished the sound. Jonah needed to do that more; it made two small lines appear on the sides of his eyes. She reached out to stroke them.
“I’m saying I want you to be my wife. My everything. That is if you can tolerate the idea of marrying a guy whose parents did something demonic to him when he was a baby so now he has to figure out how to handle his crazy abilities.”
He had said that with levity but she knew that he meant what he said. “Jonah, I don’t care a lick about your parents. Let them stay locked away where they belong. They’re nothing to us.”
“Then you’ll marry me?”
“I seem to be doing a very bad job of answering you. Yes, yes, I want you to be my husband.”
Jonah tugged her tighter against him. “Shit, Mindy, I need you so much.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
He kissed her hard, walking them both backward until they were pressed up against the wall. Her breasts ached and she suddenly felt as though she was wearing way too many clothes.
She wanted to be naked, writhing in his arms. “Fast, Jonah. Please don’t make me wait. It’s been too long.”
“Quiet, my love. I’ll get us both there. I don’t want to rush this. I’d never get over it if I disappointed you just moments after bungling a proposal.”
He always thought the worst of himself. They were going to have to work on that. But not at that moment. Not when she needed her legs around him and his cock inside her more than she needed the air she breathed.
* * * * *
Slow down. He had to keep repeating that mantra or he was going to spill himself way too fast. This was the behavior of a man who hadn’t had his woman for five years not five weeks.
Still, every moment away from Mindy was hell. It might as well have been five years.
He stroked her breasts through her shirt, finding her nipples and rubbing them until they peaked hard enough he could feel them through the material. His balls ached and tightened.
Jonah hissed in his breath.
“What’s the matter?” Her voice had a husky tone. He’d barely touched her. It was awesome that she could get so turned on so quickly by his caress. It did his ego a world of good.
Hell, at that moment he could fly if he needed to.
Not that he intended to try. Staying put until he got her naked and beneath him was what he would be accomplishing for the next bit of time.
He pulled her shirt over her head and discarded it.
“Put me down,” she licked his neck, “and we can get to the good part faster.”
As much as he really liked holding her against the wall, it helped to satisfy something inside him that needed to know she was safe, he had to agree with her. They weren’t going to both get naked in that position.
Jonah set her down and they tugged at each other until they were both stripped of their clothes, some of which now piled at the floor by their feet.
He ran his hands over her creamy skin, looking for any indication that she’d been wounded in any way since they’d been apart.
She shivered beneath his touch and he grinned. “You like that?”
>
“You touching me? Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that I like it. A lot.”
Mindy kissed him and the world refocused. Only she existed for him. The feel of her breasts pressed against his chest, the way her curves fit against his body as if they’d been made for each other.
Maybe they had been. How else could he ever understand a woman like her wasting her time with him?
“Bedroom.” He picked her up and carried her across the apartment to the guest room. After he gently set her down on the bed, he grinned. “You do realize that this is where we met? This apartment.”
“Right.” She nodded, biting down on her lower lip. “I was terrified out of my mind and you came. Suddenly, I knew everything would be okay.”
He didn’t know how to handle her words. They moved him and if he didn’t want to start weeping like some kind of pathetic excuse for a man he had to distract himself. The truth was he’d wanted to make her feel safe. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her.
He took her nipple in his mouth, swirling his tongue around it. She tasted sweet, like strawberries and it made him harder, which seemed impossible since he already felt as if he might explode at any second.
Mindy didn’t help. She reached down and took him in her hand. He gasped. “No, darling. Not yet.”
“You never let me play.” She pouted.
“After.” He bit down on her earlobe and she pushed tighter against him. “You make me too out of control.”
“Fine.” She kissed him again. “I do want you inside me.”
“That’s good because that’s what’s going to be happening. Very shortly.”
He scooted down on the bed until he could insert one finger into her warmth. She was wet for him. He pulled his finger out to taste her. Mindy’s eyes got huge as she watched him taste her from his hand.
“You’re flavored like heaven.”
She gasped. “I don’t embarrass easily and yet you seem to be perpetually making me blush.”
“I live to bring that red hue to your skin.”
Mindy rolled away from him and he reached for her. “Where are you going?”
She winked at him before pulling a condom from the side drawer of her nightstand. “After we get married, I’ll go on the Pill.”
The idea of being skin-to-skin made his hands shake. He had to get that image out of his head. “How do you feel about eloping? Tomorrow?”
She laughed. “Sounds really good right about now.”
He slipped his fingers back inside her, this time tweaking her clit. The small bundle of nerves felt swollen and she moaned when he touched it. He groaned when she arched on the bed. Mindy made him so hot.
“You’re wet and writhing. I think you missed me as much as I missed you, kitten.”
“When this is over, I’m never letting you call me kitten again.” She arched her back again, this time gripping the bed sheets.
He laughed. Leave it to Mindy to manage that much thought when most people were incoherent. His head was muddled and his cock dictated the directions of things.
At that moment, it was to get inside her. He sheathed himself and moved until he was positioned at her core. Joining with her would be like finally coming home after a long, terrible absence.
Mindy wrapped her legs around him and he surged into her pussy. Her wetness surrounded him, drenching him in the signs of their love, proving to him that he wasn’t alone in this desperate need for her.
He pushed forward and her muscles clenched around him, fitting him tightly like a glove. “Oh. Damn.” He cursed. “You’re so small, baby, always perfect, always as if you were made for me.”
“Jonah,” she bit down on his shoulder, “how could it be this good? With you, it always is.”
He didn’t know. There were no answers, no questions, nothing existed. Just the pleasure traveling up and down his spine, his balls tightening and his cock begging him every minute to give in to his explosive need to claim her, to shoot himself inside her and know nothing else but the sweet oblivion found between her thighs.
But he wouldn’t. Not until she’d found her pleasure. Always her first. Nothing would be sweet if she didn’t. Nothing would matter.
He reached between them and found her clit. She gasped when he rubbed her, grinding into her as hard as he could to increase her pleasure.
Mindy threw her head back, panting. He could hear how close she was from the small noises she made from the back of her throat.
Yes, he wanted her to, needed to know he brought her to the peak and pushed her over it.
She cried out his name and her muscles clenched around him, milking him, making him see stars. Finally, he couldn’t take any more. He had to give in to it—he required completion like he did his heart beating.
He came hard. Over and over until he felt certain he’d never move again. Finally, because he couldn’t do anything else, he collapsed on top of her.
Fate had given him this gift. He wouldn’t waste it.
* * * * *
Jonah found Mindy leaning in her chair, staring out the window as she sipped her coffee. When he walked in, she smiled.
“Hey, lazy.”
He walked over and kissed her on top of her head so he could smell her hair. There was that strawberry scent again. “Guess you wore me out. Sleeping in is not usually my thing.”
“I know.” She kissed him. This was what he needed, waking up with her in the morning. “You need to eat something and have some coffee. I got a text from Christian. Apparently, there’s a ghost that needs hunting. He thought you and I might like to handle it while he went for his tux fitting.”
“For real? Christian is giving up a ghost hunt?”
“No.” She stood up. “He’s not. He’s going to do it. Because you and I are eloping today. Remember?”
“I do. I wasn’t certain you would.”
“Oh. I remember.” She winked at him. “But your word is your oath, right? And last night you told me we’d elope. So that’s what we’re going to do.”
“I want to make a million oaths to you.”
She stood up. “And so you shall, I’m sure.”
“You’re up to something.” Mindy was leading up to telling him what she wanted. “Out with it.”
“Well, I thought if we were going to elope we might as well do it in Rio.”
“All right.” Money was no longer going to be a problem. He might as well use his parents’ blood inheritance to make his wife as happy as possible. “And?”
She held up a newspaper. “Pretty sure they have a demon problem in Rio.”
He stared down at the story. A woman’s house had been invaded. Oh sure, it was being heralded as some crazy tourist site but, like Mindy, Jonah knew truth when he saw it.
“You want to go help this woman on our honeymoon.”
She nodded. “So do you.”
Jonah scooped her up in his arms. “You are so fucking cool.” His woman. “We’re going to have to go pack your mop.”
About Rebecca Royce
As a teenager, I would hide in my room to read my favorite romance novels when I was supposed to be doing my homework. I hope, these days, that my parents think it was worth it.
I am the mother of three adorable boys and I am fortunate to be married to my best friend. We’ve just moved from New Jersey to Texas where I am learning to love Barbecue!
I am in love with science fiction, fantasy and the paranormal and try to use all these elements in my writing. I've been told I'm a little bloodthirsty so I hope that when you read my work you'll enjoy the action-packed ride that always ends in romance. I love to write series because I love to see characters develop over time and it always makes me happy to see my favorite characters make guest appearances in other books. In my world anything is possible, anything can happen, and you should suspect that it will.
Rebecca welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Rebecca Royce
Crimson Lust
Demon Within
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Ellora’s Cave Publishing
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Weird Nights
ISBN 9781419949609
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Weird Nights Copyright © 2014 Rebecca Royce
Edited by Rebecca Hill
Cover design by Willo
Cover photography by Tatiana Morozova, tankist276/shutterstock.com
Electronic book publication May 2014
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