“That’s pretty shitty.” He sat beside her and took her hand.
“Yeah.” She laughed, sniffed a hearty sniff and swiped at her nose. “If you’re going to sell your descendants to a demon it should be for something more important than candy.”
“Like world domination,” he agreed with a serious face that he knew would make her laugh again.
It did and it felt like a million bucks.
“Or eternal youth and beauty,” she said. “Or all the gold in the king’s treasury or something.”
“So are you still demon possessed?” he asked, bringing her hand to his mouth for a kiss. Even that slight contact of his skin upon hers made his heart start to do that melty thing in his chest, the thing it did every time he was near her.
“No, I had it exorcised. Apparently it’s not kosher for people to sell their descendants into slavery. Demon service has to be chosen by someone with free will. My mom or Gram could have had it cast out a long time ago, but…I don’t know. I guess they didn’t feel they had a choice.”
“They weren’t as strong as you are.”
“I’m not strong, Heath. I gave in, like everyone else. It… It was there that night.” She looked at him uncertainly before she continued. “The night we were together.”
“Is that why you pounced on me?” he asked, not wanting to believe that she’d only made love to him because the demon made her do it. Talk about a blow to his ego.
“It’s probably the reason I pounced on you then rather than a few weeks later. That’s why I wanted to wait. The curse was supposed to expire on my thirty-first birthday. Every woman in my family ‘lay with one man and conceived one daughter before the clock struck midnight on the eve of her thirty-first year’. So I figured I’d wait to do any lying until I was thirty-one and then the curse would be broken. But the demon had other ideas.” Bella stared at Heath’s lips playing along her hand.
He’d never been so glad to see a hint of lust in a woman’s eyes in his entire life.
“So I was your first?” he asked
“You were my first,” she said, tongue slipping out to dampen her lips. “Basically my first everything, except tongue kissing. I’d done that before,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“I never would have guessed. You were amazing.”
She shrugged shyly. “Well, I did watch a few adult films.”
“You watched porn?” The news was as erotic as hell.
“Adult films,” she said with pink cheeks.
“Bella, I have to show you something,” he whispered.
“What’s that?” she asked with a smile.
“How much I’ve missed you.” He pulled her tightly to him, pressing every inch of her amazing body against his. He claimed her lips and told her with his tongue, his teeth, his hands, how much he loved her, needed her, wanted to be with her forever—or as long as she would have him.
“I’ve missed you too.” Her voice was so thick with desire that he had to stop kissing her for a moment, pull back and take in her parted lips, her breasts lifting toward him through her red V-neck t-shirt, and the love that he’d prayed to see shining in her eyes.
He’d actually prayed. For real, on his knees and everything.
“So you’re going to give me a chance?”
“I don’t see that I have a choice. I think we were made for each other,” she said, slowly starting to work open the buttons of his black dress shirt.
“People with ancestors like ours have to stick together,” he said, dipping a finger down between those lovely breasts and tracing the edge of what looked like a black lace bra. His cock did a dance of celebration, swelling to epic proportions as he imagined being inside her again.
“Absolutely.” She eased his shirt off his shoulders and leaned forward to kiss his bare chest somewhere close to his heart. He’d never been so glad that he hadn’t had a clean undershirt to wear in his entire life.
Heath smiled and made a mental note to tell Mary never to ride his ass about wearing underclothes again.
“Mary.” He said her name out loud, his heart clenching so powerfully that it actually skipped a beat. The raging erection in his pants began to soften.
“No, I’m Bella.” Bella arched her brow as if trying to figure out what game he was playing. Then she read something in his expression, something that made her take his face in her hands and turn him gently to look at her. “Mary is a friend?”