by Tessa Bailey
“H-hi, I’m Gordon,” he said, backing away from Jonas’s intensity.
The lights in the basement sputtered.
With a sense of impending doom, Ginny tried to insert herself between man and vampire, but Jonas surprised her by extending his hand toward Gordon. “Nice to meet you, Gordon. I understand you’re a friend of Ginny’s.”
“Yes.” He released a light laugh. “Well kind of…”
Jonas’s eye twitched. “Kind of?”
Gordon straightened, as if gathering courage. Had he no his sense of self preservation? “We did go out on one date…and I was hoping maybe we would again—”
A popping noise sounded above their heads. Sparks rained down from the ceiling and the radiator behind Ginny’s table started to whistle, shooting off steam in three directions. The emeralds in Jonas’s eyes burst into flames and the ground started to shake.
Murmurs of alarm went up around the church basement.
“Ginny,” Jonas said, sounding as if he was being strangled. “Can I speak with you privately?”
Distantly, Ginny thought she heard Tucker and Roksana laughing like hyenas, but she didn’t dare look to confirm. No, she twined her fingers together with Jonas’s and hustled him twenty yards to the back exit door into the alley, closing it firmly behind them.
Jonas walked straight to the wall opposite the church and ripped two handfuls of bricks out with his bare hands, smashing them to dust at his feet. “Ginny,” he bit off. “Can we compromise on killing him?”
“No.”
“There you have it.” He swiped out an arc of bricks, as easily as one might swat a fly, leaving them scattered in pieces on the ground. “Proof discussions don’t work.”
“I’m not having a discussion about whether or not you can kill someone simply for liking me. We went on one date, before I ever met you,” Ginny said. “Besides, I’m not the first girl you’ve been with.”
He turned to her with an incredulous expression. “You are my feast. Do not concern yourself with breadcrumbs.”
“I don’t. Because I can see it’s pointless up against…”
Jonas stalked closer. “What?”
“What we have.”
He kept coming until he’d backed her up against the wall. “What do we have? I need to hear you say it. Having you angry with me was torture enough, then this man thinks he can come within ten feet of my mate.” He buried his face in her neck, inhaling deeply. Capturing her wrists and pinning them above her head. “You don’t know, love. You don’t understand what happens inside me when there is friction between us. It’s like burning in hell.”
“I don’t like it, either.” Spicy, little shivers raced all over her skin, pooling in the places where their bodies made contact. Chest, belly, thighs, lap. “But I’m happy you asked me to come outside instead of acting on what you wanted to do.”
His laughter was devoid of humor. “Rip his throat out with my teeth, damn the rules?”
“Yes.” She pulled his face from her neck and slid their lips together, side to side, eliciting a deep, male groan. “And what we have? It’s forever. Nothing comes close to that, especially not one bad date.”
Jonas’s hips and chest surged closer, flattening her even tighter to the wall, almost to the point of not being able to breathe. His restlessness and aggression called to something inside of Ginny. Intuition pervaded her, raw and honest and new. Unique to the two of them. “You need to feed,” she whispered.
Jonas made a broken sound and spun her around to face the wall, aligning his body tightly with hers. “Tell me again what we have,” he growled, gathering her hair in a fist. “Tell me, love.”
“Forever,” she breathed. “And when we go inside, I’ll tell him, too, if it makes you feel better.”
He paused with his lips on her neck. “I like that. Not as much as I like the idea of killing him, but I like it.”
“That’s a compromise,” she said, smiling back at him. “Was that so bad?”
For several seconds, he did nothing but stare at her, seeming almost mesmerized. “Nothing that makes you smile so beautifully could ever be bad.” With a final, longing look at her pulse, he let go of her hair and stepped away. “Let’s get you back inside. I won’t have your reputation damaged because I can’t control myself around you.”
Turning back around, Ginny breathed a laugh. “I wouldn’t mind a change to my reputation.”
His brows drew together. “What does that mean?”
Was it so much to ask that this man who seemed to believe she was wonderful continued to believe it? “They have me in the dusty corner by the radiator because I’m Death Girl. I’m just the outsider.” She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “They think there’s something wrong with me for wanting to work with the dead. I’m used to it. Or maybe…I thought I was.”
Several more bricks popped out of the building across the alley. “Blind idiots,” he said, his temple visibly throbbing. “Inside, love. You’re about to to sell out.”
“Oh no.” She grabbed his arm before he could open the church basement door. “Jonas, you cannot compel people to bid on my dresses.”
His hand curled into a fist on the door. “Compromise, compromise,” he grumbled unhappily. “I will not compel anyone to bid, but I am going to…can we even the odds?”
The smile nearly leaped off her face. “Yes.”
Regarding her closely, his lips parted on a prayer. “People who are good and kind, inside and out, hold up mirrors to the malevolence around them. I’ve walked this earth for almost ninety years and I’ve never met anyone who exemplifies that truth more fully than you, Ginny. You are good in every sense of the word. And evil hates reminders of what they’re incapable of being.” He kissed her mouth softly. “Let them flail and sputter in their inferiority. You’re a goddess among fruit flies.”
He had to tug Ginny’s hand to get her moving.
When she did, she had the urge to picture herself as one of her movie stars to boost her confidence. But after standing up to Galina earlier, and now with Jonas’s words ringing in her head, she didn’t need those illusions. Not tonight.
Maybe never again.
She walked hand in hand with Jonas through the sea of curious faces, stopping when they reached Ruth.
Jonas looked down at her and winked.
“Ruth,” Ginny said, clearing her throat. “I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Jonas.” She looked Gordon in the eye. “He is my boyfriend. Sorry.”
“She’s not sorry,” Jonas drawled, smiling at Ruth.
“No, I’m not,” Ginny hurried to continue, feeling the crowd closing in on them to hear better. “And anyway, I’m wondering, if it’s not too much trouble, if we could move my table into one of the more well-lit areas?”
Ruth didn’t answer. She was too busy staring a hole in Jonas.
Ginny did a quick check to make sure he wasn’t compelling her and relaxed when his eyes were their normal shade of seductive green.
“Mother,” Gordon prompted, exasperated by his mother’s shameless staring. “Seriously.”
The dress club founder jolted. “Oh, I’m sorry…I…yes, yes of course.” She fluttered a hand near her neckline, face turning a light shade of pink. “Gordon, would you help Ginny move the table—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Jonas cut in. “Thank you, Ruth. You’re obviously a fair and reasonable leader.”
Giggling, she fanned herself. “Well, I try my best.”
Jonas put an arm around Ginny and led her away. They’d only made it about five feet when Galina called out from her table where she was surrounded by her dress club posse. “Ginny!” Her smile was almost feral. “Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?”
“Boyfriend,” Jonas corrected Galina, tucking a strand of hair behind Ginny’s ear. “Of the eternal variety. If you’ll excuse us.” He guided her past the table, leaning down to mutter in her ear, “Fruit flies.”
Five minutes later, with
the help of Roksana, Tucker and of course, Jonas, her table was not only in the light, it was in the dead center of the room.
Ginny shifted on her feet. “Can’t we scoot it toward the wall a little—”
Jonas quieted her with a kiss. “This is where you belong.” Next, he brushed his lips across her forehead, seeming fascinated by her widow’s peak. “Do you want my help?”
“You’ve done more than enough.” Her fingertips slid over his ribcage and he let out a low groan, stilling her hand in a tight grip. “I have to do the rest by myself.”
He seemed reluctant to let go of her hand, but eventually did. Keeping Ginny in his sights, he went around the back of her table and fell into a metal folding chair the way royalty falls into a throne, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee.
Ginny took a deep breath and faced the room, which she had to admit, was a heck of a lot easier with the addition of Jonas at her back. Half of the guests were still gaping at him…and yet, he gaped at her. Before Jonas, she’d had tiny little seeds of resourcefulness inside of her that couldn’t grow without sunlight. But they’d been there nonetheless. They were products of Ginny. Perhaps they just needed some encouragement to bloom.
She squared her shoulders and took a long breath, painfully aware of the people circling her table, scrutinizing her months of work and still not stopping.
Still not stopping.
Until someone did.
“Hi,” whispered the young woman with a starburst brooch, punch clutched between her fingerless gloves. “Everyone is talking about the Christmas dress and I love it. I do,” she assured Ginny in a scratchy Brooklyn accent. “But…I have my eye on the white silk. That faux fur collar is to die for. Can I bid?”
“Yes,” Ginny exhaled, stepping aside. “Please.”
As the woman crouched down at the table and scribbled her number on the white square of paper, Ginny turned and met Jonas’s eyes over her shoulder.
He winked and mouthed the words, “That’s my girl.”
She smiled, huger than she could ever remember doing. It reached all the way to her pounding heart—and she knew in that moment, she would never love anyone or anything more than Jonas Cantrell.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jonas carried a laughing Ginny into her bedroom over his shoulder. She was tempted to scold him for handling her like a sack of potatoes, but she was in too good a mood. The best mood of the century. The millennium.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, directly to his butt. “The highest bid of the night.”
“I’m not surprised,” he sniffed, ever the prince. “I know nothing about dresses, but I know I’d most like to see you in the ones you made.”
Her face burned with pleasure. “That’s how you judge, is it?”
“Yes.”
“I guess the one downside to selling them all is you’ll never see me in them.”
“That is regrettable.” Gently, he lifted Ginny off his shoulder and settled her on her feet, keeping steadying hands on her waist. She gasped when he used the belt to tug her up against his body, nipping at her mouth. “Speaking of dresses, love. This little fucking red one…”
Her knees turned to rubber. “What about it?”
“You know.” Using his hold on the belt, he turned her in a slow circle, raking her with hot eyes all the while. “Yes, you knew when you put it on that I’d be obsessed with getting it off you.”
“Obsessed?”
“Ginny, don’t question my obsession with any and every part of you.” Turning her to face him once more, he unfastened her belt and let it clank to the ground. “Just start assuming.”
If only her lungs were working properly. “Are you going to spend the night?”
His fingers paused. “Would you like that?”
She nodded, never more sure of anything. Never wanting anything more than she wanted to forge that final connection with Jonas. “In my bed.”
Jonas seemed to rein himself in with a deep, shuddering breath. “We’ll go slow,” he said, thickly. “God, I’m scared out of my mind I’ll hurt you.”
“That whole thing about the rules? Breaking one means breaking them all? That can’t apply to us,” Ginny said, pushing the jacket off his shoulders and running her palms up the cool cotton of his white, long-sleeved shirt, feeling his muscles strain and flex at her touch. “Nothing else seems to apply. I’m your second mate in a lifetime. I feel your pain. Until someone can explain any of that to me, I’m operating as if this is a-a…totally unique situation.”
“We’re nothing if not that,” he agreed unevenly, watching her hands mold over his body. “You’ve done some thinking about this.”
“A little,” she admitted, in a vast understatement. “Have you?”
Jonas puffed a pained laugh. “Have I thought of getting you into bed?” He dropped his mouth to the valley of her breasts, kissing them both with a greedy, open mouth. “Almost as much as I’ve thought of getting you down the aisle.”
Ginny’s legs turned to mist. “What did you say?”
He straightened and looked her square in the eye, intensity radiating from every inch of his powerful frame. “You heard me.”
Her mind stretched into an obstacle course and she had no idea where to begin conquering it. Was he serious? Marriage? Yet even as the holes in his plan presented themselves, she was filled with an effervescent hope that could have carried her up to the stars. “Jonas…our relationship is a secret,” she said, common sense prevailing. For now. Holding back her happiness was like trying to plug a dam with a twig. “We’re not even supposed to be together.”
“You can be my secret wife just as easily as you can be my secret girlfriend,” he said in a low, resolute voice, backing her step by step toward the bed. “All you have to do is say yes.”
Before she could utter a word, he drew off his shirt and tossed it aside, leaving him in all his glowing, tousle-haired, muscular glory. Her blood had turned up the volume on every part of Jonas, down to his cloves and mint scent, the plush masculinity of his lips, the intensity with which he devoured the sight of her. All of him burned bright with hunger and beauty and possessiveness. His fingertips brushed down the trail of dark hair beneath his belly button absently, drawing attention to the risen flesh below.
“Um…” she started, a ticklish feeling stirring in the deepest recesses of her stomach. This was all happening very quickly. She was still getting used to being a vampire’s mate. Surely they could space out the surprises here and there? “I m-mean, we should probably live together for a while first. To see if we’re…compatible? You do own half of this place now, remember? You could move in for a while and—”
“Compatible?” Appearing more than a little annoyed, Jonas sauntered closer, giving Ginny no choice but to fall back on the bed. He leaned over her, bracing his hands on either side of her head. “I live for you. I crave you without cease. Your beauty, your blood and your spirit sustain me. Yet you question our compatibility?”
“No,” she whispered. “No, that was a stupid thing to say. I’m just trying to keep up with the rapid-fire changes. I need you. I crave you, too.” She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling every word like a twist in her chest. “Constantly.”
When she opened her eyes, she saw the temper had ebbed from his face. His overt possessiveness remained, though it was tempered with adoration. “Compromise,” he said to himself. “Moving in here could draw more unwanted attention to us. But hell if I’ll be able to stay away. Or deny you anything you ask.”
“We’ll be careful.”
“Ah, love. There’s nothing careful about us.” Jonas scrutinized her thoughtfully, hungrily. “Do you know exactly what it is you crave from me, Ginny?” He reached down and tugged up her dress, bunching it around her waist. “Is it time for me to show you?”
Her belly shuddered under his rapt regard. “Yes.”
He hit her with blistering eye contact while lowering his mouth to her stomach, licking a slow circle with
the tip of his tongue. “Open your legs.”
Ginny’s feminine core clenched with such intensity, it hurt to follow his order, but she managed, her chest already heaving, trying to draw air. Simply from being on display in front of Jonas, her dress around her waist, thighs fallen open, her moon and star panties stretched over a place she’d never shown anyone.
“Such a beautiful offering,” he groaned, ghosting his mouth over the waistband of her panties, then lower, nudging her mound with his lips. “Do you give yourself to me freely, Ginny Lynn?”
Her hands flew up and fisted the bedclothes. “Yes.”
The heat of his mouth warmed her, covering her in gooseflesh. Through the taut material, he pressed his tongue down on her sensitive nub of flesh and sparks danced in front of her eyes. Lord Lord Lord, it was already took much. The rasp of his shaking hands on her knees, the flex of his shoulders, the wicked portrait he made framed between her straining thighs.
Do you know exactly what it is you crave from me, Ginny?
Until he tugged her panties to one side, then ripped them off entirely, she hadn’t understood. Not completely. The need to be claimed by him was already swamping her senses and plaguing her with a heavy, aching feeling right in the center of her belly. This was so much more than desire, though. She’d desired him from the moment he sat up on her table.
No, this ran deeper. Like she’d been waiting and pining and suffering without the weight of him on top of her. Without his mouth and flesh and breath.
She needed to the point of pain.
His tongue curled around her swelling button of flesh and she tore at the comforter. “Jonas,” she moaned. “We’re compatible. We’re compatible.”
A male laugh vibrated her nerve endings all the way down to her toes. He rode his tongue up the split of her sex and made a guttural, satisfied sound, before batting her clitoris like a predator with its cornered prey. “Even sweeter than it looks,” he muttered hoarsely, yanking her hips closer and laving her with the flat of his tongue, up and back until her head thrashed on the bed. “Ginny,” he growled, squeezing her knees in his flexing hands. “Try and be calm. I’m getting too…excited.”
