After he sifted me to view Glenashdale Falls, we stood for a long time, his arms wrapped around me, cocooning me in the shelter of his body. We stared at the breathtaking water cascading down the rock side, the edges of the deep pool crusted with ice and the snow-dusted woods surrounding, never saying a word. After fifteen minutes of thoughtful silence, he leaned over my shoulder and brushed a kiss below my ear.
“Time to get you warm and fed.”
Holding me in an iron embrace, he sifted me across the island to the outskirts of the village Brodick where restaurants, inns and shops dappled the coastal town. Arm in arm, we strolled along, me following Jude’s lead as he skirted a corner and passed the post office, obviously having a particular destination in mind and definitely having been here before.
A gruff-looking man with a barrel chest and urgent stride scowled and muttered something as we passed.
“What did he say?” I asked Jude.
“Tourists,” he said with a smirk. “The locals get a bit tired of tourist invasion, I imagine.”
“Oh,” I said with a laugh as he hauled me around another corner off the main road. He guided me toward a door, over which hung a round cast-iron-rimmed sign with script lettering—The Brodick Brasserie.
Jude kept his hand at the small of my back, nudging me past the corner bar and farther into the restaurant near the menu on a blackboard. I perused the items, pulling off my gloves and tucking them into my coat pocket. A withered old man hunched over the wooden bar in his brown wool coat and flat cap, nursing a pint of dark beer. A rosy-cheeked waitress with strawberry-blonde hair pulled into a ponytail met us where the tables and booths began.
“Two for lunch?” she asked in her thickly accented and chipper voice.
“Yes, just two, thank you,” said Jude. Instantly, I noticed a Scottish burr drawling his words. It took me off guard.
We meandered to a table near the window, the restaurant more crowded than I’d imagined for a town so small. Jude pulled out my chair, then sat across from me. We both removed our coats and set them on the backs of our chairs.
“What’ll you have to drink?” asked our smiling waitress.
“Just water for me,” I said.
“A pint of Guinness,” said Jude.
“That’ll warm you up,” she said, scribbling on a pad. “And did you have a chance to choose from the blackboard menu?”
“Yes. I think I’ll have the sea bass,” I said.
“The lamb for me. Thank you.”
He gave her a smile, the kind that had melted my insides to goo on countless occasions.
“I’ll have it right out.” The poor woman’s fair skin flushed cherry pink as she swished off to get our drinks.
I couldn’t help but grin.
“What are you smiling about?” His burr was still there, stretching his syllables to a sexy lilt.
“I like that accent.” I leaned over the table, whispering, “Will you use it on me later? After lunch, back home…in private.”
“If you keep looking at me like that, we won’t make it through lunch.”
Just like that, heat tightened low in my belly. His burning gaze promised all kinds of sin. Suddenly, I wasn’t so hungry for sea bass.
Our waitress brought the drinks. “Here you are,” she said, staring at Jude, clearly unable to help herself. He finally broke his fiery gaze from mine, giving her a nod of thanks before downing half the dark beer, wiping tan foam from his upper lip.
I unfolded the napkin in my lap, trying to find something to distract me from thoughts of the man across from me and the bed at the cottage. I heard a snatch of an English accent from the petite blonde two tables over.
“Really,” she drawled. “How could he possibly think I’d be happy with him for that? I’m telling you, he’s gone completely mental.”
She wrinkled her nose at her brunette friend, who tittered as she sipped her drink through a straw. Something about the woman, her snarky attitude, made me think of Kat.
“So what’s the deal with Kat and George? I know they must’ve been together at one time, but what happened?”
He eased back in his chair, his hand resting at the base of the frosted glass of Guinness. He wiped the condensation with a long index finger, which only brought my mind back to the bedroom. Geez, I had it bad.
“I believe you know about Kat and Damas. Correct?”
“I know that he took her. She said she was there for a long time.” My throat constricted, considering my dear friend in the hands of a monster like Danté. I had no idea what a long time truly was—days, months, years, decades. A chill crawled over my skin.
Jude’s gaze wandered out the window. “I don’t know the extent of their relationship before that happened. I knew George was acting peculiar, on edge, which was unlike him. Then he told me Damas was working the London scene, the aristocracy. Of all the princes of the underworld, Damas has always been the master of deception. He could blend in with the highborn and pose as the most civil of dukes or the most roguish of rakes, preying on widowers and naïve debutantes. George told me Damas had targeted a woman for his own gain, more than for sport.” He gave me a knowing look. Damas had wanted her as his bride, for certain, or at least a concubine of some sort.
“It was Kat,” I said.
A slow nod. “By the time George rallied me and even reported his findings to Uriel, Damas had already taken her, and wanted her as an Angelus Retonsor.”
“What? Kat was an angel hunter?” I hissed.
The English ladies glanced in our direction. Our waitress walked up at that moment and set our dishes down. “Here you go. Careful of the plates. They’re very hot.”
“Thank you,” I said tightly.
Realizing we were in the middle of something rather intense, she disappeared quickly. When she was out of earshot, I began again.
“How is that even possible? How can an angel hunter become a demon hunter?”
My brain was spinning. Kat, my sweet cheerful friend, once worked for the enemy, a demon prince of Dark Flamma.
“Before you let your imagination run away with you, let me say that she never hunted or harmed any angels. Had she done so, Uriel never would’ve given her a reprieve. No. Damas had twisted her mind almost beyond the point of return, but somehow, she’d held on. She wasn’t able to resist him in all ways, but she managed to hold him off from turning her into one of his angel hunters.”
I forked a piece of buttery sea bass into my mouth, while Jude cut into his lamb. I remembered that piece of filth, Bleed, kneeling before her and begging for torture like she was some kind of dominatrix, willing to dispense pain at his pleasure. I wondered if word had gotten around the underworld that she had once nearly been one of them, and they knew some secret about her time in captivity. The way Bleed begged for it, the way Kat knew how to control him, made me wonder what kinds of hell Kat had been through in the lair of Damas.
“So Uriel saved her from Damas?”
“No. George did.”
I remembered the vision I’d had that night at Glastonbury Abbey, where a broken George stood on the quay with Jude telling him to forget her and Uriel claiming he never would. Never could. The strength of will searing through his veins had told me he’d go after her. Now I knew for certain it was Kat he’d lost and longed to find. I refused to think about the other part of that vision which still made my blood run cold, the promise Uriel made Jude, that he would give his soul up willingly for a woman he loved. Whatever premonition Uriel had, I was bound and determined to never let something like that happen. I shook off the thought.
“He loved her,” I said.
“Still does.” Jude gave me a wistful smile. “He won’t speak of what happened in the lair of Damas, of what he saw, of how he was able to bring her back. I only know what Uriel told me afterwards.”
Jude took another bite, chewing slowly, remembering.
“Please. You have to tell me what Uriel said.”
Jude gulped down the
last of his dark ale. “He said, ‘George did the impossible. He saved a lost soul, his fallen woman, from the chains of the most dangerous demon prince. And I have rewarded his bravery by giving her a second chance.’”
I couldn’t eat another bite. “So Uriel made her a Dominus Daemonum.”
Jude gave a stiff nod, clenching his jaw as he chewed more vigorously.
I draped my napkin over my plate. “So why aren’t they together now? I know she cares for him. What’s the problem?”
“That question can only be answered by George and Katherine.”
He tossed his napkin on the plate, frustration leaking from every movement and swift glance around the room. It was a waste—loving someone with your whole heart and allowing time to ebb on without ever cherishing what could be. Jude and I were well beyond that, and the need to grab on and hold tight gripped me like never before.
“I want to get out of here,” I said.
The urgency in his expression mirrored my own. He stilled, capturing me with his gaze as he sprawled back in his chair, one arm resting on the table where his index finger tapped in a slow, steady rhythm. “I want you…wife.”
It felt like forever before the waitress dropped the check, we paid our bill, whisked ourselves around a corner, sifted across the island and slammed through the cottage door, Jude crushing my body against the wall.
A desperate kiss swept me away—teeth, tongue, lips clashing in ravenous need. Tossing our coats aside, he cupped the back of my thighs and lifted. I wrapped my legs around his waist, cradling his hard length against my apex. Grinding myself against him, I moaned into his mouth.
He swore a string of nasty epithets, grappling to strip me faster. He broke from the kiss long enough to set me down, yanking off and throwing my boots clear across the room—one bounced on the dining room table—and stripping my panties and jeans in one swift move. Pressing me back against the wall, I wrapped my legs around his waist again, whimpering at the delicious friction of my naked skin against the hard crotch of his jeans.
“Ah!” I gasped against his mouth, my brain barely functioning, misfiring, as I rode the molten sensation rolling through my body.
He unzipped his jeans just enough, his shaft jutting out, finding my body ready and waiting for him. No foreplay this time. I sank down as he plunged up. In one euphoric thrust, he was buried deep. I sucked in a breath, having him inside me still a foreign yet frighteningly intimate sensation.
“So beautiful,” he ground out, capturing my gaze as he pumped into me against the wall, my soft curves molding to his hard body.
I clung to his shoulders, pulling him closer, wanting, needing, moaning for more. So I told him.
“More,” I demanded on a breathy gasp.
He groaned, giving it to me, hand tangled in my hair, gripping my nape, teeth scraping my throat. Our bodies were the same machine, moving against and into each other as if we were made of the same parts, for the same purpose, striving to meet the same mind-blowing end. That rope binding us together encircled us in a strangling hold, stretching, tightening as Jude’s body vibrated and my blood pumped at a furious pace, my underlight glowing in the afternoon dark of the cottage.
An uncharacteristic laugh choked out of my throat as I climbed higher, my senses swimming in ecstasy, the hottest fucking man on this planet punishing my body with sheer, raw desire in the hardest, most delectable way. If I’d thought he marked me my first night, I was so wrong. He branded me now as his one and only. As the only. He ruined my body to any other. No man could touch me now. With or without vows, I was his, now and forever.
This was what they meant, the poets when they wrote of love. Not the silly romantics, but the hard-core realists, writing of love as if it were a runaway freight train burning a hole through the world, lighting every fucking thing on fire. Jude was my runaway train, blazing straight through me, igniting me into an inferno. The irony was that only he could ever quench the flames.
His fingers curled into the soft flesh beneath my thighs. Our breaths mingled in a furious bid for air, confined in the small space where our bodies strove to wind tighter into each other.
“Kiss me,” I managed to say, no longer giving a shit if I could breathe, needing his touch to invade every part of me.
He sealed his mouth to mine, stroking his tongue deep. I whimpered, sliding mine along his, my mind screaming one word, one name only.
Jude… Jude… Jude.
He slammed into me harder with a fierce determination that might’ve frightened any other woman. But I knew him. I understood this longing, and I wondered for a split second if I’d ever be able to look at him without this violent need for his touch.
My core tightened as a mounting sensation spun me toward the cliff. I ripped my mouth from his, dropping my head back against the wall and screamed as a shuddering orgasm tore through my whole body. I squeezed every muscle I had.
Jude’s body froze into a rigid wall of steel, only one part of him moving, pulsing inside me.
Minutes later, we were still standing there, panting, finally noticing that breathing air into our lungs was actually an important thing. Jude touched his forehead to mine.
“Sorry.” He pressed a soft kiss to my open mouth. “Couldn’t stop myself.”
“Sorry?” I laced my fingers into his hair, molding my mouth to his in a slow caress, letting my tongue slide over his bottom lip. “Again. Husband.”
His eyes widened a fraction before sweeping a swift kiss to my lips. “Give me a minute.”
“Just a minute?” I arched a brow.
His mouth quirked into the sexiest smolder I’d ever seen. My heart skittered ahead. “Well. Perhaps two,” he said with a wink. Lifting me away from the wall, he carried me to the bedroom, where we spent the rest of the afternoon.
After nightfall, we ate a dinner of cheese, ham and French bread, snuggling in his comfy chair in front of the fire in the bedroom. Still naked, I sat in his lap with a tartan blanket wrapped around me. We hadn’t said a word in nearly an hour, simply sitting together, touching, staring into the fire.
I raised my left palm out to him. He pressed his to mine, my silver ring glinting by firelight. I observed the intricate details, an exact match to his.
“I hope you weren’t looking for diamonds.”
I scoffed. “Not at all. This is perfect.”
Jude removed his hand from mine, pointing along the edge of the ring. “Do you see how the interlacing has no beginning and no end?”
“Mm-hmm.” I watched as his index finger traced my ring. It shouldn’t have been erotic, but I couldn’t get my brain to think straight anymore when it came to him.
“It’s a Celtic design, meaning forever, infinity.”
I smiled, lacing our fingers together and pulling our hands against my chest. “Like us.”
“Yes,” he agreed, his voice having dropped several octaves. “Like us.”
I kissed him again, then lay my head on his shoulder. “I wish we could just stay here forever. In this cottage. Away from the world and demons and destruction.” I heaved out a sigh. “I’m so happy here with you, Jude. Happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life.”
He kissed my crown. “As am I, mon coeur.”
I listened to the fire crackle and the steady thump-thump of Jude’s heart beating inside his chest, drifting away to the most pleasant sleep I could ever remember.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Snuggled in a pile of quilts on the bed, I was immersed in my book, The Captain’s Captive. We’d had several days of sheer bliss. Jude had gone into Brodick to buy more peat as the shed outside was nearly empty. We’d been cozying up to the fire day in, day out. I lounged about back here, feeling like queen of my own Scottish cottage. I suppose that would make Jude my king. Hmph. No doubt about that.
The historical romance had gotten even better. Captain Sparr’s privateer ship had been capsized during a storm. He’d managed to save Viola before they washed up on shore on an unknow
n island, of course. The freezing temperatures of the water had Viola shivering violently, her lips turning purple as her body began dipping into hypothermia. So what else could Captain Sparr do but strip them both naked? He built a fire in record time out of who knows what, found and made a bed of bamboo leaves on the edge of the beach, tore her soaking dress from her body, removed his clothes, then warmed her with his body heat till her core temperature returned to normal. The shock of the storm, the plunge into the freezing ocean, and the whole near-death experience had doused her into a deep sleep. Wreckage from his ship, the Siren, washed up on shore. There had been no survivors except them, of course. A scrap of the sail washed ashore as well. Captain Sparr dried it out near the fire, then blanketed himself and Viola with it, spooning his body behind hers. She stirred awake. And so had other masculine parts of him. She’d just looked over her shoulder with her angelic, violet-blue eyes and said, “Thank you for saving my life, Captain Sparr,” and he’d replied gruffly, “Call me William,” with a lustful glint in his eyes when I was suddenly snapped out of my fantasy world by a vibrating noise.
I glanced around the room, irritated as all hell, because I had to know what happened next. Actually, I knew what I hoped would happen next, but the irritating buzzing noise wouldn’t stop, coming from the mantel in the bedroom.
Setting my book down, I crawled out of my nest of blankets and picked up Jude’s phone, which was vibrating incessantly. Cell service rolled through here like the wind. Not that we paid any attention to our phones lately, avoiding any and all interruptions as much as possible. I glanced at the iPhone screen. Five missed calls from George. Not good. We’d both turned our phones completely off for the first two days here. I’d checked in once with Mindy. She’d texted, asking how I was enjoying my time with Jude along with a row of winky faces, X’s and O’s. I’d replied that everything was perfect with a row of hearts. But that was the extent of my contact with the outside world and that was just how I wanted it. I grimaced at the blinking “missed calls” from George.
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