Passionate Kisses 2 Boxed Set: Love in Bloom

by Magda Alexander

Breathing hard, he smoothed his hands down her back until they shaped around the perfect globes of her ass. Their kissing grew hotter and harder. She ground on him, and his body tightened like she’d plucked a string between his stomach and his balls.

  Shit. He was going to come in his pants.

  No. He shoved the pleasure away with a force of will stronger than any he’d ever summoned before.

  His vow was at stake. He wouldn’t break it.

  You’re playing with fire, cautioned the voice of reason.

  Maybe, but I’m not going to get burned. He’d had a lot of practice holding himself in check. He could do this. He could give Jade pleasure, and he could enjoy making out with her without breaking his no-coming rule.

  Encouraged, he toyed with the thin strip of satin between her delectable ass cheeks. He curled two fingers around it and thrilled at the feel of her silky skin heating the backs of his knuckles. He was less than an inch from finding out whether she was as turned on as he was. Just a twist of his wrist and a stretching out of those two lucky fingers, and he’d be there, where he’d never been before with any woman.

  Would be a shame to come this far and not at least touch her. Jade was special enough to share this with. He was frigging twenty-seven years old. He ought to know what a woman’s wetness felt like.

  Jade broke their kiss.

  He tensed. She was going to tell him to knock it off, that they were doing too much. Guilt frayed the edge of his desire. He forced his hand away from paradise and gripped her hips, an apology on the tip of his tongue.

  She gazed at him with heavy lidded eyes. “Please,” she said and then she caught her lower lip between her teeth.

  His breath hitched at her beauty, and he lost his train of thought. “Please what, baby?” He’d do anything she asked. Anything.

  “Touch me. I need you, Emmett.”

  How could he refuse her? She was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. His heart was her hostage. His body was her servant.

  Pulse pounding, he strained up to take her mouth again, and as their tongues wrapped around each other, he curled his fingers into the front of her panties and found her soaking wet center. She was slick and hot and completely perfect. Feeling her wet for him was the most sensual thing he’d ever experienced. He had to swallow back the urge to come.

  Forcing himself to focus on her pleasure, he found her swollen little clit-her moan told him he was in the right place. So did the way she started writhing on him.

  Her enthusiastic response was every bit as intoxicating as the pleasure pounding through his dick.

  “More,” she breathed.

  He obeyed, pushing a finger into her drenching heat.

  This wasn’t sex. It was comfort He was just comforting her. As long as he kept his pants on, he wasn’t breaking his rule. He wasn’t sacrificing his vow. He could do this for her without coming.

  And if she came, it was only because she really needed it, needed him. That was nothing to feel guilty about. It was something to feel proud about.

  She sat up and rocked herself on his finger, eyes locked on his, approving, loving. She might not have said the L word back to him, but the proof of it was there in her gaze.

  He added a second finger to the first, and she began whimpering in time with her rapid breaths. Being the cause of those sharp little mewling noises sang to everything male in him. His cock pounded behind his zipper in unbearable pleasure-pain.

  But he had to bear it. Or throw away his vow. He couldn’t deny he was more tempted than he’d ever been, but he wasn’t ready to break, yet.

  She ground herself on his fingers, wordlessly asking for more.

  He grit his teeth and gave her what she needed, thumbing her clit while he pumped in and out of her. “I want to give you this. Come for me, baby.”

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Joshua’s stomach turned with nausea at the scene on the bed. Taking the shadow form that still felt so natural to him, he had blended into a dark corner in Emmett’s room to watch over Jade and assist her if necessary. At the moment, necessary was an understatement. Not only had Mercy clearly overpowered his charge, but she had wasted no time seducing Emmett.

  Already, the blessing around Emmett’s home was weakening. It remained in place only because Joshua was shunting his own power into it. But if Emmett took the final step and joined intimately with Mercy, no amount of angel interference would sustain the blessing. Draonius would enter the house.

  Then, to put it colorfully, all hell would break loose.

  It would be best to keep the blessing intact. Joshua had enough to deal with at present, including standing by in case Mercy shoved Jade out of her body. If he wasn’t there to catch her essence, she would disperse and die. Since she was his charge, he must protect her above all other duties, including fighting Draonius and protecting Emmett. There was only so much one angel could do.

  Which was why he thanked God for the gift of technology.

  In his hands were two modern devices, one of which he’d swiped from the kitchen counter, and the other from Nick’s bag before he’d left. Using his mastery of air and energy, he brought up Nick’s name on the screen of the first gadget and “sent” the call. Then he lowered the volume control and discreetly placed the device on the bedside table without the two on the bed noticing. He switched the other device on and placed it on the stairs.

  Jade hadn’t been strong enough to relay her message to Nick. He prayed he wasn’t too late to do it for her.

  *****

  Nick’s phone rattled in the cup holder. He was at the Dunkin’s down the street from Emmett’s for a caffeine infusion and thought about ignoring the call since he was eager to hit the road and get back to his apartment in time to get in an hour or two of studying. But it might be Ali. He handed his money to the window guy, took his iced vanilla and straw, and pulled up to answer.

  The display showed it was Emmett. Hoping Lisa hadn’t backed out, he pressed talk and said, “What’s up?”

  What he heard instead of Emmett’s voice made his blood run cold. The sharp moans of a female engaged in sex.

  “What the hell? Hey, Em? Emmett! What’s going on, there?”

  More moaning. Could that be Jade? Were they having sex and his buddy accidentally made a phone call when he took off his pants?

  “Emmett!” he yelled.

  There was no response other than more moaning, sharper and faster. Then Emmett’s voice, telling Jade to come for him.

  His heart dropped into his shoes. He’d been gone less than ten minutes and his buddy was breaking his vow.

  “Damn it!” Keeping the line open, he set his phone in the cup holder beside his coffee and floored the accelerator. He raced out of Dunkin’s and drove the mile and a half to Emmett’s in record time, praying it wasn’t what it sounded like, hoping it wasn’t already too late for his buddy.

  *****

  The bedamned blessing was holding. Given Emmett’s obvious lust, it should at least be weakening, but Draonius couldn’t detect even the slightest wavering of power.

  His talons gouged the bark of his perch as he glared through the window to the candle-lit lovers’ nest. Mercy was doing her part. He couldn’t fault his seductive little witch. But the bloody believer still had his trousers on. It should be his cock inside her, not his fingers. He should be fornicating his brains out, eradicating the blessing. But for some incomprehensible reason, he resisted.

  This wouldn’t do. Draonius was weakening by the minute just holding on to this wretched bird’s carcass. She needed to speed things up. Or they’d both be damned.

  He coughed a warning caw, but Mercy didn’t seem to hear it. She had her head thrown back, and she was kneading her own breasts. Her moans cut through the still night. She was about to find sweet completion.

  The seduction was necessary, but a sharp cut of jealousy took him off guard. She was enjoying her role to the point of forgetting her master. How dare she? He cawed again, this time louder, a deman
d for attention.

  She still didn’t react.

  The little whore. She’d pay for selfishly taking her pleasure while he wasted away in this bloody tree. Anger ripped through him as he thought of all the ways he would punish her once he had the powerful male body at his disposal.

  A sudden ear-piercing racket sounded from the road at the front of the house. It was a blaring horn, and it was getting closer.

  Bloody hell. The last thing he needed was for some foreign noise to distract Emmett from Mercy’s seduction. He flew around the house to find the coach belonging to the fat man screeching to a halt nearly upon Emmett’s doorstep. The man propelled his massive form out of the coach at surprising speed.

  “Emmett!” he yelled, running for the door so hard his ridiculous hat tumbled from his head. “You better not be doing what I think you’re doing!”

  This believer would not upset his plans. He tucked his wings and dove, aiming for the target of the man’s great towhead. He would taste blood this night, and it would strengthen him.

  *****

  If Jade had control over her eyes, she would be crying with frustration.

  This was her body, damn it! She did not want this. Emmett might still have his clothes on, but he was an idiot if he thought this wasn’t breaking his vow.

  This was sex.

  He was having sex with her. And she had to stop it before he lost more than his vow. Technically he was still a virgin, but from the way his hips were moving under her he was lost to Mercy’s whims. If that bitch could tempt him to do this, she could tempt him to go further. And she knew from Mercy’s memories what the witch would do to Emmett at the peak of his first-ever orgasm with a woman, the same thing she’d done to Joshua-shove a knife into his heart and hand him over to a demon, body and soul.

  No way was Jade going to let that happen. Not to the man that had just told her he loved her. Not to the man she was pretty sure she loved back.

  But her strength was no match for Mercy’s. She’d tried the brute force method of taking back her body, and it hadn’t worked. She’d tried wresting control of her mouth and begging Emmett for help, but Mercy had retaliated so strongly, it had been all she could do not to get hurled out of her body into that awful wind.

  But she wasn’t giving up. There had to be some way to get the upper hand.

  An idea struck her. Mercy was under her skin. It was time to return the favor.

  She called up in her memory the dream in which she’d watched Draonius kill Mercy. Concentrating on Mercy’s pain and her sense of betrayal from that dream, she thought, You really trust him not to hurt you again? She visualized Draonius’s huge winged demon form. His teeth. His claws. Do you really think he’ll be any more careful with Emmett’s body than he was with Joshua’s?

  Mercy had been on the verge of climax, but Jade’s words pulled her back.

  Draonius loves me. He won’t hurt me.

  He loves himself more. She was getting to the witch. If she kept it up, Emmett might figure out something bad was going on. He will hurt you again. It’s what he does. He uses women. You’re just another victim to him. The conviction in her voice came from years of observing the selfish a-holes her mother had wasted her time on.

  A flash of anger licked her like fire. “Stop it,” Mercy said out loud. “You don’t know him.” She gave a violent mental push.

  Jade dug in her tendrils with the last ounce of her strength, willing Emmett to realize what was happening. She hung on, barely.

  His fingers stopped moving inside her even though Mercy kept riding them. His voice strained, he said, “Did you say stop, babe?”

  She felt Mercy’s confusion and jumped on it. “You don’t want this, Emmett. Remember your vow,” she said in a rush.

  “Damn you! Get out!” Mercy shrieked, taking back control of her voice.

  She felt Emmett withdraw his fingers from her body. She heard him say, “What’s going on, hon?”

  Damn you! Mercy shrieked inside her head. The witch blasted her with rage. Frigid wind ripped her from her body.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  A horn blared outside. A car door slammed. Muffled shouting doused Emmett’s desire like a bucket of ice water. He couldn’t make out the words, but he was pretty sure the voice belonged to Nick.

  He bit back a curse and wiped his fingers on the sheets. Feeling suddenly ashamed, he met Jade’s eyes. He wasn’t sure if he’d expected her to look disappointed or embarrassed, but he definitely didn’t expect to see her face twisted in anger.

  “Make him go away,” she growled. “Finish what you started.” She clawed at his jeans.

  He caught her wrists. Something was very wrong. “Jade? What’s going on?”

  He tried to roll her off of him, but she squeezed him between her thighs like she was riding the mechanical bull at Billy Bob’s. He couldn’t unseat her. Spiders skittered up his spine.

  She didn’t answer. Her hands twisted in his grip until she’d managed to work his fly open. She wore a look of crazed determination that made him feel sick to his stomach.

  “Baby, it’s over,” he said, scrabbling with her hands to keep her from reaching for his erection.

  Nick’s shouting had stopped, and Emmett dared to hope it was because his buddy had decided to leave. No such luck. Downstairs, the kitchen door banged open. Footsteps clomped toward the stairs to his room, and he heard a muttered, “Son of a bitch,” then a hiss, as if his buddy were in pain.

  “Don’t come up here, man,” he called, still struggling with Jade. Whatever had gotten into her, he didn’t want Nick to see her like this. He sure as hell didn’t want Nick to see him like this.

  Nick’s footsteps stopped midway up the stairs. There were a few beats of silence. Then his buddy voice floated up from the stairwell. “Em, I need you to get away from Jade right now.”

  “Please don’t come up. Jade’s not dressed.” Well, she wasn’t exactly naked, but she was close enough to it that he preferred for her to put something else on before Nick came up. That is, if he could get her to stop trying to grab his dick.

  “It’s over, baby,” he said to her. “Hey, hey, it’s not going to happen tonight.”

  Tears coursed down her cheeks. Her face fell to something between rage and despair.

  Suddenly, she dove for the pillow and came away with the chef’s knife from his kitchen. “Tell him to go away,” she mouthed as she touched the blade to his throat.

  He was clammy with sweat from the passion of a few minutes ago. At the sight of his girl pinning him to the mattress with a knife, the sweat turned to ice on his skin. He swallowed and a flare of pain over his Adam’s apple told him she’d just drawn blood.

  “Um, Nick,” he said. “She says you’re supposed to go away.”

  “Pray,” was his buddy’s quiet response.

  He felt it then. Evil. He’d never realized evil had a sensation, but it did. It was cold. Not the kind of cold you fight by putting on a coat or turning on the heat, but the kind of cold that makes itself part of you. He felt cold to his core, like he had coolant pooling in his intestines.

  His heart in his throat, he did what Nick told him, reciting the Lord’s Prayer as he had in Jade’s kitchen when that thing attacked them. “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name-”

  Jade screeched, “Stop! Draonius, help me!”

  Her fingers convulsed and the knife fell to the mattress. She pressed both hands over her ears.

  He kept reciting the Lord’s Prayer, torn between reaching for Jade and recoiling from her.

  When she scrambled off of him with jerky, inhuman movements and huddled against the wall, a sob built in his throat. He didn’t let it out-he would fall apart if he did. Instead he kept reciting the Lord’s Prayer as he crawled off the bed. The words on his tongue tasted of warmth and hope.

  Nick came up into the room, and the sight of him drew his gaze away from Jade. His buddy’s ever-present pageboy cap was missing. In its place were criss
crossing streams of blood matting his white-blond hair and streaking his face. It looked like something had tried to claw his head off.

  Terror tightened his gut. His voice failed him. His prayer became a strained whisper. But when Nick joined in, he found his voice again.

  They finished the prayer, and Nick said, “Your phone sent me a message a few minutes ago.” There was a tremor in his voice. He didn’t take his eyes from Jade. “It said, ‘She is possessed by a spirit named Mercy Abigail Birmingham, who serves the demon Draonius. You must stop him.’” He took a shaky breath. “I’m guessing you didn’t send me that as a joke.”

  A shiver pebbled every inch of his skin. “I didn’t send it at all.”

  Nick held up a hand. In his fist was one of the devices he’d used at Jade’s house the night before. The EMF detector. It hadn’t done anything then. Now, it was blinking yellow LED lights.

  “And I suppose you didn’t leave this for me on the stairs, either,” Nick said.

  “Nope.”

  Holding the EMF detector out like a ward, Nick walked slowly to where Jade huddled against the wall. The lights blinked from yellow to orange. As he crouched and held the EMF detector right up against her, the lights blinked red, confirming what he already knew in his heart.

  The evil was in Jade.

  It hit him like a blow to the stomach. How had this happened? How had he not known? What was Jade feeling? Was she even in there?

  “What’s happening?” he asked Nick. “What do we do?”

  Nick didn’t look at him. “She’s possessed.” His buddy looked just as stunned as he felt.

  “What do we do?” he repeated.

  Nick blinked a few times as if getting hold of himself. “Get me a cross or a Bible,” he said. Then he began reciting something that sounded like Latin.

  His leather-bound Bible lived on his desk across the room. He ran to grab it and pressed it into Nick’s hand.

  Nick held it facing out to Jade, almost touching her.

  She rocked on her haunches and keened a blood-curdling cry.

  “You’re hurting her!” He grabbed at the Bible.