Devoured Page 6

  He’d head home tomorrow and take care of the calls that needed to be made for the Procter children. Then he’d be back in Deepweeds Monday morning to make sure that their transition to Bella’s temporary custody went smoothly and Mr. Procter was convinced not to cause any trouble. Heath knew the right people to pay off to make sure what he wanted was accomplished with the utmost speed and discretion.

  And if Mr. Procter weren’t bribable, he’d find other ways to make him see reason.

  Then, when all the dust had settled and Bella had succumbed to the inevitable love and lust growing between them, he would put his mind back on other things. Like business. It was what he obsessed over twelve hours a day, seven days a week, his raison d’etre and his favorite use of a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  Strangely, however, the real reason he’d come to Deepweeds this afternoon was starting to seem unimportant. Sure, he still planned on making sex toys—the best damn sex toys in the industry—but it suddenly didn’t seem so important for Bella to work for him.

  No matter how many nondisclosures they signed, gossip had a way of spreading. There was always the chance that there would be a leak, that the truth would come out and she’d be back to suffering the same kind of public relations disaster she was dealing with right now.

  And she was better than that.

  Maybe even he would be better than that if he were with her.

  “But will she want to be with you, jackass?” He whispered the question into the darkened cottage before he closed his eyes and willed himself to fall asleep.

  He wanted to be unconscious before he had to listen to Bella sliding into her bed, and more importantly, before his brain had time to figure the odds on the Queen of Sweets making a go of it with the King of Smut.

  As he slipped into dreamland, however, his mind broke the news that it didn’t look good. It didn’t look good at all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bella

  Bella was dreaming, she had to be dreaming.

  The raging fire inside of her could never burn in waking life. She would be incinerated, destroyed by its heat, eaten alive by the raw need that was quickly consuming what was left of her right mind.

  But she could still smell the familiar scents of her cottage—lavender, baked goods and sugar—and the unfamiliar smell of Heath across the room. She could hear the night birds calling outside, the last of the summer insects humming into the darkness, and the soft snoring from the man on her trundle bed.

  The man responsible for this unbelievable burning.

  She shifted again, throwing off her quilt, grateful that she hadn’t lit the wood stove. She was already twisting, writhing against the suddenly coarse sheets. Every nerve in her body screamed for her to get out of bed, to go to the only person who could ease the ache that was becoming more than she could bear. Each whisper of her nightgown across her nipples, each shift of thigh against thigh, seemed to make the burning worse. It was impossible to catch her breath, her skin was damp with sweat, and it was all she could do to keep from moaning her desire into the night.

  Go to him. Go to him and take what you need.

  “No.” She muttered the word aloud, then closed her eyes and forced herself not to move, not to feed the itch inside of her with any more friction of sheets and fabric against her sensitized skin. She had made it so long. She was stronger than this. It was only a month. Was she such a slave to her newly awakened lust that she couldn’t delay her gratification a few weeks longer?

  Take what you need, Bella. He’ll never come back.

  Do you want to die a virgin, alone in your cottage, never knowing what it feels like to have a man in your bed?

  Damn that voice, it was evilly persuasive. Maybe Heath wouldn’t come back. He’d promised to help Hansel and Gretel and she believed he would. He had said he loved her and as crazy as it seemed, she almost believed that, too—she knew she was falling for him.

  But what if she were wrong? It had happened so fast, so quickly it made her head swim. What if this were all some crazy dream, the climax of which was her lying in her bed as her body cried out for liberation from the sexual hunger that had tormented her for most of her adult life?

  He wants you. He’s hard for you even in his sleep.

  You could claim him now. He would never have to know you were a virgin or wonder why you’ve waited so long to share your body with a man.

  She didn’t know if it was the word “claim” that did it, or the whole idea of ravishing Heath while he was sleeping, but she was suddenly positive that the voice in her head wasn’t hers.

  There was something wrong, something working in her mind, under her skin, that wasn’t Bella. Her suspicions were confirmed when she was suddenly jerked into a sitting position by an unseen force and her bare feet slid to the floor of their own accord.

  The voice. The movements of her body. Something was horribly wrong.

  The terror that coursed through her at the realization was almost enough to banish her painful desire.

  Almost…but not quite.

  Don’t fight this. You want him. You crave the feel of him inside of you, reaching into your womb, giving you a child, the next in your line, the girl who will carry on your legacy.

  “No.” Bella tried to scream, but the sound came out a hoarse whisper. Then, as if in a dream, she watched her arms grip the bottom of her nightgown and pull at the gauzy fabric until it floated quietly over her head.

  Touch yourself, Bella. Ready your body for him.

  Bella moaned into the night as her hands rose to roll her nipples between her fingers and thumbs, plucking and teasing until her breasts were heavy and swollen. Her sex became a painful, throbbing place, filled with so much need, so much hunger, that she knew there would be no turning back. She would take him. Even if the voice and its accompanying power over her body were to fade at this very moment, she would still cross the room, rip the sheets from Heath’s sleeping form, and claim him like a woman possessed.

  “A woman possessed.” The words resonated through the eerie quiet of the cottage, as did her sharp gasp as one hand left her nipple and slid down between her legs.

  She felt her fingers part her curls almost as if they weren’t her own. They teased her swollen flesh for a moment, sliding through her slick folds. Then her middle finger worked even further down, dipping into her pussy, bringing back wetness to coat her clit. Her fingers flew over the bundle of nerves, teasing the nub.

  “Oh,” Bella whispered, her knees threatening to buckle and her body to shatter right there in the middle of the wooden floor.

  Good girl.

  The voice whispered once more inside her mind. Then it was gone as quickly as it had come, taking its power over her body with it, leaving her so filled with frustrated desire that she shook and trembled.

  The night was suddenly colder than she could bear. Her breath came in ragged gasps as she clenched her hands together, bringing her knuckles to her mouth and struggling to come back to herself, to find the rational woman she knew was somewhere inside the carnal creature she had become.

  Unbidden, her eyes found Heath’s sleeping form only a few feet away. He was on his side, his face turned toward her, his lips slightly parted in a way that made them look even more delicious. He looked younger, softer and even more loveable. The innocence that sleep brings should have made her go back to her own bed and find release on her pillow. It should have cleared her mind enough to prevent what had a few seconds ago seemed inevitable.

  But it didn’t. She didn’t.

  As she crossed the last few steps to his bed and gently rolled him onto his back, Bella knew she was making a mistake she would regret for the rest of her life. But she didn’t care; she couldn’t care about anything except satisfying the sanity-stealing desire that had become her entire world.

  She knew of only one way to remove it, satisfy it, eradicate it, one way to get back to who she really was without this unbelievable hunger.

  �
�Bella?” Heath was still half asleep as she parted the opening of his silk boxers and removed his cock—which was indeed hard, thick and ready, just as the voice had said it would be.

  “Heath, wake up,” Bella whispered as she reached down and spread her sex, positioning the head of him against her slick, aching center. She didn’t want him to be asleep or for this to be something he might regret when he woke up and realized what she’d done.

  “I was just dreaming about you—oh yes, Bella. Yes!” He woke up faster than she would have believed possible. In seconds his hands were on her hips, fingers digging into her flesh as he pulled her down to meet the sharp upward thrust of his hips.

  In the first instant that his thickness tunneled deep inside, there was a flash of pain and a sensation of being stretched past capacity. Then the pain was gone, replaced by the euphoria of feeling him inside her and of being more intimately joined than she had thought possible. She looked down into his face, seeing a hunger and need that rivaled her own. His face contorted in a grimace of pleasure that was strangely beautiful, and she knew, right or wrong, he’d wanted this just as much as she had.

  “Lean down, give me your tits,” he moaned and Bella obeyed, not even caring that he’d used the word “tits” once his mouth closed around her nipple and he began to suckle her. His tongue flicked in swift circles around her puckered tip until the tension within her built to yet another level, making her forget everything but her desire.

  “Yes,” she gasped the word against his mouth as he kissed her hard enough to bruise her lips.

  She rode his cock with a frantic rhythm even faster than the steel hands on her hips were urging. In seconds, he gave up on setting their speed, his hands stealing around to cup her ass. His fingers dug into her flesh, leveraging her thrusts in a new direction, a direction that had her clit rolling over his pubic bone again and again.

  “Heath,” she pleaded, not knowing what was going to happen next, but knowing she needed it more than she’d ever needed anything. She was shaking, breathless, drunk on a kind of pleasure she still couldn’t believe was real.

  “Come on my cock, Bella, come on me,” he demanded softly into her ear, and for some reason those words were all she needed.

  She cried out as she came, hearing herself as if she were listening from across the room. Her spirit filled every corner, soared to the rafters, her essence floating out through the chimney as the pure bliss of his hands on her, his cock inside of her, made her explode past the boundaries of her skin.

  She had become something different, a being of energy and pleasure that existed outside the constraints of time and flesh.

  “I love you.” She sagged onto his chest, feeling as if every bone in her body had been broken and reformed, leaving her limp and useless and weak. “I really do.”

  In that moment, she didn’t care if he felt the same way; she simply needed to tell him the truth in her heart.

  “I love you too,” he said with a ragged sigh. “I love fucking you, I love eating your pussy, I love watching your face get all red when you’re pissed off, I love eating your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—”

  “Heath—”

  “Don’t interrupt me when I’m telling you how much I love you,” he ordered before rolling her onto her back and positioning himself above her, slowly beginning to pump his hips.

  “I love the way you love those kids and the way you talk dirty every once in awhile. I even love the way you put sheets on a bed, the way your ass tilts up when you’re tucking them in. Oh God, and your pussy—God—your pussy is the best place I’ve ever been,” he panted with a little laugh.

  “Heath.” Bella laughed, unable to believe that the slow, sensuous stroking of his still rigid cock inside of her was making her body come alive again, already building the fire she knew would consume her, destroy her and recreate her all in the space of a few mind-blowing minutes. She wouldn’t have believed it was possible once, let alone twice.

  “Come back to the city with me, live with me, let me fuck you like this every night.” His eyes burned into hers with a fire she knew came from his heart, not only his body.

  “Heath, I—I don’t know, I don’t know.” It was suddenly impossible to think amidst the warring voices in her mind.

  He was crazy. She was cursed.

  He couldn’t be serious, but then again, maybe he was.

  And if he were, did she have the courage to take what she wanted, to throw curses and legacies and the work of a lifetime to the wind to claim the man who had changed her world overnight?

  “Then marry me. Marry me. I’m not too scared to ask. I’ll marry you tomorrow.” His rhythm grew faster, more urgent. He leaned in to claim her lips, his tongue moving against hers in a frenzied dance as she lifted to meet his thrusts.

  His hands shifted from her waist to her nipples, softly brushing the nearly raw flesh with his thumbs, building her need to the breaking point. Then he dropped his face into her neck, slamming his body into hers with a fierceness that told of his need to possess her completely.

  “Bella, Bella.” He chanted her name against her skin as his pace grew even faster. His thickly muscled arms shook as they wrapped around her shoulders, clinging to her, clenching her tightly to his chest.

  “Come inside me, Heath.” She cried out as her pussy clenched around him in a second wave of pleasure.

  “Bella, I love you.” He moaned and came, drenching her insides, shooting himself deep inside her center as her walls continued to pulse with the aftermath of her orgasm.

  And then something was different.

  Bella actually felt the shift when it happened. She stopped breathing for a moment, terrified as a tinkle of wicked laughter sounded somewhere outside her window and then floated off into the night.

  She’d done it, exactly what the voice told her to do. Not only had she slept with Heath, she’d practically begged him to come inside her.

  Now she’d just have to wait…and pray. Maybe she would be different, maybe the curse would finally end with her, with her and the man who—from the glistening in his eyes as he lifted his head and looked down at her—seemed to be as blown away by the feelings between them as she was.

  “I love you, too,” Bella said, smoothing a lock of hair off of his forehead.

  She tried not to let her heart lodge in her throat, but something deep inside of her said this would be the last time she’d ever see him smile.

  Hell, it might be one of the last times she’d ever see his face.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Two months later

  Mary didn’t know what drove her to do it, what finally gave her the courage to stand up for what she’d wanted for so very, very long. But something had, some inner strength that had abandoned her decades before.

  So she’d done it. She’d done it without a second thought, and then put the entire event out of her mind. She’d had to do it, had to stop him from making the biggest mistake of his life.

  That woman didn’t love him, couldn’t love him, not the way she did.

  Mary O’Neill had loved Heath Miller for longer than she could remember, since they’d been kids playing in the back alleys of Kingdom City’s grittier streets, dreaming of ways to get out of the hell they’d been born into. They’d been a pair, Mary with a mom who was always messed up on pixie dust, and Heath with a dad who beat him so hard he had convulsions until he was twelve.

  Until the day his dad mysteriously disappeared and Heath had been free to start turning his dreams into a reality.

  What did Annabella Quinn know about that little boy? How in the world would that goody-two-shoes be able to deal with the episodes Heath still sometimes had, long stretches when he’d shake so badly he couldn’t come out of his office, couldn’t function in the world until Mary convinced him to go back on his medication? Would Annabella know how to calm him down, how to resurrect, time and time again, the strong, virile, magnetic man who knew how to turn everything he touched to gold?


  She couldn’t, wouldn’t. She wouldn’t be able to deal. The first time she woke up to find him trembling in the corner, lost in his violent past, she’d leave him. And he’d end up more broken than he was already.

  “Mary, what exactly was in the Christmas candy collection sent out this afternoon?” Heath asked, sticking his head out of his office to where her desk guarded his inner sanctum.

  Mary turned to look at him, her smile fading when she saw the same dark circles under his eyes that had been there for the past month, ever since he’d learned that Annabella Quinn had been granted custody of the Procter children and still wouldn’t return his calls or letters.

  But it would be all right. He would get over his disappointment in time. He couldn’t really be in love with a woman he’d known less than twenty-four hours. It was irrational and ridiculous, two things Mary couldn’t tolerate.

  “Peppermint condoms, gingerbread edibles and a sugar cookie body oil.”

  “No mint-chocolate condoms?” he asked, looking down at the paper in his hand in confusion.

  “No, you said those tasted like flavored laxatives, sir,” she reminded him, praying that his recent forgetfulness wasn’t a sign of an episode to come.

  He hadn’t had one in nearly three years, but then it was almost Christmas and that was always a hard time for them both. It wasn’t easy facing the “family” season when you didn’t have much in the way of family, and what you did have you wished would crawl into a hole somewhere and disappear forever.

  Still, they’d always managed to get by together. Their annual Christmas dinner with the other orphans on their staff had come to be one of the highlights of Mary’s year.