Page 38 of The Devil

I don’t make love. I fuck.

I think I’m starting to get that.

He leans back in his seat, his long black coat falling open. His legs are spread wide, relaxed, the powerful muscles of his thighs straining the fabric of his slacks. I drag my gaze up over his flat stomach to his chest and broad shoulders. Then to his hands.

My stomach flip flops as I imagine his full weight on me. His cock pushing into me.

What is it going to feel like when he doesn’t stop? When he truly claims me. It’s what I’ve wanted for a long time but now, now that it’s my imminent reality, I admit I’m a little scared.

He cracks his neck and I see a sliver of all the ink he hides beneath his black shirts. The scars the tattoo artist painted over. He’d wanted me to see. It would have been easy enough to hide them, but he’d wanted me to see and that knowledge I feel not in my stomach, not like when I think about us together in bed, but in my chest.

My heart.

He doesn’t have women at his house.

He doesn’t show anyone his scars. His ink.

But he let me sleep in his bed. And he showed me all of it.

Jet tucks his phone into the breast pocket of his coat, and I glimpse the shadow of bruises on his knuckles. Are those from last night?

Blood stains my hands for you. For. You.

Was someone waiting for me last night? Was it one of the men who’s been threatening me for years? I’ve had so many text messages, threats, vivid descriptions of exactly what they’re going to do to me when they get their hands on me, that it became weirdly normal. I’ve never been sure if it’s one person or more. Every time I blocked one number, a new message popped up from another. Trying to keep up was like playing whack-a-mole.

Did he really hurt someone, kill someone, for me?

Jet leans forward and reaches into the passenger seat. “You get enough for the boys?” he asks Malcom as he opens the box of pastries and chooses one.

“Yep. I’m going to miss those when we get back to Devil’s Peak.”

“Me too,” Jet says, biting into the cardamom bun. He makes a low sound of pleasure as he turns his gaze to me while he chews and I can’t help but think how his lips would taste now, sticky sweet with cardamom. How his mouth will feel on my skin. Between my legs. Because that kiss, our second ever kiss, it sucked the air from my lungs and made my knees buckle. Hell, the chaste kiss to seal our vows at the altar had my heart racing.

He takes another big bite and grins like he knows exactly what I’m thinking. He finishes his pastry, licks the stickiness off his fingers and leans toward me.

“Anticipating our wedding night?” he asks.

I smell the sweet scent of cardamom and sugar on his breath. “More like dreading it,” I lie.

He leans back and laughs like it’s so very fucking funny. “I wonder, Little Virgin, if I slipped my hand into your panties,” he starts, setting his hand on my thigh and sliding it up under the skirt of my dress. “If you’re already wet for me.”

I shove his hand away. “Stop it!”

“There’s another thing I’ve been thinking about too,” he says, unperturbed, leaning close to whisper the next part. “I wonder if your pussy will taste as sweet as it smelled when I laid my head on my pillow the night after you had your little sleepover in my bed.”

My face burns. Fuck. I’d forgotten that. I’d slid my fingers between my legs that night in his bed imagining it was him, his fingers, and then for reasons that weren’t quite consciously made, I smeared my come on his pillow. Like I wanted him to smell me when he laid down that night.

I guess he did.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie yet again.

“No need to lie. I liked it. It got me hard,” he says in a loud whisper.

“Oh my God!” My face burns and he slaps his knee, laughing hard. I decide to ignore it because he’s enjoying this too much. “Where are you staying?” I ask, my voice unsteady. It takes all I have to look at him.

“The Balmoral.”

Of course he’s staying at The Balmoral. Dumb question. It’s the most exclusive hotel in Edinburgh. Where else would Jethro Blackstone stay?