Jade's Spirit (Blue Collar Boyfriends Book 2) (13 page)

“Enough, Mercy.” Back in the turret bedroom, he was beside the bed. He stood over her, eyes blazing.

A strong urge to obey rose up in her, but she couldn’t stop the memory. It surged ahead like a runaway train.

Joshua’s strokes had been irregular and overly eager. The moment Draonius took over, he roused afresh. He plowed into her with ruthless jabs of passion. Fingers dug into her thighs holding her possessively. He mated with her. He loved her.

“Mercy.” Her name was a feral growl on his lips.

Pleasure ignited. She cried his name and clutched him to her. Bliss. This was bliss.

Another growl erupted from her lover. And another. His passion became painful.

“Draonius?”

She tried caging him with her thighs to keep his thrusts shallow.

His eyes turned red. He bucked like a wild beast.

Oh, the pain!

Back in the bedroom, he reached for her.

She kicked at the bedcovers in her haste to evade his reach. “You hurt me.”

Lightning quick, he locked a hand around her arm, stopping her retreat. “You must focus. Learn her. Understand her. If you fail in this, we have no hope.”

“Stop! You’re hurting me!”

Joshua’s body expanded before her eyes. Clothing shredded. His skin took on a charred appearance. His face became that of a rabid dog.

She screamed.

The thing atop her howled.

Pointy teeth descended. Ripped her throat.

She jerked from his hold and scrambled to the other side of the bed. The sting of betrayal doubled her over. “You lied to me. I did what you asked, and you—you killed me.”

The man sighed like one who ran short on patience. “It was no lie, Mercy. A mistake, yes, but no lie.” The impatience left him, replaced with tenderness. “I would never lie to you, love. Not to you.” The mattress dipped with his weight.

She brought her bare knees up to her chest and hugged them. She did not want him to cross the distance to her, but he was coming on hands and knees. This was a humble act for her powerful demon. He was crawling to her.

She should flee. But God help her, she craved the apology waiting in his glittering eyes. Could she forgive him? Should she?

She gripped her knees tighter. “You said you loved me. You promised we would be together forever.”

Cool, masculine hands cupped her cheeks. Thumbs wiped her tears. “There, there, love. We have been together, haven’t we? Not in the way I imagined, but we have a chance now to make it right. Turn your mind now to what must be done, not what mistakes have been made in the past.”

Yes. She must practice commanding Jade’s body if she hoped to seduce Emmett. She must repeat her actions from the past to give Draonius control of Emmett’s body as she did with Joshua’s body. But what if Draonius hurt her again?

“It will not happen again,” he said, as if he could hear her thoughts. He moved closer. His lips brushed her forehead. “My lovely, lovely girl. I had not understood the limits of mortal flesh. Joshua’s body was so fragile. Yours was—” He breathed in deeply, his nose against her neck.

She shivered.

“—So easily wounded,” he crooned. “And taking you, Mercy, taking you was heaven. I lost my mind with pleasure. It will not happen again. I swear it. I have learned. I will control my impulses this time. Besides, I could never harm this body. Look at it. It is so strong, so exquisitely firm and yet soft in all the right places. Don’t you want it? And look at these. Oh, these are magnificent.”

He’d managed to pry her arms away from her knees. His hands molded to the shape of her breasts through her T-shirt. She arched her back to press more firmly into his palms.

Stop it! Get out of my head! Make him stop touching me! I don’t care if this is a dream. I don’t want this!

Jade.

Mercy redoubled her efforts to push Jade’s consciousness down and away. The silly mortal tried to fight back, but she didn’t have a prayer of succeeding. Jade’s thoughts were all but quelled.

“Come, darling.” Draonius insinuated his body against hers. “You know I did not mean you harm. I love you.” He stroked her face.

She nestled her cheek into his hand. “I love you, too. Of course I forgive you.”

“Will you let me show you how gentle I can be?”

“Yes, Draonius. Oh, yes.”

* * * *

Jade startled awake with a thundering heart. Vague remnants of a disturbing dream slipped away like sand through a sieve. From the wetness in her panties and the rubbery exhaustion in her limbs she knew it had been another sex dream, but she didn’t remember who had starred in it. And she had a chilling feeling she had tried to wake from the dream and hadn’t been able to.

She hugged herself under the covers. She felt violated, which was silly because it had only been a dream. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling it had been somehow more than a bad dream.

Her fingers itched to grab her phone and call Emmett. Just hearing his voice would reassure her. Then she remembered the disappointing end to their date. Hurt and anger rushed into her heart, plowing out the disquiet from the dream.

Refusing to let a stupid nightmare and a bad date dictate her mood, she threw herself into her Saturday, starting with a good, hard run around her new neighborhood. She filled the rest of the day with housework, a lunchtime visit to Grandma Nina, and a long phone call with Jilly in which she determinedly avoided the subject of Emmett Herald.

When it was time for bed, she grabbed the afghan off the back of the couch, marched outside, right under the sachet of herbs above the front door, and climbed into the backseat of her Jetta. She slept like a baby, assuming babies sleep for eight solid hours without a single dream.

Chapter 11

“Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you,” Pastor Tim was saying, but Emmett wasn’t paying attention. He was thinking about his date with Jade on Friday night.

She’d looked incredible, and she’d danced even better. He’d been so proud to walk into Billy Bob’s with her on his arm. But more than that, he’d simply enjoyed being with her. The girl had a great sense of humor and was all kinds of fun to hang out with. There was a depth to her, too, that he longed to explore.

But he didn’t trust himself with her. He was like a landmine ready to detonate, and the sexy Boston beauty was like a whole platoon of marching soldiers.

Though to be fair, at this point, almost any girl who showed an interest in him was likely to set off an Emmett-explosion. When he and Chelsea had called it quits, he’d been kind of relieved, because it was getting nearly unbearable to hold back with her. There was only so much making out he could take before his balls felt like they were going to rocket to the moon with or without him. He’d tried taking a step back with Chelsea, letting her know they needed to take it easy with the physical stuff. That’s when she’d told him they needed to go forward, as in ’til-death-do-us-part, or she’d walk. He’d hoped she’d been bluffing. She hadn’t been.

The worst of it was, Chelsea’s ultimatum hadn’t been unreasonable. They had everything in common. They went to the same church, lived in the same town, listened to the same music. She would have been happy to marry him and raise kids in Dover. And maybe if he had loved her just a little more, he’d have been happy to make a life with her. But what he’d felt for Chelsea hadn’t been enough to move him past his fear of divorce.

When he looked at him and Chelsea toward the end of their relationship, he’d seen his parents when they’d been in exactly the same spot, longtime sweethearts with families that were practically neighbors in Dover. They’d gotten married and had everything going for them. They’d had two kids, steady jobs, a loving church family, the whole American dream. And in the end, it hadn’t been enough.

He was starting to worry no amount of chemistry and circumstances would ever be enough. How did any two people take marriage vows and believe in what they promised each other when no one knew the future?

He couldn’t see himself ever taking marriage vows. And it scared him so bad he tried not to think about it, because if he never got married, he would never know what it was like to show a woman physical love. He would never know what it was like to press inside a girl he adored, to feel her grab his shoulders and buck like a wild pony while he rode her to orgasm after orgasm.

Aw, crap. He had a boner in church.

And he’d just totally lost himself in a fantasy while Pastor Tim preached about restraint.

Anytime he let himself daydream about finally being with a woman, she was always this faceless body with soft, tan skin, breasts that overflowed in his hands, and long, toned legs wrapped around his waist. He’d tried forcing faces onto that body over the years, but he just couldn’t picture any of the girls he’d dated in that way. He’d thought it was because he respected them too much to give them starring roles in his fantasies. What did it say about him that he’d just seen his fantasy woman’s face for the first time, and that she was Jade?

She deserved better than some perv ravishing her in his mind. That was exactly why he needed to keep his distance from her.

People stood up around him. The piano played the opening of “I Surrender All.” He didn’t need to open the hymnal. He knew the words. All four verses. But he held the book anyway because if he rested it on the back of the pew in front of him, it hid his erection.

He sang along and tried to focus on making the words a prayer.

All to Jesus, I surrender
All to Him I freely give…

…All to Jesus I surrender
Humbly at His feet I bow
Worldly pleasures all forsaken
Take me, Jesus, take me now

Funny thing about prayer. It shined a light on the heart. And that light usually revealed some dark spot that needed to be dealt with.

He realized he was being selfish. Here he was obsessing about his own problems from his comfortable pew at Dover’s First Methodist Church and less than a mile away, Jade was at her grandmother’s house on Little Turnpike Road, alone in a new town and probably needing the Lord.

She’d seemed willing to come to church with him, but, he never followed through. He was more worried about the mincemeat he might let her make of his virginity vow than the state of her soul.

What kind of Christian let his own fear keep him from showing his neighbor the Lord’s love? If Jade died without knowing the Lord and he had ignored the opportunity to share Him with her, then her fate would be on his head.

…All to Jesus, I surrender
Lord, I give myself to Thee
Fill me with Thy love and power
Let Thy blessing fall on me

After church, he climbed in the cab of his truck and dialed Jade’s number. Maybe she would go to church with him next Sunday.

The phone rang twice. On the third ring, she answered with, “How was church? Did you sit with Chelsea, Erin, and Mara?”

He was in the doghouse.

He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and turned on the AC. Across the parking lot, two of the girls in question, Chelsea and Erin, were getting into Chelsea’s Toyota—Mara went to the Presbyterian church up in Londonderry. He returned Chelsea’s wave, wondering what had Jade so upset.

“Hey, Jade. How you doing?” He decided to start fresh and see if he couldn’t at least be friends with her.

Her tone was pure ice. “I see I’m not the only one good at avoiding things. Don’t change the subject. Tell me how church was. I couldn’t help but notice you didn’t pick me up this morning.”

“Aw, Jeez. I’m sorry. You weren’t waiting for me, were you?” He was such a turd.

She sighed. “No. I knew better than to expect it. But I’m pissed at you for reneging on the invitation. And what was with the sudden space on Friday night? I thought we were having a good time, and then you just— You know what, whatever.”

She sounded like she was about to hang up on him. He blurted, “Come out to lunch with me. I’ll pick you up in five minutes.”

“A second date with the schitzo who runs hot one second and cold the next? Let me think. Ah, no.”

He winced. “We could go as friends.”

“Fuck you, Emmett. I’ve got enough friends.” She hung up.

He thunked his head on the headrest. Jade was on his mind 24/7, and not because he wanted her as a friend. He’d definitely had more than friendship on his mind Friday night, and she’d known it.

He should swing by her place, try to talk to her in person. Maybe in a few days. Girl needed some time to cool off. And he needed some time to figure out how to make this right.

Chapter 12

Soft knocking woke Jade up. Bright daylight had her blinking furiously as she looked for the source of the sound. She was used to waking up bathed in either harsh sunlight or the softer gray light of overcast skies since she’d slept in her car the last three nights, but she wasn’t used to anyone catching her in her cowardice. When she saw Emmett peering through the back-seat window, all concerned eyes and frowning mouth, she pulled the afghan over her mortified face. Maybe he’d take the hint and go away.