Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set Read online

  “I’m sure you do, but what makes you think I’m even interested in him?” Monica crossed her arms.

  “Shit, girl, you almost set the bayou on fire every time you looked at each other. You think I didn’t notice?” DiNero shook his head and shot her a grin. “I’ve never seen that man give anything that much attention in all the years he’s worked here, including every animal I’ve ever owned.”

  She frowned. “That’s just...”

  “He’s got a place near Bourbon Street,” DiNero told her. “And I’d like him to come back. It’s worth another donation to your vacation fund if you can convince him.”

  “I don’t hunt people,” Monica said flatly. “If he wants to come back, he will.”

  DiNero held up his hands, looking apologetic. “Fine, fine. Again, can’t blame a guy for asking. I guess I’ll just have to beg him myself.”

  “No,” Monica said. “You know what... I’ll see what I can do.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Long days. Long nights. Booze and women and the rich copper taste of rare steaks.

  Jordan had glutted himself on all of it. Sex and meat and all the things he tried so hard to deny himself because giving in to the hunger only made it that much harder to deny it the next time. He’d smashed the mirror in the bathroom, and now he took slow, lingering satisfaction in the way the glass glittered on the floor because he hadn’t cleaned it up.

  There were other things he could’ve done, too. Crashed a car. Robbed a bank. Gotten in a fistfight with a motorcycle gang. The possibilities for mayhem were endless and alluring, and fuck it all, if he hadn’t had any sense of conscience, he’d have done all of it. Run wild in the streets, howling at the moon.

  Instead, he wallowed in his small sins, all he allowed himself to indulge in. Tonight it was a glass of very expensive wine and a steak the size of his head, with all the trimmings. Later, he thought, he would find himself a woman or two or three and spend the night’s last hours reveling in naked flesh.

  Except there was already a woman on his doorstep when he got home.

  He knew her at once by her scent, and his lip curled. His dick got hard, too, immediately, and he hated himself for that. And her a little, too.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “A few hours. Where were you?”

  “Eating an enormous dinner. Drinking too much. How’d you find me?”

  Monica stood when he came closer. She seemed to have been waiting a long time. She stretched, and fuck if watching her body move didn’t make him want to take her right there against his front door.

  “I hunt down mythical beasts for a living,” she said. “You have an address and a credit-card statement and utility bills. You were easy to find.”

  “What do you want?” He was a little drunk, not so much from the wine and the food but from seeing her again. Smelling her. He wanted to taste her with a real and physical longing.

  “You,” she said simply.

  Jordan heard his own low rumble in answer. She would think he was an animal for sure at that sound, he thought, but he couldn’t take it back now. Monica took a step closer.

  “You,” she whispered again, offering her mouth.

  He wasn’t going to kiss her. But there she was, soft and curvy, and that hair, that fucking hair spilling down her back and over his hands, and then she was in his arms and her mouth was on his and his knee pressed between her thighs, and in another second or so, he could be inside her, if he only...let...go.

  “No,” Jordan muttered without moving away from her.

  Monica pressed herself against him. “Take me inside. Fuck me. Then feed me. Then we’ll talk.”

  It was the finest offer he’d ever had, but he hadn’t spent so many years learning to control himself to give in now, just like that. “What the hell do you want, Monica?”

  She linked her fingers behind his neck. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I still dream, Jordan. And when I wake up, I reach for you. Not just anyone. You. I don’t know why.”

  He reached behind her to unlock the door and push them both inside. He had a moment to feel ashamed of how he’d let the place get filthy. Maybe she wouldn’t notice in the dark.

  “I’m not just a curiosity,” he told her. “What do you want to do, study me? Put me in a collection the way DiNero does with his pets?”

  She shook her head, following him into the small kitchen, where he poured them each a drink. “No. If I wanted to do that, I’d have told Vadim about you.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No. You’re not a freak or a curiosity. But I do want to learn more about you. Not just how you are in bed, which is very, very good, by the way.” She leaned to kiss him again, but briefly. “Jordan...you’re special.”

  “Sure I am.”

  She put her hands on his hips and pulled him closer to her. “Maybe it’s just sex. Maybe it’s only that. Or maybe it’s something else. I’m willing to see if there’s more to us than that. The best you can do is try.”

  He backed her up against the kitchen counter but stopped himself from putting her on top of it and ripping her panties off, pushing up her skirt. Sinking into her heat. He shivered from the thought of it. Made a low noise.

  “DiNero sent me here to find you. See if you’d come back.” Monica hopped up on the counter and drew him between her legs. “I told him I’d see what I could do.”

  “So that’s why you’re really here.” He slid a hand between them, his thumb rubbing her through her panties. This time, she was the one who made the noise.

  Her back arched a little. Her voice became raspy. “I know you love working there. Maybe not the guy himself, but the job? You love it. Don’t let me take that from you.”

  “You think you could take anything from me?” He bent to nip at her neck, angry in a way but also so turned on he could barely think straight.

  When she took his face in her hands and held him still so she could look in his eyes, the entire world shifted. “I don’t know about taking, but I’m hoping you’ll let me try to give you something.”

  His throat dried. “What’s that?”

  “Me,” she whispered and kissed him again. “It’s really all I have.”

  There was no holding back then. Her skirt went to her waist, her panties torn free. He was deep inside her right after that, and her nails raked his back through his shirt. They fucked hard and fast, rattling the cupboard doors. Her body clenched around his, sending him over the edge, and she cried out his name.

  Breathing hard, Jordan blinked, a realization flooding through him. He shook his head, not sure what to think. What to do.

  “What?” Monica asked him.

  “It’s... I’m not...hungry. Anymore.”

  She gave him a curious look, then one of understanding. She pulled his mouth to hers again, her hand cupping his chin to hold him there for the kiss. Her other went behind his neck.

  “I understand,” she told him. “You feed me, too.”

  Later, after a shower and cleaning up the glass and another meal, this time of fresh pasta and salad and bread, they sat at the table together. She’d been quiet, mostly, and that was fine with him. He was still trying to think about where this was going, or what it meant. She’d made him an offer. Just try, she’d said. But could he?

  “I didn’t think you’d want this,” Monica said, indicating the plates in front of them.

  He looked at her. She wasn’t meeting his gaze, and he thought he knew why. “No?”

  “You said you’d had a big dinner. I didn’t think you’d want to eat again,” she said.

  He waited for her to look at him, and when she did, he took her hand and pulled her onto his lap. “There’s something you should know about me, Monica. Something that might make a