Page 28 of The Baby Hex (Mori’s Mementos #2)
Crilus
Mori wasn’t answering his phone, and neither was Preston.
I frowned at my phone screen before reaching over Pierce to slide it onto the nightstand.
Somehow, I’d entered the cold war between the twins, and I didn’t like it.
They’d come to stay with me after a ghost haunted a restaurant that I was responsible for, and a dead wolf told them to stick around in London for their next assignment.
Now, they were at odds while the world tried to splatter us with glass shards.
My phone vibrated and another photo of Baby Cutter flashed across the screen. He was all fleshy now with a mop of yellow hair, passed out milk-drunk on Rho’s chest.
“I want one,” I said and bit my lip. “I shouldn’t but I do.”
“Is this your way of asking me to put a baby in you?” Pierce smirked, rolling onto his side to face me.
“Maybe,” I said and bit my lip again. “Have you had enough blood? I ate most of your food earlier and---”
“I had some shakes while you were asleep,” Pierce said before I could ramble on for too long. “Have you heard from Jon?”
“What? Why would you ask about him now? Don’t tell me you slept with him too!” I groaned and shook the mental image from my head.
“Because he could be a complication,” Pierce said. “Not for our sex life but our children.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Children change things. They give you a crack in your armor. We can manage the cracks but that means we have to talk about them.”
“Give me my phone back,” I sighed, and he handed it to me.
I was just about to call Jon but decided to see if he texted me instead. A lot of clients loved leaving long trails of evidence as if they were dumb enough to think they were above the law. If you’re leaving a trail for Medwin and Clarence to find you were dumber than the law.
“I don’t think he’d come after a baby,” I said.
“If he did, his spirit mange would look like a mild case of freckles.” I checked through my missed texts anyway.
I had one from Nic who I had only met on the one occasion where he came to me for a protection spell for his aging mother.
It seemed that Jon had come clean and had also told him about how much I was charging him not to tie him to Nic for all eternity.
He made a simple request that I find another way to punish Jon since he didn’t want that headache.
Though, he’d be glad to have one of his guys serve me Jon’s head on a silver platter if that canceled out his now ex boyfriend’s debt.
I chuckled to myself and scrolled on. I scrolled on to find a text from Preston that I had somehow missed.
“It’s all Pierce’s fault. He’s so much good stuff. Put the phone down and your ass up, okay? I’ll tell you what to do since you seem to have forgotten,” my wolf howled into my thoughts.
I opened the text from Preston despite his protests.
“Oh! It seems our friend ‘Jon’,” I quoted his name with one hand as I scanned the text.
“Has been imprisoned for identity theft. His real name is Bob Hanniagan who had swindled more than one heir or heiress out of their fortune. He’s going to be shipped back to the rodent territory above Heartville to face charges there. ”
“That’s the place on the west stateside coast, right?” Pierce double-checked.
“Yep, and those rodents hate liars and manipulators. They’re going to put him under the jail or whatever their version of that is. So, back to you putting a baby in me.”
My hands trembled as I blacked out my phone screen and laid it back on the nightstand.
Why was I so damn nervous now? I wasn’t some virgin.
Quite the opposite. I had sex when I wanted to.
Sure, normally I was preventing the creation of life, but sex was sex, right?
I wasn’t going to be one of those guys who suddenly worried some man wouldn’t find them attractive. Shit!
“What storm is going on behind those pretty eyes?” Pierce asked, his voice soft as he waved his hand at the ceiling and the overhead lighting dimmed.
“None,” I said, trying to ignore the anxiety creeping up from my stomach to my chest. “Heat’s an evil beast.”
Of course, Pierce tasted the lie on the air.
Even a little kid could but he didn’t say anything.
Instead, he ran his hand over my chest and stomach through my shirt.
My breath hitched and I had to force myself to breathe.
His touch spread warmth throughout me but his gaze remained on my face.
He wanted me. Of course he wanted me. His hard dick was pressed up against my leg and he smelled like he might succumb to his baser instincts any second now.
Only I’d spent so much time in my head constructing a list of reasons that I couldn’t possibly be with him that I never stopped to wonder if he had his own list.
“Was the Jon thing a way to push things back?” I cut to the chase because I was too damn old to play games instead of ask direction questions.
“No,” Pierce shook his head. “The Jon thing was because it occurred to me right then. I was thinking about you while you were trying to call your cousins. I was thinking about everything I know about you and all the things I still don’t know about you.
I remembered you and Preston talking about him. ”
“So, you’re going to stay at home with the kids and off my enemies?” I laughed.
“The two things aren’t mutually exclusive, I’ll have you know,” he chuckled and leaned in for a long, slow kiss.
All the doubts that had collected in the back of my mind over the years whenever I thought about meeting my true-mate surfaced and Pierce kissed every last one of them away.
His tongue slipped between my lips and I welcomed him into my mouth.
His tongue twirled around mine again and again and I lost myself to him.
I could’ve talked him in circles for days.
There was always going to be a reason to doubt the future, but I decided to jump in eyes-wide-open.
Whatever came next, we were in it together.
Heat burnt hot across my skin until I was ready to strip naked, but Pierce took his time kissing me.
He held me tight to him, making it impossible to strip down without breaking free of his embrace and I wasn’t ready for him to let go of me yet.
The rolling to-do-list that always kept my mind zipping around shut up when he kissed me as if his tongue had some magical abilities all on its own to neutralize my worries.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked, pulling back from my lips even though I tried to follow his face to stay in contact with his lips.
“Yes,” I nodded. “Are you?”
“I’m not the one who needed convinced.”
“If you didn’t run away after Preston beat you up with snacks, I guess you’ll stick around forever,” I teased him.
“I let you eat chips in my bed,” he growled and kissed up my neck. “There will be tiny grains of salt here for the rest of eternity. If that’s not proof, I’m sticking around, nothing is. Is there anything I need to know in case your heat fully takes over?”
I thought about it for a second, staring past him, so his handsome face didn’t distract me. There was plenty he probably needed to know about my life, but it was impossible to wrap it all up into neat precise instructions.
“I meant about sex,” Pierce said, meeting my gaze. “Or anything that would need to be done immediately in the next few days.”
“I can be a bit of a scratcher and not just during intercourse,” I admitted and bit my lip. “Elf thing or bird thing. I don’t know but I hold on and sometimes it happens.”
“I heal quickly. I’m a vampire,” Pierce shrugged.
“Clients might call my phone, but it should go to voicemail, and someone will probably text to complain that the bar still isn’t open. At least one person is always an impatient fuck.”
“They’re all adults. They can wait,” Pierce said, sliding his hand up under my shirt as we talked.
“Your hand feels so cool to the touch. My heat is really kicking in, I think,” I said, glancing down at my dick that was now standing erect despite its fabric prison.
I’d been slick since before Medwin chased us out of the middle of the street.
“I’m okay with biting. That’s the other thing.
Chomp on me. I don’t mind. In fact, I like it. ”
“Has a vampire ever fed on you before?” Pierce asked, his thumb rolling teasing circles over one of my hard nipples.
“No, but a bite is a bite. Dragons have bigger teeth,” I said and instantly regretted it.
That was a fuck up, right?
Pierce only laughed and kissed my neck again.
“But they don’t have venom, and they don’t suck blood either,” he murmured against my skin.
A second later, he pulled my shirt over so that it hung off my shoulder, revealing my plump claiming gland full of clear, magical fluid.
I braced for his bite. Most folks waited until they were in the middle of lovemaking, but I was more than ready for him to initiate our claiming vows.
Maybe once he was inside my head my nerves would soothe themselves out.
Only, Pierce didn’t bite me. He nuzzled his cheek against the gland that contained all the clear, magical fluid we needed for one side of the claiming vows.
My wolf whimpered inside his inner sanctum as Pierce’s scent rubbed all over us and clear, magical fluid sloshed inside the gland.
It was stingy to the touch, but some things really did hurt so good.