So you can lock him up,I thought, but didn’t say.
Hayes rang off. That chore done, I went to find the guys in their usual evening locations. Heathcliff slumped in his chair, and Grimalkin sprawled across his lap. I thought Heathcliff would have revoked Grimalkin’s lap privileges now that she revealed herself to be my grandmother, but they’d been companions for a long time before I came along, and that kind of insouciant friendship endured even though Grimalkin could now shift into a human at will.
Kind of like how raven Quoth defecates on anyone who quotes Poe and it’s hilarious, instead of disgusting.
Heathcliff closed his book as I crossed the room and planted a kiss on his cheek. As I pulled away, his arm shot out to grip my wrist, holding me in place. He turned his face slowly up to meet me, and the firelight danced across his features, capturing the blaze in his eyes.
“Are you okay?” His gruff voice rumbled through my body, shooting a wave of lust. Everything about Heathcliff was just so… primal.
“I—” I didn’t really know how to answer that. “I miss Morrie.”
“What do you need?” He choked the words out, his finger tightening their grip.
I need to forget. Just for a moment.
I opened my mouth to speak, but I should have known Heathcliff and I were beyond words. He yanked my arm down and stood up, tossing me over his shoulder. I made to fight but he cupped his enormous, rough hand over my arse and I… I didn’t want to fight.
Heathcliff grunted as he flung open the door to my room – the room the three of them made for me, filling it with beautiful textures and kind touches only they could think of. As Heathcliff tossed me down on the bed and crawled up beside me, I noticed Morrie had kept the hook he used for bondage play in the ceiling.
And then I ceased to think. I challenge any hot-blooded woman (or man) to initiate cohesive thought while literature’s most infamous gothic hero has his tongue down your throat or his hands tangled in your hair.
Except not, because no bloody way am I sharing Heathcliff Earnshaw with anyone.
Except maybe Morrie, if we ever got him back.
I lost myself in the kiss, and before I knew it my shirt flew across the room and hit the wall. Heathcliff crushed my mouth with his kiss as he flung away my skirt and tore the replacement pair of panties in his haste to get inside them.
“Bloody hell, lingerie doesn’t grow on trees…” my protests turned into moans as he sucked a nipple into his mouth, his hand plunging between my legs to send me spinning into a near-instant orgasm. His body crushed me into the sheets, and I was lost in the scent of him, the… Heathcliffness of him, all rage and feral need.
“Your skin smells like Morrie,” he rasped against my neck as he parted my legs with his knee.
“Yes… well, wemighthave had sex on top of the police car before I drove it to the village.”
Heathcliff dragged my hips back against his as he impaled me on his dick, swallowing my gasp. His size knocked the breath out of me, but in the best possible way. He pushed his arm between us so he could reach my clit, rubbing the nub until I writhed beneath him. Heathcliff wasn’t being gentle tonight. He pounded out his fear and rage and powerlessness into me with every thrust, and I rose up to meet him, matching his rage with my own.
And I caught a whiff of it – Morrie’s grapefruit and vanilla clinging to the sheets, to the walls, to every part of us. Because he was part of us.
The groan that escaped Heathcliff’s throat tore me apart. His finger battered my clit as he broke into pieces for me. Morrie’s scent twined between us, larger-than-life and in our faces, just like the man himself. Heathcliff slammed into me until our legs trembled together, until we collapsed onto the sheets in a tangle of body parts, not knowing where one of us ended and the other began.
I am Heathcliff.
Another orgasm broke over me like a wave, and the clench of me around his cock sent Heathcliff over the edge. His head rolled back. I bit his throat, tasting the salt on his skin as he shuddered inside me.
Heathcliff rolled off me and collected me in his arms, and a black bird fluttered down out of the darkness, hopping along the side of the bed. My eyes fluttered shut as weariness overcame me, and when I opened them again I looked at a beautiful boy with a curtain of shimmering black hair and eyes rimmed with fire. Quoth crawled under the covers and clicked off the light, and the two of them held me. I breathed in the mingled scents. Heathcliff’s earthy peat. Quoth’s fresh spring air and wildflowers. And the tiniest hint of Morrie’s zesty grapefruit-and-vanilla still wafting in the air – the ghost of my third boyfriend.
Morrie, wherever you are tonight, know that I love you. That… I’m going to fight for you. And that I’d never, ever, push you over a waterfall.
Chapter Seven
CRASH. BANG. SMASH.
“Fuck!”
I bolted upright, my heart pounding. Rain pattered against the window, and a shaft of grey light from the open curtains illuminated a square of unfamiliar room. It took me a few moments to remember where I was – in the bedroom at Nevermore Bookshop the guys made for me –my bedroom.
“Pox-ridden bastard! Dishonorable cur!”
And someone was downstairs destroying the shop.
