It was a moment before Shawn replied, as if maybe he couldn’t believe where he was, either. But then the fighter from the night before, the one she had saved, the one she had been working so hard to never, ever think about ever frickin’ again, shrugged.
Like they’d just happen to run into each other in the fruit section at Hannaford’s.
“You mind lowering the bear spray,” he said wryly.
She shook her head to clear it. “What?”
He nodded at the mace. “Unless you’re planning on using it on an unarmed, defenseless male? I mean, I’m all for feminism, but that seems a little aggressive, don’t you think.”
“You? Defenseless. Really. Well, then I’m the tooth fairy.”
“You don’t look like a fairy.” His eyes traveled down her body. “Unless you’re hiding your wings somewhere that I probably shouldn’t ask about?”
Mae closed her eyes and prayed for composure. And when it became clear she could wait until next month before anything close to leveling out landed on her proverbial front porch, she forced her lids back open and glared at the fighter. He was exactly as she remembered. Big, mean-looking, and with a set of black marbles that stared out of his harsh face with a combination of boredom and judgment.
Oh, and he was dressed like something out of a Deadpool movie, in all black, body-hugging combat gear.
“What the hell are you doing here,” she repeated. Because really, what else was there to say?
“I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop by.” He leaned forward and sniffed the air. “Hey, you got any coffee in that kitchen of yours? I’m not much of a tea drinker.”
• • •
“Fuck me . . . oh, yeah . . . let me see you . . .”
Balz was on his back in his bed in his room at the Brotherhood’s mansion. But he was not alone. Holy fucking hell, he was so completely and totally not fucking alone.
A dark-haired woman was straddling his naked hips and riding his erection, slow and steady. And like she read his mind, she arched back and planted her palms on the messy bedspread by his knees, spreading her thighs wide, letting him watch as his enormous, glistening cock slid in and out of her sweet, hot core.
“Oh . . . God, damn it . . . fuck . . .”
She was so beautiful, her breasts swaying with her movements, the tight tips pointing to the ceiling as she went even deeper into that arch of hers. Below their perfect weight, her abs undulated under her fine, smooth skin, and all of those luxurious brunette locks cascaded down onto his shins.
“That’s right, fuck me,” he groaned as he squeezed her knees and forced them even farther apart. “Faster.”
As if she had nothing better to do than cater to his every fantasy, she moved more urgently, her blood red lips parting, her pelvis working, the piercing hanging from her belly button winking in the low light. She was so flexible, it was as if she were made of water, her body flowing over him, covering him, even in the places her skin wasn’t on his own.
In the back of his mind, he thought of the Mrs. at the triplex. He had done this kind of shit to that human woman, taken her, controlled her, given her the kind of pleasure that would recalibrate all the lovers she had ever had, and would ever have. That romp had been good fun. A fine way to blow an hour or two.
But this . . . this was game-changer sex—
Shifting her balance, the woman brought one of her hands forward. Her nails were long as talons and painted the same red color as her lips, and as she reached between her legs to her sex, they gleamed in the dimness.
On a rise of her hips, as his cock emerged from her slick hold, she raked them up his super-heated, super-sensitive shaft—
“I’m coming,” he barked. “Fuck, I’m coming—”
Just as he was on the verge of ejaculating, as the pleasure sharpened to a point of anticipatory agony that he wanted to capture and hold inside of his balls forever, at the very moment when the orgasm was starting—she up and disappeared.
There was even a poof! and a little wisp of smoke—
Balz bolted upright.
Throwing his hands out in front of his bare chest and his stick-straight arousal, he waved through the air, searching for the warm flesh, the woman, the heat and the passion.
Nothing.
There was nothing there.
Rubbing his face, he looked around. Yes, this was his bedroom. Or at least he thought it—no, no, he was home. He could see the outlines of the familiar arrangement of antiques, and the pile of his thieving clothes on the floor, and the cracked door that opened into the marble enclave of his bathroom—