Man about the House (Wicked Wraiths) (3 page)

BOOK: Man about the House (Wicked Wraiths)
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Chapter Three

“Ugh, I am so glad that’s over.”

Janelle let herself into her small apartment and trudged up the stairs. Each step felt heavier than the last. Reaching the top, she dropped her purse next to the phone table and groaned as she looked around the small sitting room. With back-to-back shifts, work then the club, she hadn’t cleaned up in days, and she still had to get a couple of hours study in.

Despair and exhaustion clawed at her. How the hell was she going to manage all this? There just wasn’t enough time in the day to do everything she needed. A heavy sigh escaped her chest. It wasn’t working. She needed help or she needed to cut back.

Just in case you needed a little help — cleaning or otherwise
.

Janelle’s lips quirked into a small smile. Grabbing her purse, she dumped it on the back of the easy chair and rifled through it for the scroll her friend had given her. She knew Tori thought Janelle needed to get out more. She’d even tried to set her up on blind dates, insisting Janelle needed help finding a man. She wouldn’t be saying that if she’d seen the guy earlier — Corvin — and that kiss in the kitchen.

Even now Janelle herself couldn’t believe it. Pausing, she lifted a hand to lips that still tingled. God, the guy could kiss. Even just the little taste she’d gotten before they were interrupted had turned her brain to mush and her knees to Jell-O.

Confusion filled her again. Why had he even bothered with her in the first place? Men who looked like that, like they should be gracing a catwalk in Milan or Paris, didn’t go for women like her, even when they were drunk.

Then there was Steve, who hated her, yet had seemingly ignored the fact he’d caught her in a clinch with a guest; a sack-able offence. The Steve she knew would have scuttled off to the manager in a hot second to report her. He hadn’t. Instead he’d just nodded at her and walked right back out, leaving Janelle a bunch of nerves.

“Today,” she decided, “made no sense.”

Her purse slid from the back of the chair onto the seat, bringing her attention back to the present. Janelle groaned as she looked around the room. It wasn’t messy. She was too much of a neat freak for that. Trouble was she tended to use the place as a hotel most of the time, so well-worn paths showed where she hurried from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen in a morning. The rest of the place was showing signs of inattention what with dust beginning to form across all the surfaces she didn’t use.

“Right. Magic it is then. Tori, you’d so better be right about this cleaning spell.” Unrolling the spell scroll, she looked at the unfamiliar words. According to the instructions Tori had given her, the spell had been coded to her, so she didn’t need to do anything icky like cut her finger and drop blood on it or, worse, cut a lock of hair to power it. She took a breath.
Okay, here goes nothing
.

Thnall terantis Terathel,

Heran juris gerath,

Ceris armouret anak,

Heran Koras go-gothian totalis.

Aranath gosita terabi.

She finished the incantation and looked around in expectation.

And looked.

And waited.

Still nothing.

“Well bugger me, bloody useless.” Sighing in defeat she dropped the scroll back into her bag.
Great, I’m going to have to pull an all-nighter
.

Right, first job is the kitchen. Of all the jobs in the house, it was the one she hated the most. Kitchen work reminded her of her nemesis: food. She’d much rather scrub the bathroom twice over than deal with even the small kitchen she had.

Grabbing her purse to dump back next to the door, Janelle turned and walked right into a hard male chest.

“Oomph!”

She rebounded. Before she could land on her ass, she found herself wrapped in a pair of strong arms and nose to pec with a broad, muscled chest. One she could see right through.

“Oh.”

Even Janelle’s tired mind could make the links. She’d summoned a wraith, and now a see-through hunk had appeared in her apartment. Chest muscles flexing in a fascinating display, he set her gently back on her feet and released her.

Janelle stumbled back a step and looked up. Hell, he was tall.
About as tall the guy from the club
, the traitorous little voice in the back of her head, the one who was obsessed, reminded her.

Her gaze travelled up the well-defined pecs and over his shoulders, up a broad but not too chunky neck to a face that just had to match the rest of his body. He would look like a Greek god. Built like that, he had to.

“Huh?”

She couldn’t see his face. Not properly anyway. Sure, all the features were there. She got the impression of a strong nose, full lips and a pair of intense eyes. For some reason, her brain refused to bring them all together into a whole. It was like looking at something with a migraine, when she could see letters and words yet not actually read them, but without the pain.

“Oh yeah, Tori said that would happen. It’s weird,” she told him, finding it quite disconcerting that she had a half-naked and silent hunk standing in the middle of her lounge. Still on edge from the club earlier, she felt a buzz of awareness tremble through her.

Hubba hubba, I can understand what Tori meant now when she summoned Jacob. He’s gorgeous
!

Feeling her cheeks burn Janelle snuck a glance down. He was naked apart from a pair of well-worn jeans hanging from his lean hips. The top button was undone, giving her a tantalizing glimpse of the skin below. He was commando under there. She swallowed as the thought sent her blood pressure through the roof. It was one thing Tori telling her the Wraiths were sex-on-legs, but quite another to see it in the flesh.

“Hmmm, okay. I guess I’d better show you where everything is, hadn’t I?”

 

Staying in the role he’d gotten Hex to curse him into, Corvin only nodded in reply, following her through to the kitchen. His appreciative gaze wandered down her back to linger on the mouth watering curve of her ass. She sure was one delectable little package. Rounded curves wrapped up in satiny, coffee-cream skin he just wanted to lick to see if it tasted as good as it looked.

His cock, semi-hard since the club, rose to full attention as he got a lung full of her perfume. Taking a deep breath, he dragged her scent into his lungs to savour it. He ached for her, his balls tight and heavy as his dick pressed painfully against the denim of his jeans.

“So, the cleaning stuff’s in this cupboard here…”

She was talking, showing him where all the cleaning supplies were, but all Corvin he could think about was boosting her up on the counter and picking up where they’d left off in the club.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Her voice broke through his erotic daydreams and he refocused on her. She was standing with her hand on her hip, a cloth in the other and an exasperated expression on her face. “I know Tori said you guys didn’t talk, but I’d kinda credited you with at least some intelligence. Perhaps I was wrong.”

“Actually, we can talk,” he replied, breaking all the rules but not caring as he crossed the kitchen in two steps. The temporary curse Hex had put on him had not only obscured his appearance but also changed his voice. The one that emerged was rougher and deeper than normal, like he had a bad cold or smoked twenty a day for the last thirty years.

Taking the cloth out of her hand, he tossed it into the sink. His other hand snaked around her waist and dragged her up against him, hard. Her gasp of surprise was accompanied by a darkening of her eyes and a flare of her nostrils. She was into this.

“I’ve got far more interesting things in mind than cleaning.”

He bent his head and claimed her lips again. Unlike at the club, this kiss was hard and possessive. Crushing her lips under his, his tongue swept across her lower lip in a demand she open up and allow him access.

His hands stroked down her back. One splayed across the back of her hips and pulled her in hard. She gasped as his thick cock pressed hard into her soft belly. Corvin didn’t waste the opportunity, sliding his tongue into her mouth in a sensual move. A deep groan rumbled in his chest as she responded, tentatively teasing him with her tongue. Not quite letting him get what he wanted but allowing enough of a glimpse of the heaven she offered, it nearly drove him out of his mind.

He broke the kiss to demand against her lips, “You want to play?”

His free hand smoothed up from her waist to cup one of her breasts. She wasn’t big but neither was she small. The perfect handful and it was all natural. If there was one thing that turned Corvin off, it was false tits.

She caught her breath at his almost rough touch, her eyes wide and dark. He stilled, not wanting to hurt her. With the sheer desire and passion that boiled in his veins, he could quite easily do that and there was no excuse for such a loss of control. Her body was relaxed, though, no tension in it as she melted at his touch.

Corvin smiled and walked backward with her, out of the small kitchen. There had to be a bedroom around here someplace because he seriously doubted she slept on the floor. No, from what he’d seen, she was as house-proud as hell and perhaps even a little shy.

A shiver ran through him at the thought. The quiet ones were always the best; he knew that from long experience. Once he’d gotten them out of their shell, most were wicked in bed. Anticipating a long hot night, he pressed his hips against hers a last time and said, “We can play, darlin’. Oh yeah, we can play. Bedroom?”

Chapter Four

“Through there, on the left.”

Still reeling from the kiss, Janelle was amazed she managed a coherent reply. If she’d thought the kiss in the bar earlier had been hot, then this was scorching. Absolutely, one hundred percent hotter than the sun,
hawt
. Dragging a shaky breath into her lungs, she sent a mental command to her knees to find some bone structure down there before she attempted to walk.

The wraith grinned, a wicked little expression. It was strange, but if she focused on one feature like his mouth, then she could see it clearly. Same for his eyes, a clear blue filled with a wicked twinkle. It was just when she tried to see all of his face at once that it slid out of focus.

He’s a wraith. So why does he remind me of the guy from earlier
? she mused as her trembling knees got their act together. Phantom he might be, it still didn’t mean she wanted to make an ass of herself and face-plant in the carpet in front of him. Janelle didn’t have a lot of feminine pride or ego, so the little she did have wouldn’t survive such an encounter.

She pushed off from the counter as he walked out the kitchen.
God, he has a nice back
. Janelle was a sucker for a nice, well-muscled male back. And his ass? Firm enough to crack nuts with. Her knees went all wobbly again. As though he could read her mind, he looked over his shoulder, wicked twinkle in full evidence again, and held out his hand to her.

Gratefully, Janelle took it and let him lead her through the lounge and toward her tiny bedroom. She needed the support; arousal and excitement thrummed through her veins in equal amounts. How this worked, she didn’t know.

When Tori had told her about the wraiths, and how she’d summoned Jacob — who wasn’t really a wraith but had appeared as one — Janelle still hadn’t wrapped her head around how that had all happened. She’d been more than a little skeptical.

After all, it was a bit fantastical, wasn’t it? The idea a spell could summon an otherworldly being to take care of all the cleaning
and
who was excellent in bed? It was a good thing the idea hadn’t reached the feminine population as a whole. There would be magazine articles dedicated to “How to Summon Your Wraith” and then reality series like “In Bed with the Wraith.” It would revolutionize the world — and put men out of jobs.

Not that the man in front of her wasn’t a man. He turned at the door to the bedroom and pulled her hard up against him without warning. Janelle gasped as her curves were flattened against the hard planes of his body from breast to thigh. He was most definitely a man.

She swallowed. She could feel everything. The solid muscles of his chest, the knee-weakening six-pack, and — it just kept getting better — a rigid cock any porn star would be proud of.

His lips teased the skin just under her ear. “Janelle, honey, you have no idea what I plan to do to you.”

His sultry tone hit her low down. Her pussy ached and clenched tightly. Lips parting on a soft moan of need, she arched her neck to allow him better access. The trembling in her stomach expanded throughout her whole body and shivered across her skin. Heat slipped from between her pussy lips, dampening her panties, as her body readied itself for anything he had in mind.

Janelle wasn’t one to be passive, though. Most people got it wrong, assuming reserved meant shy, and she’d happily go along with any suggestion. She pulled back a little and looked him in the eyes challengingly. “Tell me.”

He grinned, a slow sensuous expression full of heat and promise. “Blunt. I like that.”

His hand flattened across the back of her hips and held her against him. She could feel the blood pounding through his veins and filling that magnificent cock as it pressed against her.

“First I’m going to strip off every piece of your clothing…” His voice was low and ragged, filled with the same desire and need she could see reflected in his blue eyes. He stroked the back of his finger up her arm to the cuff of her shirtsleeve. The simple touch left a tingling trail along her skin.

“Then I’m going to taste every inch of this delicious skin. Find every sensitive spot you have; which areas make you giggle, which make you squirm and beg me to stop.

“Then, when you’re squirming under me, when you think you can’t take anymore, I’m going to spread your thighs and lick, kiss and nibble your clit until you come screaming over my tongue,” he promised, his cock jerking against her with an eagerness that threatened the structural integrity of her knees again.

Janelle swallowed. His words reached deep inside her and flicked her arousal from idling into overdrive. The temperature in the room seemed to soar. How was he doing this? He wasn’t even touching her beyond holding her against him. Well, apart from the fact their bodies were plastered together from thigh to breast, of course. She could feel his reaction to everything he was saying.

“But I’m not going to stop. Oh no. I’m going to make you come again and again until you’re begging me to take you, until you’re begging for my cock in your tight, wet pussy. Would you like that, Janelle?”

She couldn’t speak. Her mouth was too dry and her heart pounded in her ears. Instead, she nodded mutely as he carried on. “Do you want it slow and easy? Comfortable sex, like having sex on a hot summer’s afternoon with the sun beating at the closed blinds and sweat sliding down our skin? Or do you want it hard and fast… like this?”

Without warning he turned them, pinning her back against the wall and pressing hard into her. She gasped, half in shock and half in sheer arousal, as her hands braced against his broad chest.
How odd
. Even though she could see through him — not easily, it was like looking through a thick voile curtain — he felt completely real and solid under her hands.

He even smelled real. The scent of his aftershave hung in the air, over something else, a deep, woodsy, musky smell that had to be his own, natural scent. Janelle closed her eyes. For a moment she was taken back to the kitchen at work, and the drunk in the women’s clothing who’d kissed her.

He didn’t give her time to think. He captured her hands, stretching them over her head and pinning them there in one of his. A soft moan whispered in the back of her throat as the change in position mashed her sensitive breasts against the solid muscles of his chest. Her nipples, already tightened into hard beads, rubbed against the lace of her bra, desperate to be free.

“How about like this?” He held her gaze as his free hand stroked down her hip and further. Reaching down, he hooked a big hand into the back of her knee and drew it up over his hip, holding it in place.

Janelle’s soft moan erupted into full force as he rolled his hips, pressing the bulge at his groin between her parted legs. Rocking his hips, he pressed against her aching clit. Pleasure rolled through her. All she could think of was that a couple of layers of fabric was all that stopped him from burying his cock deep inside her needy cunt.

His lips teased her neck again, his moan feral when she pushed her hips back against him. She wanted him. Now, if not sooner, and she couldn’t believe her own reaction. She just didn’t do this — have sex with a guy within minutes of meeting him.

Really
? The little voice in her head mocked.
What else would you call this then
?

He was a wraith. Tori had assured her this was what they did, and they enjoyed it. That they volunteered for it… volunteered to be at the beck and call of a summoning spell. So he’d known what he was getting himself into. There would be no awkward morning after, either. As soon as they were done, unless she requested him to remain, he would disappear back to where he’d come from. That was yet another thing she wasn’t sure of the details on, but so far, all the information Tori had given her had proven to be true.

“Bed,” she managed between the wicked temptation of his lips on her neck and his hips pressing against her, simulating what was about to happen. Preferably without clothes though.

“As you wish.”

Instead of pulling away as she’d expected, he simply let go of her hands, and reached for her other leg. Janelle squeaked as he lifted her. Worried about being dropped, she wrapped her arms and legs around him and clung. Unbelievably, to her at least, he carried her with ease as he strode into the bedroom. Every step pressed his denim-covered erection against her until Janelle was ready to come there and then.

He paused at the bottom of the bed, running his hands over the curves of her backside. “God, you feel fantastic. I love your ass.”

That made her pause, and deep inside, something delicate and easily crushed started to flower. “Yeah? You don’t think…” Janelle broke off and bit her lip.
Christ, how needy could she get, looking for reassurance about her looks from a wraith
? “Carry on.”

He started to kiss along her jaw as he propped a knee on the bed and lowered her onto it. Janelle pouted a little as his hips left hers, keenly feeling the loss of his body warmth and the pressure against her clit.

“Doesn’t matter.”

She reached up and slid her hands into his hair to pull him down for another kiss. This time, to cover her insecure little slip, she was the aggressor. With a rumble of surprise in his broad chest, he parted his lips and allowed her determined exploration. She lifted her hands to run her fingers over his stubble-covered chin and moaned in delight as she imagined what it would feel like between her legs. Her pussy quivered again, aching to be filled over and over again.

“Anyway,” she said as she broke the kiss. “Wasn’t someone making promises earlier?”

She felt rather than saw his smile. “You know I was, wench. You want it? You got it.”

Wench? Who called anyone wench these days? Janelle opened her mouth to complain about the term when he waved his hand and their clothes disappeared.

“Holy shit,” she gasped, surprise surging through her as she went from the comfortable concealment of clothes to completely naked and pressed skin against skin with a naked — very naked — guy. “How the hell did you do that?”

“Does it matter? Just accept it, Janelle.”

His hand smoothed up her waist then her ribcage, stopping at the curve of her breast, her now very naked breast. She bit her lip as her nipples hardened, becoming tight little pebbles that craved his touch. He had to touch her, he just had to. Her teeth dug into her lip harder as her gaze shot to his face.

Heat suffused through her body at the expression she found there. Dark heat and an even darker hunger swirled in his eyes. Funny, but if she could see him properly, she was sure his eyes were nearly the same colour as the guy from earlier.

Exactly the same
, the little voice in her head insisted.
Oh, hush, you. You’re just obsessed with… What was his name? Corvin. Yeah, that was it. You’re just obsessed with Corvin. And this can’t be him because he wasn’t a wraith and this guy is. So nerr
.

“I love your ass. I love your curves.” He ran his thumb along the crease under her breast before cupping it in a warm palm. His hard knee slid between her thighs and parted them. “Whatever you think, you don’t need to lose weight.”

Janelle paused and looked at him, pulled out of the sensual mood for a second.
What was he doing, reading her mind
? Tori hadn’t said anything about that, and she wasn’t sure she liked all of her innermost thoughts and fears laid out bare. “How did you know I was trying to lose weight?”

His hand stopped and Janelle pouted. Quickly he started up again, his thumb stroking over her breast, getting closer to the nipple with each stroke. “Your purse was open. You have a uhh, weight-loss club card in there.”

“Ah.”

Janelle relaxed just at the instant his thumb reached her tight nipple. She sucked in a breath between her teeth as he rolled it under the broad digit. She’d never been sensitive around her breasts, but something about him had brought out reactions she’d never had before.

“Perfect just as you are.” His voice was low, as though he was talking to himself. Bending down he sucked her nipple into his mouth. She gasped as the sensitive peak was enveloped in wet heat. His tongue brushed over her and her gasp turned into a low moan of need.

She drove her hands into his hair and held him to her as he laved each of her nipples in turn. He brushed his tongue across the turgid nipples, suckling them and even nipping gently with his teeth, until she was panting and squirming under him.

All too soon, he moved on though, sliding down her body as his second knee joined the first between her parted thighs. Janelle pouted and tried to hold on for a second, her pleasure-numbed brain slow to process information. Gently, he disengaged her hands and kissed his way down the centre of her stomach.

Heading south.

Janelle tensed. Anticipation and excitement hummed through her in equal measures as she realised what he was planning. Her pussy clenched. The ache there was near painful now. Torn, she couldn’t work out what she wanted more at the moment: his clever lips and tongue between her legs, or the cock she’d felt earlier slamming into her and filling her to the hilt.

“Just relax,” he murmured against her skin as he kissed along the curve of her hip. A large, rough hand smoothed over her quivering stomach and held her in place. He nudged her legs further apart so he could settle his broad shoulders between them. Janelle whimpered and reached out blindly for something to hold onto. Finding nothing else to get a purchase on, she grabbed the sheets and mangled them instead.

He trailed a line of soft kisses down the inside of her thigh. Fire and ice followed his lips. Fire from his touch, then ice as the air in the room whispered over her skin. Oh God, what was he doing? He needed to hurry up and get on with it already!

By the time he parted her pussy lips with gentle fingers, Janelle was wound up so tight she was ready to come off the bed. Her hips jerked as he touched her. She moaned breathlessly as his tongue flicked over her, playing in the valley he’d created.

The soft, then firm, brush of his tongue was maddening. Thrills of pleasure followed by frustration rolled through her body one after the other as he alternated nibbling her clit with flicking his tongue down to circle the entrance to her pussy. Nice as that was, it didn’t soothe the deep need within her. She needed to be filled. Now.

BOOK: Man about the House (Wicked Wraiths)
13.26Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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