Page 58 of Midnight Torment

Jordan, on the other hand, sat like a supermodel with his hair blowing in the breeze created by the Jeep being driven by a maniac, his sunglasses covering his eyes and adding to his bad boy image.

“Since I’ve never been to a diamond mine, is it going to have stones hanging out of the wall to sparkle as we move a torch around?” I almost shouted over the sound of the engine.

Johannes laughed, turning in his seat to look back at us, before returning to his driving since we veered off to the left. “This one only had initial excavation. Some of the well-defined mines are a huge network of tunnels and caverns. The diamonds are found in the walls as they excavate. Some operations blast and take a lot of the earth out to be sifted through above ground.”

I smiled at his description. “I had visions of needing my sunglasses underground.”

“Mines are dirty places filled with muck and debris, and sometimes the floors are like rivers since they use high-pressure hoses to blast the walls.” He had decided to call over his shoulder instead of trying to kill us.

“Sounds delightful,” I replied, lifting my leg to study my manicured toenails in my flipflops.

Jordan chuckled and shook his head. “You should have worn boots.”

I elbowed him in the side and stuck my tongue out, which made his grin widen. He was being an asshole. The man seemed to constantly be ready for military action instead of being on holiday.

Putting my hand on his stomach, I leaned up to whisper in his ear. “I have no problem climbing on your back and wrapping my legs around your waist.” I sucked his earlobe into my mouth and bit down.

His hand landed on my waist, his head spinning so our noses touched. “Your legs belong around my waist.” His lips hovered over mine. “Or over my shoulders.” Our breaths mingled. “Or on your knees and spread for me.”

Well, there was another pair of panties completely ruined since he’d singed them. Every time I thought I brought my A game, he raised the bar and left me struggling to control my arousal.

My eyes fluttered closed and my forehead pressed into his. “I swear you’re going to kill me.”

“Oh no, Megan, you don’t get to die. I lost you once when I walked away to save you. Now you’re mine and I intend to show you the true meaning of pleasure every single day for the rest of our lives.”

More than anything else in the world, I had wanted a family of my own. When he walked away, I realised that he took that dream with him. I could have had children with Mark, but it would never have been a family. Jordan was the beating heart of my world, and if it was only the two of us, we would still be a family.

“I love you,” I whispered against his lips. “I always have and I always will.”

He needed to know he was worth loving because Jordan never saw his true value, and I didn’t mean in pounds and pence. He was a billionaire and I didn’t care if we lived in my tiny apartment with no money as long as we were together. Now that he’d let me back into his life, he was never getting rid of me.

His hands cupped my face, his thumbs tracing over my bottom lip as he tipped my face back. “You hold my worthless heart in your hands, little butterfly.” His voice was barely more than a whisper, meant only for me to hear. His mouth formed the wordsI love youagainst my lips.

It meant more than a thousand loud declarations since Jordan never revealed emotion to anyone. Love hadn’t been a word in his vocabulary five years ago andno falling in lovewas rule three in his commandments he issued in the Twilight Rooms. The only problem with that was that hearts didn’t listen and were governed by emotion.

Johannes babbled happily in the background, pointing out a rock formation. Jordan smiled and tucked me in beside him. He slid further down in the seat, and his fingers moved silently across my skin in subtle ownership.

The diamond mine was nothing like I expected. In my mind, it would be a place with a doorway decorated in sparkling stones and music playing as little miners came out singing with their pickaxes over their shoulders.

The entrance was a narrow hole in the rockface that could be mistaken for a small, naturally occurring cave. The tunnel leading into the ground was nothing more than a dusty, dirty narrow chamber that looked as if it had been dug out with shovels since there was scattered dirt outside. Wooden beams braced the walls and ceiling, and wooden planks lined the floor.

Jordan raised an eyebrow at my disgusted expression. “Not as glamourous as you thought?”

“Something like that,” I muttered, glaring at the filthy floor. “I guess I just expected to find diamonds or some other precious stones.”

Johannes rubbed a dirty piece of something more translucent than the rest of the grime. “This is a diamond.”

I frowned a leaned forward to examine it, and stepped back unimpressed. “They don’t look like that in Lucy’s jewellery.”

“And I don’t look this good when I crawl out of bed,” Johannes said with a laugh. “We all need a little wash and polish to be at our best.”

I didn’t want to be impolite and point out that he needed more than a wash and polish.

Jordan didn’t seem to be interested in travelling far into the murky underworld of the mine, but instead moved around the entrance and tunnel that led to a small chamber. He moved his torch systematically over the walls, stopping every so often to let his fingers run over an area before he photographed it and moved on.

Since there were no huge diamonds growing out to entice me, I walked around to study the chamber. My own stone came into my mind as I wandered here and there to study the walls. The rose-shaped stone was lodged in my bra since I read an article once that said that it was the perfect place to carry a crystal since it was close to your heart and could be concealed. Something about the words of the stall holder had activated my latent fear and I wanted all the protection I could get from the faceless bogeyman.

Some etchings at a turn in the wall caught my attention, my fingers tracing over it. “What’s this?” I asked.

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