Page 66 of Midnight Torment

“You do realise that sniffing assholes doesn’t sound right and creates a terrifying image,” Megan said while chewing the side of her mouth.

At least she hadn’t said no. “We can wait until you’re ready.”

Megan’s fingers wrapped around my wrists. “I’ve been ready for years; it was you who kept throwing obstacles up.”

“Does this mean I have to get down on one knee or some shit?” All this talk of emotions was making me very uncomfortable.

Her eyebrow arched. “Or some shit,” she replied. “You can do it properly when you have a ring. It’ll give you time to think this through since you look ready to run at the prospect of sayingI do.”

I moved quickly to pin her arms behind her back and bring her flush with me. “I’m not running anywhere, Megan. One day you’ll discover the truth that I was the dark angel watching over you even as my heart bled, and my soul fractured.”

Her chest rose and fell rapidly. “Jordan?”

“I was there all the time, Megan. I wanted to kill every single man who looked at you and blow the brains out of that stupid fuck who let you get away.” I brought my head down until my lips hovered over hers. “You are mine, never forget that.”

She blinked but never said a word. I didn’t care if my possessiveness made her want to run. There was nowhere on this planet that I wouldn’t find her and bring her home with me. The final alarm on my phone sounded, reminding me that we needed to leave for the airport.

I pressed a quick, hard kiss to her pouty lips and released her. “Time to go.”

She grabbed me by the T-shirt as I turned to walk away. A fire burned in her eyes. “I expect that ring when we get home,” she whispered, all her emotions blazing for me to see. “Don’t let me down again.”

I deserved that, but it didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt like hell to hear the words from her lips. “I let you go once to protect you, Megan. I’m not that noble to make the same sacrifice twice.”

She was the only ray of sunshine in my dull existence, and now that her heat warmed me, I would never be able to walk away again.

The whisp of a smile danced on her lips and she slid her arm through mine. “Who cares about nobility? It was overrated a few centuries ago and beyond out of date now. I would much prefer for you to drag me into your life caveman-style and shag me senseless.”

I rolled my eyes at her and led her out of the bedroom before I did just that and we missed our plane. “Who said romance was dead?”

She grinned and everything fell back into place again. I hadn’t been lying earlier when I said she was the missing piece of my soul. I was only complete when she was with me.

The hire car was like an oven inside as we drove to the airport, the air conditioning desperately trying to keep us cool while the sun pounding down on us tried to thwart it. Perspiration beaded on my brow and sweat trickled down my spine to rest just above my ass. I did nothing but complain about the cool, damp weather back home, but right now I craved it.

“Can we still live with Simon?” Megan asked randomly. “I don’t think I want to live in a huge mansion like Cassandra where I could get lost trying to find the bathroom.”

Her imagery made me laugh out loud. “I think she probably knows where the toilet is.”

“I know, but one of the children’s homes I lived in was a huge old house, and I was always cold and hungry and miserable. A home should be somewhere that you can always hear the other people and feel their energy.”

“We can live wherever you want,” I replied. I would buy an acre of the moon if that was where she wanted to live, although I wasn’t sure how that squirrel would cope floating about up there trying to sit his ass in a window box.

Megan shrugged, staring out the window. “I don’t need that much,” she said in a low voice. “Just somewhere I feel safe.”

I could understand that since we both had no parents in our past to create a home for us. At least I had Grampa, while Megan had had no one to give her stability. My hand found hers and she turned to look at me. “Like I said, we can live wherever you want. I have no preferences except that you crawl into bed beside me every night.”

Megan giggled and pulled my hand into her lap and threaded her fingers through mine. “I assume you mean naked?” That slow smile that made me think with the wrong head curved her lips.

“I have no objection to silk and lace,” I quipped, raising an eyebrow. “Most fabrics rip with the right amount of force.”

Her indignant glare and the way she pulled her sunglasses down so I could experience the full effect of it suggested she wanted me to know she was displeased at the fate of quite a few pairs of panties over the years. Megan was the type of woman who liked her underwear to match, so she lamented the loss, and her bra was cast aside until she got more to match.

I laughed at her expression and sat back to finish our drive to drop off the hire car. The heat in the airport was stifling, and even standing close to an air conditioning unit didn’t help.

“They’ve opened the gate to our flight,” Megan said. “I’m going to pop to the toilet.” She stood on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to my cheek before heading in the direction of the ladies’ toilets. She’d already been about a million times since she hated using the toilets on the plane. I followed her, typing a reply on my phone to Flynn about a part we needed to order for our newest car design. Not even the guys knew about my car racing, and Megan had managed to drag that information out of my grumpy business partner.

Five minutes passed and I grumbled inwardly about the queues in women’s toilets. After ten minutes, I texted Megan but there was no reply. That was the moment the doomsday clock inside me stopped ticking and I knew there was a problem. I got a member of the airport staff to check every cubicle since it was the ladies toilets and it would have caused a ruckus if I went in there alone.

I activated her tracker on my phone, but she was already moving away from the airport and too fast to be in a car.

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