Page 6 of Fortune's Favor

She points a finger at me and stabs me in the chest. I grab her finger and it’s like fire burning from that tiny little point of contact all the way down to my cock.

She jerks back and holds her hand to her chest, her cheeks flushed and her eyes lowered. “Uh-ummm. Of course I trust Jerry. You’re the one that has issues with what I do.”

Anger flares and I grit my teeth. “You wanna know why that is, sweetheart? Because your kind conned my mother endlessly out of every last dime my father left her when he died.” I stalk back and forth on the sidewalk in front of my little house, tearing at my hair. “Do you know what it’s like to watch every bit of stability you’ve got in the world get pissed into the wind by the woman who’s supposed to take care of you? I do. I know it very well. There were so many nights that I went to bed hungry and listened to her out in the living room with some con telling her a bunch of bullshit about my dad. But she ate it up. Because it gave her the chance to keep fighting with him instead of actually living for me and herself!” My voice gets louder and louder until I’m practically hollering at her.

But she stands there, her hand still clenched protectively around the finger I touched. “I do know exactly what you mean. Because I had the same thing with my own mom.”

My brow lifts and I eye her suspiciously. “You’re trying to tell me that your mom was conned out of money by psychics when you are a psychic?”

Shaking her head, I see her full lips quiver and my heart sinks. “No. What my mom did was follow her heart endlessly. No matter whether she should or shouldn’t. She married five times and each man supposedly loved her. But they really didn’t. She worked her ass off at first taking care of them and me and then it just started to fall more and more to taking care of them because she didn’t want to make them mad and then have them leave her. That was the worst thing in the world to her.” She turns away and walks up to the sidewalk up to my door. “I didn’t think it was the worst thing in the world. Mine was always being left out of everything. I was her only child, her only daughter and yet she didn’t have time for me. She was too wrapped up in meeting and marrying the next mister right to even notice me half the time.”

And now I can’t stop thinking about some little girl sitting in a corner, forgotten, while her mom makes dinner and acts like the perfect wife for each husband. Fury builds up and I have to clamp my lips shut to keep from telling her that she deserved better. I know she did. Just like I did.

I wish I believed that that little girl knew she did. Maybe that’s why she’s convinced herself that she’s psychic. Because it helps to push aside some of that pain from her childhood. She’s more than just a sad little girl.

She’s special.

“Come on. Let’s go inside and we’ll work this out. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

If she suffered in her childhood and that’s why she’s imagining what she is…well, I can’t really blame her.

Sometimes it sucks to be a kid.

But as I watch her soft, rounded hips sway up the sidewalk, I can’t stop my dick from getting fucking rock hard.

Her ass has to be about the best I’ve ever seen. Full, round and firm. Just right to take a bite out of while I fuck her from behind.

I grind my teeth and swear under my breath. I need to lock that shit down.

Neither one of us have the time or inclination to just delve into the raw hunger that I feel around her.

She’s the kind of girl you keep and marry. The kind you take home to mom and dad even if she is crazy for believing she’s psychic.

She’s not the fuck ‘em and leave ‘em type. So I’m gonna have to keep my aching dick in my pants and help her and the Chief and then as soon as this is all over, find a willing woman and fuck her into next week and hope that that works.

I don’t want a wife. This girl has forever written all over her. She’s not for me.

Chapter Five

GYPSY

Hissing breaths come from the dark. A slight rustle that makes my skin crawl. Something furtive whispers in the night and I close my eyes, praying.

Something crawls on the ground and then dry, raspy skin touches my ankle. I bite my lip to keep from screaming. “Wh-what are you?”

“Don’t you recognisssse me, my love,” it hisses. “I’m your faithful husband come back to find you. I’m sure you’ve misssssed me as much as I’ve misssssed you.”

My eyes widen as a huge, dark green snake with glistening scales slithers across my foot and then wraps itself around my ankle. I can’t breathe. His dry body wraps around me and I can feel his scales sliding along my bare skin, the edges catching on my skin roughly.

Shaking and whimpering, I fight to keep my eyes open. “It’s only a dream. It’s only a dream,” I keep repeating the words desperately. It’s a nightmare. Not a dream. But it’s not real. None of it.

There is no giant snake speaking to me as it wraps around me. It’s not real. It’s not real.

But his hooded head comes up to peer at me and I can see myself reflected in his eyes, terror on my face. “My bride. I have been waiting and waiting for you to be reborn so that we can be together. The gods that tore you from me cannot keep us apart any longer. I cannot wait until my lips touch yours.”

His hood comes up behind him, huge and dark in the mists around us. His huge mouth opens and his long, white fangs glisten in the light, poison dripping off of them. I can feel the steel coils of his cool, raspy scales tightening and my breath stutters in my chest.

“Mine,” he hisses and then his head drops and he’s heading right for me, his mouth open and his reptilian eyes glowing in the dim light.

---