Ellora's Cavemen: Tales from the Temple IV (25 page)

Aeryn knew the tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Craig tried to rape me, but he didn’t. I used some of those self-defense tricks you taught me.”

Devlin laughed out loud. He had heard that Morelli was in a lot of pain when his deputies were processing him. “I heard his lawyer was already screaming police harassment and assault.”

“I’ll testify about who hit whom.”

“I’m waiting for an answer to my question,” Devlin reminded her gently.

Aeryn frowned. “What question?”

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Mlyn Hurn

“Will you marry me?”

Aeryn met Devlin’s dark eyes. “You don’t have to marry me, Dev. We’ve never talked about marriage before, and you don’t need to feel that you have—”

Devlin covered her mouth with his hand. “Hold it right there! I didn’t bring it up because I thought that you never wanted to remarry. You never talked about it, and I overheard you tell Elyse one day that you didn’t think you’d get married again even if you found out you were pregnant.”

Aeryn flushed. “Sometimes we all say things, then when they come true, we change our minds.”

Devlin started to answer her when he stopped. “Come true?”

Aeryn shrugged and flushed guiltily. “Remember about six weeks ago, and that picnic you surprised me with? Well, it looks like forgetting a few essential items has had repercussions.”

Devlin felt pole-axed and looked down at Aeryn’s flat belly. “Are you sure?”

Aeryn nodded. “I had the doctor run a test when I got here. But I didn’t want you to feel obligated—”

“Aeryn, I’ve wanted to move in with you almost since day one. But I knew that with my position here, and it being a small town, we would need it to be legal. I want us to make it legit, as soon as possible. I love you, Aeryn, and nothing, or nobody, is going to change that.”

Aeryn sniffed indelicately and rubbed at her nose. Devlin grinned and handed her a tissue. “So, what do you say?”

Aeryn blew her nose, and then laughed. Devlin frowned for a moment. “What’s so funny?”

“When I tell our grandchildren about this one day, it isn’t going to sound the least bit romantic.”

Devlin laughed out loud and pulled her into his arms. He kissed her lightly, not wanting to hurt her. “You get back to normal, babe, and I’ll be happy to give you something more romantic to tell anyone you want.”

Aeryn giggled and kissed his lips lightly. “You’ve got a deal, sheriff.”

The End

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About the author:

Mlyn lives in Indiana, USA. She worked as a Registered Nurse for 23 years in Pediatrics. Reading Barbara Cartland and Harlequin romance novels in high school spurred her to start writing. She did technical writing for her employers until she started writing erotica four years ago. She began her own website for people to view her stories. Mlyn is single and lives with her cranky cat Georgia, whom she named after her favorite artist for inspiration, Georgia O’Keeffe.

Mlyn welcomes mail from readers. You can write to her c/o Ellora’s Cave Publishing at 1337 Commerce Drive, Suite 13, Stow OH 44224.

Also by Mlyn Hurn:

Blood Dreams

Blood Dreams 2: Hunter’s Legacy

Burning Desires

Crown Jewels anthology

Elemental Desires anthology

Family and Promises

Family Secrets

High Seas Desire

His Dance Lessons

Medieval Mischief

Passionate Hearts anthology

Rebel Slave

Submissive Passion

The Cattleman

Things That Go Bump In The Night 3 anthology

The Beckoned

THE BECKONED

Jaid Black

Jaid Black

Prologue

“Jack,” she breathed out. “What are you doing to me?”

Wai Ashley awoke on a gasp. In a cold sweat, her dark nipples stabbing against the wet silk of her nightgown, it took her a long moment to come to terms with the fact she had been dreaming.

This wasn’t the first time she’d had the vision. Indeed, she’d been abruptly awoken from the dream of the man who’d haunted her sleep on many an eve these past twenty-six years of her life.

Jack Elliot.

Who was he?

Where
was he?

And what did he want with
her
?

She sighed. “You’re being ridiculous,” Wai murmured.
He
didn’t want anything from her because
he
wasn’t real. Jack Elliot didn’t exist.

She needed to get that fact through her thick skull once and for all. He wasn’t a real man. He was a nighttime hallucination—nothing more, nothing less.

A part of her wished that Jack was more than a passing mirage in a cold, lonely desert night. All these years of dreaming about him and she still knew little of him, though what she did know about her mythical lover more than made up for the parts she didn’t.

Strong. Tall. Tan. Solid muscles. Long, light brown hair with streaks of gold woven through it. Incredible body. And a really huge—

Wai frowned. He didn’t exist. There was no use in dwelling on the made-up physical attributes of a fictitious man. Jack, she had long ago decided, was a figment of her overactive imagination. Perhaps a make-believe friend she’d developed in her less than perfect, and oftentimes abusive, childhood.

The only problem with that theory was that Jack…well, he’d been there with Wai from the crib through womanhood. Warm, protective—almost paternal—from infancy through adolescence. He’d cradled her through all the tears, murmured soothing words to her she hadn’t understood, but that had somehow helped regardless…

Scared all the ghosts inside her away.

Jack Elliot had been her rock in the darkest hours of her childhood—her mental protector. Wai’s drunk of a father could beat her body, but he could never take her mind. Her mother could whip her into a bloody pulp, but she never managed to break Wai’s spirit.

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The Beckoned

All thanks to her loving, strong, invented protector.

When she’d hit puberty, though, Jack had changed somehow. He wasn’t less a hero—just more a man. A primal, arrogant male who demanded total attention—and absolute obedience. It was almost as if he’d waited for her to grow up so he could claim her as his possession.

More than once since she’d reached puberty, she’d awoken from a violent orgasm courtesy of mythical Jack—just like tonight. He’d leave her gasping and moaning, writhing beneath his knowing hands as she begged for his calloused touch.

She just wished she could stop dreaming about him altogether. Because of Jack and his nocturnal lovemaking in the world of slumber, no real man had ever been able to compare.

Lying back down, Wai pulled the covers tight around her. There was no time to ponder the mythical man her brain had named Jack Elliot. She needed sleep. Tomorrow was a big day. She had waited for this moment ever since she’d decided to go to college.

If the ad agency hired her on, it would be a turning point in her career.

“Go away, Jack,” she whispered to the walls, to no one. She was always alone. How would she ever find happiness—completion with a real man—if her fantasy lover haunted her every night?

Wai blew out a tired, groggy breath of air. “Let me go.” She determinedly closed her eyes. “I’m not a scared little girl anymore. It’s time to let me go, Jack.”

* * * * *

Major Jack Elliot frenziedly pumped his long, thick cock with his left hand. His eyes were tightly shut, his teeth gritting. Beads of sweat dotted his hairline as he imagined himself pounding into her sticky, wet flesh.

Over and over. Again and again and again.

He knew he shouldn’t be touching himself like this. The preachers all said God forbade it. Said he’d go to hell for wasting his seed outside a wife’s body. But she was always there, his intoxicating witch. For as long as he could remember being able to get hard, her imaginary body had summoned him to do things to it he knew he shouldn’t.

Fuck it. Jack had done a lot worse in his life in the name of freeing his countrymen from the dominion of Great Britain and the king than spill fruitless seed.

He pumped his shaft harder, mercilessly, his jugular bulging and muscles tensing with the effort. He came on a low growl, his cock jerking in his hand, his vein-roped arm bulging, as cream spewed out on his belly.

Sweet God.

She was Indian. A Lenape, he supposed. He didn’t know her name, but her face had haunted more dreams than he cared to think back on.

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Jaid Black

Long, inky-black hair. Light brown eyes. Thick black lashes, which outlined her eyes with a natural kohl that would have made the legendary Cleopatra jealous.

Luscious lips. A round bottom…

And the tightest cunt a man could ever dream of owning.

“Who are you?” he rasped, his voice sounding scratchy. Jack had barely recovered from the last battle with King George’s men and yet tonight he was already back to pumping himself like a man possessed. “What do you want from me?”

Silence.

Jack drew in a deep breath and slowly expelled it. His unblinking blue eyes stared at the ceiling of the animal-hide tent he lay in as if it held all the answers. He wished it did.

For years he had dreamt of her. At first, she came to him in the nighttime as a child, an infant. He’d held her tight, cradling her crying body in his dreams until she fell fast asleep. Over the years she had gone from infant to child to…

Sexy as sin, exotically beautiful woman. His dreams hadn’t stayed altruistic at that point. They’d become more carnal every time she made an appearance in them.

Jack felt he had that right. Here, in reality, there was nothing but blood, death, and war. He owned nothing but the boots on his feet and the clothes on his back. In his dreams, though, he had a woman all his own. He didn’t know her name, but she had always belonged to him—she always
would
.

Sighing, he tucked his half-erect penis back into the flap of his pants. Rolling to his side, he closed his eyes and determined to fall asleep. Preferably without
her
waking him up again.

His jaw tightened. He would need his energy come dawn. There was no use in dwelling on a woman who didn’t exist.

Especially not on a maple-sugar-skinned female the laws of the civilized Christian world forbade him from ever taking to wife.

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Chapter One

One year later

“This is ridiculous,” Wai muttered to herself. She squinted her eyes, trying to see through the slashing rain beating down on the windshield of her rental car. The wipers were set at full speed, but it didn’t seem to help. “Great,” she sighed. “This is just perfect.”

She was driving down Interstate 77 in the middle of rural Ohio. The Akron-Canton Airport was a goodly ways behind her. She didn’t know how much further her destination was in front of her because it was getting increasingly difficult to read the small green signs to the right of the road.

Leave it to her boss, Greg, to give her an account that took half of forever to reach!

He’d had it out for Wai since day one for reasons unknown. Didn’t like the competition, she supposed, and especially not from a woman.

Not that it mattered. She planned to leave the ad agency in Columbus, North Carolina, behind in a few months and move on to bigger fish in bigger ponds. Namely, she had her eye on Manhattan, and on becoming an advertising rep at one of the prestigious firms dotting the New York City skyline.

Wai had several interviews lined up with various Big Apple advertising agencies.

Ordinarily she would have bickered with Greg over taking on a seemingly impossible task such as her current assignment, but Wai figured that if she could turn rural, Amish-settled Millersburg into a coveted tourist attraction, then, well…she was a shoo-in for Manhattan.

She would, come hell or high water, do what the mayor of Millersburg had hired her ad agency to do and get the tiny little Ohio town on the proverbial map. And then Wai would, finally, get out of North Carolina.

That’s how she was—stubborn to the bone. Once she set her mind on a goal, she worked her ass off to attain it. It was the very same way when, at the vulnerable age of eighteen, she’d made the decision to leave her native New Zealand behind.

Moving to America on her own had been difficult at best and downright terrifying at worst, but she’d done it—and thrived. New Zealanders spoke the Queen’s English so language hadn’t been an obstacle in the beginning, but culture had. English-speaking she might be, but she was Maori—one of the indigenous people of her native country. A New Zealand Indian, if you would.

If there was one thing Wai was great at, though, it was getting past cultural barriers.

She had been blessed with a warm, inviting smile that emanated the sincerity and honesty of her heart. Her eyes, almond-shaped and lighthearted, danced with the 161

Jaid Black

joviality and inward happiness she’d managed to retain despite the difficult circumstances of her life.

But mostly, Wai reflected, she was also something of a talker! Never at a loss for words, she was able to make any person feel instantly at ease around her. Her gabby nature had served her as well as, if not better than, the eyes and smile she’d inherited from her beloved, deceased grandmother.

No matter what it took, she resolved, steering the rental car toward the first exit she could halfway make out, she would get this assignment completed. If she could overcome her less than idyllic childhood and carve out a new life in a different land, she could also make Millersburg a happening spot.

Even if that meant bringing cow shit, corn husking, and Amish fashions
en vogue
.

Wai broke from her reverie as she spotted a highway patrolman wearing a neon orange rain slicker near the end of whatever exit she’d just taken. She pulled her car up alongside him to ask for directions to the country inn she held reservations at.

“It won’t happen!” the potbellied officer informed her, his voice loud to be heard above the relentlessly pounding rain. “The entire county is on a flood watch and the Tuscawaras River had already overflowed!”