I went on, “I like making breakfast for you. I like you in my kitchen. I like that henley you wore today, it looks great on you.”

“Kitten,” he murmured and his fingers shifted down the smal of my back. He leaned his body into me and pul ed me closer.

me closer.

My hands hit his hard chest, one slid up and my fingers curled around his neck. “I like to hear Juno’s tags jingle when you give her a rubdown. I like hearing your clothes hitting the furniture.”

After I said that, his lips hit my neck then slid up to behind my ear.

I turned my head so my lips were at his ear and I wrapped my arms tight around his middle. “I’m sorry I fought you, Mace,” I whispered. “But now that your mine again, I’m never going to let you go.”

He turned his head and I could swear he was looking at me in the dark. I felt my face grow warm under his gaze, my soft body already warming from his hard one pressing into mine.

Then he kissed me.

Then we used our mouths, tongues, fingers and other parts of our body to process everything else that needed processing.

When we were done processing, when I’d finished purring and we were breathing steady again, when Mace had rol ed me and pressed my back into his front, when Juno had come back to bed and settled at our feet, I whispered, “Thank you.”

“What’re you thankin’ me for, Kitten?” Mace said into the back of my neck and he sounded amused.

“I’m the Queen of Super Shitty Bad Luck. Al my life, my luck has been bad. Not just bad, super shitty bad,” I shared.

“But not anymore. Now it’s good. It’s always good when you’re around. So I’m thanking you for being my good luck you’re around. So I’m thanking you for being my good luck charm.”

For a beat, I felt his body go solid as a rock.

Then his arm around my waist got super tight. So tight, it squeezed the breath out of me and, again to the back of my neck, he muttered, “Jesus.”

The way he said it, the way he held me close, made me hope that in my first battle, I’d kicked some demon ass.

I considered tel ing him I loved him but I didn’t want to push too hard, too fast.

My war against his demons was going to take awhile. I needed to be patient and strong and not f**k it up.

I could wait.

Chapter Twenty

Demon Scum

Stella

The next morning, I made Mace apple streusel coffee cake which, unfortunately, as I was under house arrest (in a way) this necessitated Mace making an early morning trip to the grocery store to buy ingredients but he didn’t seem to mind (as he never did, and anyway, my apple streusel coffee cake was one of his favorites).

While it was baking in the oven, I tried not to make a big deal out of putting Mace’s clothes in the closet and the stuff in his boxes around the house.

I wanted him to notice me doing it but I wanted to make it seem like it was perfectly natural. Like a daily chore, rinsing dishes or feeding Juno.

It was another battle in my War with the Demons, making him feel welcome, settled and at home at my place (okay, so maybe it was more like a minor skirmish but it was stil something).

At first, it didn’t seem he noticed anything since he was sitting on the couch, talking on his cel , leaned forward and writing notes on a tablet on the coffee table.

Considering, even for a normal couple, this would be a huge deal, me moving his stuff into my space, the fact that he treated it like it was perfectly natural, like a daily chore, began to piss me off. So instead of doing it like I didn’t want him to notice it, I started banging around while I did it, like he could bloody wel get up and help me.

I got down to the bottom of the last box; it was fil ed with about thirty CDs. When Mace flipped his phone closed, I picked up the box, lugged it to the coffee table and dumped it on his writing tablet.

His head came up immediately, he looked at me and said, “Babe.”

I put my hands to my h*ps and told him, “You need to mark your CDs.”

His eyes went to my h*ps as his brows snapped together.

Then he looked back at me and asked, “Why?”

“Because if you don’t mark your CDs, they’l get al mixed up with mine,” I reached in and pul ed one out. It was Journey’s, “Evolution” (which, by the way, featured one of my favorite Journey songs, “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” and I wondered, briefly, if I could fit that song in the next night’s set list and decided quickly to do so).

For your information, I had that same CD.

Everyone knew what that meant.

“Who cares?” Mace asked, interrupting my mental set list restructuring, lifted up the box and set it aside so he could see the tablet.

Obviously, he didn’t know what doubled CDs meant.

“I care,” I told him. “I have this same CD. How wil we know which one’s yours and which one’s mine?” Mace sat back and put the sole of his foot against the edge of my coffee table.

“Who cares which one’s yours and which one’s mine?” My eyes bugged out right before I said, “I care.”

“Why?”

“Because I do. Because it’s a CD. Because CDs are sacred.”

“It’s the same CD,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but I bought mine at Twist and Shout during my Journey phase and Twist and Shout is gone now. I was with my old band when I bought it. At my demand, we played

‘Wheel in the Sky’ like, every night. I loved everything Journey. Even their power bal ads. I hate power bal ads.

But Journey’s power bal ads kick… fucking… ass.

‘Faithful y’, ‘Open Arms’. Those bal ads rock.”

“So, if we find we’re doubled up on CDs, we’l sel mine on eBay.”

I made a choking noise then spluttered, “What?” Mace was watching me closely perhaps wondering if I needed an intervention.

Then he repeated, saying the words slowly this time,

“We’ve got any of the same CDs, we’l sel mine on eBay.” I threw my hands up in the air. “You can’t just sell your CDs on eBay, especial y if we’ve doubled up. If we’re doubled up then they serve a dual purpose. First, they’re backup CDs in case something goes wrong with one and second, they’re material evidence that we should be together because we like the same music. Everyone knows that!”