Cuddling Sucks in Coffins Read online

  “Have you completely forgotten the most important thing in this vengeance scenario you planned? Your brother was the bad guy, not me,” Jacek growled. “Your brother taught me everything I need to know about torture. It would be a pleasure to put that knowledge to use.”

  I sliced my gaze over my shoulder at him. I would never ask him to torture anyone, not when he’d risen above his past, accepted it as part of who he was, scars and all.

  I turned back to Ronick. “I will do what must be done.”

  The holy water and containment were already torture. It tortured me, too, and I very seriously doubted I could go beyond that.

  “Can you all give Ronick and me a minute?” Jacek asked. A muscle in his jaw bounced, and his fists balled at his sides.

  Nodding, I turned toward Sawyer and Eddie in the doorway, their expressions hard as stone and just as difficult to read.

  “We’ll be right outside if you need us,” I said.

  The three of us strode out but left the woodshed door open a crack. Eddie paced the yard in tight circles and raked his fingers through his hair as if to reconcile what I’d done. Sawyer gazed over the fence at the cemetery. The longer the silence stretched, the faster my knees threatened to buckle under the weight of what I’d become.

  A monster. All because of Paul.

  “Sawyer. Eddie,” I whispered to their backs. “Please say something.”

  Sawyer stepped toward me just as I started to break.

  A sob welled in my throat and then cracked through the night. “I’m a monster,” I whispered. “Just like R—.” Ronick’s magic still prevented me from saying his name or any name like his.

  “No.” Sawyer cradled my face between his large hands, his expression pained like I’d hurt him.

  “If he doesn’t give me the sword’s power, then what do I do? I couldn’t tell you guys, Sawyer. I couldn’t—”

  “Belle—”

  “If Detective Appelt doesn’t give me my power back, then I’ll imprison him too.”

  “That’s—”

  “How many people will I have to lock up and torture just to survive Paul?” I hissed. “What if I end up hurting you three or turning into something that you hate?”

  “It’s not possible, Belle.” Sawyer’s thumbs massaged away the tears streaming down my cheeks. “You didn’t see the state of Jacek when I found him, a shell of the person you know today. I had a conversation with Roseff before Jacek killed him. The man was a lunatic, and I guarantee you he never had any doubts or reservations about what he was doing. You are not him, do you hear me? He didn’t deserve to live. But you do.”

  His words penetrated and wound through the inside of my skull until I could at least draw a breath again. Progress. Jacek was right—I couldn’t do much else if I couldn’t breathe.

  Eddie stepped toward us. “You are blindingly bright, Sunshine, but maybe you’ve forgotten something about books.”

  I sniffed and barked out a weird laugh that sounded like a hiccup. “We’re talking about books?”

  Sawyer sighed, still smoothing my cheeks. “It’s the only language he knows.”

  Eddie hopped up onto a pile of logs covered in a blue tarp that hugged the fence and sat so he had a clear view of both the woodshed and the cemetery. “You once said, and I quote, ‘No other slayer after me should ever have to go through this bullshit.’ If you want to save lives, including your own, that makes you the hero, not the villain in the book world. You do whatever you need to do to get that done, especially if it means roughing people up who are stupid enough to get in your way.”

  Sawyer nodded and joined him on the log pile with the all the grace of a butterfly despite his size. “Ronick made his choice a long time ago. I don’t know anything about this Detective Appelt, but if he stole your power, that does not make him a good guy.” He gazed at me, his orange-yellow eyes intense but warm. “He deserves what’s coming to him.”

  I sighed, suddenly exhausted even though the night had just begun. Night’s Fall weighed heavily in my hands, but with my vamps a safe distance away, I flung it up in the air just to see what happened. It flopped back down in the grass. Damn you, gravity. I bent to retrieve it and then leaned it against the wood pile.

  Sawyer stared over the fence at the cemetery. “I did say that to defeat a monster, you have to become a monster, which I think you’re doing the best way you know how. Paul wants to kill you, and you want to live just as much, if not more than what he wants. Two powerful, opposing beings battling it out in a ferocious display of claws and fangs sharper than mine.” Smiling, he held out a hand to help me up next to him. “And guess who’s winning?”

  I grasped his hand but stumbled on my way up, some of the logs shifting dangerously. “Apple pie?”

  They both chuckled, but it was filled with humor. The best sound ever.

  Sawyer planted a kiss on the top of my head as I settled between them. “You are winning.”

  I really couldn’t argue with that since I was still alive. Still, this battle was far from over.

  Keeping my ears glued to the low murmur of voices floating from the open door of the woodshed, I rested my head on Sawyer’s shoulder and gazed out over the view of the graveyard across the empty lot. Since my slayer powers were no longer shoving me out the door to patrol, I could stall and soak up this moment before I threw myself into the fray. There would still be patrolling and staking and general mayhem, and I was sure Detective Appelt would come looking for me at the one place he had to know I’d be.

  Then of course there was Paul, still lurking around every corner of my subconscious when he wasn’t raining horror down on my whole world.

  Just one more minute of peace, of being sandwiched between two of my three favorite creatures on this planet.

  “Sunshine...” Eddie gazed at my hand resting palm-up on my knee like he wouldn’t mind munching down a few of my fingers. Instead, he touched his fingertips to my wrist, then slid them around to pick up my hand. He placed it delicately in his open palm set on his thigh and slid my fingers up until they threaded with his.

  My breath caught. I was touching him. I lifted my head from Sawyer’s shoulders just slightly, worried I’d make a wrong move that changed Eddie’s mind.

  He smiled out at the graveyard, the biggest one I’d ever seen on him. I grinned, too, the first in a long while, my chest brimming with warmth. Despite everything, I was the luckiest girl on the planet.

  In the very near future, my life would surely be another shitstorm. But right now, there wasn’t any other place I’d rather be.

  Now read the rest of the series!

  Stakes Have Sword Envy

  Devils Are Prickly Bastards

  Slayers Give Happy Endings

  Some Swans Don’t Swim

  Or get The Slayer’s Reverse Harem Complete Series Box Set for a cheaper price than books 2-6 combined!

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  About the Author

  Holly Ryan is a pen name for a USA Today bestselling author who one day said, “Screw it. I’m gonna write books with some serious sizzle.” She’s fueled by wine, which is where the idea probably came from.

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  Also by Holly Ryan

  A Touch of Dragon Fire

  Forked Tongues Are Fun

  Bros Come Before Hordes

  The
Slayer's Reverse Harem

  Vampires Don't Give Hickeys

  Cuddling Sucks in Coffins

  Stakes Have Sword Envy

  Devils Are Prickly Bastards

  Slayers Give Happy Endings

  Some Swans Don't Swim

  Standalone

  The Slayer's Reverse Harem: The Complete Series

  A Touch of Dragon Fire: The Complete Series