Bad Boy Romance: Nick (Romantic Suspense Alpha Male Romance) (New Adult Rock Star Contemporary Short Stories) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 2) (48 page)

******************************

The last thing on Vivian's list for the day was to stop by
Aurora's house and gather some of her belongings to bring back to her, and the
sun was already set by the time she and Cade pulled into the long circular
drive at the front of the house. It sat uncomfortably dark and quiet, and
Vivian immediately felt anxious.

She climbed the front steps cautiously, the fear only
increasing in her chest when she noticed that the front door stood open a few
inches. Cade pushed ahead of her to enter first and she reached forward to loop
her fingers in the hem of his shirt, seeking the comfort and security of his
presence.

Cade turned on the light in the entryway and Vivian drew in
a terrified breath. Papers, broken pottery, and shattered glass littered the
marble floor.

"Sara?" Vivian yelled into the silence of the
ransacked house.

When there was no response, she broke away from Cade and ran
up the stairs toward Sara's bedroom.

"Vivian, stop!" Cade yelled after her, but Vivian
kept running, looking into every room she passed.

The devastation only seemed to worsen as she got further
into the house. When she reached Sara's bedroom she saw her sitting in the
middle of the bed, her hands bound behind her back and a black blindfold over
her eyes.

"Oh my god," Vivian said, rushing to the side of
the bed.

She had just grabbed onto the ropes on her wrists when she
felt someone grab her roughly around the waist. Vivian screamed and thrashed
against the strong grip, trying to push away from whoever held her. Her body
slammed into the bed and she rolled over to see a huge man hovering over her.
Sara was making sobbing, whimpering sounds and the man suddenly cracked the
back of his hand across her cheekbone.

Sara fell backwards onto the bed and Vivian tried to
scramble away from the man, but he descended on her, grabbing her by her
shoulders and pulling her up toward him.

"Put her down," Cade said from the doorway.

His voice was low and calm, the control making it even more
frightening than if he had shouted. The man turned to him and Vivian used the
temporary loosening of his grip to push away from him and run across the room
to Cade. He led her gently into the doorway and stepped further into the room.

"You're who they sent?" the man scoffed, "We
were hoping the creature Aurora ran off with would at least come back to gloat,
but instead they sent Aurora's little friend and her boyfriend to deal with the
aftermath. This shouldn't been too much of a challenge, do you think?"

Two other men stepped into the bedroom from the adjoining
sitting room and Vivian wrapped her hand around the doorframe, the fear making
it difficult to breath. She could hear her own breath in her ears and terror
was making her shake. Cade, however, seemed completely calm as he took two long
steps toward the dresser on the wall and drew a cigarette out of the open pack
laying on the top.

Vivian watched Cade turn the cigarette around backwards and
put the tip in his mouth. He puffed once and drew the cigarette from his mouth,
revealing a glowing end. A shiver of excitement rippled through her despite the
fear and she saw the three men visibly stiffened. An instant later furniture
skidded out of the way as Cade shifted and his massive form filled the space.
One of the men pulled out a long dagger, but before he could even raise it,
Cade lifted one claw and slashed it across the man's chest.

The smell of blood filled the room and Vivian turned her
head away from the man bleeding on the floor. Footsteps pounded as the other
two men ran from the room through the side door. Cade's human form swept Vivian
into his arms and rested a kiss to the top of her head.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

Vivian nodded and kissed his chest. This was reality now.
She was irretrievably part of this, but as long as she held onto Cade, she felt
like she could get through it.

An hour later they stepped out of the house and into a night
that was suddenly chilly. Fall was coming quickly and the shift in seasons
seemed to underscore what was happening around them. Vivian could hear the
voices of the trusted members of the operative inside the house, trying to make
sense of the situation and decide what to do next. It was clear now that any
talks of peace were only for show. The war was here and Vivian was a part of
it.

"What do you want to do now?" Cade asked, tucking
an arm around her hips and drawing her close to him.

Vivian breathed in the smell of sage and the hint of sweat
from his skin. His arm felt safe and powerful around her, and her body
responded to her primal need for him.

"Bring me home," she whispered.

Cade's hands were at her shirt pulling it off over her head
even before the front door to Vivian's house closed behind them. She kicked off
her shoes as she walked backwards across the living room, kissing him hungrily
and working the buttons along the front of his shirt open. Her hands slid over
the smooth, rounded muscles of his shoulders as she pushed the shirt away and
let it fall to the carpet.

As soon as they made it into the bedroom, Cade released her
bra and tossed it away, bringing his mouth down to suckle the breasts he had
kissed so patiently earlier. Vivian arched against his mouth and at the same
time felt in front of her for his belt so she could unfasten it. The button and
zipper fell away under her hands and he stepped out of the pants. Cade lowered
himself to his knees, easing her pants and panties down over her hips and
thighs so that she stood in front of him with nothing separating them.

Vivian cried out as his tongue slipped into her core,
tasting her and readying her even more for him. The sound tore from her chest
like a release from the tension, the fear, and the uncertainty of the day
behind them. As it left her lips, she surrendered herself to Cade, focusing
only on that moment and the touch of his body near hers.

She was quickly spiraling out of control when Cade got to
his feet and scooped her up so that her legs wrapped around his waist and the
heat of her core cradled the swell of his erection through the thin fabric of
his trunks. He carried her to the bed and lowered her onto the mattress,
pausing only long enough to step out of the trunks before rising over her and
pushing into her in one hard thrust.

Vivian wrapped her legs around his waist again as he pounded
into her, each thrust accompanied by a deep, guttural sound. Suddenly he
withdrew from her and she felt his hand tuck under her hip so that he flipped
her over onto her stomach. Sliding one leg up so that her knee bent up toward
her shoulder, Cade entered her again. She lifted her head as a moan poured from
her lips and felt Cade bite down into her shoulder with enough intensity that a
shock of delectable, pleasurable pain rolled through her body, bringing her
right to the edge of her climax.

Cade thrust into her harder until he impaled her a final
time and roared with a release that made him throb within her, pushing her over
the edge into another dizzying orgasm. She lifted her hips slightly as she
milked him, wanting to be as close to him as her body would allow. As their
tremors slowed, Cade lowered himself down onto her so that his body enveloped
hers in warm, comforting weight. He slid his arms up over hers and intertwined
their fingers, touching a kiss onto the back of her shoulder before resting his
head onto her back.

Vivian could feel his heartbeat on her back and his slowly
relaxing hardness still inside her. She let the feeling soothe her and ease her
toward sleep. Tomorrow would come soon enough and she would return to
Killington with him to face whatever awaited the dragons. For now she was
satisfied to rest beneath him, lost in the scent of sage and the thought of the
colors in his eyes. Her loyalties had changed and she knew that no matter what
her memories held, this was the beginning of forever.

THE
END

"Son of a bitch!”

Forgetting that she was in public, Ariel quickly sank down
in her seat, pulling the large book she held in front of her face, cringing.
She heard giggling beside her and reached out to smack Daniel on the leg to
stop him from laughing at her. She could feel the eyes of everyone in the
library staring at her and she had the sudden fear that a skeletal librarian
would come in and toss her out by the back of her shirt for defiling the
sanctity of the public library reading room.

"Tell me again why I'm sitting here with you," she
hissed toward Daniel, still holding the book up in front of her even though she
had just finished reading it.

"I need moral support," Daniel replied.

"Moral support to get through your history final?"

"Yes."

"Do you know how much longer I'm going to need to be
supportive because all of these people are still staring at me and I'm fairly
certain that those ones over there in the corner are planning to kill me."

"We can go as long as you bring me back to your place
and give me some of the good stuff."

Daniel lifted his eyebrows at her and Ariel smiled back,
nodding as she helped him gather up his papers and books and carry them toward
the circulation desk.

Twenty minutes later, Ariel walked into her living room
carrying two bowls of ice cream. Daniel was sitting on the floor with his back
against the couch and she placed one of the bowls in his lap. She settled onto
the couch behind him and grabbed a jar she had tucked under her arm. Twisting
off the metal top, she dipped a spoon down inside and reached around Daniel to
drizzle a long golden stream of homemade caramel sauce over his ice cream.

"Oh, yeah.
That's the stuff
," he murmured.

"I know how you like it," she said, digging the
spoon down into his ice cream so that his first bite would be mostly rich,
buttery caramel.

"I'd totally marry you if we didn't have sex, I could
see other people on the side, and you made me caramel every day."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Ariel curled into the corner of the couch and spooned some
of the caramel over her own ice cream.

"So do you want to tell me why you decided to shout
obscenities in the presence of old ladies and innocent library books?"

Ariel dropped her head back against the couch with grunt of
frustration. She swallowed her mouthful of ice cream as she reached for the
book on the edge of the coffee table.

"The stupid cliffhanger at the end of this book,"
she said, holding the book so close in front of Daniel's face he had to lean
back away from it.

"Don't all of those books end with a cliffhanger? I
thought that was the whole point of having a series. You hang, then they scoop
you back up, then you hang, then they scoop you back up," he turned his
attention back to the bowl in his hands and took another bite of ice cream,
"It's all really exhausting, honestly."

"You don't understand. This was like…" she groaned
with exasperation, unable to come up with exactly the right words to explain
why she was so angry at the book, "The books have been leading up to a war
between the two rival tribes of wolves. There was a standoff with the Alphas of
each of the packs and this book ended right as Lazar leapt into the air and
shifted while the other was shooting a crossbow at him."

Daniel looked back at her with a dumbfounded expression on
his face.

"Lazar?"

"Yes. He's the good Alpha who has been trying to get a
bloodthirsty pack away from his pack's lands."

"Lazar?" Daniel repeated.

"Yes," Ariel said emphatically.

"And he's a wolf?"

"When he shifts, yes."

"So he's Lazar…the wolf."

Ariel chose to ignore the comment and turned the book over
in her hands, staring down at the picture of the author on the back of the
cover as Daniel sang "To Life" under his breath.

"He's so beautiful," she murmured.

"The wolf?" Daniel asked after a resounding
L'chaim
to finish out his song.

"The author," she said, tilting the book to Daniel
so that he could look at the black and white picture on the cover.

Ariel had stared at that picture more times than she could
count. Max Grimsley's dark eyes burned into her from the covers of more than a
dozen books tucked on the bookshelf in her bedroom, and, though she wouldn't
admit it, she often turned whatever book she was currently reading over on her
nightstand so that she could look at his picture before going to sleep.

"Well, pretty soon you will be able to look at the real
thing," Daniel said, a hint of teasing in his voice.

Ariel sighed, part of her hating how it made her feel to
have a moony-eyed crush at her age while the other part loved the tingle
through her body each time she read his name or saw his picture.

"I know. I can't wait."

She indulged the moony-eyed side by letting out an excited
squeal. It had seemed like the months leading up to the convention were
multiplying and sliding by with all the vim and vigor of a pot of day-old
grits, but it was finally only a few days away. Max Grimsley would be there,
signing copies of his books and giving a panel on fiction writing.

"So which are you more excited about, having him sign
your book, or getting the opportunity to yell at him for dangling you so
precariously over his literary cliff?"

She had told people she was going primarily for the
workshops that she hoped would further her own burgeoning writing career, but
she knew she was going for
him
. The ache inside her when she looked at
his picture was intense and she couldn't wait to be near him, even if it was
only long enough for him to scrawl his name across the cover page of her book
and flash her an obligatory smile. Even that may satiate her.

"We'll have to see how I feel in the moment," she
said, taking another bite of her ice cream and letting the slowly melting
vanilla ice cream and rich caramel swirl across her tongue.