Military Romance Collection: Contemporary Soldier Alpha Male Romance (69 page)

Chapter Five

             
Three Months Later

Krista

             
              In her apartment in the city, Krista sat upon her bed, surrounded by stylish pillows that cascaded down around her, and looked at the artifact she held in her hand. It was a locket, but it held no photo inside. There had been one. A faded edge of one was trapped in the hinge, the photo itself likely torn out long ago.

              “I have to go back,” Krista said out loud.

              The mystery still taunted her, invading her waking and slumbering thoughts, but her reasons to go back to the desert valley far surpassed her desire to figure out what happened to the lost settlers. She placed a hand over her growing stomach, knowing that the baby who grew inside may possess a very special ability.

***

Nothing about the desert had changed since Krista had left, running from the secret Bridget had revealed, running from the enemy that was also her lover. That was the beauty of the desert. It was a time stamp, reminding the modern to revere the past, even when the future was so uncertain.

              Krista pulled into the ranch. It was unkempt, losing the wonder it had before. The horses were huddled into their stables, the feed in their coral trays growing mold. The statue of the mustang in the courtyard was tarnished. It felt… defeated.

              Taking a deep breath, knowing her life would never be the same, Krista left her smart car, ready to reveal her own secret to Derek, a secret that would soon enter the world.

              “Derek!” she called from the courtyard. “We need to talk!”

              Derek did not answer her call, but someone did.

              Bridget.

              “What are you doing here?” the redhead snapped, emerging from the main building.

              “That’s a bit of a tired response, isn’t it?” Krista countered, in no mood to deal with the tigress.

              “You shouldn’t be here,” Bridget said. “You’re a threat to my people.”

              “I’m no threat,” she mumbled then called out again, “Derek!”

              “He’s not here,” Bridget revealed. “He hasn’t been here for some time.”

              Krista’s heart sank. It had taken her weeks to build up the courage to come back. She wasn’t sure she could a second time. “Where is he?”

              “None of your business,” Bridget said. “I suggest you leave.”

              “No,” Krista refused. “I’m not afraid of you.”

              It was what Bridget wanted to hear. “You should be,” she teased before transforming into a tiger.

              Krista didn’t flinch. Her instincts wanted her to run, but she knew that was what Bridget wanted, not because she was a tiger but because she was sadistic. She enjoyed her games.

              Growling, Bridget sprang, her paw held out to claw Krista to the otherworld, but she stopped midair and dropped to the ground, human once more, fully clothed.

              “You’re pregnant,” she muttered, stumbling over the words. “Is it Derek’s?”

              Bridget changing into a tigress and back into a human had not been the astonishing transformation. The astonishing transformation was the softness she now spoke with. Her menace was gone, beaten by the truth that lie in Krista’s belly.

              “It is,” Krista said. “I’m carrying his child.”

              To her further amazement, Bridget hugged her, tears in her eyes. “Our people are near extinction,” she said. “This is good news. Every child born means a chance of our survival.”

              So Bridget wasn’t so sadistic after all. She was just desperate to protect her people. Krista prided herself on her ability to analyze human behavior, it was what made her a decent anthropologist, but she had failed to see that behind Bridget’s temper was a woman desperate to save her own kind.

              “Where is Derek?” Krista asked again.

              “He’s in the city, looking for you.”

              This time, the tears swelled in Krista’s eyes. “Really?”

              “Of course.” Bridget took her hand. “But don’t worry. I’ll call him. Come into the house and rest, and by this evening, he’ll be here.”

***

“You’re pregnant?”

              Derek was stunned, frozen by the news. Standing next to him in his bedroom, a large suite fitted with dark furniture, Krista was sure he was going to pass out.

              He didn’t. Instead, he smiled broadly and picked her up into his arms. “Woo wee!” he shouted. “I’m gonna be a papa!”

              “You are,” Krista said, laughing as her brawny cowboy spun her around.

              “I went looking for you,” Derek said, setting her down, growing serious. “I wouldn’t have stopped until I found you.”

              “I know,” she said. “I’m glad.”

              Her words were simple, but they were weighed with emotion, an emotion that propelled them to the bed. Silent and admiring, Derek undressed her, venerating the beauty of her curves as he did.

              “You’re more gorgeous every time I see you,” he said, kissing her stomach.

              It was an affectionate kiss, but it turned into one much more provocative. He continued to kiss her, all the way down to her core. Pulling her closer to the edge of the bed, he spread her legs apart and pressed his tongue against her clit. He circled his tongue around, awakening her body as he drank in her femininity. She moaned with pleasure, savoring the caress of his tongue against her flesh, allowing it to ignite every nerve in her body.

              “I want you inside of me,” she said, pulling on his hair, lifting him back up to her. She helped him pull off his T-shirt and remove his jeans and boxers until he was as naked as she was, except for his cowboy hat, which she told him to keep on. It complimented his hard, tanned body perfectly.

              Raising her knees, she opened her legs wider, her core pulsing for him to enter her. When he did, sliding his cock into her wetness, her body convulsed with pleasure, relishing the feel of his cock against her inner flesh. He rode her like a gentleman, his movements sweet and smooth, until his need for her took charge. As the heat in her body rose, so did his pace, and he thrust into her with a profound desire, moving in and out of her as their bodies melded into one.

              She arched her back, taking all of him in, the heat within her peaking, sending her over the edge. As she came, she grabbed his backside, pushing him further into her. He came with her, shuddering as he released himself into her, her tiger.

              Later, as he held her in his arms, Krista told him about the locket she found. “The way the bones of the man reached out, I can’t help but feel he was reaching for whoever’s photo was in the locket.”

              “He was,” Derek proclaimed, surprising her. “The mystery of the lost settlers is no mystery at all, not to my people. They were a group of shifters – tigers, my ancestors. Their forefathers and foremothers had come to America long before them, but it’s not easy to hide your tiger form in a land tigers are not native to. Eventually, the settlers were pushed out West, running from those who hunted them. They thought they were safe here, but a group of hunters caught up to them and massacred them. Very few survived.”

              “That’s terrible,” Krista said, borrowing tighter into his arms. “Why didn’t the survivors leave?”

              “They were tired of running. The hunters continued on, searching. So the survivors stayed, hiding in the plateaus, letting the hunters wander ahead. It was within the plateaus that they buried those who were massacred, hiding their bodies. Some, like the man you found, had been killed as they shifted, caught between the world that murdered them and the world they were most free.”

              “And the locket?” Krista asked.

              Dermott chuckled, though it was a mix of sadness and amusement. “Actually, Bridget has the photo that goes inside. It’s a photo of her great-something grandmother, whose husband was killed saving his wife and children. The bones you found are her family.”

              “Does she know?”

              “She will once you give her the locket.”

              “How devastating,” Krista sighed, “to be torn apart so brutally from the one you love.”

              Derek cupped her face into his hand and kissed her tenderly. “I have a small notion of how it feels.”

              “Never again,” she said, smiling into his piercing blue eyes. “We’ll never be torn apart again. We’re a family now, all three of us. And all our children to come. We won’t go extinct.”

***

              THE END             

The day I walked out on him was probably the best and worst day of my life.

We’d met twelve years previously, when I was just twenty-one and fresh out of college, and he worked down at his family’s garage just outside the city. With my small-time job as an editorial assistant at a tiny publishing firm, he was something consistent and normal in my day-to-day life of wrangling all sorts of out-there creatives and trying to figure out which manuscripts would sell or not. So when he proposed to me- only a few days before my twenty-fifth birthday- of course I said yes. Look, I was young, and crazy in-love and I think most people in the same position would have said yes. We planned to get married, just as Porteclus Publishing began to pick up. We managed to creep a couple of new authors on to bestseller lists, and work became even more hectic. I sometimes wonder, if I hadn’t been so dedicated to my job, if I might have managed to keep us together. When I weigh the options in my head, I know I was right to keep going with my career. I don’t think anything would have fixed us by the time we celebrated our tenth anniversary together.

The garage had been on its last legs for a while, but it still came as a shock when Mike’s parents declared bankruptcy and he wound up spending most of his day on the couch, drinking beer and feeling sorry for himself. At first, I tried to brush it off; asking myself how well I’d cope in a similar situation, and focusing even more on work, where I was now one of the head editors. I was working twelve-hour days, then coming home to find Mike passed out on the sofa, some papers hurriedly strewn about to make it look like he was actually looking for another job. I knew he was lying, and I knew I was just supporting the husband who’d never even thought to look outside his family’s business for work, but I stayed. He was still something regular, and I was used to coming home to find him there. It would have been too strange to walk out.

But then I came across the laptop. I knew I shouldn’t have, but when Mike stopped haranguing me for the daily sex he apparently needed to function, I got a little suspicious. I tried to push my irrational fears from my head- after all, when did he have the time to go out and cheat on me? But when I noticed that he’d left his Facebook open, I glanced around the room and quickly clicked on his messages- and there it was.

Weeks and weeks of messages from her-some woman called Tanya, a dark-haired, curvy vixen. I tried not to hate her- it wasn’t just her fault. My dumb-ass son-of-a-bitch husband had been the one cheating on his wife. But I couldn’t help wanting to direct all my rage at her, to hold her up as a man-stealing jezebel, just because it would make facing the next few months that much easier. But in the end, I knew who I needed to confront, and it wasn’t Facebook Tanya with her flirty messages and explicit pictures. It was Mike.

When he walked back into the room, he took one look at my face and practically crumpled away. He knew what this was about. I got it out of him almost immediately- that he’d met her through work, and they’d got back in contact the previous summer. They’d started flirting in January, and fucking in March. I asked him if they ever did it in my house, and he said no, but I could tell he was lying. The thought of my sacred space being violated like that made me feel ill.

I didn’t love him, not by then. But that didn’t make the break-up any easier. My pride was shattered, my ego ruined by the knowledge that this man had chosen someone else over me. I spent weeks home alone, trying to reconstruct what was left of my self-esteem-sitting in front of the mirror, brushing out my shoulder-length blonde hair, slicking bright lipsticks across my small mouth and posing this way and that. I could see that I was objectively attractive, but that didn’t take any of the sting out of not being desired any more.

So there I was, dropped straight back on to the single pile at thirty-three. I threw myself into work, spending longer days at the office so I could fill my time with something and not dwell over my action plan of finding someone new. I knew what I wanted, and it wasn’t a relationship. It was a fuck. A hard, fast, fuck. I wanted to prove to Mike that I was over him and that I could do better than him, and I wanted to do it with someone hotter than him.

I pondered over my predicament while I sat in my office, sipping from a mug of coffee and looking over the to-do list for the week.  I heard a noise outside the glass of the office walls, and glanced up- and a pair of bright blue eyes looked straight back into mine. My heart flipped in my chest, and something clicked in my brain. I think I might have found the guy who was going to introduce me back to the world of dirty sex.

I had known Patrick Young for three years now, ever since I was on the board that hired him straight out of college. He was smart, funny, and would occasionally linger in my office a little too long to chat or share a joke or talk over whatever manuscript he’d been flicking through that morning. And sure, I had certainly noticed that he was damned cute. He was short, around my height, with dark stubble and mess of black hair, the kind of hipster intellectual look that I would have thrown myself at in college. And now that I was single again, there was no reason for me not to relive a few of my college fantasies, no?

I gestured for him to come in, and he opened the door and plunked himself down in the chair opposite mine.

“So, what can I do for you today, Patrick?” I grinned, looking up at him as I ran one hand through my blown-out hair (hey, when you pay for your hair to look this good, you want people to notice).

“Not much, I was just wondering if you’d received my notes on the Franklin book. I sent them down a few days ago and I hadn’t heard anything back, so…” He shuffled in his seat, no doubt aware that the intensity of my look meant exactly what he thought it did.

“Yeah, I’ve got them right here,” I replied, rustling in my desk drawer. “I’ve just been organizing the launch party for Grace Vickers’ second release, and I want to make sure it’s perfect.”

He pulled a face at me teasingly. “You? Wanting perfection? I never would have guessed.”

I laughed. He was so easy to be around, and even now I was fighting my brain’s urge to fantasize about what his stubble would feel like between my thighs. “Whatever. I’ve just been in a lot recently, and the thought of going to an actual, bonafide social event sounds like the break I’ve been looking for.”

“Oh? So what lucky man’s going as your date?” Patrick had known about the divorce from the start, but this was one of the first times he’d addressed the issue of my continuing singledom out loud. Good to know he was thinking about it.

I cocked my head at him and leant back from the table, crossing my legs as I did so that my bare knee poked out underneath my smart skirt. “Don’t have one, yet. Got any nice, eligible young men for me to meet?”

Patrick paused, as if distracted by the look in my eye. His gaze drifted briefly down to my leg, before he seemed to shake himself and direct his attention at my face. “None that I can think of. Unless you’d be keen on any of my authors?”

“You know that I don’t date anyone who works in the creative industries, Pat. I’m far too much of a corporate drone for that, according to every musician I slept with in college,” I rolled my eyes. “Couldn’t you join me? There’s free champagne, and we get a taxi there and back from the office. Could be fun.”

His eyes dropped down to his lap. “I actually have a…thing on that night.”

“What are you up to?”

“I have an engagement party,” he mumbled. “Me and Rita…we kind of got engaged over the weekend.”

“What?” I’d known that Patrick had been dating some girl named Rita on and off for the last year or so, but I also knew that she’d cheated on him repeatedly, and got insanely jealous over any of his contact with other women-including me. “How will she deal with the fact you’re sitting in here, discussing this with me? If she’s able to get a break from sleeping with all your friends, that is.”

He winced. Damn. Maybe that had been too harsh. But I was annoyed. I wanted this guy, and I couldn’t, in good faith, try and get with him while he was engaged to someone else.

“You know, she just really wanted to settle down, so she thought-“

“She thought?” I raised my eyebrows. “Did you actually have any input in this, Pat?”

“Sort of.”

“How much?”

“I paid for the ring.” He looked up at me, and I could see the fear of someone who knows they’ve made a great big mistake jumping through his eyes.

“Patrick, sweetie, if you don’t want to marry her, you’ve got to break it off before the engagement party. Because after that, people are gonna know you guys are together, and you’ll have to break up with all of them too.” I shook my head, remembering the hoops I had to jump through to get people to remember that no, Mike and I weren’t together any more. “Trust me, as someone who’s been there, don’t do it unless you’re one hundred percent sure.”

He didn’t take his eyes off mine, a resigned look crossing his face. “Yeah. Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

“Make sure you do,” I nodded. “After all, who else will take me to the ball?”

He rolled his eyes at me, managing a short laugh. “Oh, Kelly, I’m sure you’ll find somebody. Nice young woman like you shouldn’t be short on Prince Charmings.”

“I’ll keep you updated,” I grinned back, trying to disguise my disappointment at his announcement. Damn it all if I didn’t have kind of a crush on one of my underlings. I wriggled in my seat, re-adjusting myself, and trying to ignore the needy pressure that had begun to build between my legs. God, only a whole day left at work before I could go home and spend the afternoon with my vibrator.

But I had to get through that whole day first. So I set about placing calls, organizing caterers and invitations, and focused on making the most kick-ass launch party ever. I really liked working with Grace Vickers; she wrote sci-fi novels with a subversive feminist edge, and she’d rocketed us up high in the national consciousness with her first release. I still remembered flicking through the first draft of Opalfruit, knowing in my bones that we had struck on to a winner and that we needed to snap her up now if we were going to get her at all. Hanging out with her at the party would be reason enough to organize it, so I wanted to make sure every single detail would be perfect. After all, part of my job was to guide clueless authors through the real-world process of publishing, promoting, and selling a book.

But I had other things to do. My day was structured around a long meeting with Harry Bale, one of our biggest investors in the company, a billionaire a few years older than me who had taken a liking to our release list and decided to “get in on the ground floor of a good thing”, as he put it. Truth be told, I had always had a little bit of a crush on Harry, but I didn’t think he would look twice at a woman like me. He probably spent his time hanging out with twenty-something supermodels. Probably on a yacht. Probably somewhere far, far away from my grey office.

It was the first time we’d met since the divorce, as he wanted to come in and talk to me about the next year’s releases, to have a look over what we were planning to publish. He was pretty knowledgeable about books, so I liked sharing my passion with him, but he was usually pretty uptight and always seemed to be in a hurry. Nonetheless, I was looking forward to getting the chance to stare blatantly at my handsome older man for a while. He was good-looking in that old-fashioned, Hollywood-star kind of way, with a strong jaw and close-cropped dark hair that made his hazel eyes glow. The complete opposite to Patrick, maybe he was what I would need to distract myself from striking out so dramatically that morning.

When he arrived, bang on three, I was already standing up behind my desk, fluffing my hair and plastering a big grin on my face. No need to make the big man feel like he wasn’t wanted now, was there? He opened the door and walked in, matching my grin, and extended his hand.

“Kelly Holmes. Always a pleasure.”

“Not Holmes any more,” I corrected him, sitting down. “I got divorced.”

“Oh?” His ears seemed to prick up with interest. Why did he care so much?

“Yeah, a couple of months ago. I’ve been focusing on work since then, so I’ve got lots to tell you about our new releases…” I went into my drawer, shuffling around papers to find our schedules, when I felt his eyes boring into me. I stopped what I was doing and looked up at him.

“Everything okay, Harry?”

“Yes, I’m just…surprised that a woman like you would be single for more than a few seconds at a time,” he murmured. His soft tone sent a shiver down my spine; damn, was he flirting with me?

“Maybe I’ve just decided that I don’t want to date anyone right now,” I shot back. I was a little annoyed at his assumption.

“I suppose you might have.” He nodded.

“I’m perfectly self-sufficient, thanks very much,” I replied brusquely, even though a spark of interest had shot through my body. Did he want me? I knew that I wanted him, and that there wouldn’t be anyone more impressive to show off than a hot, mega-rich bachelor.

“I’m sure you are,” he smiled, allowing his gaze to drift down to the shirt I’d unconsciously unbuttoned a notch before he arrived. Ugh, I couldn’t have made it more obvious that I wanted him. All I had to do now was chew seductively on a pen and lean across the desk and I would be living out every dumb office-porn cliché in the book. But something about his suggestive talk, and the chemistry that had suddenly crackled into life between us, made me want to embrace those tropes and go for it.