ROMANCE: Lion Protector (Paranormal Shifter BBW Military Romance) (Shapeshifter Alpha Male Short Stories Book 2) (107 page)

THE END

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I.

Well, maybe it wasn’t one of the smartest things that I’ve ever done, but it was one of the most amazing nights I’d ever spent with a man. That amazing night; however, had left me with a problem; a very big problem. I had a baby SEAL growing inside of me. Not the marine animal, obviously, but the highly-trained, savage animal of the United States Navy’s Special Forces Unit. The lean, aggressive and overly arrogant bad boy had, along with a few too many tequila shots, gotten me stirred up, we’d gone in search of a hotel room, found one and spent the night doing things that still make me tingle. The bigger problem is the fact that the guy is a complete jerk and I’ve got to track him down.

Typically, hunting for a navy SEAL is no easy task. They’ve been thoroughly trained to blend in and disappear into their surroundings. This particular one, however, was a newly retired SEAL living not far from the Mexican border south of Tucson, Arizona. I’d once heard a joke about SEALs operating in various places throughout the world and being a long way from water. Dan Sexton’s ranch was a very long way from water. It was a very long way from anywhere, really.

As I headed down I-10 south of Phoenix passing Exit 219 for Picacho Peak Rd, I couldn’t help remembering exactly how I’d gotten myself into the predicament that I was facing. What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas, but that isn’t always true, sometimes what happens in Vegas follows you home. In my case, it followed me all of the way back to Fresno, California.

Alisha, Valerie and myself had decided that the three day weekend that we all had together needed to be celebrated in a way that was a little out of the ordinary. It was so rare that at least one of us didn’t have to work, so on Friday evening, we spontaneously started on a road trip going south. L.A. was the initial destination, however, someone got the bright idea, might have been me, to take a left at Bakersfield. By Saturday morning, we were checking into the Mirage Resort and Casino on the Vegas strip.

If you turn three, attractive ladies in their mid-twenties loose in Sin City, crazy things are going to happen. We were no exception to that rule. After closing the curtains and recharging all day Saturday from our overnight drive, we were ready to stir things up. Saturday night was a blur of action and I never remember laughing so hard or being so totally smashed off my ass since I’d become of legal age. Letting off steam had been exactly what the three of us had needed and we’d pulled out all of the stops. Surprisingly, none of us had hooked up on Saturday night; sort of an unspoken, girls-night-out pact. However, since Monday was a holiday, Sunday and Sunday night started out as a repeat, except for one major difference; one that I had begun to regret.

Numerous Crown and Cokes and far too many tequila shots into Sunday night, the three of us had wound up in Bally’s. We pooled some cash together and elected Valerie as our designated roulette player, though, she was obligated to follow whatever numbers and colors the two of us called out. Surprisingly enough, she was doing pretty well and we started celebrating each win with a tequila shot. Consequently, our celebrations got louder were beginning to cause quite a scene. Our scene had attracted the attention of a number of bystanders, which is always the case in Vegas. Everybody wants to be hanging around the winners. That was the first time I saw Dan.

There were two, v-shaped studs in t-shirts and jeans with closely cropped hair with whiskey tumblers in their hands and amused looks on their faces among those gathered around us. One of those in particular had the brightest, most penetrating blue eyes I’d ever witnessed in my life. Along with those blue eyes was a reckless, half-smile that weakened not only my knees, but my resolve as well. I’d sworn off the bad boy type, knowing that along with that rebel attitude typically came all sorts of extra trouble, but, like I mentioned before, my resolve had already been weakened. I smiled at him.

The way the corner of his mouth moved up just a little bit and the way he cocked his eyebrows was all the encouragement I needed to abandon Alisha and Valerie. Maintaining eye contact, a strolled casually toward him, “How’s it goin’?”

“Can’t complain,” he replied.

His buddy nodded in my direction and twitched an upper-lip in place of a smile as well. There was no mistaking that I was talking to two bad-asses.

“Had any luck?” I asked.

“Depends on what you mean by luck.” His deep voice sent a tingle up my spine. The way his bicep flexed as he lifted the whiskey tumbler to his lips didn’t make those tingles stop. In fact, from that point forward, the tingles only multiplied. “Looks like your friend is doin’ alright.”

“That’s just ‘cause Alisha and I are good luck,” I laughed. I could tell by way that I laughed and the level of my voice as I spoke, that I should probably be cutting back on the shots. Just as the thought entered my head, Valerie hit another winner and Alisha called out to me. “Another shot,” I giggled as I started back to the roulette table and the glass extended toward me in Alisha’s hand.

Dan and his friend, I never did get his name, or maybe I forgot it, decided to tag along behind me. After downing the celebratory drink, I turned back toward him. “See,” I slurred. “Good luck.”

The next win had everyone around the table taking a shot, as did the ones that came after that. My interest, however, had started moving away from what was taking place on the spinning wheel and toward Dan.

“I’m Sara, by the way,” I said sometime later, extending my hand for the requisite handshake that went along with introductions. I’d already made plenty of contact with him before that moment, grabbing onto his firm, meaty biceps on several occasions as I shared my excitement over another of Valerie’s wins.

“Dan,” he replied, again, twitching the corner of his mouth in what served as a smile.

That bad-ass attitude and his relative silence was sucking me in deeper by the second. He was dark, mysterious, arrogant; the complete bad boy package, wrapped in all sorts of muscle and eyes that made my insides flutter whenever I looked into them. Needless to say, with my inhibitions weakened by booze and those eyes, I became more friendly as the night went on.

“What do you say we find a place that’s a little bit more private?” That’s the line that got me into trouble. Evidently, he wasn’t averse to finding somewhere private, because we soon abandoned the roulette table and the casino. We strolled out away from Bally’s flirting with each other and wound up on the other side of the strip in front of the famous fountains of the Bellagio. His kiss stirred all sorts of aches and desires in me, but it was that firm body and arms of steel wrapped around me that did the most damage; not that there hadn’t already been enough damage done.

“Are you like a bodyguard or something?” I asked when we paused for a moment.

“Navy SEAL,” he replied. “Well, was. My buddy and I just retired. We’re having one last go before we head home.”

“No way!” I squealed. “You, a trained killer? I don’t believe you.”

“Up to you,” he shrugged.

“Do you know how many bullshit lines guys use to pick up girls?”

“I do.”

“You know that’s one of them, right?”

“Do you want me to kill somebody and prove it?”

“That might be a little much.” Then I did the only smart thing that I’d done that whole night. “How about showing me your navy I.D.?”

“They don’t print S.E.A.L. on them, you know,” he chuckled as he produced his wallet and his navy I.D. card.

I snatched it away from him and retreated several steps trying to get the dim light to hit it just right. “Dan Sexton. Hmmm… does that mean you have a ton of sex?”

“I do alright,” he grinned.

“I’ll bet you do better than alright, SEALman,” I purred, moving back into his arms for another long, passionate kiss.

II.

I exited I-10 onto I-19 in Tucson and then exited again onto Arizona 86 headed southwest. I could still feel his kiss and his touch, but I also remembered what an ass he had been when he left. I’d been a conquest, entertainment, something to brag about to his SEAL buddies and nothing more. About the only useful information I had gotten out of him was that he had a ranch southwest of Tucson, but that and his name, which had stuck in my head because of the stupid joke that I’d made about it, had been enough for me to finally track him down.

Twenty miles out of Tucson, I turned south on Arizona 286, which wasn’t one of the best highways I’d ever been on, but it was certainly much better than the one that I came to a little less than an hour later; washboards and gravel were the more pleasant features of what passed for a road in southern Arizona. There were pits from hell, which appeared out of nowhere and threatened to swallow my Lancer.

Thank God for satellite imaging and GPS coordinates, because there was no flashing neon signs announcing the turn to the Sexton ranch, nor was there even a piece of crap, wooden one. In fact, what I saw when my GPS instructed me to “turn right in 100 feet,” caused an argument between me and the device. Maybe they called the two dirt ruts with grass, rocks and brush between them a road in Arizona, but where I come from it looked like two parallel jogging trails. What the hell else was I supposed to do? I turned onto the road and was soon regretting yet another decision.

The scraping, bumping and crunching that was going on underneath my car should have been enough to make me give up on my pursuit, but two factors quickly came into play. I was determined to make certain that bastard knew that I was pregnant with his child and there didn’t seem to be any decent place, which wouldn’t completely destroy my car, to turn around. So, I pressed forward all the way up until I heard a very loud thump and my poor little Lancer came to a very sudden and permanent halt.

I say that it was a permanent halt, because when I tried to start the car again, it refused to even give it a try. I popped the hood and got out, quickly realizing that my choice of footwear, although quite attractive, was not really suited for the Arizona desert. The only pair of “boots” that I owned were fringed, knee-highs with 4 inch heels, which, at the time, I considered to be “western wear”. The heat that engulfed me as I stepped out of the car reminded me of a sauna, which I enjoyed at the spa, but not particularly out in the middle of nowhere. It goes without saying that I wasn’t in a very good mood.

Why I popped the hood is another mystery. I know absolutely nothing about fixing cars. I guess I did it because that’s what you do when your car stops running and won’t start again. Struggling through the brush and rocks to the front of the car, I lifted the hood and looked at the motor. It didn’t really look any different than it did the half a dozen times I’d seen it before, but I thought maybe I should look at it really good. That didn’t really help. I closed the hood, got back inside and tried to start it again, but without any luck.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” I screamed at the dashboard and beat on the steering wheel. The heat inside the car rose quickly without the air conditioning and I realized that I was going to have to make a decision. The GPS placed me about halfway between where I’d left the bad gravel road and the coordinates that represented the location of the ranch. I had a decision to make: walk back to the gravel road on which I hadn’t seen any cars or walk forward to the Sexton ranch.

Opening the car door and stepping out once more, I voiced my decision to the surrounding desolation. “He got me into the fucking mess, so he can get me out of it.” I started walking down one of the parallel jogging trails on my way to what I hoped would be Dan Sexton’s ranch.

Saguaro cactus and sagebrush provide plenty of romance to a western movie, the few that I’d actually seen, but up close and personal, with thousands filling up the surrounding landscape along with at least a dozen other species of cactus, tend to lose a great deal of their romance rapidly. The tall, statuesque cactus does, however, provide decent shade from the scorching sun; not that it matters a lot where the temperature is concerned. At over a hundred degrees, the difference between 120 and 110 doesn’t really matter. After about 15 minutes of walking, every inch of fabric on my body was soaked and clinging to my skin.

I was sitting on a rock in the shade of one of the tall cactus when I noticed movement on the shimmering horizon. I continued to watch the blurred shape until it finally began to resemble a man riding a horse. “Oh great,” I said aloud. “I’m about to be shot down by a Mexican bandit.” The ridiculous thought or delirium from heat stroke plunged me into a rather strange fit of laughter.

I’d finally gotten better control of myself by the time the rider came closer. I recognized the shape of the man on the horse long before I could make out the features of his face. There was a mixture of joy and anger when I saw the features of Dan Sexton’s face, shaded by the brim of a cowboy hat, take shape not far from me. What followed afterward were controlled giggles as recognition began to come to him.

“Sara?” he said with one eyebrow cocked and confusion all over his face. “What the fuck?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, standing. “Surprised, huh?”

Evidently, the shock of seeing me was too much for the big, bad-assed SEAL, because he couldn’t seem to be able to form any words.

“What am I doing out here?” I helped him with the question.

“Uh, yeah?”

For a few moments, I struggled with exactly how to answer that question. Part of me, the part that was pissed off, wanted to just be blunt and lay it all out on the table, but the more rational side of me told me that I might need to be nice to him. I was probably going to need his help getting my car out of hell and back into civilization. We hadn’t parted on what I would consider the friendliest of terms. Okay, yeah, the term “fuck off” was probably used by one or both of us, maybe multiple times during the conversation. So, whatever I said was going to be awkward. Finally, something came to me.

“I just sort of wanted to apologize for the way things ended up in Vegas.” It was lame as hell, but what else was I supposed to say? I couldn’t just lay into him for being an asshole, getting me pregnant and being an asshole; yeah, an arrogant asshole.

“You drove from L.A. or wherever the fuck you live to apologize?”

“Fresno,” I responded. I had to fight down the anger and remain rational. If I pissed him off, he might just leave me out there in the desert. I raised my hands, cocked my head to one side and shrugged. What else could I do?