Touchdown Daddy (94 page)

The media firestorm over Scarlett's bruised face quickly died down, and nobody found out about the attack on the island. She did end up in therapy, at Max's insistence, and that helped her deal with the trauma she had been through. What helped even more, though, was having Max's arms around her at night whenever she woke with nightmares and preparing for the baby that grew inside her day by day.

On the day that marked two years after she and Max had made their deal to be fake engaged, Scarlett stared impatiently at the clock while her beautiful ten-month-old baby boy nursed. His clear blue eyes, the same color as his father's, drifted shut, signaling that he was ready to go down for a nap. Even though she and Max had planned for this, and had tried to adjust his sleep schedule so that he would be awake and happy during the ceremony, it looked like their son would be sleeping through the wedding.

"It's a good thing Max is so patient." She sighed as she eased the baby off. They had named him Maximillian after his father, but would be calling him Liam so as to avoid confusion as he grew up. "Do the guests look like they're getting impatient? A gentlewoman never keeps her guests waiting. I knew I should have fed him before we left the house."

Vanessa chuckled. Scarlett had chosen to have only the elderly housekeeper as matron of honor, with no bridesmaids. For the wedding, Scarlett and Max had planned the most elaborate affair they could, then taken all the money that would have been spent on it and gave it to various charities, instead putting on a simple wedding with only friends and family in the church Max's parents had married in.

"A gentlewoman takes care of her baby before her guests," Vanessa said. "Give him here so you can finish getting ready."

Scarlett handed the baby over and did up her dress before she took off the nursing cover. She'd gone with a navy blue taffeta number that laced up the front for easy feeding access. The hems and sleeves were embroidered with a white accent that looked stunning. While Vanessa rocked Liam to make sure he stayed asleep, Scarlett went to the mirror to check her makeup and pin back a stray curl or two.

The white orchids that were her wedding bouquet were waiting for her nearby. They were one of the extravagant items that Max had insisted on, once she had told him that they were her favorite flower.

"You look lovely, dear," Vanessa assured her. She beamed like a proud mother. "I always knew it would take a special girl to be with Max, and I'm glad he found you."

"Found me?" Scarlett giggled, giddy and excited with a dash of nerves. "Interrupted me, more like it. If he hadn't walked in on me trying to rob him…"

She let the thought trail off. If he hadn't arrived when he had, none of this would have happened. The thought left her breathless; it was so terrifying to consider the fact that it would have been so easy for them to pass by each other, never meeting. If she didn't have the man she loved, if she didn't have her beautiful baby boy… where would she be?

Vanessa smiled at her. "I don't like to think where Max would be if it weren't for you, Scarlett. You have really brought out the best in him, and for that, I am profoundly grateful."

"He would have been fine without me," Scarlett mumbled, feeling the heat rise in her face as she ducked her head. The tiara that used to belong to his mother was perched on her head, and she wore a matching ruby necklace around her throat. It complemented the dark blue of her dress perfectly. "I wouldn't be alive without him. I owe him so much."

"And he owes you more than you know. I hadn't seen him genuinely smile since his parents died. Not until you came along."

"Oh, goodness!" Scarlet laughed in embarrassment as her eyes filled with tears. "Stop that, or I'll ruin my makeup."

"That won't do," Vanessa said, shaking her head. "You collect yourself. I'll go tell that charming gentleman that you're ready."

Scarlett smiled at the elderly woman's description of Hao. As Vanessa left, the bride turned back to the mirror. She hadn't lost all the extra weight she had gained during her pregnancy, meaning her stomach was even rounder than normal, but she didn't mind. Every time Max saw her naked, he marveled at how beautiful she was. She only really cared about two opinions as far as her body was concerned–hers and his.

"This is it," she whispered to herself. She twisted the engagement ring that had belonged to Max's grandmother on her finger. "Who would have thought, two years ago, that I'd be getting married?"

She didn't have long to muse on the events of the past years. Vanessa returned with Hao, who beamed at her and kissed her cheek when he saw her. True to the promise she had made two years ago, she had asked him to walk her down the aisle, and he had been more than happy to oblige her.

Soon they were in the chapel, Scarlett's hand tucked into the crook of his arm.

Scarlett's breath caught in her chest at her first sight of her husband-to-be. He was wearing a black tuxedo paired with a white shirt. A navy handkerchief was just visible in his breast pocket. A smile lit his face, like he was seeing clearly for the first time. Scarlett's heart beat faster and she smiled back, the same feeling filling her. Hao had to pull her back when she picked up her pace.

"A gentlewoman never rushes," he whispered into her ear. "And this is exactly why I never play at things. It gets real far too quickly."

Scarlett wanted to remember every detail of this moment. The way Max's hair curled at the back of his neck. The way he held his hands in front of him but checked once for the ring in his pocket. The flash of light in his eye when he gave Vanessa a smile. And she did. Later she would remember a lot more, like how Hao choked up when they reached the front of the aisle, and how the wedding guests looked. But at that moment she was so wrapped up in Max's eyes that everything else disappeared.

She was vaguely aware of the exchange of vows, the words she had practiced coming off her tongue so readily that she didn't need to think about what she was saying. Liam woke up during the exchange of rings, and both Scarlett and Max smiled at him as he began gurgling and chomping on Vanessa's finger.

Scarlett could hardly believe this was real… it was all too good to be true. And yet it was happening, it was true.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife," the priest said. "You may kiss the bride."

Max moved in to kiss her, but Scarlett was faster. She threw her arms around his neck and pushed herself to her toes. Their lips came together to the sound of a thunderous applause.

*****

THE END

Bonus Book 19: Slave to the Alien Dragon

By:
Abella Ward

Description

A curvy slave fighting as a gladiator PLUS a hot dragon warrior fighting for his planet PLUS an enemy looking to destroy them!

The mighty, proud race of dragon shapeshifters, the Kinai, have kept to themselves, guarding their secrets from outsiders and living their lives in relative peace.

Then, an old enemy begins to haunt their shores yet again, searching for a way to defeat and enslave them so they can use their power to conquer the entire planet of Elamaren.

Commander Kenner of the elite Darkwing Squadron is his race’s greatest shield against those who would do them harm, but he finds his mission compromised when fate brings him face to face with the only Earthling on his planet – the big, bold and beautiful Teresa Echeveria.

The victim of an alien abduction, Teresa is sold away into slavery on the strange and amazing planet, all hopes of ever returning to Earth lost forever...

Forced to fight in the gladiatorial arena, she’s holding on to the last reserves of her will to keep going when Kenner swoops in on his majestic wings to save her.

But treachery and jealousy lurk in the shadows, and the unlikely lovers must fight for both their love and their lives against impossible odds. All they have left is their faith in each other... but will that be enough?

In a stone-walled underground cell with a small, barred window and a strong wooden door locked from the outside, a woman stood in front of a mirror of polished bronze and donned her weapons with meticulous care. She was tall and possessed the strong musculature of an active athlete generously padded with a thick layer of fat, most of it distributed on her ample breasts, stomach, backside and thighs, forming a voluptuous figure of eight. Her dark hair was cut a handbreadth under her shoulders and woven into a tight French braid. Her caramel skin boasted several scars, mementos of wounds made by swords, trigons and spears, all of them sustained within the past year, month and seventeen days, except the one on her right thigh. That one was from a bullet that grazed her in a drug bust in her rookie year at the Houston PD.

She wore armor made of layered brown leather. Many fighters preferred metal, but she found it too clunky. Leather was lighter, more flexible. It breathed, and was just as effective as steel, provided it was properly made. And hers was. No fighter ever stepped out onto the sands of the Pit of Wallaria unless they were of sound mind and body and properly equipped both offensively and defensively. Hers was a composite consisting of a scale cuirass with faulds made of wide leather strips, pauldrons on her shoulders, greaves on her legs, and vambraces with hand and elbow guards, the underside of each hiding a retractable dagger. Whereas the majority of other fighters used knives and daggers as secondary weapons, she used nothing but them, which is why she had a pair strapped to her forearms and her thighs, and over a dozen throwing knives stashed away in the secret folds of her armor.

Outside, she could hear the masses chanting.

“Hele! Hele! Hele!”

An understanding of the Common Tongue of Elamaren was one of the first skills she acquired since her abduction, but the name she had been given was a word of her mistress’ native tongue.

Hele.

Behemoth.

Pain shot through her, and she closed her eyes tight, counting backward from ten before she opened them again, looking at herself, at this person she had become to survive. She felt her heart clench.

“I am Teresa Luz Echeverría, of Houston, Texas, USA,” she said, in English, hard determination in her clear, deep voice as she willed herself to remember the one truth no one could take from her. She touched the bullet scar, the sole anchor to her old life. “I am twenty-seven, a human woman of the planet Earth. I am a soldier. I am a policewoman. I’ve survived foster care, high school, a tour in Afghanistan and six months of hazing my first year on the Force, and I’ll be damned if I won’t survive this, too. This wretched hive will burn to the ground one day... but I’ll still be standing.” Eyes firmly on the mirror, she repeated her mantra, in Spanish this time, and then again, in Pashto and Dari each.

They could take her from her home.

They could enslave her.

They could beat her, starve her, give her a derogatory name.

They could force her to fight others for their entertainment, and then slap a pleasure-collar on her and sell her to the highest bidder.

But they could not take who and what she was. Never.

“Listen how they call for you,” a smooth, lilting voice called out from the hallway, and Teresa mentally reminded herself that killing the woman the voice belonged to would be counterproductive to her goals. After unlocking and removing the beam that both closed and fortified the door to her cell, the door opened and two... well... let’s be generous and call them men, walked in. They were twins, and by far the largest of all the different sentient beings Teresa had become acquainted with since her abduction. They were at least a foot and a half taller than her and built of nothing but solid muscle. Their skin was a sooty dark gray covered in thin, coarse hair, and their enormous heads, which had large jowls and mean teeth that seemed to always be bared in a snarl, grew directly from their shoulders.

The Garn could be called many things, but easy on the eyes wasn’t one of them.

They positioned themselves on each side of the door, both dressed in chainmail and leather and armed to the teeth, watching her as if they couldn’t wait to be given the order to rip her apart.

But the woman who entered after them would never give that order, at least not while she could still make money out of Teresa.

She was the most beautiful creature ever created, a resplendent sample of the Skatian race. Tall, taller than Teresa, and built to willowy perfection, her features were exquisitely delicate, and her silvery hair, straight as an arrow, cascaded down her back all the way to her hips, always behaving perfectly, as if she were an anime goddess. Her skin was a powdery, pale beige hue that marked her as a member of the noble caste, flawless, and perfumed with a fresh, flowery scent Therese would’ve loved if she did not associate it with her current fate. The woman wore, as always, a long, flowing gown of gossamer silk in pale, pastel colors, strategically layered to tantalize the observer’s imagination yet reveal nothing, and no jewelry save for the long, layered necklace of painstakingly thin chains that cascaded from the graceful column of her neck to the tips of her demure bosom.

Her name was Esplyn of House Rida, and Teresa hated her with all the passion of the undying fire of a thousand suns.

“My Hele,” the woman cooed, as she observed her property. Teresa did not correct her. It was not worth the pain and humiliation of the punishment she would have to endure for it once the fight was over.

She’d learned that lesson the hard way.

“You must be very careful to put on a good show today,” her mistress instructed her, in the tone one would usually use on a mentally underdeveloped child, and petted Teresa’s cheek. “We have special guests in the audience today – a diplomatic envoy from Kinai – and we want them to have fun.” Her face scrunched in disgust. “Filthy barbarians,” she sneered but reverted quickly to her usual graceful serenity in a second. “But, alas, we must play nice with them,” she sighed, the sound of a long-suffering person resigned to their fate.

Personally, it made Teresa want to punch her (more so than usually, that is). There were many people in Wallaria who deserved to feel sorry for themselves, but not this woman. As a scion of a noble family and the favorite lover of the High General, Lady Esplyn had lived a life of splendor and privilege since the day she was born, and probably would until the day she died. Even this – buying, training, and working slaves for Pit fights – was nothing but a hobby to her, a game to pass the time and indulge her sadistic urges.

But Teresa knew better than to say or do anything that would give her mistress any reason to be displeased with her, so she just stood there and waited to see if this conversation had a point.

And, when Lady Esplyn snatched Teresa’s chin in her spindly fingers and pulled her head up to face her, she knew she was about to find out.

“You
must
win today,” she ordered, in that cruel tone of voice Teresa knew to dread, “That bitch Sangra paid off the Pit Master to pair you with that Firuzian bitch-boy of hers, and I want to see you
annihilate him
. Do you understand?” Teresa nodded. She understood, perhaps better than her mistress thought. No matter how hard their masters tried to isolate and desensitize their fighters to prevent them from forming bonds amongst themselves or organizing a rebellion (as had been the case a few times in the past), they still found a way to communicate amongst themselves.

More to the point, though, her training had conditioned her to be observant, vigilant and always aware of her surroundings, and she gathered information in her head like an ant gathers food for the winter.

She knew, then, that the reason Lady Esplyn was on edge today was because her main rival in the High General’s bed, Lady Sangra of House Chenei, had issued what was tantamount to a public challenge by influencing the Pit Master to pair up the fighters to her liking. In itself, this was not strange, but when it happened without the mutual agreement of the fighters’ masters... oh, yes. Lady Sangra could not have made her motives any clearer if she had hired all the criers in Wallaria to shout it from the rooftops.

Teresa also knew the reputation of the man she was about to take on, and that only added to the pressure she suddenly found put upon her.

The Firuzian, whom Teresa had never heard referred to by his name, was as famous for his fighting prowess as he was for his beauty and extravagant style, and a recent addition to the Pit roster. He was an Adonis among bog monsters when compared to all the other male fighters she knew, with his powerful, perfectly chiseled musculature set upon a tall, wide frame. Teresa found the combination of his athletic, humanoid features and the defining traits of his race – completely smooth, hairless skin the color of oiled bronze, sharply angled cheekbones and slanted, almond-shaped eyes with irises of sparkling gold, roughly three times as large as that of an average human – extremely attractive. And she was not the only one, for it was said that his mistress charged obscene amounts of money to those who wished to indulge in that impeccable body, and there were rumors he spent every night he was not rented out in Lady Sangra’s bed.

There was no doubt that the Firuzian was an expert killing machine as well as a skilled showman. Teresa honestly wasn’t sure she would come out of this fight alive, let alone win – especially not in the spectacular fashion her mistress had demanded.

“Win, my Hele,” Esplyn hissed in her face, “Or I shall grant a week’s worth of playtime with you to the twins.” Teresa gulped, terrified and disgusted at the memory of the last time the mistress had put the pleasure-collar on her and let her attack dogs have her way with her, and nodded again. “Excellent,” Esplyn smiled, all gentleness and sweetness again, and began to walk out.

“Oh,” she said, pausing, and glanced at Teresa over her shoulder, “And do try to cut up his face.” With that, Esplyn left the cell, and her goons with her, but the door did not close. Instead, four guards entered, wearing armor in red and tan, the colors worn by all those who worked in the Pit.

The time had come.

They would escort her to the Pit, where she would fight for her life yet again.

May God grant her mercy in this merciless place.