Curvy for Him: The CEO and the Soldier (Curvy for Him Series Book 5)

by Annabelle Winters

  No, they weren’t following us.

  They were waiting for us.

  All my senses go on high alert as I gun the engine and barrel down the road. This Humvee can handle a lot of heat, and it’s pretty fast too. The bulletproof windows aren’t much bigger than slits, and it would take a lot of bullets on target to shatter that glass. No way that happens when the shooter and the target are moving along a bumpy road. And this baby is armor-plated like a tank. Bullets will just tickle its belly and make it giggle like a schoolgirl. An RPG that hits low might topple us, but it’s pretty hard to keep a heavy rocket-launcher aimed when you’re careening down a dirt road. We’re safe in here. All I need to do is outrun these fuckers and we’re home free. Once I have some breathing room, I’ll lead them to the middle of nowhere, get our coordinates, and call in a drone strike. Wham. Bam. Game over. Thanks for playing with the U.S. Army, you bearded boyscouts.

  “No,” comes El’s voice. “Drop me off first.”

  I stare at her in shocked silence. “Are you fucking crazy?” I finally say, laughing but not because anything is funny. “They were waiting for us, El. They’re after you. You aren’t getting out of this vehicle.”

  “Your mission is to get me to this meeting safely,” she says, her palms almost white because she’s gripping the front bar so tight. I can see she’s scared, but she’s not breaking. She won’t break, I can tell. She’s fucking crazy, but she’s brave, I’ll give her that. She’s on a mission too, and she’s willing to die for it, whether or not anyone else believes it’s worth dying for. I respect that. I understand that. Fuck, I am that.

  I hear that top-mounted machine gun chatter behind us, peppering the Humvee with bullets. I stay on course as the hotel approaches on our left. I know I’m faced with a decision here. A decision that strangely feels about us again, about me and her. This is our story, I decide. So what’re you gonna do, Edge? What are you going to do, Soldier?

  Then a calmness washes over me, the calmness of supreme control, that sense of destiny that comes over a warrior when he knows he will be the last man standing after a battle, when he knows his fate, trusts his star, steps boldly into the firing line knowing that nothing can touch him.

  “You know how I know you’re mine?” I whisper as I glance at my mirrors and quickly scan everything in front of me.

  “How?” she whispers, her eyes wide and alert as she looks straight ahead.

  “Because I know you won’t break. You won’t give up. You won’t surrender. Nah, you won’t fucking break, not ever. You’re a soldier’s woman, El. You’re my woman.” I take a breath, my eyes locking on the front entrance to the hotel. It’s a drive-up entrance, with pillars and posts that provide some cover. With a silent prayer to the Gods of War, I floor the accelerator and head straight for the hotel. “You’re my woman, El. You’re my woman and I love you. I fucking love you, El. So go do what you need to do, follow your star, chase your mission. I got your back, Babycakes. I got your fucking back.”

  11

  EL

  Edge whips the Humvee around so it skids to a halt right in front of the hotel entrance, my side facing the door. I’m shivering with fright, but I know I’m not stopping, not backing down, not giving up. It might be stupid as hell—shit, it is stupid as hell—but in a way this is about principle as much as it is about results. I won’t be scared off. I won’t be shut up. I won’t be defeated.

  I won’t be broken.

  “You do what you need to do,” he told me, his words sending ripples of overwhelming love that drives away the fear like the sun dissolves morning mist. “I got your back, Babycakes.”

  There’s a part of me that’s terrified that this is the last I’ll ever see of Edge, but I know that it’s a fear I’ll have to live with my entire life. Edge is a soldier, and nothing and no one is going to change that. It’s not easy being a soldier’s woman, not easy letting him go back to do what he’s called to do, to risk his life for principles and values greater than us all. But this is my life now. This is my story. And this is my forever.

  A moment later I’m out the door, running like I’ve got wings on my feet, boobs bouncing, ass jiggling, not giving a damn what I look like. The adrenaline is flooding my system, and I feel so focused and alert it’s unbelievable. Behind me I can hear Edge open fire on our assailants, the throaty sound of his M-16 automatic rifle filling the air as I hear screams from the men he’s mowing down like weeds in our backyard. Then there’s an explosion that almost knocks me flat on my face, and I turn my head and gasp when I see that Edge has hit the enemy Jeep’s gas tank!

  One of the assailants was thrown clear, and he’s out of his mind, his face half burned from the explosion, robes charred and smoldering. He’s lost his rifle, but is running straight towards Edge with a curved knife raised high, screaming in Arabic like a madman. I pause for a moment, holding my breath and waiting for Edge to put him down and end this fight.

  But Edge lowers his rifle, and I just shake my head in disbelief. Then I smile, even though smiling just confirms I’m as crazy as my man is.

  “You crazy, honorable, goddamn macho idiot,” I whisper as I watch Edge drop his rifle and pull out his knife, stepping out from the cover of the Humvee and racing to meet the enemy in the open battlefield. He won’t take out another soldier from a distance if the man doesn’t have a gun. He’ll finish it up close and personal. Like a man. Like my man.

  I can’t believe I’m watching this, and I can’t believe that I’m smiling, that I’m not afraid, not horrified, not disgusted, not traumatized. I know Edge is going to be the one standing when everyone else has fallen. I asked him to protect me. That’s what he’s doing. And he’s doing it his way. The way of the warrior.

  I blink as Edge sidesteps a vicious strike from his attacker. Edge is taller and bulkier than his opponent, but shit, he moves with the grace of a dancer when he’s in a fight. It’s beautiful to watch, and I push away the thought that I’m sick, perhaps a freakin’ psycho if I’m actually enjoying this!

  Ten seconds later Edge strikes the fatal blow, and he does it quick, slicing the man’s jugular and then stepping back and simply walking away. He doesn’t take any delight in killing the enemy. He understands that everyone fights for the side they believe is right. But he does his job. He does his duty. He does what he was born to do.

  “Now it’s my time,” I whisper as I meet Edge’s gaze from across the battlefield. “Now I need to do what I was born to do.”

  Then with just a nod at my soldier, my protector, my man, I turn and head to my meeting with these hijab-clad women who are as heroic as any man who dared step onto a battlefield. And the moment I see the joy in these women’s dark eyes, hear the energy in their voices as they chatter away in broken English, I know that it’s all been worth it, that I made the right choice to come here. I’d been communicating with these women via encrypted email, and honestly I could have given them most of the same information without leaving the comfort and safety of my office. But for some reason I decided it was important for me to be here, to come here in the flesh. It was a gesture. A symbol. A show of solidarity, of sisterhood. You’re risking your lives, and I’ll risk mine to make things better for the next generation of women.

  I’m still smiling when I walk out of the meeting an hour later, and when I see Edge standing out front, leaning on his Humvee, sunglasses on, the enemy’s blood on his fatigues, I almost burst into tears when I think of that crazy decision to come here. Was there a part of me that knew I’d meet him here? Was there a part of me that knew that my own story would be written here? Was there a part of me that knew I’d find my forever here?

  “Um, what are you doing?” I say when Edge pushes himself away from the Humvee, takes off his sunglasses, and then slowly goes down on one knee.

  He holds up a ring, and I frown when I realize that it’s the ring that comes attached to the pin of a grenade!


  “I won the war for you, Babycakes,” he says in that gravelly voice that sends shivers down to my boots. “You gonna marry me now or what?”

  “Yes,” I say as the tears roll down my cheeks and Edge roars in delight and then scoops me up in his arms like I’m a doll. “Yes! All right?! Yes.”

  I’m still laughing and crying as I say yes again, as Edge twirls me around like it’s just the two of us in the world. But through the madness of it all I understand that I’m also answering my own question, the one I asked myself just before Edge asked me his question.

  Yes, I think as Edge carries me back to our chariot and we drive away in a cloud of American dust. Yes, maybe I did know that my forever was waiting for me here. Maybe I did know that this was my story and nobody else’s. Let’s go with that, all right, brain? Yeah, Let’s go with that.

  12

  ONE MONTH LATER

  THE WALDORF ASTORIA HOTEL

  NEW YORK CITY

  EDGE

  “Let’s go, Babycakes! You’re gonna do great,” I call after her as she slams the door and storms off, but with a smile on her pretty round face.

  I’m still grinning as I pull her panties off my face and sniff them like the dog I am. Then I roll over on the bed and flip on the TV. I wanted to be down there in the crowd, front row, center seat, looking up at my confident, articulate wife, clapping for her when she delivers what I know is going to be a killer speech. But she asked me to stay up in the room. Said this was the biggest crowd she’d ever addressed, and she didn’t want me to make her nervous. I was almost pissed off, but I finally said OK and gave in. That’s part of the deal, I reminded myself. If she needs me out of the room sometimes, so be it. I can do that for her.

  I settle into the big pillows as I watch El take the stage. She does look a bit nervous, but the moment she starts speaking I see her confidence roar back like the tide coming in. She’s speaking from the heart, I can tell. She has notes and a teleprompter, but she doesn’t need that shit. She’s a believer, a believer in her mission, in herself. She didn’t break when we looked death in the face. She’s not going to crack under this kind of pressure either.

  Fuck, what a mother she’s going to be to our kids, I think as I glance at her belly on the screen. It’s only been a month, but we found out she’s pregnant yesterday. It was a happy moment, but I wasn’t surprised. I knew I knocked her up the very first time I came inside her. Fuck, I bet it was the very first swimmer that got there too.

  I’m cracking myself up, and I have to take a couple of deep breaths before I can settle down again and listen to El speak.

  “. . . but to be truly successful, to be successful as business leaders and community leaders, we also have to make sure we don’t stifle and suppress who we are as women. Not businesswomen. Just as women. And it’s complicated being a woman sometimes.” She pauses as her words sink into the crowd. Then she looks into the camera, and I swear she’s looking at me. I grin and hold up her panties, fisting them and bringing them back to my face just as she breaks into a girlish grin that’s so fucking adorable I know it’s melting the crowd.

  “Yes,” she says again, smiling at the camera once more and then beaming as she looks over the crowd. “It’s fucking complicated being a woman.”

  The crowd breaks into raucous applause, and I’m whistling and clapping too, naked in our bed, my wife’s panties in my right hand. The camera pans across the audience, most of them women in business suits, all of them smiling and shaking their heads because they weren’t expecting my CEO-wife to speak so bluntly, shooting from the hip.

  Fuck, I love those hips, I think as the camera cuts back to El and then goes back to the audience. But suddenly I jerk upright, blinking as I wonder if I really saw what I did. I lean towards the TV, and then I grab the remote. This suite has a DVR setup, and I told El I’d record the broadcast so we could watch it together later. She didn’t like the idea, but whatever.

  Quickly I back up to that last shot of the audience, freezing it on what caught my eye. It was a man in glasses, dressed in a powder blue suit with a pink shirt underneath. He didn’t really seem out of place except for the fact that when everyone else was clapping, he was staring at his phone. Of course, even that wouldn’t have been out of place since everyone stares at their fucking phones all day.

  But not this kind of phone.

  Not a goddamn flip-phone from the last century.

  Myself excluded, there are only two kinds of people who still use flip-phones. Drug dealers is one, and this guy in a powder-blue tailored suit ain’t answering texts from a crackhead client.

  The other class of people who use flip phones are well known to any soldier in today’s world: Bombers.

  I play the video in slow motion, watching in shock as the guy punches a sequence of keys and then shakes his head, like he’s either messing up the code or he’s lost the signal. We’ve all been trained to recognize that flip-phones are a common way to trigger a bomb. I hesitate for one more second, my throat almost closing up as I review my options at lightning speed.

  Nope, I decide, rolling out of bed and crashing through the door. No fucking options. Get there now. Protect your woman. Protect your fucking family. Run, Solider. Run like the wind. Fucking run!

  13

  EL

  I stare in muted shock as a naked streak enters the room from the side door, tattooed and scarred, long cock swinging like a hose, big balls bouncing like two pendulums. Already people are screaming and shouting, and I just blink in disbelief as Edge tosses a security guard over his shoulder like he’s a toddler!

  “Edge!” I scream, finally realizing that this isn’t an hallucination, that this really is my naked husband who’s clearly lost his mind. “Edge, are you—”

  But he’s already barreling his way through the crowd, stepping on toes without giving a shit, knocking over women who are dressed to the nines, all of them as horrified as I am!

  I’m about to lean in to the microphone and scream again, but then I see a streak of blue darting through the crowd in front of Edge. I squint and stare before gasping when I realize I actually recognize the guy in the powder-blue suit and the pink shirt!

  “Guy-guy?” I mutter as I watch Edge leap through the air in all his naked glory, tackling Guy-guy with all his weight, bringing him down so hard I don’t think the guy is every going to walk right again. I blink and shake my head as I try to make sense of it all. Did Edge go into some jealous rage after seeing Guy-guy in the audience or something? Edge was pretty pissed when I told him what the asshole said to me all those years ago.

  No, I decide, shaking my head again as I watch in dazed shock as Edge punches the guy’s lights out and then pulls what looks like a flip-phone out of the guy’s limp hand. Edge wouldn’t even know what Guy-guy looks like, didn’t even know his name. Besides, Edge isn’t that much of a caveman, is he?

  “Ohmygod, he’s just gone crazy,” I mutter, placing my hand over my heart as I realize there can’t be any other explanation for this bizzarro behavior. “Oh, Edge!” I whimper as I try to climb down off the stage and make my way over to him.

  I lose sight of Edge once I’m down at floor level, and by the time I get to him, he’s given himself up to the police and is cuffed up and being led away.

  “Get the fuck out of this building,” he whispers to me, his blue eyes sane and sober. “Do it now, Babycakes. Right fucking now!”

  I frown as Edge glances at the flip-phone which is sitting on the floor near the broken jaw of Guy-guy. It does strike me as strange that this guy would have this phone. He was very much an iPhone guy with the biggest screen possible.

  A chill comes over me, and I just turn and head for the exit. Behind me I hear Edge whispering something to the cops, and I almost choke when I hear the word “bomb.” Now I get it, and I almost break into a run, my hand instinctively going to my b
elly. We found out I was pregnant yesterday, and I’ll be damned if my story is going to end now!

  I make it out the door as I finally hear the noise level rise in the ballroom. Edge knows something about crowd control. He knew that if he just yelled “Bomb! Everyone run!” it would cause a stampede. People would be crushed, perhaps killed. By whispering it to the cops he could get them to evacuate in an orderly fashion. Caveman ain’t so dumb after all.

  Three hours later I’m sitting in Police Plaza in downtown Manhattan, watching my husband walk out into the room dressed all in orange.

  “Hi,” I say as we leave the police station and walk down the busy street.

  “Did they tell you what’s going on?”

  I frown at him. “Well, I saw the news flashes about them finding a bomb under the stage. A small bomb. Just enough for whoever was on the stage.”

  Edge nods. “Yes. This guy is some whacko who had it out for you, I guess. Turns out he’s an investor in the online education business. Got his own company that competes with yours. They tracked his phone and Internet records, and it turns out he’s been following your career for years. They figured out that he was the one who arranged a hit on you in Afghanistan, El. He was the one who sent those mercenaries to the meeting place to ambush us. He wanted it done in Afghanistan so it would look like the Taliban took you out. But he failed, and then I guess he just lost his fucking mind and decided to just . . . I dunno, blow the fuck out of you so it would still look like some Islamic fanatics!”

  I stop so abruptly I almost fall over on my face. I turn to Edge and wonder if he’s messing with me. Does he really not know that he just punched the hell out of Guy-guy?

  I tell him, and Edge just blinks at me in silence. We’re both staring at each other in shock, and my mind races as I put the pieces together. Then suddenly I break into a smile, blinking again as I feel a strange relief mixed with what feels like . . . pride?