Too Long a Soldier (Kingdom Key Book 3)

by TylerRose.

“If it pleases you Master.”

  A sentence that thrilled him down to his balls. He’d never wanted any woman to voice her submission before. He’d never wanted any woman to call him Master before her. His hand in her hair pulled her up so he could look at her. Eyes glazed with endorphins, lowered to narrow slits.

  “Nails taught you pretty well,” he said.

  “He was not my only teacher. Or my only Master. He was merely the first and one of the most strict and skilled. I’d say he taught you pretty well too.”

  He put her head down on his shoulder, held her close and warm against his chest and belly.

  “You feel so right, little girl.”

  He turned, half lay on the pillows with her on his chest and her legs off to the side.

  “Stroke me while I beat your ass.”

  She did, relaxed on him with a firm grip around his cock as his tireless arm came down a thousand more times. Not quite as hard as he could, but hard enough that he raised welts and left bruises. He groaned, nearing a good cum. Before he could stop her, her mouth was around his cock and her throat was sinking down around him. He came in that instant, pulsing inside her throat a few seconds until he made her let him go. Oops. She’d not suckled, however. He hadn’t left her there long enough for her to start.

  They lay together in the silence until she fell asleep again. Certainly didn’t take long. Cleaned up, changed into fresh clothes, he went down to his office on the first floor to catch up on whatever Warren had left for him.

  A pile of mail to read, including a thank you note from Chicago. A still-sealed envelope had come in a larger envelope.

  “Private for Jerome Black” handwritten on the front. He ripped it open, looked at the signature. Thomas Holmes.

  You are in possession of a rare

  and extremely valuable flower.

  Care for it well.

  There are others who would

  greedily take it if given the opportunity.

  “Yeah, no shit,” Jerome said aloud, and read on.

  She ran away (again) so fast I could not give you my card.

  Call me. You and I have much to discuss.

  “What time is it in California?” he hollered.

  “Seven,” someone hollered back.

  He closed the door and reached for the phone.

  “Holmes Enterprises. Mr. Holmes’ office.” A very professional female voice.

  “Mr. Holmes please.”

  “I’m sorry, he is on his way out of the office.”

  “Tell him Jerome Black is on the phone an’ I ain’t callin’ back.”

  “One moment please.”

  On hold to elevator 80’s Rock music, but only for ten seconds.

  “Mr. Black.”

  “Mr. Holmes.”

  “You got my note. Thank you for calling.”

  “Yeah, an’ I’ll file that first part under ‘no fucking shit.’ What do you think you know?” Jerome asked.

  “I know a great many things, Mr. Black. As, I’m sure, do you.”

  “Okay. Let’s trade one. You taught her to dance so she could go to boring events and amuse you.”

  Thomas laughed. “She called you from my limousine on her birthday.”

  “You’re going to ask a little blonde girl to marry you.”

  “You bought fifty cots and blankets and had them delivered to your Safe Haven building for no apparent reason.”

  Good one.

  “You gave her an apartment in a building you own so she wouldn’t go back to Toledo,” Jerome said.

  “You sent $200 in canned goods to Safe Haven.”

  Half a pause.

  “You sent her to a ‘friend’ who runs a sleep study two weeks ago,” Jerome said.

  “And she nearly had a stroke while she was there,” Thomas said. “Today I can’t find her.”

  “So what do you think you know?” Jerome asked.

  “I know neither of us really want to discuss this over the phone. I’m flying to Chicago tonight. I’ll be at the Ritz Carlton. Meet me in the bar at midnight, Chicago time. I’ll be alone and I’m not a fighter.”

  A moment to think about this. Tyler had said it had ended badly.

  “I’ll be there,” Jerome decided, and hung up. He went up to get his car keys and pack his pockets. He woke Tyler with kisses and a smile.

  “Thomas Holmes has asked me to meet him Chicago. I’m going. I’ll be back tomorrow. You can stay here if you want.”

  “What does he want?” she asked.

  “To talk. He knows more than you think he does.”

  “I know exactly what he knows, Jerome, and why he knows it. He knows who I am too, and would take control of me right now if he could. Let him think you trust him and you don’t know, but don’t trust him as far as you can throw him.”

  Another kiss.

  “You taste too good, woman.”

  “All those orgasms,” she smiled up at him.

  “Here’s one more,” he said, finger and thumbs seizing her clit for a slipping pinch. “Cum,” he said between kisses.

  Hot exhaled gasps and a shiver. “Sifu.”

  “I am so going to enjoy hearing that when I slide my cock into you for the first time.”

  He left, tasting her, smelling her, enjoying her flavor on his fingers. She was so in his nose that he always smelled her. The woman drove him crazy when she wasn’t even around.

  Chicago in two and a half hours? Totally doable so long as he was invisible to radar… which he was. He pulled into the Ritz Carlton and parked the car himself. He found the bar, found Thomas Holmes in a quiet corner with an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels and two glasses.

  He saw Jerome, stood to shake hands. Jerome slid around to face the room. “I should have taken the moment to introduce myself at the charity ball,” Thomas apologized as he poured. “I was so stunned to see her I completely forgot myself.”

  “Yeah, well, she has that effect on men,” Jerome said.

  “That she does.” He held up his shot glass. “To a rose with the most dangerous thorns.”

  Jerome tapped it and they drank and Thomas filled again.

  “So talk,” Jerome said.

  “Of course, now we’re here neither wants to reveal too much. You have more at stake, so I’ll start at the beginning. I have a great deal of money, Mr. Black.”

  “Call me Jerome.”

  “Jerome,” Thomas nodded and leaned in. “I have the kind of money that allows me to fund anything I damn well please. Hubble is a child’s toy. I have a telescope that sees space ships heading toward Pluto from directions other than Earth.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I have a little blonde girl whose brain waves during her sleep study were unrecognizable as human. Yesterday she had a headache and today I can’t find her,” Thomas repeated from their conversation on the phone.

  “She’s not well today. Give her a couple days.”

  “So I see you at a ball. You who I know she knew, and there she is with red hair and green eyes, more gorgeous than I’ve ever seen. The look in her eyes…is very different. She’s not the same person, yet knows me. So fill in my puzzle…Where did this duplicate come from? Why has she come? How long ago did she refuse my proposal?”

  “I can’t say when. I don’t know,” Jerome said. “What’s she here for? To save the world.”

  “Literally?” Thomas asked.

  They drank.

  “Literally. What you see with your telescope is ships approaching a space station that’s been there for over 1,700 years. There’s a whole congress up there in our back yard and aliens have interfered here for over two thousand years. She’s trying to put that right. If you really want to see something, look to the southern degrees from Alpha to Gamma quadrant. At some point, he’s going to be visible.”

  “Who?”

  They drank the next shot.

  “Armageddon. Apocalypse.”

  “Coming here?” Thomas asked.

  “Sh
e came to help us stop him,” Jerome confirmed.

  “Us?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You have extraterrestrials in your home.”

  “Two females and a mechanoid. The rest of their force died crashing on the moon. Their ship is all but destroyed. They’re trapped here.”

  “How horrible for them. Tyler has the training to do this?” Thomas asked.

  “She does, and then some. She’s also got the determination. I’m sure you know what that is like.”

  “Hm, yes. Never met a woman so mature and headstrong for such a young age, yet so willing to be taught and molded.”

  “Which reminds me. What did she call you?”

  “Thomas.”

  “No. She was with one of my good friends and she called him Master Kevin. What did she call you?”

  Took Thomas a moment to decide If he should answer.

  “She called me nothing of the sort, I swear it to you. When I was in the mood to be served by my love, I would call and give the command to be silent. ‘Hello’ would be the last word I would hear her speak until I let her leave Monday morning. Silent service. Obedience and submission. The most I would allow sometimes would be the word yes. She hated that.” He downed his next drink. “I mean with a passion. But she was obstinate enough to do it. If you are her chosen, then I envy you. She was the highest paid companion on the planet for a reason. She instinctively knows what a man needs from his lover.”

  “Highest? There’s girls cost more than ten grand.”

  “Ten grand was what she got, Jerome. The agency got another ten grand per hour.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “She was flown on personal jets to meet Princes of Kuwaiti, Saudi Arabia, Japanese Moguls. The jet alone probably cool ten grand to go get her and back.”

  “Shit, what she do?” Jerome asked rhetorically.

  “Anything they wanted. She worked for a second agency to have sex more often. I couldn’t stop her. Back to the other discussion. This man Armageddon. Why Earth?”

  “He’s been chasing something he wants. I got it. So he’s gotta fight me to get it. But he don’t know that yet, which works in our favor. He’s not expecting a fight. We want to keep it that way, so we’re keeping quiet.”

  “This happens in February,” Thomas said.

  Jerome nodded. “She tell you?”

  “Only that the world is going to have its eyes unpleasantly opened. What date?”

  “She’s also the Queen of Understatement,” Jerome said. “The 18th.”

  “To the Queen of Understatement,” Thomas held up his glass. “What are the odds she’s going to die?”

  “Very good for all of us. We have no one, Thomas. Seven and a few hundred bikers with Nam under their belts.”

  Thomas sat back, rubbed his palm over his stubble. “So this guy brings his army. Invades. People die. That Congress up there won’t be happy about it. You’re not expecting them to help.”

  “They won’t,” Jerome said. “They would be forced to face the interference they’ve ignored for two thousand years. I think they’d rather Earth burn than face their deeds.”

  “Okay. Lemme see what I can do.”

  “There’s not much to do, guy.”

  “There’s always something to do, Jerome. Just a question of what. I would sponsor a crisis readiness drill in Detroit for that day. Have hundreds of emergency personnel staged an hour or less away.”

  “That would be a help.”

  “I could start the first Annual Toledo Bikefest. Toledo has a convention center we could fill up with mean-ass armed men ready to unleash on an unsuspecting alien army. Get a bunch of chopper builders to make some cool bikes. The clubs will come for that. I can talk to the grapevine, make sure they bring weapons.”

  “You know biker clubs?” Jerome questioned with a small skepticism.

  “Master Kevin you said? That would be Kevin Neiland, aka Nails. President of the Iron Knaves. He’s well enough known in BDSM circles, and so am I.”

  “You’re a busy guy.”

  Thomas grinned. “I have an obscene amount of money. It allows me to do any damn thing I please. And I do. Why is my blonde girl not well?”

  “She probably won’t tell you. She is very telepathic. Today she found her abilities. She needed help to get through it and will need a couple days to assess her life and herself. She’s going to be under pressure to move to the space station and she’ll eventually go. Horrible things are going to happen to her. But she has to go. You will propose marriage and she’ll still go.”

  “What if I don’t propose?”

  “She’ll go. She just won’t have that guilt of jilting you,” Jerome told him.

  “I see. So the little girl runs away again and grows up to return to you. Gotta love a paradox,” Thomas said, and drank.

  “Mine isn’t exactly yours. The red head is from another universe, a parallel. This one was close, but she wanted, like, the one two spots to the left. She ended up here. We’re apparently a little more aggressive here. The Tyler you know is not so strong as my redhead. Her abilities will be far less.”

  “Once she goes I’ll never see her again,” Thomas said.

  “Probably not.”

  Silence.

  “Once her lover, forever in love with her,” Thomas said into his empty hands. His eyes came up to meet Jerome’s. “You have no idea how much I envy you.”

  “As much as I envied whoever she was with on her birthday,” Jerome said. “Whatever she leaves in her apartment, keep it as is. She came to me with almost nothing.”

  “I will. I’ll renew her tags when they come due.”

  “She’s got a car?” Jerome asked.

  “Two. The Trans Am she bought herself and the Porsche I gave her for her birthday.”

  “Wow. Good gift. Those weekends you didn’t let her talk?” Jerome led in.

  “Yeah?”

  “They were good training for the worst time of her life.”

  Thomas said nothing at first. “Have you a card?”

  “Yeah.” Jerome handed over his business card.

  “Just in case. I won’t interfere with you. Knowing what’s coming, I’ll do what I can by way of support and back up. I won’t try to contact her; but if you ever need a safe place to stash her for a while, my home is always available.”

  “You can call her if you want. She’s mine and she knows it. She won’t let anyone else touch her, regardless who they used to be to her.”

  Thomas laughed. “Smart man.”

  “As I said. We are more aggressive here than in her own time line. She’ll never know how insanely jealous and distrustful I am of every man who looks at her. My trust will be solely in her, that she will enforce my will. If we’re done, I’m going to head back.”

  “Thank you for coming Jerome. You didn’t have to and I appreciate it.”

  “Of course I had to. You deserve to know what the blonde girl can’t tell you.”

  They shook hands and Jerome held himself together until he got into the car. Key in, pushed buttons, engine on.

  “Drive home.”

  The Torino did the driving while he slept, drunk, in the reclined driver’s seat. The car woke him as it turned into the parking lot at 6am. Four and a half hours sleep and he was no longer drunk. He’d hoped Tyler would still be in his bed. She wasn’t. He changed and went for his jog in the cool Autumn morning. Spotting the same black sedan in three places, he cut his jog short and returned to tell Landra Ahr.

  “Probably FBI,” he said.

  “Where?” Tyler said from the open command center door.

  “On my jog.”

  Her phone was out and she was dialing with her thumbs.

  “Who are you calling?” Jerome asked.

  A finger held up. “David Brooks please.”

  “Let me see if he’s in. Who is calling?”

  “His daughter,” she said in unpleasant tones. “And she’s pissed.”

  Five seconds.

 
“Tyler? Where are you?”

  “I keep having to say this, Dad. Call off the fuckin’ dogs.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the FBI dogs trailing my very good friend on his morning jog. No more. All surveillance on his property, person, and acquaintances will stop. Now. Or I will make it stop. None of you want that, so back off. Leave us be to do our thing and nothing gets broken. No one will be hurt.”

  “Is that a threat?” he asked.

  “It’s a simple fact of life, Dad.”

  “Are you here in Toledo?”

  “Where I am is irrelevant. I hear about any more dogs and things will start to get messy.”

  She hung up on him, dialed again.

  A groggy hello.

  “Thomas.”

  “Tyler?”

  He was wide awake.

  “Feds are sniffin’ ‘round the door. I’ve warned my father but he likely won’t be able to pull the leash back this time.”

  “I’ll make a phone call. Jerome seems a good man. I hope he does right by you.”

  “Thank you, Thomas.”

  She hung up again. “Matter settled.”

  “I do not approve of this action,” Landra Ahr said.

  “How bad for you. It’s done.” She walked away.

  “Ooh, I like that sass!” Jerome grinned.

  “You and she have become very involved,” Landra Ahr observed.

  “Do you think it wise?”

  “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. Our relationship is not up for discussion.”

  His phone ringing, he headed for a cup of coffee and his newspaper.

  “Morning Giuseppe,”

  “Romey, I have a problem. Petras quit last night. None of the other bouncers will take this job. Can you fill in for a couple days?”

  “Why’d he quit?” Jerome asked, reaching for a fresh cinnamon muffin from the plate Tyler set on the table.

  “Someone took a baseball bat to his headlights. Last week it was a knife in his tires.”

  “Can’t say I blame him. I have a meeting tonight. It’s only Thursday, can you do without a Cooler for a night?”

  “It’s dollar beer night,” Giuseppe said.

  “Shit, that’s right.”

  “Two o’clock’s closing, right?” Tyler interrupted.

  Jerome nodded.

  “I’ll do it. Eight to two for two hundred bucks a night cash under the table.”