Annihilate Them

by Christina Ross

  “I love you making love to me—and vice versa. I think you just sent me to the morning sun and back. I can barely see.”

  “That’s because your eyes are closed, Jennifer.”

  I opened them. “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  “Now that you can see, how about you tell me if you see this?” he asked.

  We were lying next to each other—facing each other. I looked into his eyes and saw that they were filled with affection and love. I placed my hand against his cheek, but then he took my hand in his own and squeezed it gently.

  “I’ve thanked God every day since that night at the foundation that you’re still with me,” he said with emotion in his voice. “Because life without you, Jennifer? I don’t want to live it. You are the best of me. You see me for who I am—flaws and all. And yet you still want me. You still love me.”

  “I could say the same—”

  “And maybe you could, but it’s me who’s talking now. I just hope that you know that all of it is true. There is no one in this world who I’d rather be with. Who I’d rather call my wife. And who I’d rather spend the rest of my life with.”

  “I love you so much, Alex,” I said.

  And then he made love to me again.

  WHEN WE’D FINISHED and both of us were spent, I propped my head up on my elbow and looked down at him.

  “After that, I think that I might have the vapors,” I said to him. “And that I also might need a shower. Want to join me?”

  His eyes glinted with humor when I said that. “Would you mind if I took a power nap?”

  “After all of that work?” I said as I kissed him on the lips. “Not at all. Because you were superhuman this morning. I won’t be long. Give me twenty minutes.”

  In the bathroom, I closed the door behind me and was about to use the toilet when I saw the pregnancy test kit sitting on the edge of the vanity, as if it were there to mock me. I hadn’t taken a test in the past two weeks because it hadn’t seemed like there was a point when we weren’t making love.

  A deep sense of shame came over me when I looked at the kit, which had disappointed me time and again for so many months that I had come to resent it. Still, regardless of that—and because it had been too long since I’d checked, I decided to just suck it up and give it another go. I opened the box, pulled out a strip, sat on the toilet, and peed on it.

  The test took twenty minutes to show whether I was pregnant, so when I was finished, I left it on the vanity and then stepped into the shower where I stood under the hot water for a good fifteen minutes before I even started to wash my hair and my body.

  When I was finished, I toweled off, and without even thinking about the pregnancy strip, I started to blow out my hair with a hair dryer until it was dry. I moisturized my face. I brushed my teeth. And then, just as I was slipping into my white, terry-cloth robe that hung next to Alex’s on the back of the bathroom door, I caught sight of the pregnancy strip in the mirror next to me.

  I’d practically forgotten about it.

  Steeling myself for more disappointment, I stole a look at it.

  WHEN I STEPPED OUT of the bathroom, Alex was standing across from me, naked, looking out at the expanse of New York.

  “Are you an exhibitionist?” I asked.

  He turned to look at me. “Might be.”

  When his gaze caught mine, which was filled with tears, he spun around, came over to me, and held me.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “You look upset.”

  “Is that how I look?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then in this case, looks are deceiving.”

  He shook his head at me as I tried—and failed—to compose myself.

  “Jennifer, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  When I held up the test strip in front of him, he looked at me and then at it in bewilderment. And then his lips parted in anticipation of what I was about to say.

  “We’re pregnant,” I said as tears spilled down my cheeks. “It’s finally happened.”

  He took the strip from my hands, stared at it for a long moment, and then looked back at me with a wild grin on his face. “We’re pregnant?”

  “Apparently, we are. To make sure, I checked twice.”

  “I can’t believe it...”

  “Well, believe it,” I said as he held me close to him and kissed me. “Because finally, I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a child. Now, make love to me again, Alex—and do it as if it were our first time.”

  THANK YOU FOR READING Annihilate Them! I hope you enjoyed it! Annihilate Them: Holiday is coming soon.

  If you are interested in reading more about Kate and Ben, I’m including the first chapter of A Dangerous Widow on the next several pages. This is a stand-alone novel filled with romantic suspense. Here is the book’s description:

  Five years after her beloved husband’s death, Kate Stone suddenly learns that it was no accident. Instead, due to a chance encounter with a psychic, she discovers that it was a full-on, calclated, cold-blooded murder.

  Initially, Kate rejects the idea. How could Michael possibly have been murdered? All of the evidence surrounding his death suggests that it was an accident.

  Enter Ben Cade, the first love of Kate’s life—a man she hasn’t seen in sixteen years. Now a former SEAL turned private investigator, Ben agrees to help Kate learn the truth. Soon, the love they once shared for each other begins a slow simmer—just as chaos ignites around them as twists, turns, death threats and deceptions abound.

  Enjoy the excerpt! The A Dangerous series continues in 2017 with A Dangerous Agenda with more Kate and Ben!

  A Dangerous Widow

  By

  Christina Ross

  PROLOGUE

  New York City

  October

  JUST HOURS BEFORE HIS brutal and unexpected death, Michael Stone woke to greet the day just as he had every day since he’d married Kate seven years ago—with optimism, with a hunger to tackle the day head on and to see what would come of it, and with the same burning sense of love he had for his wife.

  In the master suite of their Park townhouse, he looked over at the clock on the bedside table and then turned onto his side, came up close behind Kate, kissed her on the base of the neck, and held her next to him as she woke up.

  “It can’t be morning yet,” she said.

  “Like clockwork, the globe has turned.”

  “Didn’t we just go to bed?”

  “Technically, we went to bed around eleven. But in reality, we went to sleep around twelve-thirty. You know, after I had my way with you.”

  “That was nothing short of a marathon.”

  “It was meant to be one. And let’s just call this day what it is—a celebration. StoneTech remains mine. Thank God I didn’t sell it.”

  When she turned to face him, Michael thought how beautiful she was, even fresh from the throes of sleep. He watched her sweep her long brown hair away from her face before she leaned in to kiss him.

  “Sorry about the morning breath,” she said when they parted. Her brown, almond-shaped eyes sparkled at him. “But consider it my gift to you—if you weren’t awake before, you certainly are now.”

  “I’d exchange morning breath with you any day, love. And Kate, I want to thank you again for listening to me over the past week, and for helping me come to the decision I made.”

  “You made the right call, Michael. I know how difficult it was for you to do what you did, but in the end, StoneTech is your baby. You’re the one who built it into what it is today. You’re the one who created a company that apparently everyone wants, and for good reason. You’ve turned it into a billion-dollar powerhouse. Let’s just be grateful that you never took the company public, because if you had, anyone with serious capital reserves—such as Apple, for instance—could have come in with an aggressive takeover strategy, and you’d be dealing with a whole host of other problems right now.
I know that yesterday was hard on you because you let down two of your closest friends, but in comparison to a hostile takeover, that was minor. At least all you had to do was to give them an honest explanation for why you weren’t going to sell StoneTech, and then walk away from the deal that they proposed to you.”

  “The deal that I’d pretty much promised them would happen,” he said.

  “You had the right to change your mind. But I get it. I understand how you feel about letting people down, especially when it comes to Mark and Tom. They thought that everything was set to go. Legal was present, the papers had been drawn up, and everyone was excited for the buyout to happen. But in the end? It was your choice not to sign those papers. Yours hardly is the first deal to fall through in this city, that’s for sure. And it won’t be the last. We both know it—and so do they.”

  She kissed him again on the lips. “How about some coffee?”

  “I’d love some coffee.”

  “Then let me make us both a cup. Because with the slate of meetings I have in front of me today—and after what you did to me last night—let’s just say that this girl needs one. Or three. Probably three.”

  She slid out of bed, and he admired her naked body as she crossed the room with the same unaffected confidence that had attracted him to her the moment they first met in grad school at NYU.

  Back then, each had been pursuing their graduate degrees in business, and when they met, the mutual attraction was as swift as it was powerful. Two years later, the summer after they graduated, they married in a small ceremony that included only family and close friends, because, at that point in their lives, they were so broke, they couldn’t afford a large wedding.

  Each had hailed from modest backgrounds, and with hefty student loan debts hovering over them, there literally was no money for the sort of big, expensive wedding Michael wished he could have given Kate.

  And look at us now, he thought as he watched her slip into a silky white robe. Christ, we’re lucky.

  At thirty, Kate Stone was a senior vice president of finance for Bank of America in Manhattan. At thirty-one, Michael headed a multi-billion-dollar company that had made its fortune on the encryption software he’d written and perfected. It was now considered the industry standard in data protection.

  StoneTech had been revising and selling versions of its software for the past seven years. Its clients included the government, the banking, insurance, medical, retail, and hospitality industries, as well as the airline industry, the global marketplace in its many forms, and also a whole host of other corporations and businesses that needed to ensure their clients that their personal data was locked down.

  That’s where StoneTech shined—and that’s where Michael Stone had made his unlikely fortune in only a matter of a few short years. It was his deep affection for what he’d built that had stopped him from signing over his company—despite the three billion dollars he would have reaped in the process.

  Neither he nor Kate denied that the lure of that kind of money was enticing. But the more he thought about the deal and giving up StoneTech—and the more he talked to Kate, who was against it because she thought that he’d eventually come to regret it—the more he realized that she was right. He would come to regret it. Until he and Kate decided to have children, which each wanted sooner rather than later, StoneTech was his child for now. With new software in the works, there was a whole host of other opportunities to explore that excited him.

  He wondered what he would have done with his life if he’d sold it. Since the contract had carried with it a non-compete clause, he couldn’t have designed a better version of his encryption software. So, where would he have gone next? Where would he have fit in? How could he ever duplicate that kind of success? Knowing that he couldn’t unnerved him, and so, with Kate’s support, he decided to keep the company, despite the anger and disappointment of too many people to count.

  “Meet me in the kitchen?” Kate said from the bedroom door.

  “Right behind you.”

  She winked at him. “Just not behind me like you were last night, OK?”

  “I can’t promise you that,” he said. “Not when you’re looking like that.”

  AFTER KATE HAD SHOWERED and dressed, and was ready to leave for work, Michael stood in the townhouse’s grand entryway in nothing but his boxer shorts with their towering Great Dane, Bruiser, sitting by his side.

  Each watched her come down the curving staircase.

  She was wearing a fitted black business suit, her long hair had been whipped up behind her head in a tight chignon, and the only jewelry she wore were her wedding and engagement rings and the diamond solitaire earrings he’d purchased for her last Christmas. He thought she looked beautiful.

  When she saw him, she just stopped mid-staircase and looked down at him.

  “How can you stand there looking like that?” she said. “You know I can’t handle seeing you like that. You’ve been spending so much time in the gym lately, I’ve become a wanton woman. Look at how ridiculous your pecs have become—and those abs. And then there’s your curly head of black hair, which you know I want to rake my fingers through. You’re nothing short of a tease, Michael Stone. And it’s not fair.”

  “Maybe I’m trying to convince you to stay home with me...”

  She grinned when he said that, and then started down the stairs again, her black briefcase swinging at her side.

  “I wish I could, but today is so jam-packed with meetings, I already know that it’s going to be the day from hell. I can sense it. In fact, it’s probably going to be worse than I imagine because I know whom I’m dealing with at those meetings.”

  “Well, that’s just another good reason to stay home.”

  “Believe me when I say that I wish I could.” She furrowed her brow at him. “Lydia comes today, doesn’t she?”

  “She does.”

  “And thank God for that! When she cleans, would you mind asking her to leave my office the way it is? I know that it’s a hot mess, but in that mess, I also know exactly where everything is. And since I’m in the middle of writing up an important report, there are post-it notes everywhere with items that I need to include in that report. I’ll straighten things up before she comes next week. Tell her that’s a promise, even though she’ll already know that I’ll probably fail to pull through. Still, I’ll try.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “You know, I’m glad that you’re staying home today,” she said as she crossed over to him and placed the palm of her hand against his cheek. “I know the workaholic in you wants to get back at it, but you need this day for yourself, if only to decompress from yesterday. Read a book. Watch a movie. Take Bruiser out for a walk—he could use one, and so could you, if only to clear your mind. And, please, forget about the upcoming takeover of MicroCom—that’s weeks away at this point, and you don’t need to be thinking about it. Even though I know you will. Still, after what you went through yesterday, you should try to do your best to relax, OK?”

  “I’ll do my best. I love you, Kate.”

  “I love you more than you’ll ever know—and I mean that from the bottom of my soul. I don’t know what I’d ever do without you.”

  “I can say the same.”

  When he said that, Bruiser, who long had been jealous of their relationship, made a low growling sound deep in his throat and stomped his foot on the parquet floor.

  “And I love you, too, my giant Bruiser,” Kate said as she scratched his head and rubbed the steel-gray fur beneath his jaw. “Where would we be without you?”

  The dog barked.

  “Exactly,” she said. “So, keep your father company today, OK?”

  The dog stomped his foot again.

  “That’s a good boy. You’ve always been the best boy. And since you’ve put your foot down, I’m going to take that as a ‘yes.’”

  “Dinner out tonight?” Michael asked.

  “Absolutely. I’m up for anything, because the last thing
I’ll want to do when I come home is cook.” She reached down, pulled back the waistband of his boxers, and released it so it slapped against his skin. “But just make sure that you’re properly dressed, stud. Otherwise, you might be the main course. Now, give me a kiss. I should leave.”

  When they kissed, it was just like it always was before either of them headed off for work—quick and light so that Kate wouldn’t ruin her lipstick and his lips wouldn’t become stained with it. It was a kiss meant to begin their day, as well as a promise that they’d see each other at the end of the day.

  But this time that didn’t happen. Though neither knew it, this kiss would mark the end of their lives together.

  Michael stood alongside Bruiser and watched Kate sweep through the front door and into a blinding burst of sunlight. When the door clicked shut behind her, he looked down at Bruiser and said, “You see—I miss her already. But then, I always do regardless of how busy the day is.” He patted the top of Bruiser’s head. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

  Less than two hours later, Michael Stone was dead.

  THE NEWS CAME JUST before nine-thirty.

  Kate was preparing to attend her first meeting of the day when her secretary, Carrie, came to her door looking shaken. The fingertips of her right hand were pressed against her lips. Her green eyes—usually so striking, and sometimes filled with mischief and good humor because they had become good friends over the years—were bright with a look of horror, grief, and loss. She was trembling.

  “Kate,” she said.

  Kate got up from her desk and came around it. “Carrie, what’s wrong? Why do you look so upset? What’s happened? Is it Charlie? Is he all right?”

  Charlie was Carrie’s husband, who was undergoing chemo to battle leukemia. She moved to speak, but despite the effort she made, no words would come.

  “We’ll take it from here, ma’am.”

  In a haze, Kate watched Carrie step aside as two police officers—one male, one female, each with their hats held in their hands—stepped into the doorway.