by Leah Wilde
He’d backed away from the MC, taking a less active role. He’d handed more power over to his inner circle, handing down decisions and plans through them instead of having such a physical presence. He was still there for events and those sorts of things, but he’d been more focused on our relationship.
Plus, the nature of the MC seemed to have shifted over the last year. They had become more successful and less violent as they spent more of their time and energy on their business interests instead of trying to take control from other organizations. I wasn’t really sure exactly what they were doing. Since I had told Gage that I didn’t want anything to do with the MC really, he kept me out of the loop.
Our life was filled with romance and passion. Our new home was a beautiful old Victorian house. The upstairs master bathroom had a claw-footed tub that stood off of the ground and sat deep enough that I could stretch out in a hot bubble bath whenever I wanted, and Gage often had one ready for me when I came home from the university.
In the place of the MC, he’d picked up cooking, and he would often have exotic foods waiting for me from all over the world. He knew I loved exotic foods, and he did what he could to create an impressive variety night after night. He was a damn good cook, too.
“It better be a damn ring,” I said aloud, closing my laptop. I grabbed it and headed to my next lecture on Russian history.
On my way back from my last class of the day, I found Gage sitting in my office chair with his feet propped up on my desk. He wore the same black suit with shiny, black dress shoes instead of his usual worn out boots.
“Well, hello, Dr. Noll,” I teased as I entered my office.
“Hello, Ms. Danvers. Are you here for extra credit?” he joked right back.
“Stop,” I hissed. I felt my face flushing. “And yes, I could use some extra credit. What do I have to do to get an A?”
He smiled. “You don’t want to know what you have to do to get an A.” He took his feet off the desk and sat forward in the chair.
“Mmmm, but what if I said I did want to know, Dr. Noll? What would you tell me?” I continued teasing. I liked this game, pretending he was the professor. It had been a year, and I felt like there were still things he could teach me about my body and about pleasure in general.
“I would tell you that you need to read my new book, Ms. Danvers,” he continued playing along.
“Really? What’s it about?” I asked him, noticing that his hand rested on the cover of the book on my desk.
“It’s about discovering pleasure by letting our guards down and enjoying our bodies,” he said. “I’ll be happy to autograph a copy for you.”
“Funny,” I said. I didn’t have anything else to say or anywhere else I could take the joke.
“I thought so. Hey, maybe you could help me write that book, actually,” he said.
“Maybe. We’ll see. So, are we going to dinner, or what?” I asked, leaning across my desk to him.
“Maybe. I don’t know. Hey, what do you think your surprise is?” he asked as he stood up and started around the desk.
“It’s a surprise,” I told him. He knew damn well what I wanted it to be. I wanted his surprise to be a damn ring, a nice, fat, juicy diamond ring that looked just as good as he did in that suit.
“It’s no fun when you don’t play along,” he teased.
He put an arm around my waist and walked me out of my office.
“Come with me, Dr. Danvers. Our chariot awaits.”
Downstairs, stepping out of the history building, I saw that he had a car waiting for me, complete with a driver. I didn’t want to ask where he’d gotten the money or which one of us was paying for it. Asking questions with Gage was sometimes like looking a gift horse in the mouth. Sometimes things were just too good to be true. Or legal. And I had learned the hard way that I was better off not knowing which was which.
The driver wore a tux and held the back door open for us to get in. I slid in first, sliding across to the driver’s side. Gage slid in beside me, and the driver closed the door.
Butterflies sprang up in my stomach. I’d been racking my brain all day trying to figure out what kind of surprise would require us going to a five-star restaurant and pulling out all the stops like he was. There was only one thing it could be, and if it turned out to be anything else, I’d already told myself I was going to stab him to death right there at the table. When they asked me why I did it, I would just tell them he drove me crazy, and that I was already hormonal because of a surprise I’d been keeping from him for about a month or so.
I had been waiting for the perfect time to tell him, and it never seemed to be right. There was always something else going on. Tonight, I told myself.
“What are you thinking about?” Gage asked, jerking me out of my thoughts. I realized I’d been staring out the window.
“Just thinking about what your surprise is going to be, thinking about what I want it to be,” I answered him, perhaps a little too honestly, but I’d been after him about it long enough now that I felt like it didn’t matter. I felt like he should have expected the comments and suggestions at this point.
“Well, I hope I don’t disappoint you tonight.” He turned and looked forward.
Then again, if it wasn’t a ring, my insistence on wanting a ring from him would probably just serve to make him think I was disappointed when it turned out to be something else. I grabbed his arm and pulled myself close to him.
“I don’t care what it is, baby. You know I’ll be happy with whatever you get me, because it’s from you. I don’t want you to think that’s all I want, okay? I’m just messing with you.” I put a finger under his chin and turned his face to mine.
I kissed him in the backseat of the car. Our lips worked together passionately, and our mouths opened. I could taste his breath as his tongue probed into my mouth. I even tried to judge by the way he was kissing me if it was going to be a ring or not. His kiss was deeply passionate, the controlling way he kissed me when his desire was hard between his legs.
I took his passion as a good sign and kissed him back, answering his passion and desire with my own. I dug my hand into his hair. I squeezed my legs together in my tight little skirt, trying to contain the wet, aching desire growing between them.
I didn’t want to go to dinner anymore. I wanted him to tell the driver to pull over into a dark, abandoned parking lot so we could make love in the backseat of the car like a couple of horny teenagers after prom, eager to explore each other’s bodies and enjoy the love they felt for each other.
I just wanted him inside me again. It had been over a year, and every time I saw him, every time I kissed him, every time we touched, I wanted to fuck his brains out. I reached down between his legs and rubbed the hardening shaft behind the thin fabric.
He grabbed my thin wrist gently and pulled away from our kiss.
“Not yet, baby,” he said with a suggestive laugh. “You can’t have dessert before your dinner.”
“Oh, so that’s dessert?” I asked him. “So you must be pretty sure of this surprise of yours,” I teased.
It was a damn ring. I knew it. There was no way it could have been anything else. I felt myself throbbing for him now. I could feel my heart pulsing inside of me. He was going to propose to me at dinner. I knew it! I just had to play dumb until after he popped the question, or else I risked ruining his surprise. I wanted him to think I was really surprised.
Hell, I was already surprised that he was even thinking about it. I didn’t know he’d even been planning it, sneaky bastard. But that was okay. I was going to floor him with my own surprise after he asked me to marry him. Of course I was going to say yes. I was going to scream it in the restaurant and again all night in bed as he pumped me full of himself again and again to celebrate our engagement and our growing family.
Damn it. I didn’t want to go to dinner. I wanted to skip the restaurant and the food. I wanted to go home, let him propose to me under the night sky and then make sweet, pass
ionate love all night with the love of my life.
The car slowed, and we pulled up to the curb in front of a brightly lit hotel underneath an old, prestigious hotel. The walls of the restaurant were all glass in front, and I could see the bright gold and white light and linens inside.
Yep, I thought, he’s about to propose to me, and then I’m going to whisper in his ear that we’re pregnant.
We walked up the steps to the restaurant arm in arm, and I couldn’t help but feel like we were walking into our future together.
THE END
Sneak Preview: SPITFIRE by Ada Stone
Spitfire
IF SHE THINKS SHE CAN HANDLE ME, SHE’S IN FOR ONE HELL OF A SURPRISE.
I’ve banged enough women to last a dozen lifetimes.
And I left them all the exact same way: desperately begging for more.
Too damn bad.
In this world, you can’t always get what you want.
Like this whole damned situation, for instance.
I sure as hell didn’t want to end up bleeding to death on the side of some godforsaken highway.
I didn’t want to lose this war with my enemies.
Matter of fact, the only thing I did want was the curvy, sexy nurse who pulled over and saved my life.
Even though I was lingering on death’s doorstep, my c*ck pulsed at the mere sight of her.
Hair like silk, t*ts aching to be touched… this broad was different from all the others.
But she’s a she-devil if I’ve ever seen one.
All spiky attitude and a mouth that writes checks her frail little body just can’t cash.
I may be injured, but that’s not going to stop me from doing what I’m about to do:
Taking this little spitfire to my bed and f*cking her ‘til the cows come home.
Chapter One
Jasmine
The night was brutal. The long hours are always bad, but tonight was especially…horrific. There was a twelve car pile-up over on the interstate between Richmond and Allerton. The whole area had to be closed off with traffic redirected, and from what I heard right before I left, they still hadn’t cleared up the backed-up traffic. But none of that was why it was awful for me. The traffic wasn’t important, though I was grateful for the heads up. That was why I was driving on the backroads towards home, even though under normal circumstances it would be twice as long as my normal route.
No, instead it was the carnage from the wreck that had tainted my, already long, day at work.
When the ambulances brought them in, I was both sickened and horribly relieved to find that only about ten of the eighteen passengers involved had survived long enough to actually make it to the emergency room. It was a wicked thought, but I knew that the fewer we had, the better our odds of saving them were.
And I wouldn’t feel responsible for having to pick which ones we could and couldn’t save.
My hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, so tight that my knuckles were turning white. I’d managed to keep the tears at bay, resolving to keep it together until I got home, but it was getting harder and harder. I could see the blood covering their clothing, clothing I cut away to reveal the oozing wounds. The blood was so dark it looked black, arterial instead of the bright red, superficial scraps most people thought of.
I took the right up ahead. I wasn’t as familiar with this road as I was with the interstate or the ones nearer to my house, and it was dark, too. It made it harder to see and to be sure that I was going in the right direction.
“I need to get that damn GPS fixed,” I muttered.
I didn’t use it often, but I could have done with it tonight. The problem with these backroads was that they weren’t very well lit, and I couldn’t see street signs until I was practically on top of them.
“Shit,” I told my windshield when I realized that I’d just passed the street I needed to turn off on. I needed to turn around.
Slowing down, I checked my rearview mirror and the road ahead of me. When I was sure that no one was coming—though really, who the hell would be out at one in the damn morning on some back road in the middle of nowhere—I pulled a sharp left, making a u-turn to head back the other direction. But there wasn’t quite enough room to turn around completely, and I had to choose between sliding into the ditch and backing up a little. Not comfortable with the idea of backing up on a road, even with it being this dead, I was getting ready to just half slide into the ditch to get the extra room when my lights hit something.
Or, more specifically, someone.
I slammed on the breaks, grateful I’d been going slowly. For a moment, I just stared out the window, eyes wide. The body was unmoving, and I felt knots twist in my stomach.
Oh God, please don’t let him be dead, I thought.
I’d seen enough death today—carnage like most people only saw in the movies. Now to find a body along the side of the road after work? I just didn’t think I could handle that. Shoving the car into park, I reached, with shaking fingers, for my phone and pepper spray, just in case. The guy looked unconscious at the very least, but I’d seen enough horror movies and watched the news often enough to know that I had to be careful. Swallowing harshly, I started to dial the police as I got out of my car.
I had the pepper spray in one hand while I held the phone up to my ear with the other. I wanted to go ahead and get the paramedics en route in case he was alive, and I wanted to make sure that I had someone on the line that could come to my rescue in case this was some elaborate setup.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” The dispatcher was a woman with a nasally voice that sounded extremely bored. If I had to guess, she was one of those women who had done this job so long that the terrible things she encountered on the job no longer affected her like they should. I worked with more than a few people like that at the hospital. It was a terrible thing to see, but I understood it. Sometimes it was just too much. And if you let it get to you, eventually you would burn yourself out. I was always teetering on that edge, threatening to spill over into a mental breakdown if I wasn’t careful, but I’d always managed to pull myself out of it just in time.
A vacation. A night out on the town. A romantic night out with my gay friend, because I knew there was no risk of “something more” ever happening. Just something to take my mind off of all the terrible stuff I was seeing so regularly.
“Hello?” the woman asked, her voice taking on a note of impatience.
I realized that I hadn’t said anything yet. Swallowing, I said, “Yes, hello. My name is Jasmine Felton. I’m a nurse over at St. Mary’s. I was driving home and came across a man along the side of the road. I’m stopped now between Richmond and Allerton, closer to Allerton. I’m going to check to see if he’s alright, but if you could please send someone to help, I’d be really grateful. We’re on the backroads.”
I paused after explaining the situation, waiting for the bored woman to shift into alert mode and ask for more specifics. I was trying to pick out a sign somewhere. I’d missed my turn not far back, so I could give her that, at least. I was hoping for a mile marker to be more exact, but I didn’t see any.
Moving closer to the man—I hoped it wasn’t just a body—I saw the glint of metal not far from where he lay. A motorcycle, I realized, which made me a little nervous. If he was riding a motorcycle, then there was a good chance that he had an accident and swerved off the road. And those kinds of accidents were bad.
“Please be alive,” I muttered and moved quickly down the edge of the ditch.
When I reached the bottom, I moved to check the man for injuries. I had to either give up the phone or my mace to do so effectively, so I shoved the pepper spray into my coat pocket. Fumbling with my phone, pinching it between my ear and my shoulder, I realized two things quickly.
First, the man was alive. I could see him breathing, though his breaths were shallow and uneven.
Second, the woman on the other end of the phone still hadn’t responded to me.
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br /> Frowning, I pulled my phone away from my ear and looked down at it. It was dead. “Oh, hell!” I tried to turn it back on, but of course, that was pointless. What was worse, I had no idea how much the dispatcher had gotten of my statement when I’d first called. Had she gotten any of it? And even if she did, she probably hadn’t picked up on enough to be able to locate me or the man who was breathing shakily.
That’s not good, I thought, frowning at his prone body.
I glanced back at my car and considered if it was a better idea to go back for help——and ensure that I was safe in case this went bad—or to stay and see what I could do for him. Though my own survival instincts screamed at me to leave, I found myself kneeling down beside the man in the ditch. I was a nurse, and I wouldn’t leave an injured man behind.
If I had to, I’d haul him up and into my car.
I felt his forehead first. He felt a little warm but not too bad. He might have had a fever, but I didn’t think it would be enough to do any real damage, so long as I got him fixed up and out of here soon. Looking him over, I confirmed it must have been a bad motorcycle accident.