Walk on the Striped Side

by Jessie Lane

  Yup. He was going to lure the little human into bed. To use and abuse that tempting little body of hers that still needed to be fattened up a little. Did the woman not eat at all? Shaking his head to himself, he decided not to concentrate on that. No, all he needed to concentrate on was that he was going to have her as many times in as many ways as he had to, to get her out of his system. By the time he was done, she would be a sated, begging, crying mess, screaming out his name better than a high paid porn actress on the set of an orgy. And after he exhausted her ass into a state of sleep that might look more like a coma, he’d walk away from her for good.

  Gage pondered the best way to get the difficult woman where he wanted her. Which was the nearest flat surface in lieu of a bed. He debated whether he should try the ridiculous human practices of dating her, or if he should just throw her over his shoulder like any other shifter would do. The problem with carrying her off over his shoulder was that she might misconstrue it as an attempt of kidnapping. He barely held in his snort of disgust over that thought. As if he would ever have to kidnap somebody! Women fell all over themselves for the chance to be with him. This woman was just unnecessarily difficult.

  He really didn’t want to have to lower himself to the disgusting practice of a date to get her in bed. It was ridiculous. And unnecessary. Not to mention that he had better things to do with his spare time. So there had to be a way around all of that. So while Gage stood there, trying to figure out how he could get Sergeant Demos out of her BDUs and naked as fast as possible, he watched as the woman in question went from mad to damn near psychotic. The angrier she got, the more the subtle fragrance belonging to her got spicier. Richer. Like exotic chocolates with red chilies in them. Which only turned him on more. Causing his cock to lengthen and press rather uncomfortably against the zipper in his pants. Somewhere in the back of his mind, as he watched her face turn an interesting shade of red, he knew it wasn’t quite natural that he kept getting turned on every time she got pissed off. The truth was, at the moment, he could care less about how weird that was. And the fact that he didn’t care at all, well that should have been his hint that walking away from her wasn’t going to be that easy after all.

  ***

  Elena

  “Have you idiots lost your damn mind?”

  Okay, it was safe to say her tentative leash on her temper had snapped. Which wasn’t unheard of per se, but she tried really damn hard after that last trip to the anger management counselor not to flip her shit and give in to the urge to beat the snot out of people. These eight morons though, they made her want to start throwing hooks and uppercuts like a desperate boxer fighting for a championship title.

  “Problem Sergeant Demos?” Ivanov’s deep baritone was the only one to respond.

  Did he just really ask her if she had a problem? She felt the muscle underneath her left eye twitch again. The small movement did not go by unnoticed by Master Sergeant Ivanov, who smirked at the small sign of her current mood. Which her youngest sister Delta lovingly labeled: DEFCON PSYCHO. Only Ivanov had no idea just how accurate the description of psycho could be for Elena when she well and truly lost it. And that was because the last time Elena had gone DEFCON PSYCHO was when she was seventeen and her oldest sister Chloe had come home with a good sized bruise on her cheek from her then boyfriend Jimmy Butowski. Thank God juvenile records were sealed by the courts. Otherwise the Army would have never let her in.

  Crossing her arms over her chest, Elena snapped. “You’re damn skippy I’ve got a problem! My problem is that the station received a report of possible vandalism in this building. So I had to drag my ass out here in the middle of the night just to find you lot rolling around here like a bunch of morons. Get a life, would ya? Next time, don’t bother mine!”

  Turning on her heel, she stormed towards the front door. Shoving one of Ivanov’s unit members out of her path on the way out. She heard movement seemingly following behind her, but chose to ignore it since she knew none of the men would hurt her. Making her way back to her vehicle, Elena rounded the front of the car and reached for the driver’s side door handle. A large hand reaching around to land on her door stopped her. Even if he hadn’t reached that hand out in front of her, she would have known he was too close to her body because she could feel the heat off that too large body of his along her back.

  Breathing out a frustrated sigh, “What do you want Master Sergeant Ivanov?”

  Warm breath whispered across her ear lobe. “To make your trip out here worthwhile.”

  “Yeah? And how do you plan to do that?”

  “By offering you the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  “You mean you’re going to let me put you in handcuffs and arrest you?”

  He snorted. “You’re not arresting me. And you’re definitely not putting me in handcuffs. I could return the favor for you though. Use your own handcuffs on you.”

  Shaking her head no, Elena laughed. “Sorry pal, but last time I checked, I was the one with the power to use them. Not you.”

  “Only here, on base, and only when you’re on duty. I was talking about later. When you get off shift. I could come over to your place and demonstrate who really has the power in this dynamic.”

  Elena turned slowly until she was facing Gage Ivanov. Those strangely beautiful eyes of his almost seemed to glow in the night as they slowly dragged upwards from where they’d been glued to her ass and then focused on her face. Cocking her eyebrow at his apparent and shameless ogling of her backside, she gave a short laugh. “I know you special ops guys think you’re the best thing around since sliced bread, but don’t get too full of yourself.”

  He slowly leaned forward to run his nose from the base of her throat, skimming her skin lightly as he inhaled deeply, before stopping his lips so that they were touching the shell of her ear. Then he whispered, “I’m not looking to get full of myself. I’d much rather fill you.”

  Her mouth instantly went dry as the Sahara Desert, and other parts of her, ones much lower than her mouth, seemed to fire up. Except there was no dryness involved down there. No, her panties were practically sopping wet right now. Elena had to lock up every muscle in her body so that she wouldn’t lean forward an inch and a half and rub all over him like a cat in heat.

  This was a bad, bad idea. If she went and did something as stupid as hooking up with him, someone could make some whack ass claim of favoritism on this call she’d responded too. So she needed to move herself away from the hottest man to ever push all of her naughty buttons, and drive away from here like her career depended on it. Because if she gave into this insane attraction between them, with any claim of favoritism or fraternization against her, her career might go down the shitter. As good as the man probably was in bed, it wouldn’t be worth the career she adored in the Army.

  Right?

  Elena put her hands on his chest to push him off of her, because he hadn’t moved away at all, but ended up gasping instead when his teeth nipped her ear. Now her fingers were clenching his shirt instead of shoving him away because those lips of his were on the move. Placing a lingering kiss on the skin just under her ear, before continuing their journey south where he stopped again to gently bite at the base of her neck. It took Elena a second to realize that the sound she heard was her moaning as she pulled the infuriating man closer until nothing but clothes separated the fronts of their bodies.

  She felt that hand of his come off her car as he used it to grab the back of her neck seconds before his lower body pinned her to the car. She could feel the hard length of him push into her stomach. His other hand slipped in between her butt and the vehicle so that he could grab her ass hard, squeezing his fingers into her soft flesh in a slow rhythmic pattern that reminded her of a cat kneading. Dropping his mouth down to hers, she thought he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t. He licked her instead. Swiping a deliciously wet, but slightly rough tongue right over her lips. Her breath caught in her chest from the erotic feel of that tongue and he groaned. His ch
est vibrating slightly under her hands from the sound. That lick alone was the most understated but sexy thing that any man had ever done to her.

  That was the moment her common sense went out the window.

  Elena stood up on her tip toes and crushed her mouth to Ivanov’s in a desperation she’d never felt before. Would probably never feel again. And as he thrust his tongue in her mouth and tangled it with her own, she knew without a doubt that he really would make this trip out here worthwhile.

  She just hoped that giving into her hormones didn’t backfire on her later.

  CHAPTER-THREE

  January 2012

  Elena

  The sensual rumble of a gruff baritone voice from the other room woke her up. Man she loved that voice. There were times when he was buried deep inside her, making her feel like no one else ever had, that he would say something in the moment with that growl, some command, some encouragement, and it felt like a freakin’ purr. Of course, she knew the walking wall of muscle that called himself Gage Ivanov wasn’t truly purring. That had to be anatomically impossible for a testosterone laden guy like him. Oh, but to some very sensitive girly parts she owned, probably the only parts of her body that were feminine at all, they quivered at that almost purr. It was sexual nirvana, that purr-tastic voice. And after doing something that she’d never done before, which was maintain something that resembled a monogamous relationship for a span of six whole months, she was ready to admit that she was definitely in love with that voice. She’d fallen head over heels for the man who owned it.

  Not that she’d confessed that little bit of information to Gage. Oh no, she’d kept that under lock and key from the moment she’d figured it out a little over a month ago. It had taken some time to even convince herself that it was genetically possible for her to experience the emotion called love for anyone other than her family. After all, she was a Demos. And as her mother always told her, the Demos women did not marry. Nor did they let a man tie them down with such stigmas like a relationship. No, they simply found good specimens to scratch the occasional itch when it was needed. That might sound crude to the rest of the world, but she’d yet to see her mother or two sisters settle down with a man for a long term run.

  So the fact that she, Elena Demos, middle child of the biggest anti-monogamy supporter in the known universe, was lying in these sheets that were twisted around her naked body in her lover’s bed, and considering becoming a one-man kind of woman, was just craziness. The idea that she would ignore every warning her mother had ever lectured her about in regards to men, and how they would only break your heart, so that she could profess her newfound love for the man in the other room, was a big deal. There was no telling how her mother or sisters would act when she let that cat out of the bag. Hell, her mother who’d been so sick she was bedridden now, wouldn’t cut her any slack at all. More than likely, Momma Demos would chew her up and spit her out with a lecture to end all lectures. That might not scare other grown adults, but anyone who knew her mother should be shaking in their flippin’ shoes. It didn’t matter that Momma was a petite package who only looked to weigh one hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet. Elena had watched that small powerhouse of a woman put a grown man two times her size on his knees, cupping his junk with both hands, and crying a river for giving her mother a pat on the ass in a bar. In other words, she was scary.

  But as Elena listened to her lover presumably talking to someone on the phone since she hadn’t heard any other voices yet, she couldn’t help but think that it was time to tell everyone how she felt. Gage had to feel something for her if he kept coming back to Fort Bragg to spend time with her when he wasn’t even coming or going from his latest mission. And he’d risked an awful lot in taking the chance to get involved with her since it would be severely frowned upon should their relationship come to light.

  But in retrospect, they hadn’t been able to avoid what was between them. It wasn’t always pleasant. There was something about the combination of their two personalities that just begged for them to grate on each other’s last nerves. Gage had later said it was the strain of animal like sexual attraction between them. But for Elena, it had been lust at first sight. Now it was the dreaded four letter L-word. And how she wished that lust, was still the word that fit that description, but instead it was love.

  She was holding out hope that her mother was wrong. That all men weren’t lying, conniving, cheating dogs who couldn’t be trusted with a woman’s vulnerable heart. She could tell Gage how she felt, and then hopefully he would tell her that he loved her too. Perhaps then, Elena could then take him home, introduce him to her man hating mother and wary two sisters, and show them that there were in fact good men out there. Maybe after that one of her two sisters would break the Demos ‘no long term man’ rule and go out and find a stud of their own. Cynics could be converted into believers.

  All she had to do was break the news to the man she loved first. Which needed to be done tonight since she was out processing from the Army and headed home to Swansboro, NC in two days. She probably should have mentioned it to Gage beforehand that she hadn’t renewed her enlistment due to her mom’s baffling illness, but had never got around to it. It was hard learning to open up and share your personal life with someone of the opposite sex when you weren’t used to having anyone around to care about these things. The two of them would need to talk about how often they could visit each other now that her living arrangements were going to be drastically different.

  Easing silently out of the bed, she picked Gage’s t-shirt up off of the floor and pulled it on over her naked body. Not that she had a problem with nudity, especially in front of her insanely sexy man, but his voice was starting to get louder as if he were irritated with someone. She didn’t exactly feel comfortable butt ass naked if he was going to be in a foul mood. Curious as to what had riled her lover up, she tip toed to the closed bedroom door and convinced herself that it was not wrong to eavesdrop on the man you planned to inform had been elevated to boyfriend status. Being someone’s girlfriend gave you rights to snoop a little. It was written down in the women’s laws somewhere, she was sure.

  Placing her ear on the door, she closed her eyes and concentrated on what was being said on the other side of it. There was a muffled sentence before a short span of silence, and then Gage spit out a “Fuck you Alec.”

  Aha. He was talking to his brother. Elena had been astounded when Gage had told her he was one of triplets. At his size, she could only imagine how big of a baby he must have been. And while he said his sister Lulu was nowhere near his height or size, apparently Alec was just as tall and broad as his brother. She could practically feel her womb rejecting the idea of carrying even one baby that size. Let alone a second one or a third spare smaller one for the hell of it. All of her internal parts that scientifically classified her as a woman threatened to jump out into oncoming traffic if she even entertained the idea of two of them.

  Returning her concentration back to Gage she heard a few more murmured sentences, and then he seemed to snap. “Hell no she’s not my mate! Do you take me for some kind of idiot? There’s no way it could ever work out between someone like her and someone like me. Elena’s a hot piece of ass, but it’s not worth going through all of that trouble to make this something more than that.”

  In that moment, her heart felt like it was shriveling up in her chest and dying an excruciating death. Every dream she’d barely realized she’d been having, withered away and disappeared. Leaving gaping holes inside that she wasn’t sure could ever be filled again. Even her uterus, which had been protesting almost violently moments ago at the imaginary future triplets she and Gage might have one day, seemed to throb with pain now. How could she have been so wrong? Why in the world had she ever thought that it was going to be okay to hand her heart over for someone to love? Momma had been right. Men weren’t capable of deep emotions such as love.

  The self-preservation that had been ingrained into her from puberty kicked in and sa
id it was time to get the hell out of here. There was no way she was going to give that jackass the pleasure of knowing that he’d thoroughly crushed the heart she’d just learned to use. Moving as quickly and quietly as the highly trained man on the other side of that bedroom door, she pulled her pants on and slipped her feet into her tennis shoes. Luckily his apartment was on the ground floor, so all Elena had to do was slide the window open and ease out of it until she was standing in the grass outside of his building. She didn’t bother with taking the time to close her portal of escape. Instead, she ran to her SUV, digging her keys out as she hauled ass, and hopped in that sucker faster than the Duke boys could ever hope to get into the General Lee. Tearing out of the property’s parking lot, she didn’t bother to look back and see if Gage Ivanov had even realized she’d left him. Besides, with her too tight chest, lack of air to breathe, and the kind of pain that felt like it could take down a thousand pound elephant, Elena was sure she no longer felt anything at all for him. Yeah. He’d effectively killed everything inside of her that could have been constituted as loving, or otherwise known as stupid. So on that note, he could watch her dust fade behind her for all she cared.

  And somehow, she’d find a way to make herself believe that eventually.

  ***

  Gage

  He set the silent phone down on the couch beside him and listened to her scurry away from the door. Clenching every muscle, locking every bone in his body, he forced himself to listen to the rustling on the other side of his closed bedroom door as Elena frantically got dressed and prepared to leave. The faint sound of a sniffle almost broke his resolve to stay put. Knowing his mate, she hadn’t even realized that she was crying. The woman was simply too tough and too proud to ever admit to such weak emotions. It was one of the things he admired most about her. But he could go over all the reasons why he loved the woman who was now lifting his bedroom window to climb out of it, and it wouldn’t change the cold hard facts.