Rory thought about the lifetimes where they had been together for years and years. Would this be one of those times that she’d have his children. Would this be their final lifetime together? She tried not to dwell on it. She thought about how they were lucky to be alive and all that matter now was pleasing her beloved.
When he began to squirm at her touch, she knew that it was time to move on to the next step. She kissed him tenderly before she straddled his body, lowering herself onto his manhood, not realizing how much she had wanted it until he was buried to the hilt. His eyes flicked open, taking in the sight of her above him, and the smile that crossed his lips made her want to laugh. She was going to enjoy having this power over him, she could tell.
She rode him, trying to switch up her tempo that so that he wouldn’t know what to expect and in the process was starting to feel so good herself that she was groaning with pleasure. If you had asked her a week ago if she had liked making love on top she would have told you she hated it and yet here she was about to lose herself because she was trying so hard to please Michael.
“You’re trying to kill me!” he moaned and Rory smiled because she knew that he was close too.
They came together and it was a euphoric feeling as she spasmed while he came inside of her. It should have freaked her out but after all the lifetimes they had spent together, there was no one that she trusted more. Rory lay on top of his chest and knew that she would never be in this room again. Where Michael went, she would be sure to follow. Whatever she did, he would be there to support her because that was all they’d ever known and she wouldn’t want it any other way.
Chapter 10
“Crime seems to have gone down slightly in the metropolitan area,” the anchor from channel five news reported several weeks later. “No longer are witnesses reporting sights of monsters or berserk people. Don’t worry though, it seems that the masked man who has saved the people of New York countless times is still around. He was spotted as recently as last night.”
His pretty co-anchor added, “That’s right! Not only was this masked man with his trench coat spotted but there were sightings of him with a lady also wearing a mask. It seems that we have our very own justice league here in New York City.”
Rory watched the news from the huge television in her and Michael’s living room. It still seemed weird to call the lavish penthouse her own, but he had assured her that it was her home. Rory still couldn’t believe the strange road that fate had thrown her down and neither did her parents. When she told them she’d met the billionaire while out for a run, they didn’t believe her until Michael got on the phone and told them himself. It was a much more believable story than being the chosen savior of Earth and her alien companion.
Michael had gone back to working in the office building below the penthouse and Rory had gone back to being his assistant. Most of the time, she helped him decide how many charitable events were too many to attend and helped him fix his superhero costume if it got ripped or torn. Lately the job description had changed to joining him stop robbers, vandals and assaults. The news had caught wind of it and now they were running with this whole justice league thing. She thought of her old co-worker, Max, and wondered what his theories were this time.
She was now a week into her semester at Columbia University and although it was harder than she imagined, she was so happy to be there at all. She hadn’t declared her major yet, but she was almost certain that she was going to choose counseling. In fact if there was a way that she could help girls like her get on their feet when they ran to New York to chase their dreams, she would do it in a heartbeat. By the time she graduated, she would figure out a way to help young people find a job and have hope after the city inevitably kicked their asses. She knew that Michael would be there to help. It would be a charitable donation he was most interested in.
Their hunch about Michael no longer being ageless had also been correct. They were visited by one of his kind shortly after the Dark Society from Nebula Six had been vanquished. “You were one of our best soldiers,” he told Michael. “This version of yourself will be the final version of yourself.”
Michael clasped Rory’s hand tightly. “It will be good to slow down,” he said brightly. “I’ve finally got everything I need.
So Rory’s life became a strange routine. She’d wake up and go to her classes, she’d come home and have dinner with the love of her life and then he’d share his memories of their past lives. Of the people they were and family they’d had. Rory would stare in wonder when she would look up her previous life’s offspring and they were real tangible people. She almost felt sad because she had all these strains of family that were all completely unaware that their parents, grandparents and so forth had been reborn again. Even if she reached out those that were still alive, would they believe her?
“We will have a family again,” Michael told her on a day that she cried as she realized one of her former children had lived just blocks from her old apartment. “I’m sure of it, and this time you will get to watch them grow without the threat of the enemy hanging over your head.”
“I’m sorry that I’m so emotional about all of this it’s just so strange,” Rory replied. “I spent the last five years of my life thinking that I was utterly alone and here I am a mother already. If I had known that maybe I would have stopped feeling sorry for myself.”
It was at that moment that Michael asked her, “Do you want to see something amazing?” Before she could say no, he was taking her by jet back to England and guiding her to a place that was bustling town. He guided her to a spot in the middle of the town. It reminded her of an old village the way all the shops were all surrounding a small town square. “This. This right here is where I met you for the very first time all those many years ago.”
At that moment, Rory could feel it too. They had a history that so many other people would die for. She had more children and grandchildren than most. Michael had brought so much into her life that it made fighting the enemy worth it.
So as she listened to the television call her and her beloved New York’s Justice League, she couldn’t get mad. It was like Michael had said. Earth was a simple unaware planet. They had no idea how many sacrifices she and Michael had to make to protect it. How many times they were separated and found each other again. Now they were finally free.
She grabbed her backpack and headed to the elevator. When she got to the eleventh floor the doors opened and he stood beside her.
“Off to school?” he asked.
She nodded, “I’ll be in sociology until three.”
Michael leaned over and kissed her hair. “I’ll be waiting for you.” He reminded.
“I know. You keep on changing the world.”
He smiled at her warmly. “You as well.”
The elevator opened on the lobby floor and the pair went their separate ways. Michael went to speak with receptionist about greeting a new client when he arrived later in the day and the other went out the door and into the sun to wait for the bus. She wondered if her true identity was now as obvious as Michael’s had been that day and if people asked who she was what she would tell them.
“I am the savior of Earth.” She would tell them triumphantly. “I am a hero.” Then she shook her head as the bus arrived and she climbed on. This world was already too obsessed with superheroes and comic books, and she didn’t know if they could handle the truth. After all, the truth was often worse than fiction.
THE END
Bonus 14 of 20
Hard Tack, Hard Loving
Description
Nate Hawke returns to his hometown of Remlow Creek to remind himself of where he came from and of the simple joys of running an old town supply store surrounded by nature and horses as far as the eye can see. Whenever the fast-paced life of a New York businessman becomes too much of a grind, there is always escape. There is always the Creek.
But when one of his homeward pilgrimages is disrupted by a one night stand from hi
s city life turning up at the Creek too, the seductive allure of one world begins to bleed into his simpler country existence. Very pregnant but no less sensual than the last time Nate saw her. This golden-haired temptress draws in not only Nate, but his best friend Leo, showing them both that some loves are better shared.
Chapter 1
Nate returned to Remlow Creek early Monday morning. His glossy black car crunching over the dirt roads that constituted a fair number of the minor fairways of the little town. The sun rose over endless grass fields, ascending into a cloudless sky, pale blue and fringed by mountains. The driver, up front behind a glass privacy panel, of, guided the car along a curving path made from stones toward a large brick building with an attached stable. When it glided to a stop, there was no sound at all.
Getting out and setting immaculately polished shoes on the red stone path, Nate rose to his full height, adjusted his cuffs, and leaned in by the driver’s side door to thank his driver, who nodded back, smiling. The car pulled away, painfully shiny and whirling with reflected sunlight Nate strode up the path toward his red brick home away from home. The large double doors opened to him, and the Hard Tack Supply Store ushered him inside, back into familiar, indeed ancestral, surroundings.
A lot had changed here since Nate had first left the place. Not just changed, but updated. The original house had been standing for generations, repaired and rebuilt so many times that nothing of it now was from the Hard Tack’s initial construction. There were still the old rustic wood floors, old windows in cracked frames and poorly varnished interior furnishings. When Nate had left for the big city, that was what the Hard Tack had been— a small place in a small town. However, once he had inherited the place from his family, all that had changed.
In truth, the Hawke family hadn’t had much use for the old house in quite a while. Their business interests were diversified to the point that they had moved out when Nate had been a boy, and Nate himself had only gone back there for vacations, or to see those who had stayed behind. By the time Nate had taken possession of the Hard Tack, it had filtered down in ownership through a series of uncles and cousins. He really had no need for the place himself, financial stability and his family’s business holdings making him well off to the point that he might no longer need to work a day in his life, if he so chose. But like his work, running a publishing house focused on seeking out new talents and allowing them to be heard, Nate found he still had something of a passion for the old home, and Remlow Creek’s small community.
The Hard Tack offered something of an escape for Nate.
For a while he could leave the confines of the big city, step outside of his office and into someplace, not simpler necessarily, just a little immersion into the communal politics of a small town could tell a man exactly how complicated places with populations in the triple digits could be- but different, in a way that Nate needed. He could breathe out there, and there was something to be said for running the store itself, the personal, hands-on skills needed to do that job a welcome change from the more restrained, thoughtful demands of his day job.
Whenever life got to be too much, the Hard Tack was there to welcome him with open doors.
Nate headed upstairs first, to the apartment found on the second floor where he had lived for some portion of his childhood. Once it had been largely bare, during the lean times when the Hawke family had been unable to afford much, but Nate had thrown money at the Hard Tack for months until it was more fit for living. Now, the floors and wallpaper had been completely redone, the floor plan changed to favor the large, open spaces that Nate preferred, given that he was the only person currently residing there, if only temporarily. The shop below had received the brunt of his renovations, new money flowing into the old town and transforming the Hard Tack’s storefront into something much easier to deal with, while still retaining the rustic atmosphere that Nate enjoyed so much.
His bedroom was filled with new furnishings, a large oak closet holding a series of casual clothes that better suited Remlow Creek than the crisp black suit he had worn on the way down. Normally he would have changed before traveling, but last night had been a busy one.
It had also been a fun one, no doubt about that. The bar he had attended had been filled with good times, laughter, and a particularly attractive raven-haired woman that Nate had spent his time with, pale skin wonderful in the nighttime dark, little red dress flowing around her as they got drunker and drunker together, and then closer and closer. He could still smell her perfume on his jacket, the scent of flowers clinging to his collar, reminding him of the softness of her body pressed against him, the sound of her voice rising in ecstasy.
Ah, Mona…
It was possible, Nate supposed as he pulled on a pair of jeans, that this was not her real name. Plenty of people, both women and men, went to bars like the one he had been at for the anonymity after all. The idea was somewhat troublesome, but Nate pushed it out of his mind with relative ease. It wasn’t like he would ever see the woman again, as fetching as she was. He finished dressing, throwing on a plaid shirt and a flashy buckled belt, the kind people in the South seemed to really appreciate, for reasons that Nate had yet to truly fathom. Now more appropriately clothed, he headed back downstairs, thinking wistfully of the taste of Mona’s lips against his, the way she had bounced in his lap with youthful energy. He was only thirty-three, but the rigors of his work sometimes made Nate feel unreasonably old. It had been nice, with that in mind, to be with some cute twenty-something again.
Somehow, the floorboards at the bottom of the stairs retained their characteristic creak, despite having been replaced in their entirety. The sound was a familiar companion, had been with Nate through much of his childhood, there at every morning creeping down the stairs, teenage nights sneaking back into his room after being out far longer than he should have, and now adult days spent occupying this space as a getaway from his life in the city. That sound signified home, to him.
There were other noises too, issuing from within the main ground floor room that served as the shop floor, the sounds of someone moving within. Nate slipped around the corner and into the main room just in time to see a taller, lanky man slide into the seat behind the counter, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. He rapped a rhythmic little series of taps against the lacquered wood, then shot Nate the finger-guns.
“Morning, guy,” Leo said, grinning. Nate nodded as he passed, swinging around the side of the counter toward the back room, eyeing shelves as he went to see what needed restocking out front. Leo could be relied upon for much, but keeping the shelves filled with merchandise had never been one of them; Nate had always felt this was okay. The younger man was largely here for companionship, anyway.
Leo was a transplant from New York in a more complete way that Nate himself was. Where Nate had the benefit of having grown up in Remlow Creek, Leo just liked being here, having been taken with Nate on one of the latter’s many trips out that way to spend some time running the store. Something in the rustic surrounds, the simplicity of purpose that went with life away from the big city, appealed to Leo on some deep level even beyond what Nate himself felt. After a few more trips tagging along with his friend, Leo eventually asked if he could simply set up shop in Remlow Creek full-time, running the Hard Tack while Nate was away.
The idea had been a surprising one to hear, but it wasn’t exactly a bad one either.
After all, Leo’s own business interests were largely self-sustaining, requiring little from the man himself in order to generate income. He could afford to sit out in a small town if he wished, providing basic ranch supplies to people he could come to know on a first-name basis and simply luxuriating in the open spaces and fresh air that one simply could not get in the confines of New York. As far as Nate knew, Leo had not told anybody here where he had come from. He had left the past in New York so that it was his own choice to what extent he would dip in and out of it. As a consequence of this, he hadn’t left Remlow Creek since he had first co
me to stay there, nearly two years earlier.
He had simply walked away, as Nate never could have. It was very possible that Leo hadn’t even done so much as place a phone call to his family back home; they knew he was out here, but his suddenly newfound lifestyle apparently rubbed them the wrong way, such that neither party particularly desired to spend much time around the other. He had made a clean break with his past, and was now a fixture at the Hard Tack even as Nate flitted in and out. In some ways, he wished he could have some of Leo’s conviction regarding the place, but in others, well, Leo didn’t get to go off and have anonymous sex with cute girls in bars, now did he?
This was not, however, because he wouldn’t be able to. Though Nate was thoroughly heterosexual, even he could recognize that Leo was, in a word, devastatingly handsome. At twenty-seven, he still harbored much of the energy of his youth, proud and leonine features sitting atop a body that bounded and gestured vibrantly when excited, ropes of muscle easily visible at every moment. His penchant for tight shirts and pants did little to make Nate, at thirty-three, feel any more secure. It was like he was sharing his shop with a younger, photo-negative version of himself. Even his blond hair contrasted with Nate’s own darker locks. Between the two of them, it was clear who the eye candy was.
But then, Leo hadn’t spent the previous night with luscious little Mona in his lap, now had he?
The morning passed them by, with Nate’s thoughts running roughly along that line for most of it. It was hard to keep his mind from straying back to the young woman he had slept with the night before. The tastes and sounds and sensations of her, her body, her voice, everything, filling his imagination from end to end, dragging Nate back into the recent past whenever he began to draw himself forward into the present. Stocking the shelves became a pleasant, drifting thing, less of a chore and more of an opportunity to fantasize. Talking with Leo became a distraction from that, and Nate found himself pausing noticeably when he should have been replying, letting sentences drop and words draw themselves out into silence without meaning to. Debauchery had not made him a good conversational partner.
A Sugar Daddy’s Secret: Billionaire Romance Page 42