by Amelia Jade
His lips were just as soft as she’d remembered them, warm too. Fingers grasped her lower back and pulled her tighter to him. Kaitlyn moaned into his mouth instinctively, her mouth parting to receive his tongue at the same time. Warm and hungry she let him in, arching her back.
“Not here,” she gasped as his right hand draped itself across her inner thigh and slid up toward her crotch. “I’m not interested in getting caught.”
“Right. Okay.” Without asking he picked her up from the table and started carrying her toward the door.
“Whoa there,” she said, slipping from his delightfully strong and muscled arms, trailing her fingers over his biceps, momentarily distracted.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, bringing her back to the moment.
“Uh, yeah. I’ll walk. We’re not married. No carrying over thresholds. I’m a lady and I have to draw a limit somewhere.”
And that limit certainly isn’t fucking your boss. Twice.
So where was her limit?
Kaitlyn spent the entire walk back to her quarters—they certainly weren’t going to use his bed—thinking about that question, and one more.
Should she tell him before they hooked up again?
Chapter Thirteen
Kaitlyn
The door closed behind him and she shivered in a mixture of delight, nervous anticipation, and outright nerves as Aric stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around hers. She swayed back into him, able to feel the hardness of his muscles against her. The damn things had to be carved from diamonds they were so hard. How was that even legal?
His breath washed over the side of her face as he leaned down and somehow contorted his body so he was able to kiss her neck. She’d always had a soft spot for that, and her body reacted immediately. Blood raced to her extremities until her nipples strained against the soft cotton sports bra she’d worn, thankful yet again for the casual nature of their meetings.
As hunger stirred between her legs in anticipation of what would be happening, Kaitlyn was overcome with emotion. What was she doing? This is what had gotten her pregnant in the first place, a careless lack of regard for sleeping with someone, and now she was doing it again.
True, but what was the worst that could happen? She’d already gotten pregnant. His child was growing inside of her even now. She knew; she’d double checked with a spare test she’d brought. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was about as confident as she was going to get until she went to the doctor when they got back.
“Relax,” Aric purred into her ear, tugging gently on her earlobe. “Here.”
He pushed her slightly while pulling on one arm. The end result was she moved a step away from him, but ended up spinning. That gave her a front-row seat as he peeled his shirt off in front of her, revealing one of the reasons why she was doing what she was.
“You know,” she said, stepping forward and dragging the tip of one finger over his heavily muscled chest and then across his abs one at a time, feeling the swells and lows—“Hey, are you flexing right now?”
He grinned sheepishly.
She batted his stomach, making him flinch. “You don’t need to impress me, mister. I may not be thinking with the right part of my body right now…Okay scratch that, I’m definitely not thinking with it, but you’re already ninety-nine out of a hundred in the looks department.”
Aric laughed. “Should I be flattered you rate me so highly, or insulted that you can’t get over the little detraction keeping me from being perfect?”
“You’re too tall. It hurts my neck to kiss you,” she complained. “Great to look at, but not practical now that I’ve actually seduced you and want to kiss you.”
His jaw dropped and the big man seemed to shrink several inches.
Kaitlyn waggled a finger at him. “Now now, don’t go getting all hurt over it. It’s not your fault you’re tall.”
By now he was sputtering, trying to get a word in. “Wait a minute!” he finally cried. “Now wait just a dang minute here.”
She paused, waiting for him to speak. “Well, what is it?”
“You did not seduce me. I seduced you!”
Kaitlyn just laughed. “Of course. Because a guy like you totally needed to seduce someone like me.” She didn’t mean for it to sound as self-deprecating as it did. After all, she was more than confident with who she was, having had long enough to adjust to that fact.
If her own voice startled her, Aric’s reaction stunned the hell out of her. A mask of sheer anger dropped into place. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked quietly.
“It wasn’t an insult against you. Easy there, big guy,” she said, trying to just shrug it off.
“I never thought it was. It sounded like you were insulting yourself.” His eyes glittered like ocean waves after the sun emerged from behind the clouds.
“In a joking manner I was,” she admitted, confused. “I mean, you’re you. Whether you want to act humble or not, the truth is you’re a walking beacon for sexual appeal. I’m not.”
“Don’t you say that,” he all but snarled. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and that’s not just a phrase designed to get me into your pants.”
She blushed. “You’ve already been in them,” she pointed out.”
Aric’s expression softened. “I know, and I wish I’d been more attentive to you then. Something I intend to rectify.”
“More attentive?” she asked. “I think you did a pretty good job.”
“We’ll see. That’s not what we’re talking about though.”
“No?” Kaitlyn’s lips moved back and forth. “What are we talking about then?”
“How I don’t like your suggestion that a woman like you doesn’t need to be seduced. That a guy like me could easily have you.” He frowned. “Nerves go both ways, Kaitlyn, despite what you might think.”
Aric was nervous about getting together with her? That was news to her. Why should he be? He was a walking advertisement for sex and beauty. The tall frame with lean, hard muscle. A smooth face with perfectly defined features. A jaw to drool over and hair that was always styled to look sharp, showing he cared about the way he looked. What the hell did he have to be gun-shy about?
“Well, I’ll tell you that you don’t need to have any nerves,” she said boldly, walking toward him. Where was she getting this sudden boost of confidence from? This was not her. What kind of hormones was this pregnancy introducing into her, dammit? She was acting like a crazed sexpot who needed to get laid right now.
And that’s exactly how she felt. There was a searing fire between her legs now that hadn’t been there twenty minutes ago, and its cravings to be touched, licked, and filled with Aric’s hard cock were not going away. In fact they were getting harder and harder to ignore.
“I don’t have any now,” he replied with a mischievous grin. “Now that I have seduced you, I know how to pleasure you.”
“Do you now?” she countered.
He stepped forward and picked her up, holding her above the ground while she wrapped her legs most of the way around his waist. “I think you’re more than well aware of the answer to that question,” he teased, biting down on her neck while she ran her hands across the back of his, feeling the short hairs there.
“I was pretty drunk,” she pointed out, “as were you. How sure are you that it went down the way you remember?”
“Fairly positive.” His tongue flicked over her collarbone, sucking the air from her lungs.
“How come?” She dug her fingers into his shoulders.
“Because you came back for more.”
Kaitlyn pulled back, pouting slightly. “That’s unfair. You can’t just assume that it’s not because I’m ridiculously horny and you’re the only guy I know.”
“Oh, I can and am assuming it’s not just that.”
He walked toward the bed and laid her back into the covers, until he was on top of her. Now his hands were free to roam her body and roam they did. He was a damn magician
with his fingers and Kaitlyn stared up at him as he touched her everywhere and yet somehow avoided the spots she most wanted him to explore.
With a growl of anticipatory pleasure, she pulled him back down to her, kissing him furiously. Aric responded, finally sliding one hand up over her breast and tweaking her nipple gently through the dual layers of fabric. Kaitlyn shivered and felt her lower lip curl under her teeth. Aric watched her face for a moment before he resumed kissing her. She was loving every moment, and this time she’d be able to remember it completely.
The lights went dim for a moment, interrupting their frantic attempts to disrobe each other. Kaitlyn looked at Aric.
Aric looked right back at her. Then as one their eyes slowly went up to the lights, just as they came back to full brightness. Both of them blinked, unsure of what to say. She was about to open her mouth when the entire room suddenly jumped, spilling them into the bed.
“What the hell was that?” she asked as alarms began to blare in the distance.
Aric’s face had gone still, his eyes half-lidded. They were facing her, but she could tell he wasn’t seeing her just then. He was focusing on something else. His face went pale.
“Stay here,” he said, getting off the bed and buckling up his pants as he headed for the door. He didn’t bother to stop for his shirt.
“Aric? Where are you going?” She sat up, pulling her shirt back over her breasts, not bothering to push them back into the bra. Her attention was elsewhere.
“Stay here,” he repeated, pausing as he opened the door to peer into the hallway.
When he turned back to look at her Kaitlyn gasped. His eyes were glowing blue! The color had swallowed up his iris and nearly filled the entire eye. It had to be a trick of the light, because a moment later it was gone, but she would never forget that vivid image.
“Lock the door behind me. Whatever you do, don’t open it unless it’s me, or someone I specifically send. Promise me that.”
“I promise,” she said, scared now. The alarms were growing louder. “But Aric, what’s—”
He was out the door before she could ask him what was going on. Scared and now completely alone, she scurried over to the door and slapped the locking mechanism. The doors weren’t the thickest of metal, but it would keep out any less than determined invaders.
Why anyone would be coming for her she wasn’t quite sure, but it helped her feel safe.
Now all she could do was sit back and berate herself for asking “what’s the worst that could happen” when deciding whether or not to sleep with Aric again. Clearly she had no idea how far the world was willing to go to make her regret that question.
Kaitlyn just hoped Aric would be safe. They were on a military base after all. If something was wrong, it meant fighting, and despite his talk of training with the Guard, she knew Aric wasn’t a fighter.
Chapter Fourteen
Aric
He went to the surface and found it in chaos.
Soldiers were running in all directions. Most looked organized, but enough of them bore panicked stares or stood looking around unsure to tell him that whatever it was, it was bad. What finally caught his eye, however, was the mass of smoke pouring out of the tunnel entrance.
“Oh shit,” he whispered, knowing full well where that tunnel led.
At the bottom of the deep shaft was a huge cavern, filled with banks of equipment and scientists monitoring it 24/7. There was also an entire detail of battlesuits and a dragon on duty at all times, watching the other thing in the room. The thing that was the entire reason behind the base existing in the first place.
The portal. It was the energy door that bound this place to the Outsiders’ home world. It was from there they would eventually pour forth once the radiation on the other side eventually decayed. Early in the days after discovery, in an effort to stem the tide of the first group of Outsiders that came through, the government had authorized the use of a nuclear weapon.
They’d fired it through the portal, and it had exploded. The plan had backfired however, and a door that was five feet high by three or so wide had exploded in size to nearly a hundred feet tall, the portal itself absorbing much of the nuclear energy and using it to expand.
It hadn’t taken the radiation with it though, and now the ground on the far side was littered with it, making it essentially impossible for even the toughest Outsiders to get through. They’d tried several times since, but the dragons and their human counterparts had cut down anything that came through with ease, the radiation weakening it too much.
Now though, it looked like something had changed.
A mighty roar from overhead caught his attention and Aric looked skyward as a red dragon, the biggest he’d ever seen, plunged toward the tunnel at a steep angle, tucking its wings in at the last moment as it plummeted into the bowels of the earth.
“Well that seals it,” he muttered, breaking out into a jog, and then a sprint. If the situation were dire enough for a dragon to fly around in broad daylight, then it could only mean one thing.
Outsiders had made it through.
A situation as dire as that, Aric couldn’t stay back and do nothing. He was a dragon, one of the few who could combat the monsters on near equal footing. Although his heart longed for him to go to Kaitlyn, to tell her the truth, he didn’t have time. His help would be needed down below, and it would be needed now.
“Where are you going?” a soldier screamed as he jogged past, trying to stop him.
“I am a fighter,” he said, his dragon shining through. “My place is down there. Are you going to stop me?”
The soldier looked over his shoulder at the tunnel entrance and the smoke spewing into the sky, and then back at Aric. “I don’t recognize you.”
He rolled his eyes and looked to the sky, unleashing a blast of his power straight up. The soldier balked and couldn’t throw himself out of the way fast enough.
“That’s what I thought,” Aric muttered, resuming his earlier pace, the ground moving past in a near blur as he pushed strength into his legs, propelling him forward in great leaps. The pavement crunched a little under his feet as he landed and then pushed off again.
He didn’t slow as the tunnel entrance came and went, charging headlong down the slope, into the bowels of the earth and whatever awaited him below. Behind him came units of battlesuits and human heavy-weapons teams, but they were moving too slow. Had the entire base been caught unawares?
Aric’s ears picked up the crash of battle long before he saw it. Men were shouting. Dragons roared. Weapons fired and something big whooshed, probably the red dragon’s fiery breath. The lower he went the more the smoke hovered in the passageways, providing obstacles to his sight, forcing him to crouch down.
A very human scream ripped up the tunnel and then was silenced with fatal swiftness, cutting off sharply. Aric snarled to himself and ran faster.
He was moving at a full sprint when the slope suddenly leveled out and discharged him into the middle of everything. The chaos was overwhelming. Skidding to a halt, he was forced to take a moment to take in the madness and figure out where to go.
Everywhere he could see humans and dragons battled with the Outsiders. This was the first glimpse Aric had gotten of them in person. They were tall, standing over six feet in height, with a glossy black exoskeleton that reminded him for all the world of ant armor. They resembled humans, though their arms and legs ended in stumps that he knew could be reshaped at will. Some even now bore weapons. Swords, axes, or clublike maces.
In the midst of it all a red dragon was going berserk. The mighty creature fought with everything at its disposal. An Outsider became a horrifying melted wax figure as it breathed fire across the attacker. Another was impaled by the spikes at the end of the beast’s tail, sent hurtling across the room under the impact.
Yet another disappeared under its claw, leaving behind little more than some purple goo and a deflated-looking corpse.
Aric let it fight. A scream caught his
attention as a human battlesuit went down, an Outsider looming up, its sword ready to plunge down and kill the hapless warrior.
A battle cry ripped from his throat and he lifted his arms, turning side-on to the evil creature. Left arm extended in front of him, he tapped his right hand on the palm and pulled back. As if from nowhere a bow materialized in his hand, made from pure cackling energy. The arrow formed as he drew back the string, a condensed bolt of lightning that snapped and sizzled.
Cold, cool, and uncaring, his eyes picked out the slight opening the human weapons had created in the armor or whatever it was, and he let fly. The lightning arrow flew true, impaling the creature and flinging it backward in a spray of purple as the bolt discharged its energy inside the creature.
Without waiting to see how the human fared he found another target. And another. At one point he risked glancing at the portal. Again, he’d never seen it in person, but from the reports he’d heard, it was supposed to be larger. And with purple borders, not as yellow as the sun. Something was very, very wrong.
No more creatures were coming through, but the ones that were there were already causing enough havoc. They’d worked around the human lines and as he watched one of them escaped and ran up the tunnel. He sent a bolt after it, but without a wound to already exploit it could only tumble the thing to the ground.
Aric ran after it, fear spurring him on to great speeds as he went after the creature. It moved with a weird shuffle-hump gait, yet it could somehow still move with great speed. He caught up to it at the top of the tunnel. A straight shot awaited him as it tried to escape. He brought both hands up in front of him.
It was time for something more high-powered than the standard bow. A new creation materialized in his hands. Lifting the crossbow to his chest, he sighted and fired in one smooth motion. This time lightning spat in a solid burst. It went right through the creature’s shoulder, lopping off the arm.
A piercing wail split the sky, but the creature kept going. Aric was so stunned he didn’t pursue.
“Look out!” One of the oncoming battlesuits pointed frantically behind him.