COWBOY ROMANCE: Devon (Western Contemporary Alpha Male Bride Romance) (The Steele Brothers Book 2)

by Amanda Boone

  He scoffed as the elevator doors dragged open. “Glad to see you’ve hopped on board.”

  Anita shook her head, her eyes scrunching in confusion. “See, I don’t get that. Why does everyone expect me to be so destructively selfish?” she asked, more to herself than to him as she made her way to her office.

  He followed her inside and stood in the center of it, his tall frame fixing itself in her space like a valiant Greek statue.

  “Because you are ridiculously competitive,” he replied at last.

  Somehow, he made it sound like it was a compliment.

  Anita stood over her desk, desperately sifting through her mess of papers for the Russia file that had embarrassingly alluded her for some reason. She nodded. “Well, whatever. Look, do you really need help from me, because I have a lot to do…”

  Bruce shrugged. “Well, I’ve got almost a decade of secret deals, foreign policy, and UN bullshit to study up on, so it would be nice if you would just do your job and brief me on the Russia situation.”

  Anita rolled her eyes so hard, it made her headache worse, then gestured for him to sit down. Once they were both at her desk with a large file sprawled across it, less than a foot separated their faces and Anita found it literally impossible to ignore his eyes. “Okay, well here we have Putin. The media will tell you that he is some dictator mastermind who is trying to take over the world, but it’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “Is it?” Bruce asked, looking up at her.

  Anita made the mistake of looking back, allowing their eyes to lock. For the first time in a long time, she felt her brain freeze. Every complex thought that had just been banging against the wall of her skull hung suspended in her head, frozen in time. It was a blissful silence she didn’t know how to interpret.

  “Yes. It is,” she eventually replied, kicking herself for the crush she could literally feel coming into being.

  Chapter Four

  Anita, having showered and changed into her pajamas after an uneventful kickboxing class, settled down in front of her plasma for some shitty reality television to calm her nerves. Ever since her charged conversation with Bruce, his impossibly blue eyes were all that she could think about. She wanted to talk to him about how he had gotten his job in the office, where he had come from, what his goals were in the UN, but at the same time, she couldn’t stand the way that he was constantly challenging her and subverting her authority, despite the fact that he was the new kid, not the other way around.

  She stuffed her face with yet another fork-full of poorly made spaghetti as the theme of Million Dollar Listing came across her television and filled her living room, but even watching Louis’ self-absorbed monologuing couldn’t lift her out of her thoughts. After another fifteen minutes of staring at her television but not actually seeing anything, she picked up her phone and called Jori.

  “Hello?” she answered in with a voice that indicated her mouth was full.

  “Hey you,” Anita sighed.

  “You sound tired. Today was an early day, thank God. So go to sleep,” Jori told her.

  Anita shook her head. “Are you kidding me? After what happened today?” she asked, referring to the massive failure that was the situation room.

  Jori just laughed. “You say that like you’re the one who has to face public outrage over decisions you didn’t even have a say in.”

  “Isn’t that what we all have to do?” she asked. “The president is the only one who can honestly say he has the power to change what happens in that room and he doesn’t seem any better for it.”

  “Oh boo hoo. You can complain to me about who has it worse, or you can tell me what the hell is going on with you and Bruce,” Jori demanded.

  Anita’s eyes went wide. “You saw us?” she asked.

  “You had lunch with him. Everyone saw you.”

  “Even Victoria?”

  “Even Victoria.”

  “Oh God.” Anita groaned.

  “Why does it matter what she thinks?” Jori asked.

  “Because she’s dating him. She’s the chief of staff. If she has it out for me, she can make my life twenty times more annoying for no real reason,” she replied miserably, too braindead to deal with jealous girl drama right now.

  “But he’s only been there for less than a day. How is she already dating him?” she asked.

  Anita shrugged. She could admit that it really didn’t make much sense. “Well, I think… he must have…”

  Jori scoffed. “Please, she’s probably planning on asking him out and hasn’t gotten up the urge to do it yet.”

  Anita rolled her eyes. “Ugh. There are too many single people in office. This feels like high school.”

  Jori laughed again. “I don’t know. I think it’s a welcome diversion from trying to stop the end of the world. But anyways, that’s why you should ask him out before she does.”

  Anita shook her head, the mere suggestion throwing her off. “I don’t think so… I don’t even know if I want to date him.”

  “That’s why you date him!” she exclaimed.

  “To find out if I want to date him?” she asked.

  Just when Jori was about to say something a shrill ring on her end of the line filled Anita’s earpiece. She glowered at this, moving her phone away from her. “What the hell is that, Williams?” she demanded, just as she heard the same ringing fill her own house.

  She dropped the phone and rushed to the kitchen. There, sitting right next to her phone book and her bottle of vodka, was her Blackberry, her government phone, the secure black line. Her eyes went wide as she picked it up and answered.

  Twenty minutes later, she had dropped everything, slipped on some yoga pants and rushed down the underground corridor to land right back in the situation room. She was seeing the inside of that much more often than she would have liked those days.

  Victoria, who, with her pink lip gloss and perfectly tousled hair, looked like she had stepped out of a bathtub, slammed a copy of a “classified” file in front of all of them, then clicked the television on, showing a PowerPoint slide of the convoy that had been blown up that morning. “Our ground sources can confirm that it was Putin,” she declared.

  President Holland, who looked equally put together in his leisure cashmere and reading glasses, stared earnestly at the entire room. “What. Do. We. Do?”

  Anita was the first to speak. “I don’t think we can use force. He will use that against us. Israel was our only real ally there, and now it’s obvious that that’s gone.”

  “Are you crazy? We have to use force,” Bruce cut in.

  Anita blinked twice. There he was, challenging her again. “An executive order?” she demanded. “To do what, destroy our international standing for the next hundred years?”

  Bruce shook his head, not even deigning her fit to look at as he argued with her.

  For the first time, Anita felt like she was the only person in the room taking anything personally. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t help herself. It was something with his voice, or his face, or his eyes…

  “No, a resolution,” he remarked.

  “So, you want to start a war?” Anita asked. Her heart was pounding against her chest, and for the first time in the two years that she had been the Secretary of Defense, she felt that she was standing at the front lines of a decision that could change the world forever.

  Bruce leaned into her in a way that made her feel like they were the only two people in the room. “A war is already happening. If we want to come out winning, we have to fight it,” he said curtly.

  Anita had to physically tear her eyes away from him and focus on the president. She didn’t want this at all, but she couldn’t for the life of her come up with another solution. Horace, the director of the CIA, spoke up first, his strong, New Yorker's accent filling the room. “Look. We don’t have a lot of time. If we push for a resolution, we got backing. And just doing it might be enough to get Putin to back off. This doesn’t mean we have to
go to war. It just shows that we’re willing to.”

  Jori spoke in a subdued voice. “We can sell it to the press. It’ll up your ratings and take everyone’s mind off of the train wreck that is the domestic situation.”

  The president nodded. “Bradshaw and Harrington, I need a proposal on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

  Anita gulped. She was about to spend the night with Bruce…. Drafting a resolution

  Chapter Five

  Anita stood outside, waiting for Bruce and wondering how the hell she had landed herself in this situation. Soon enough, she heard his footsteps behind her. She turned to find him staring down at him. It was the first time she had noticed how much taller than her he was. Being around someone so big didn’t make her feel small, it made her feel safe…

  “So, how do you want to do this?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I honestly don’t even know. I’m completely against this, you know.”

  He chuckled as the two of them began to take an aimless walk. “How the hell did Holland appoint a pacifist to Secretary of Defense?”

  “Because Secretary of Defense is just that, a defensive position, not an offensive one. Only a pacifist can be trusted not to get those two confused,” she replied.

  He nodded. “So you admit that you’re a pacifist?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I was in the military for almost eight years. Say what you will,” she said, shamelessly bragging about her resume.

  “Still a little young to be defending the free world,” Bruce muttered.

  Her lips shifted into a crooked smile. “I knew it. It was only a matter of time before you brought up my age to use it against me.”

  He shrugged. “You look like you’re skipping class, not helping run the country.”

  “Since when is looking young a bad thing?” she demanded.

  “Since you’re a woman in government.”

  Anita glowered, floored at his intelligent insight. “You’re right. I didn’t even think to comment on the fact that you look like you’re in your late twenties too. So what’s your story?” she asked.

  He scoffed. “Tonight isn’t about me.”

  Anita winced. She felt oddly embarrassed that she had attempted to make things personal, as if to find some common grounds between them, and he had rejected her nonetheless. She decided to pretend she agreed with him, rather than waste time dwelling on the rejection. “Right. We can go to my place. It’s only ten minutes away from here if we use the underground corridor.”

  Bruce nodded and the two of them made the trek back to her house in near silence. Once inside, she realized she had left the television on Bravo (the most girlish television station in existence) and neglected to clean up her home. She quickly realized that bringing him here was the most embarrassing thing she could have done. “Oh God,” she muttered as she dove for the remote, shut of Fashion Police and dropped on to the couch.

  He joined her there, leaving less than a foot of space between them. She couldn’t believe she was so close to him and in such a private space. All she could think about was his intoxicating scent and his bed head, and it took everything in her to pick up her legal pad and start writing. “The first thing we have to sight is grievances,” she stated, trying her best to ignore the way that her heart was fluttering in her chest.

  He nodded, leaning closer into her.

  She bit her lip. This was hard. This was really, really hard. She was supposed to be constructing a mental list of why Russia deserved to be ganged up on by the rest of the world, but all she could do was try to guess how big Bruce’s penis might be.

  “Do you have a pen?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Uh yeah.” How stupid was she? She had completely forgotten that she needed a pen to write stuff down.

  She twisted her torso so that she could pick one off of the coffee table to her left, but he reached over her, muttering, “I’ll get it.”

  They were less than three inches away from each other, and she simply couldn't control herself anymore. She reached for him as he leaned into her, and their lips touched just as the legal pad slipped off her legs and onto the ground. Anita wasn’t sure if it was the palpable sexual tension, the fact that she hadn’t had any action in months, the impossible stress that made her feel like she was constantly in a pressure cooker, or all of these things combined, but the fact of the matter was that she couldn’t resist him—and she no longer wanted to try.

  Their lips danced together to the sound of her ticking clock and her pounding heart. They pressed against each other as his tongue slipped into her mouth. She moaned, all but melting into him, her hands clutching his enviously thick head of hair. She could feel the warmth between her legs reaching an unbearable level, her hard nipples poking against the inside of her bra, and all she wanted was to be naked with him. He pressed his fingertips against her skin, caressing her as he began to suck on her neck. She shifted her weight so that he pressed down on top of her, and then wrapped her legs around his waist. They grinded together, the couch shifting back and forth ever so slightly as his bulge pressed against her belly, then her waist, then the inside of her thighs, then her crotch...

  She peeled his shirt off, a gasp escaping her lips as she took a good look at his washboard chest. A smile played on her lips, and she traced her fingers against his muscles.

  He chuckled at this, the dark sound only making her even more aroused, as he returned the favor, effortlessly pulling her t-shirt off. He massaged her nipples through her bra, the titillating sensation sending her into a frenzy. “What about the resolution,” she gasped breathlessly.

  He looked up at her. “The resolution can wait. This clearly can’t.”

  Anita peered back at him. Something was… off. Through her groggy mind, she could hardly figure out what it was, until right before he slipped her pants off. His eyes, which were a vibrant blue less than an hour ago, glowed a dark topaz color. How was that even possible? They'd been together for the better part of the last three hours, so when would he have put contacts in, or taken them out.

  Just as she was pondering this, he began to lick her through her green, Victoria Secret briefs, and she found it increasingly difficult to care about particulars like eye color. She bit her lip, reaching down to caress his head and willing him to take the panties off at well.

  “Yes… That feels so good,” she murmured, wondering in what universe she could possibly deserve sex with a man this beautiful, and she gasped as he began to suck on the inside of her thighs.

  Then, just when she was on the verge of her first man-made orgasm in months, from nothing more than a little over-the-panty action, it happened: he bit her. “Ouch!” she screeched as she sat up, ripping her legs from under him.

  He sat back from her, his hand covering his mouth.

  She glowered it him, panting as her excitement slowly began to dwindle away. “I’m, I just, wasn’t expecting that,” she managed, taking note of the fact that his eyes looked even more different than before.

  He nodded, standing up and hastily scouring around him for his shirt.

  She gasped, stumbling to her feet. “Wait. You don’t have to leave!” she cried, a little voice in the back of her head demanding to know why he was being so sensitive in the first place.

  He shook his head. “No, I really do.”

  Then, as he lifted his hand away from his mouth, Anita saw what he must have been trying to hide: two rows of sharp teeth, definitely not human. Her eyes went wide as her stomach flipped in fear. “What’s wrong with your mouth?” she asked, slowly stepping away from him.

  “Nothing,” he snapped.

  “But—”

  Once dressed, he took one last look around her house, then turned to leave.

  “Wait, you can’t go,” she cried, trying and failing to hide the desperation in her voice.

  “No. I have to. Trust me,” he said firmly.

  All Anita could hear was, “I don’t actually want to have sex with you,” and it m
ade her sick to her stomach.

  “But what about the resolution? You can’t just run away from your responsibilities,” she argued in a reproachful voice.

  He cocked his head to one side, glaring at her. “That's not what this is, and I resent the accusation. I’m not running anywhere. I’m being an adult about this.”

  Anita crossed her arms. “That’s exactly why you refuse to stay here and work with me,” she retorted.

  “Yeah, says the one who was tonguing me just a moment ago.”

  Anita’s jaw dropped. “You were tonguing me. And anyway, this whole thing was your idea. If you didn’t want to have sex with me, you shouldn’t have kissed me.”

  Bruce’s shoulders dropped and his face fell. He tossed his jacket onto the couch, and then slowly made his way toward her.

  She stood her ground, not really sure what to expect from him anymore.

  He placed a hand on her cheek. “It’s not that I don’t want to have sex with you. It’s just that I really fucking shouldn’t.”

  Anita rested her forehead on his chest, wondering what could possibly have been standing in their way, all the while hating herself for caring in the first place. “Why?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.” With that, he kissed her on her forehead and turned to leave again.

  Anita gulped. “But… the resolution….”

  He cast his gaze down, taking a moment to think, before he looked back up at her. “Just meet me in my office in a couple of hours and we’ll figure something out.”

  With that, he left.

  Chapter Six

  The next morning, the president was hit with a revelation—inspiration, if you will—and an exhaustedAnita, Bruce, and the rest of the cabinet were stuck trying to find a diplomatic way to execute his strategy.

  “The Palestinians and Israelis have agreed to a conference call in about five minutes.”

  Anita gave a sleepy nod, far too tired to be annoyed by the sound of Victoria’s voice. She gazed down at her legal pad, aimlessly eyeing her notes to keep her gaze from drifting to Bruce. When she had met him at four in the morning in his office, he acted as if nothing had happened between the two of them. And, if Anita didn’t know any better, it was almost like nothing had actually happened, for his eyes were blue and a normal set of teeth filled his mouth.