Flamingo Fugitive (Supernatural Bounty Hunters 5) (14 page)

Francine came into the room and waved.  “Hey, still here.”

Ronald beamed, and Stone had the urge to punch his father for looking at his flamingo that way. 

“Sit down m’dear, you look pale, have something to eat.”

Francine slumped into a chair.  “Thank you, I am a little hungry.”

“I’ve got some leftover casserole.”

His rhino pushed at him to do something.  He had to take care of her.  Stone kneeled next to her and took her hand.  When she was sure he wasn’t slapping the cuff back on, she let him.  “Or I can get you something else, I could fetch you something - anything you want.  What do you want?  Pizza?  Chinese?  Chicken?  Ummm…”

His dad blinked at him, but Francine just shrugged.  “Casserole will be nice, thanks.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

There was no awkward silence.  The air between father and son was slightly testy, but only in so far as they were two big men who rarely admitted to having emotions, never mind identifying them and trying to talk about them.

So instead through their meal, they ignored whatever feelings were floating around, and Ronald told her some embarrassing stories about Stone as a young man.  Or should she say,
Ronny
.  Even her flamingo snickered at that.

Stone seemed a little edgy, but maybe that was because he feared she was going to bolt at any moment.  Although she thought the concern in his eyes went a little deeper than that.  She hadn’t asked him why he wasn’t dragging her to the cops yet; she was just grateful for it.

It was a truly enormous meal in which she was encouraged to eat twice the amount she normally would – because two rhinos couldn’t possibly believe that one bird could eat so little.  Ronald said good night and Stone
(she couldn’t call him Ronny)
took her to his room.  Or, what was his room growing up.  It didn’t appear to have changed much since he left.  There were an awful lot of posters of models in swimwear.  He actually blushed a little when she saw them.

Stone rifled through his wardrobe and passed her a huge black t-shirt that said ‘hornmeister’ on it.  “You can sleep in that.”

She considered getting undressed in the bathroom, but why bother.  It’d just start an argument about her not running off, and he’d seen everything anyway.  Francine stripped out of her clothes and enjoyed the fact that he watched in open-mouthed appreciation, frozen to the spot as she bared everything to him.

She pulled on the shirt and gave him a wan smile.  “Bet you had lots of girls up here.”

“You’d be the first,” he admitted shyly.

“No way.  Guy like you?”  He got looks
everywhere
he went.

Stone rolled his shoulders and pulled off his own shirt.  She only wobbled ever so slightly at the sight.  He was even better than he remembered.  Her bird sighed, and Francine clamped her legs together.  With everything that was happening, now was not a good time to give in to her horniness.

“Yep, I wasn’t exactly a ladies man in my youth.”

“Your dad doesn’t mind me being here, does he?”  Another reason not to try and ravish him – his dad was in the next room.  Not all families were the same, but she would die before having sex within a mile radius of her prim mother.

Stone snorted.  “Since I know what my dad’s been doing with the neighbor lady in the living room, I doubt he’ll mind.”

“They make a nice couple.”

“Ummm,” he grunted as he removed his pants.  She pretended she didn’t notice the fact that he was completely naked.  Her flamingo did the panting in private for both of them.

“Is that so bad?” she asked, firmly keeping her eyes north of the equator.

He looked pensive.  “Ever since my mom left he’s been telling me that people who take mates are idiots and that I’d be an idiot to get mated.  Now he’s turned around and told me he’s mating with Magda.  It’s unbelievable.”

“Parents do the craziest things,” she murmured.

“Yeah.”

“My dad died when I was little, and my mom told me over and over how he was her true mate and she’d never get over him.  Then she got re-mated when I was seven to another flamingo shifter.  They have two daughters.  They’re happy.  And it was always a problem that I wasn’t.  I can’t even count the number of times my mom told me just to pretend to be happy, to act like we were one big, happy family.” 
It all came out in a rush
.  She didn’t know where it came from, and at the end of it, he was staring at her in surprise.  She’d never admitted that to anyone before.  Even her flamingo was shocked that she divulged all that to Stone.

She clasped her hands together.  “You say something quick, I’m feeling very vulnerable right now.”

“Oh, ah… I’m sorry about the smell of body spray – I thought it was awesome to drown myself in it when I was a teenager.”

Francine erupted into peals of laughter.  “I can barely smell it,” she gasped between hiccups.

“Really?  Can't you smell that?  I’m almost gagging.”  Slowly, he walked toward her.  She considered fleeing, but where would she go?  “You smell amazing.”  He rubbed his face over hers and then her neck.

“Flamingos have poor senses of smell,” she breathed as his lips grazed her collarbone.  “It’s one of the reasons why so few find their true mates – we can’t scent them.”

He moaned into her neck.  “Well, you’ll just have to take my word for it that I smell amazing, too.”

“I’ll bet.”  He probably smelled as sweet as he tasted.

“Lord, feathers, you smell like chocolate peanut butter fudge cake.”  He dragged his tongue over her skin, and she squeaked in pleasurable alarm.

“Should I be offended that I smell like a calorie-laden cake?”  Hell, at that moment he could have told her she smelled like fish heads and she probably wouldn’t have minded.

“No, feathers, you smell like heaven.  Can’t believe my luck in finding you.”

Yes, but he found her because it was his job.
  “How much are you getting paid to catch me?”

Stone stilled, but an arm tightened around her waist.  “It’s not about the money.  I didn’t want someone else coming after you – someone who might not be so gentle with you.”

Francine felt another surge of truth coming, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.  “You know when I saw you outside my apartment I actually thought you’d come there for me.”  She couldn’t even stop the note of brittleness that entered her voice.

“I did,” he said, affronted by her presumption.

“No, you didn’t, don’t lie.”

He let go of her and folded his arms.  “I’ve been looking for you since the moment you ran out of my apartment without a word.”

“Not very hard,” she sniffed.

“I didn’t have your phone number or even your last name, I’ve been going through every Francine in the city to find you – I was up to the Fs.”

Her clingy bird swooned.  “Really?”

“Really.” He scooped up his pants and pulled out the feather.  “You think I carry around the feathers of all the women who shed in my bedroom?”

A spiteful voice told her that he’d be more likely to have cat hair in his bedroom before she came along, but she kept that to herself.  “But that Caitlyn woman…”

“Is the bane of my life,” he growled.

She was thoroughly ashamed of being needy but, she had to ask.  “And me?”

“The light of my life.”  He blushed.

Francine flushed prettily.  “You don’t know me.”

He took one of her hands and rubbed his thumb over her palm.  “I know you well enough, and in time…”  He left that dangling, while he smiled, hopefully.

“That won’t happen if I’m in prison.”

He stopped and sighed.  “What do you suggest I do?”

“Right now my only option for staying a free woman is to kill someone.”

“I see… wait, what?!”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Francine explained everything.  She took him through the night with Michael, the jackass trying to force himself on her and what happened subsequently.  She told him about trying to talk to Michael and his blackmail surprise.

Stone paced the room as his beast roared.  “I’ll kill him.  I will fucking murder him for this.”

Francine perched on the edge of the bed.  “That won’t exactly help my case.”

“Fine, I’ll beat him up.”  And rip something off that he could live without.  An ear maybe,
or perhaps something further south…

She rubbed her forehead.  “So then he can say that after I tried to kill him I sent my enormous boyfriend to do the job for me.”

He stopped and smiled goofily.  “I’m your boyfriend?”

“Focus,
Ronny
.”  Francine sighed.  “What am I supposed to do?  I can’t kill someone.  Not on purpose anyway.”

“You said he’d call you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, he gave me a burner cell.”

Stone closed his eyes, focusing on calming his animal.  The situation was a mess, and he needed to find a way out of it.  He needed to protect Francine.  He needed to keep her safe.  He needed to peel that t-shirt right off her body…  His thoughts were running away with him, but at least the latter was a plan both man and beast could get behind.  “Okay, so we’ll wait and see what he says, and then… I don’t know… we’ll go and talk to this woman.”

“And tell her what?  That we’ve been sent there to kill her, I don’t think that’s going to go down well.”

“No,” he said, slowly.  “We’ll just try and find out why he wants her dead – I mean there has to be a reason.  Random homicide seems unlikely, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” she replied, unenthusiastically.

Stone kneeled in front of her and used the pad of his thumb to wipe away a tear that slid down her cheek.  “It’s going to be okay, honey.”

“You’re very optimistic.”

“Yeah, I’ve had a good life, and how could I not be?  You walked into my life, and when you walked out, fate gave me your address.”

“Well, if this is the way fate gets everyone together, I have a few choice words for fate.  One of them starts with
f
.  And I’ll bet you say this kind of thing to all the girls.”

“No, everything I say to you is original or possibly ripped off from a TV show that I can’t remember watching.”

She opened her mouth to sass him back, and he quickly covered it with his own.  She whimpered he took her in a thorough kiss.

Coming up for air her eyes danced with merriment.  “Ooh, should we be doing this?  Your dad…”

“Apparently, is very aware of what sex is.”  He licked her earlobe, and she squeaked.

“How are you
down there
?”  Her eyes flicked to his groin as she tried to keep a straight face.  “I didn’t cause any lasting damage, did I?”

Stone laughed as he pulled the shirt over her head.  “Nah, the boys look okay to me.”

“Mmm, maybe I should check.”

Francine slipped to the ground and sealed her lips around his twitching manhood.  He groaned as she ran her tongue over the head and slowly began moving up and down his length, taking him as deep as she could.  She pursed her lips around him, delighting as he shivered.  Slowly she ran her hand up and down the part her mouth couldn’t reach.  Gently, he tangled his fingers in her hair, and he rocked in and out of her mouth.  Whenever his breath quickened, and he started flexing his hips, she let go of him, prolonging his release.  He moaned and gritted his teeth until she took him inside again. 

Eventually, he could take no more of the intense pleasure tingling through his body.  He stiffened and let go.  “Coming,” he gasped as he surged into her mouth.  Her fingers dug into his thighs as she suckled and swallowed.  His beast roared in satisfaction as he struggled to remain quiet. 

Stone remained hard as he pulled his cock from her mouth.  She smiled smugly, and he growled before pulling her up and throwing her on the bed.  She gasped and bit her lip as he slid between her legs and eased inside her sex.  He entered her slowly, giving her tight core time to open to his swollen member.  He was half way in before he withdrew and then pushed in again.  He grinned as a moan rippled throughout her entire body.  He worked himself inside her tentatively, going deeper and deeper until finally he was buried to the hilt.  He held himself still and waited for her to rock against him.  When she did, he leaned down and kissed her as impatiently Francine started moving and wiggling her hips.

He began to thrust in and out, taking her in long, hard strokes.  She fastened her legs around him, locking him against her body.  Her body quivered beneath him every time he filled her, and he watched for the subtle change as she started moving faster and her breathing hitched.  As soon as she did, he started moving faster, too, almost pounding against her.

Francine arched her back and squeaked adorably as an orgasm raced through her.  She tightened and thrashed beneath him as his own climax thundered through him, and he fought a losing battle not to roar in completion. 
He gave in
.  He and his rhino roared like some kind of mighty conquering heroes.  Looking down at the satiated and flushed beauty, exhausted and panting on his bed, he certainly felt like he had done something marvelous.

“Do you think your dad heard that?” she whispered, her eyes slowly drooping.

Stone pouted as he slowly turned them over, so she was lying on his chest.  “If all you can think about after that is my dad, I wasn’t doing it right.”

Francine giggled and rubbed her cheek on his chest.  “No, you were definitely doing it right.”  He held back on the fist pumping the air, but, needless to say, he was thrilled to hear it.  “Am I heavy?”

“No, why?”

“Because I’m too tired to move, and your chest is so comfortable, I was considering falling asleep on you.”

“Sleep away, feathers.”