Loving the Beast (Skye Warren) (A)

Loving the Beast

Skye Warren

LOVING THE BEAST

The sexy journey began in Beauty Touched the Beast and continued in the Beauty series. Now read the breathtaking conclusion in this epilogue novella from New York Times bestselling author Skye Warren…

Since their forbidden beginning, Erin and Blake’s relationship has been marked by deep sensuality and intense emotion. Each challenge only makes them stronger, and Blake is ready to take his new fiance to meet his family. And to meet hers.

Home holds secrets for them both. A dark legacy threatens everything they’ve worked to build. When old debt comes between them, both Blake and Erin must fight to protect each other—and their love.

Thank you for reading the final book in the Beauty series, Loving the Beast: An Epilogue Novella! You can join my Facebook group for fans to discuss the series here:
Skye Warren’s Dark Room
. And you can sign up for my newsletter to find out about new releases at
skyewarren.com/newsletter
.

Enjoy the story…

Chapter One

I
T SOUNDED LIKE
thunder and felt like an earthquake, vibrating right down to his bones. But the cause wasn’t anything as natural as a storm, not with the smell of burnt air and fuel left behind. Two F-22 Raptors had swooped low to the ground, right overhead, their presence just a blur in his retina. He squinted through the leaves, waiting. Even the trees seemed to shudder, holding their breath. The blast came two miles to the south, on the other side of the low mountain range.

“What the fuck are they doing?” Ricardo’s voice was strained, high-pitched. He had his hand on his helmet as if that would somehow keep it on, keep him safe.

Blake knew they were fucked, helmets or not. “We gotta get to the checkpoint.”

But he wasn’t about to tell his teammate the truth. It wouldn’t help to panic. It wouldn’t help to know they’d die anyway. The military had decided they were expendable. In that moment they were just as much the enemy as the terrorists hiding in a damn cave. Like the civilians here, the women and the children and the hard working men, they were fucking collateral.

“We’ll never make it,” Ricardo said, panting.

No, they wouldn’t. “We get to the checkpoint and we get out. We stick to the damn plan.”

His teammate nodded—too fast, too frantic. “Okay. I can do that.”

“I know you can,” Blake said, low and fierce. Even young and green, Ricardo toed the line. Their entire team was a fucking powerhouse—or they had been until they’d been picked off one by one by snipers on the ridge.

The ridge should have been cleared and the birds should have waited until they were clear to strike, but none of that mattered now.

Ricardo’s face twisted in grief, a thin wet track through the thick layer of dirt on his cheek. “I won’t let them die for nothing.”

Blake took the man by the back of the neck and pulled him in. Forehead to forehead. They were close. Teammates. Brothers. The last two fucking men on this godforsaken patch of earth. His chest seized tight. “No matter what, they didn’t die for nothing,” he said. “No matter what, it meant something. Now we’re going to get to the goddamn checkpoint like they’d want us to do.”

“Yeah.” Ricardo’s voice got stronger. “We’re going to get out.”

Blake wasn’t so sure about that, but there was no better plan. No plan at all except the one that had already gone to hell.

They fought through thousands of feet of dense jungle, wary of an ambush at any moment. They ran over exposed flat rock, expecting a bullet from an unseen shooter to take them out all the way.

And somehow—an actual fucking miracle—they made it to the checkpoint.

“Empty,” Ricardo breathed.

Empty. And the hollow feeling in Blake’s stomach couldn’t be surprise, could it? He’d known this would happen. He’d known as soon as the first man had fallen, that something had gone horribly wrong. They wouldn’t make it out of this.

He wasn’t even sorry for himself. He had the strangest thought that his fiancée wouldn’t mind if he never came back. His parents would milk the tragic hero story until they’d made it to the fucking White House. And his work? It was just a bunch of smoke and mirrors—the political stage, the historical backdrop. Intellectual sleight of hand to cover up
this
, the living and breathing, the fighting and dying of men that amounted to nothing.

No, he wasn’t sorry for himself but he was seriously pissed about Ricardo. Ricardo had a brother. They’d lost so many men today but right now all he could think about was Ricardo’s little brother. He idolized him—and wasn’t Ricardo too young to be an idol? To be a fucking martyr?

He wasn’t much younger than Blake, not in years, but a few tours made all the difference.

Then he heard it—the whoop of a chopper, so faint he might have imagined it.

“What the fuck,” he breathed.

Ricardo looked wary. “You hear something?”

Not insurgents. He hoped not anyway. And there it was, the chopper come to take them away. Only a few minutes late. It was a miracle. A miracle kicking dust into their eyes. They ran to the side, giving the chopper room to land.

That was the only thing that saved them when the first bullet hit the ground.

Under fire. They were under siege.

Had the enemy been waiting for the chopper to land so they could take it?

For a second, the chopper hovered, and Blake was sure it would fly right up again, taking with it any chance of rescue or hope.
Ricardo’s little brother.

But then it battered almost gently against the hard packed earth, landing only seconds before the door slid open. A barrel appeared, taking shots near the tree line, providing the cover he and Ricardo needed to make it inside.

“Let’s go,” Blake shouted over the heavy thrum of the propellers. He pushed Ricardo in front of him so he’d cover behind. They both ran.

They reached the door of the chopper. An arm came out to pull them inside.

Blake was already standing in the heavy vibrating machine when he looked back and saw Ricardo crumple to the ground—outside the chopper. “Get up,” he shouted. He didn’t care if it was cruel to drive him like this. They’d leave without him.

Their cover was gone.

“Move,” the man shouted into his headset—telling the pilot to go.

Blake moved to jump out, but the man blocked him. The other man had fifty pounds on him, as well as more nights of sleep in the past 72 hours and more food and water. But Blake had the fucking determination, the certainty that he couldn’t, wouldn’t leave his teammate behind. His last one. The only man left. If there was anyone left behind on this rock, in this oven, it would be him.

A shot hit the chopper—impossible to know where. It rocked the whole machine, and Blake fell off balance. The doors were still open, but tilted up, and Blake was sliding back, falling. Every second took him farther from Ricardo, every second took him one more foot in the air.

“No,” he roared, lunging for the doors. It would almost kill him to make the jump now, but he didn’t care. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t fucking be happening.

The guy caught him by the ankle just as he was almost out of the chopper.

He landed hard on the metal grate. The force of his fall swung the chopper far enough that he could see over the edge: the man sprawled on the ground, wounded. And he could see the other men, closing in now that the chopper was leaving range, surrounding him like a pack of wolves.

“No.” This time it was only a quiet sound, stricken. Too soft to hear over the roar of the bird.

Ricardo’s brother.
Ricardo.

Something wasn’t right. The bullet must have struck something vital, because the engine was sputtering now. They were still in the air but shifting sideways. At this height they’d crash. They’d burn.

And then they didn’t have to wait that long. A flare of orange out of the corner of his eye was the only clue the chopper would explode in the split seconds before it did, before flames engulfed him, before the force of the blast threw him from the chopper, and then he was falling, falling out of the sky.

*     *     *

“
G
ET UP!”

Blake jerked from sleep, breaths bellowing in and out of his chest, blood racing. His body was covered in sweat and tangled up, constrained. Something warm was beside him, something soft.

He grew still. His eyes closed. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

Of course he’d woken her. He always woke her when he got like this. In fact, she was the one who had to wake him up, because he wouldn’t stop thrashing and screaming. How many years had it been now? He’d come back, put his life together. He’d found Erin. Things were good, but the nightmares wouldn’t stop. Would they ever?

Erin trembled beside him. He could feel her tremors through the mattress they shared. A strip of moonlight fell over her face. Her eyes were wide, lips tight. Fear. She was afraid of him.

His stomach clenched. “What did I do?”

She shook her head, her voice shaking only slightly when she said, “Nothing.”

A lie. “What did I do to you?”

Her hands tightened and released a twisted corner of the sheet. “You were… on me.”

Something inside him went cold. He didn’t want to believe it. But maybe that was just a sign of how fucked up he was, that he wasn’t even surprised. Angry. Furious. At himself. But not even fucking surprised. “I was hurting you?” he asked softly.

“No.” The word came out too forcefully—too false. “Not on purpose. You were… I think you were protecting me. You kept saying to stay down.”

“Jesus.” He shook his head and looked at the wall.
Jesus.

He was one fucked up soldier. What business did he have with a woman like her? A fiancée like her?

“Are you okay?” he asked. He didn’t wait for her to answer. He ran his hands over her shoulders, her arms, assuring himself that she was put together, her body just as whole, her skin just as smooth.

“I’m fine,” she said, and at least her voice did sound more normal now.

Maybe he’d just scared her more than hurt her, but either way it was too damn close. Even if he’d been in a dream, if he’d believed that somehow he was protecting her, he’d used his body to dominate her. He could have injured her and not even known it.

Abruptly, he stood. The master bedroom was large, but suddenly it felt suffocating. He paced away from the bed, away from her, moving to stand at the window. So many nights he’d looked out of this window, awake again, panting and sweating again.

When would the nightmares stop?

He heard the sheets rustle as Erin got out of bed. Her footsteps were soft over the hardwood floors. And then she was behind him, her arms around his waist, her lips pressed to his back. So many nights he’d stood here, staring out the window, and so many nights, she’d stood behind him, kissing him, making him whole again. He knew she deserved better, deserved someone already whole, but he couldn’t give her up. Not when it seemed almost bearable with her here.

After a few minutes of stroking his chest, of pressing light kisses to his back, she said, “Come back to bed.”

He nodded. “Soon.”

“Not soon,” she said gently. “Now. We have to be up early tomorrow.”

The plan was to drive to his parents’ house tomorrow. It was a few hours away—and yet didn’t feel nearly far enough. “I’ll still be able to drive.”

She made a sound of protest. “I know you will, but I want you to feel okay too. Come on. I’ll help you relax.”

His body stirred at just the suggestion. Hell, he was half-hard whenever she was around. Now was no exception. His cock already formed a tent in his boxers. It would only grow painful if she kept touching him, kept pressing those lovely breasts against his back, kept her warm breath against his skin.

His hips actually bucked, his body blindly seeking her, an animal instinct, a need.

He felt her lips curve in a smile. “I didn’t mean that,” she said. “But we could.”

Except he didn’t like to fuck her when he’d just woken up from one of the nightmares. It felt too dirty, like letting her get close to that moment and all the darkness that infected him. He also didn’t quite trust himself right after one of those dreams, still shaky and overly alert.

Especially after he’d been fucking holding her down.

“Let me hold you,” he said instead. He wanted to hold her gently, sweetly. He wanted to erase every rough touch he’d used on her a few minutes ago. He wanted to erase those memories she had of him doing that, but he knew well how impossible that would be.

Wordlessly she took his hand and led him back to bed.

After she climbed in, he curved his body around hers. God, she was warm and soft. It was like fucking heaven to feel her in his arms. It scared him sometimes, how good she felt. Like he might hold her too tight, might force her to stay even if she’d be better off gone.

He let out an uneven breath.

She stroked her fingers over the back of his hand, rhythmic and soothing. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”