MILITARY ROMANCE: The War Within Himself (Alpha Bad Boy Marine Army Seal) (Contemporary Military Suspense & Thriller Romance) (63 page)

Chapter Six

Thirty minutes later, Anita found herself standing in Boris’s living room. His house looked a little upturned, with boxes stacked up the wall and piles of things just sitting around in the corners. “Are you planning on moving?” she called.

“No!” she heard him yell from the kitchen. “I just moved in,” he added as he emerged from the short hallway, carrying two wine glasses.

She nodded slowly. “Right…” As she took her glass of wine out of his hand, she couldn’t help but feel at least a little bit nervous about this whole situation. She had done this in the past of course, but not since her engagement broke off and… Well, she was a little rusty.

He placed a hand on her cheek. “Your skin is radiant.”

Anita could feel the blood rushing to her face at the compliment. “Thank you.” But those words barely got out of her mouth before he kissed her. It was like scratching an itch, satisfying a craving, sending her in overdrive. He broke it off if only to take the wine glass out of her hand and place it safely on the coffee table. With that settled, he sat on the couch, dragging her down with him. She mounted him, sitting on his lap with her legs wrapped around his torso. His lips practically attacked hers, his tongue pressing into her mouth with a determination that only made her want him more.

She clutched his back, her fingertips pressing into his muscles, her nails scratching at his skin. A grunt slipped out of his mouth as he slid his hands around her chest, his fingers tracing the sides of her breasts, wandering leisurely until they got to the hook of her bra. He deftly opened it, and Anita sighed as the constricting piece of clothing loosened. His lips found their way to her neck, sucking on her skin. Through all of this, she could feel his teeth brushing against her.

She slipped her fingers under the hem of his shirt, peeling it off and discarding it behind him. Her eyes went wide at the sight of his washboard chest, the skin providing a beautiful cover for his muscular body. She ran her finger over every curve and ridge, the warmth between her legs growing more and more intense.

As she did this, he finally unbuttoned her cocktail dress and as it slid down to her waist, she wasted no time letting her bra slide down with it.

He raised an eyebrow at the sight of her breasts, the nipples pointing right at him. “These are magnificent,” he murmured as his lips folded into a crooked smile.

Anita giggled, taking his head in her hands and guiding it towards them. He grasped them with his hands, his little massage driving Anita into a frenzy. She wanted him,
needed
him, right then and there, and the fact that he had just begun licking her nipples only intensified her desire. “That feels sooo good,” she whispered as he continued to suck on her breasts.

In one lithe movement, she climbed off him and proceeded to unbutton his pants. He helped her with it, deftly peeling them off. When she stood up to watch him slip off his boxers, her dress fell down to her ankles. She was naked except for her panties, but oddly enough she didn’t feel the least bit exposed.

Boris eyed her up and down, licking his lips. The glow of desire in his eyes was enough to make her climax right then and there. He beckoned for her, his arm lazily outstretched.

She took his hand and mounted him once again. He was about guide her on top of him, but she stopped him. “Condom?”

“Oh…” He hastily nodded as he reached over her to his discarded pants, rummaging through the pockets until he retrieved a golden magnum packet.

She raised an eyebrow at this. She had never been with a man who needed condoms that big.

It excited her.

In the next moment, he had slipped it on, and then her on right after. A slow, ecstatic breath slipped out from between her lips as she felt herself accommodate him. She could feel her sex shuddering with him inside of it. Anita bit her lip, her breasts bobbing up and down with her movements.

He turned his head up towards hers, so she leaned down and kissed him, their mouths sloppily slapping together in all of the moving. He took her butt in his hands, clutching her and smacking at her flesh with his hands.

“Oh God, I’m gonna come!”

Her eyes went wide, for she felt as if she had only just begun. Her lips folded into a frown as he continued to thrust up against her, until his thrusts got faster and harder, until a dramatic grunt flew out of his mouth and he violently shuddered. He then went limp beneath her.

She let out the obligatory sigh of fake satisfaction before climbing off of him. “Okay, well, that was fun,” she muttered as she immediately began to put on her clothes.

He stood up and made his way to the bathroom, she assumed to clean himself up. While he was gone, she finished dressing and stood around awkwardly, waiting for him to come back so that she could take it upon herself to leave. As she stood there, she heard subdued screaming coming from outside. With a furrowed brow, she made her way to the window and looked out.

Boris lived on a somewhat quiet street, but as she peered out of the window, she could just spot some light coming from around the bend

“I’m not sure you’ll be safe going home tonight… What with the riots and all,” Boris said as he entered the room.

Anita turned to face him. “Oh, I think I’ll be fine,” she replied. The last thing she wanted was to spend a semi-sober night with the complete stranger that was supposed to be a confidence boost at best, as childish as that sounded.

He narrowed his eyes at her, disbelief etched across his features. “There could be looting…”

Anita scoffed as she reached for her jacket. “Trust me, I have seen many a protests here in DC. You might have just moved here, but you will quickly find that this is just a fact of life.” She felt much more secure and ready for the world with her outerwear on.

Boris nodded as he crossed the room to meet her. “Well, I guess this is goodbye?” he asked, holding his arms open for a hug.

Anita gulped, but went in for it anyway. He planted a kiss on her cheek that made her almost certain that the next thing to come out of his mouth would be,

“So, can I have your number?”

Anita gave him a tight smile, and the prepared answer set to ward off potentially distracting relationships followed. “I work at the White House. I promise you, if you call there, you’ll find me.”

Boris nodded slowly.

As Anita turned to leave him forever, she wondered if she’d miss him in the light of day. Once outside, the screaming and shouting got much louder. There was the sound of tires screeching on the asphalt, rocks and stakes being thrown at windows. She sucked in a deep breath, part of her wishing that she had not decided to go it alone, but a bigger part of her determined not to go back, so she sucked in a deep breath and kept going, her stint with Boris making her more certain than ever to that she had completely cleared her head of her Bruce obsession. She would focus on her UN resolution and the riots. She was Anita Rhodes, and it would take a billion Bruces to bring her down.

Epilogue

Anita was in the thick of things, surrounded with anger and fire. Everywhere she turned, there was another news van, another cameraman, another reporter fearlessly screaming into their microphones. As she turned another corner, she found herself on the police-side of a blockade. Bodies were pressed together. She pushed past shoulders and arms, muttering her “excuse me’s” until she reached the barrier.

“Ma’am.” She turned to find a police officer staring down with a stern expression on his face.

“I just need to get home,” she began to button up her coat.

He shook his head. “Honey, I’m sure you don’t want to go to the other side.”

Anita turned to find a throng of people holding weapons and signs, screaming back at the police. She leaned, pushing herself past the bodies in front of her.

They were pointing guns at the people.

“What?” she breathed, her heart fluttering with equal parts of wonder and fear.

“I cannot let you go this way.”

Anita narrowed her eyes at him. “You will let me through. And you will not shoot at civilians!” she yelled. Her whole body shaking with anger. While she had been banging her head on overly priced furniture constructing an international deal, a civil war was happening right under her nose.

The police officer shook his head. “I—”

But before they could continue, she shoved through the line of police, sprinting across no man’s land. The next morning she would hear of this on the news. She would call a meeting with Victoria and demand the chance to make a statement. The next morning, she would fix it.

Just as she reached the other people, who immediately stepped aside to let her through, someone yelled, “Fuck the police!”

Anita skidded to a stop, then turned to see who had done this, her curiosity ruling the night. She only had time to let out half a breath before a block of wood slipped out of someone’s hands and flew across the barrier.

The night erupted with shots and screaming. The protesters continued to shout there chants, but their signs were getting pelted with bullets. She dodged bricks and wood, her heels catching on debris, her body lurching forward with constant tripping. But soon enough, she could see the crowd thinning out. A smile of relief played on her lips as she realized that the worst was practically over.

Then she felt someone grab her wrist. She turned with her fist clenched. “Get the fuck off!” she yelled.

The man, whose face was covered in blood, glared down at her with dark eyes. “Stay and fight!”

Anita bit her lip, punching him hard in the gut, and kept running. Through the night, she could see a figure coming towards her, a silhouette she would recognize anywhere. “Bruce,” she whispered.

Then she felt something hard hit her in the small of her back. She stumbled to a stop, the pain taking her breath away.

“Who do you think you are?”

It was the same man. His bloodshot eyes made it obvious he was strung-out, overly excited. He held a knife in his right hand.

Her heart fluttered in her chest. She was nowhere near skilled enough to fight someone with a knife who was twice her size.

“Let it go.” Bruce’s authoritative voice cut through the noise.

The man sneered at the both of them.

“I’m warning you,” he said in a dark voice, wrapping his arm around her waist.

The man lunged at them, swinging his knife.

In one deft movement, Bruce shoved Anita behind him and bared his teeth at the man, an inhuman roar erupting from him.

Anita could feel it rattling her bones.

Before he had even finished, the man ran away.

Bruce turned to face her. “What the hell are you doing out in this?”

Anita threw her hands up in exasperation. “I could ask you the same thing!”

His chest rose as he sucked in a deep breath. “Visiting a friend,” he said tersely as he grasped her arm kept walking in the direction he had come.

“That wasn’t human,” 

He shook his head. “Now is not the time.”

Anita stopped in the middle of the street, crossing her arms. Even though they had travelled considerably far away from the center of the trouble, the air was still alight with the aura of chaos. “Look, I don’t know what secret you have… But I want to keep it. You can trust me.”

Bruce chuckled, drawing her in for a kiss. “I know. I’m counting on it.”

Although he didn’t divulge anything else, she had a feeling things were changing… Hopefully for the better.

End of Part 2.

An Alien Romance

Chapter 1

“Oh no,” Amanda said, staring down at her dashboard. “Why the hell does this keep happening?”

The needle on her gas gauge had just spontaneously shifted from around an eighth of a tank to well below “E,” and, as Amanda’s car sputtered forward, she knew that she was nearing empty.

That’s what you get for driving such an old car
, Amanda told herself, once again. She’d said that same phrase to herself several times over the past few months, since her gas gauge first started giving her problems. She’d tried to keep track of her gas consumption by tallying her mileage, but she’d never been that good with math, and she didn’t know the rate at which her 1992 Chevy Cavalier consumed fuel. So, every once in awhile, despite her efforts, she ended up in a situation like this… though this situation was like no other she’d encountered before.

“Fuck,” Amanda said, examining her cell phone. “No Service” flashed across the screen at her, and she wanted to throw the useless piece of junk out of the moving car window.

Amanda looked out at the sprawled-out, empty space beside her as the car continued to slowly lurch forward. She’d been driving along an unoccupied, rural stretch of highway, and there wasn’t a home, business, or shred of discernable human life or activity around for miles. When her car ran out of gas before, it had always been in the city, and there was always a way to get gas—she could call someone, call the auto club, or walk to a gas station. None of those were options at this point, and Amanda cursed herself as she finally relegated to reality and pulled over to the side of the road.

She thought she’d gotten more than enough gas to get her from her apartment in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to her cousin’s home in Washington, Pennsylvania—but, then again, she’d never been that good with math, and she didn’t know the rate at which her 1992 Chevy Cavalier consumed fuel. Apparently, she hadn’t gotten enough, and she didn’t know how she was going to get more.

I really should’ve taken advantage of President Obama’s Cash for Clunks incentive,
Amanda thought to herself as she got out of her car and walked back to her trunk. She had a spare gas can back there, and she knew it was futile to check it. She was well aware that it was empty, as she’d drained it a few days earlier outside of a bagel shop, but, nonetheless, she checked it. It turned out there were a few drops still in it, and, for a moment, Amanda thought about dumping her bottle of drinking water into the can to try and stretch it. She didn’t know if that would be safe, so she decided against it.

If her phone had been working, Amanda would have used her Wi-Fi signal to check and see if stretching gas with water was dangerous, but since her phone wasn’t working, she couldn’t… and she couldn’t call her cousin, the auto club, or a cab. She couldn’t do anything. She was, by every measure of the word, stranded.

Get yourself together,
Amanda told herself. She was starting to feel very overwhelmed and intimidated by the situation. Her heart was racing, and so was her mind, and she felt like she was going to cry, pass out, or vomit. She thought of all those cheesy horror movies where a car broke down on the side of the road, and the driver was hunted by sadistic, ravenous, in-bred cannibals. This neck of the woods wasn’t too far from the Appalachian Mountains, you know—and, come to think of it, cheesy or not, those movies
were
pretty darn scary.

But it wasn’t just the prospect of being hunted by cannibals that frightened Amanda. She was also afraid of some more “practical” things—like running into your average, run-of-the-mill criminal who was looking to rob, rape, kidnap or murder someone. People like that really did exist, and, if Amanda had any doubt that they did, she knew all she needed to do to be reminded was flick on the local news station.

Amanda didn’t have any flares of indicators to set up in order to draw attention to her vehicle, and given all her fears, she wasn’t sure that she’d use them if she did. She figured, civilization had to be nearby somewhere. It wasn’t close, for miles, but it couldn’t be
that
far, and, as she stumbled toward it, maybe she’d find a spot that actually got cell phone reception.

It may not have been the wisest thing to leave a car on the side of the road, but Amanda decided she’d rather leave it sitting there by itself than stay inside it like a sitting duck. Plus, it was a 1992 Chevy Cavalier, don’t forget—if someone wanted it so badly that they did whatever it took to steal it, Amanda figured they deserved it. The car’s Blue Book value couldn’t have been more than $500.

Amanda hopped behind the steering wheel one last time to collect some of her belongings from the front seat. Her useless phone, wallet, and a half-eaten candy bar had been scattered there throughout the evening, and she needed each of them and more for the next leg of her journey.

Amanda turned around and reached to the seat behind her to grab her overnight bag. When she turned back around to face the front again, she dropped the bag, gasped, and felt startled. A bright light was shining on her, and a vehicle was traveling in her direction.