Seduced by Three

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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

IMPRINT: Ménage Amour

SEDUCED BY THREE

Copyright © 2012 by Sylvia Ryan

E-book ISBN: 1-61926-501-X

First E-book Publication: April 2012

Cover design by Jinger Heaston

All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:
This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

A single nuclear weapon exploding at high altitude above the United States will produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), disabling much of our nation’s electric and mechanical infrastructure. This event would seriously impact citizens’ access to food, water, medical care, telecommunications, financial systems, and transportation. Should this occur, it would have irreversible effects on the country’s ability to support its population. Experts assert that nine out of ten Americans would be dead within a year due to starvation, disease, and exposure.

—Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. 2004.
Executive Report
.

It was time they stopped eye fucking and started the more satisfying kind. Sergeant Steven Connelley knew she would resist. Sexual harassment, people talk, blah, blah, blah. But he knew it wouldn’t take much to coax surrender from her.

She’d already thought about them being together. He could feel it in her gaze. At first, the forced blank façade she tried to hide behind had temporarily obscured her from his radar.

She shielded what was inside her, just like he did.

His eyes found her walking toward him about a hundred feet away. She wore black pants and a simple cream-colored T-shirt that clung to her body, as if it wanted to be close to her skin as much as he did. Her enormous brown eyes met his and then scanned him up and down. Every morning she returned his visual strip search with one of her own.

A cool, “Good morning, Sergeant,” floated his way as she walked by.

“Miss Costa.” The words rumbled out of his chest.

His normally icy exterior almost cracked with an uncharacteristic smile. He’d finally made a decision about this wild little kitten. It was time to take her on, tame her.

But, as the day progressed, Sarge’s pleasure at the thought of finally seducing Julia transformed into infuriating frustration. Every time he looked toward the reinforced glass wall of her office, she had an inmate sitting on the other side of her desk.

By the end of the day, he resorted to standing close to her office door, waiting for the current inmate to leave, but his walkie diverted his attention from her to a fight in the unit. By the time the inmates were transferred to the infirmary and his paperwork was completed, it was after four. Julia was gone.

Sarge would be the first to admit that he was the kind of man who didn’t cope well with waiting and struggled even more with impatience if he was waiting for a woman he’d set his sights on. The combination of the two would fester inside of him, growing and strengthening overnight, and he knew he’d be absolutely hostile by tomorrow.

Four o’clock marked the end of his shift, too, and a few minutes later, he exited the facility. The September weather was sunny and just the right temperature. It was going to be a sweet ride home. For him, the trip home was longer than many of the other employees’ at the prison. He liked to live in the city, and the prison was situated right in the middle of Nowhere, USA, amid cornfields and cow pastures.

It had been a shitty day, and Sarge settled comfortably into his bad mood, brooding about the exceptional dose of “good things come to those who wait” he’d been forced to swallow. He mounted his motorcycle and headed out of the parking lot. Today, the ride wasn’t going to be long enough to dissipate the emotional buildup from his shift to—
Shit!
Sarge hit his brakes and swerved toward the berm to avoid hitting the car in front of him.

His heart hammered fast, and his fury rose, heating his face and flooding his veins with adrenaline as he realized how close he’d come to being roadkill. By the time he stopped completely, all the traffic around him on the four-lane highway had rolled to a stop, too. Every car in all eight lanes, going both east and west, was stalled. Confused people got out of their cars and milled around, trying unsuccessfully to place calls on their cell phones.

Moments later, a loud explosion sounded in the distance behind him. Sarge got off his bike and turned around toward the source of the sound.

Jesus! The airport…

Cleveland Hopkins Airport was a about a mile behind him. The inbound runway was positioned so that the landing planes flew over the interstate mere yards away from the cars beneath them. A huge fireball with billowing black smoke roared from where he had just passed minutes ago. Sarge scanned the women and men in office clothes, who stood next to their cars, with their hands over their mouths in shock. His brain was quickly putting all these seemingly unrelated events together into a comprehensive scenario. Then he looked back to the sky and saw several more planes on their final approach. The people on those planes were as good as dead.

He turned away from his bike, putting the fire and smoke behind him, and began walking, weaving through the stalled traffic and groups of people toward home.

Thoughts crowded his mind and traveled rapid-fire over his synapses. There’d been an electromagnetic pulse. He could hardly believe it, but all the evidence was right in front of him. After an EMP, nothing containing any electronic components would work anymore, including cars, planes, cell phones. It was the only explanation.

Sarge considered the impact of a widespread pulse. The disastrous aftermath would be all-encompassing. There’d be no electricity or running water. Food deliveries to grocery stores would never get to their destinations. The list of everyday items like radios, televisions, ATM machines, and computers would be about as useless as, well, a dollar bill. Dire circumstances would fall upon the affected areas rapidly and without mercy.

This was what Sarge and his buddies called an “end of the world as we know it” scenario, and he was prepared for it. He was a member of a small survival group, and unlike most people, they were ready.

His inclination toward the survivalist mindset had been prompted by his family history and reinforced by his hitch in the service. His unit provided aid in several areas around the globe during natural disasters. He saw with nervous clarity what happened to populations that lost the ability to keep themselves alive. Dehydration, starvation, and exposure culled the weak and sick quickly. Sarge shook away the memories. Modern society’s total dependence on transportation for food and the absolute necessity of electricity to pump water into homes had left people unprepared for the sudden responsibility of having to provide the basic necessities of life for themselves. When he was setting up his shelter, he wondered at times if he was crazy going to such lengths for a contingency plan. It had been hard to imagine an “end of the world as we know it” scenario happening in the US. But as he heard another far-off explosion and felt the rumble of it vibrate the asphalt beneath his feet, he realized that he wouldn’t have to try to imagine it anymore. It was here, and his number one priority was to get home.

As Sarge walked the miles to get there, he began to see confusion, and then alarm, on faces of the people he passed. There were huge crowds on foot trying to hoof it home like he was, and it was starting to sink in, at least to some, that they may be in trouble.

He thought of Julia, wanted to go get her so she would be safe, so she would survive. He brushed his fingers through his hair and grunted. Just thinking about it made him pissed off all over again. The universe was working against him today. From the moment he decided to claim her this morning, the succession of events that mapped out his day had prevented him from ever being able to do it. He shook his head. If this was a widespread EMP, there was a good chance that Julia would not survive. Sarge’s throat tightened, and he literally forced himself to begin thinking about preparing for the worst instead of concentrating on the death sentence he was tempted to face in order to find her. He knew the worst was, at most, a few days away. His survival plan had always been to live safe, apart from the coming violence, and to avoid the panic and massive die-off of people.

Sarge’s mind worked the entire two and a half hours it took to reach his home. When he finally climbed the few steps to the back door that entered into his kitchen, it was almost dark. He sat in a kitchen chair, rolled his head in a circle to loosen the muscles at the back of his neck, and took a moment to rest.

He was home, safe for now.

His house was in an area of Cleveland that was going through a renaissance, at least that’s the spin the Realtors wanted to give it. In reality, the neighborhood had gone through so many foreclosures by banks and seizures by the CPD due to drug trafficking that up-and-coming professionals started buying up the cheap historical homes, restoring them, and eliminating their hour commute to downtown from the suburbs.

Sarge was happy with his purchase of the house. A relatively fresh water source, Lake Erie, was within walking distance, and more importantly, he was able to make the necessary modifications in it to build his shelter.

Originally when someone entered through the side door, they had an option to take the stairs straight down to the basement or turn right and go up three steps to the kitchen. Sarge had covered the top of the stairwell that led to the basement with drywall and painted the new wall the same color as the kitchen. Then, he’d bricked up the basement windows. By the time he’d finished, there was no evidence the home ever had an underground level.

Sarge’s stiff legs and sore feet howled as he pushed himself away from the table. He opened his freezer and took out a steak. Tonight he would gorge, eating as much of the perishable items as he could. The rest he would try to store in a cooler and eat over the next day or so.

He started a charcoal fire in his grill and walked away to carry on with his preparations. Every item of food was transferred from the kitchen cabinets to the basement shelter, accessing the stairs through a dummy wall in the back of a bedroom closet. He had massive quantities of stockpiled food already down there. Rows and rows of shelves held five-gallon buckets containing rice, noodles, barley, flour, oats, and all manner of other basics needed to survive. He had canned fruits, vegetables, and some canned meat including tuna fish, chicken, and beef. He also had hundreds of rolls of toilet paper and huge quantities of soap, toothpaste, and water. He was set as far as life’s basic necessities were concerned.

When he was done transferring the food, Sarge finally sat down to eat. He savored every bite of his steak, knowing that he may not have food this good again for a while. Then he made himself focus on the one last task of the night, a responsibility he’d committed to only because he’d thought that the chances of having to follow through on his promise anytime soon were small. But he was a man of his word, and now he had to leave the safety of his home to get Ethan Hunter’s daughter.

Ethan was a member of the survival group. He was about fifteen years older than Sarge, but they still had a lot in common, and Sarge counted him as one of his best friends. Ethan was a single parent who had raised his daughter, Grace, to adulthood by himself. His wife had abandoned them right after Grace was born and then died of a heroin overdose a few years later. Grace was living at home with Ethan and going to college, nursing school, if Sarge remembered correctly. Sarge had heard a lot about her, but he’d never met her. Whenever he was out at Ethan’s house, they always hung out down in his basement shelter. Sarge didn’t think Grace was home very much, and if she had been home on one of the occasions he’d been there, she made herself scarce.

He stuffed another rare piece of meat in his mouth and remembered back to the night Ethan asked him for the favor. His eyes had been deadly serious and bored into Sarge’s when he asked.

“Will you get her if I’m on the road? Take care of her for me?”

“I can, but why? You have a stocked shelter here.”

“We do, and Grace is well prepared, but there’s more to surviving than having stored food and water…”

Sarge hadn’t even paused before giving his word.

Ethan was a long-distance truck driver and was gone every week from Monday through Thursday. Today was Tuesday.

It was already late by the time Sarge was ready to head out to retrieve Grace. He brought a flashlight, an empty backpack, and a firearm with him and estimated that it would take about three hours of walking each way. Barring any problems, he would be back home with her before sunrise.

The streets and sidewalks were still busy with people trying to make it back to their homes, but the crowds looked more tired than dangerous, and the later it got, the less people he saw. He arrived at Ethan’s house in the middle of the night and knocked on the back door. There was no answer. He turned the knob. It was unlocked.

“Grace,” he called as he stepped into the dark kitchen.

The house was silent. He prowled through the shadows of the first floor, searching for her, and then climbed the stairs to the second floor. A door at the top of the stairs was slightly ajar. He pushed it open and found her splayed on a bed, sleeping.

The sight of her was like a sucker punch to the gut, forcing all the air out of Sarge’s lungs. His eyes traveled slowly up her body. She was dressed in a thong and tank top. The smooth white skin of her ass and the scrap of fabric running between her cheeks prompted an internal groan.

Damn, he didn’t know exactly what he had been expecting, but it never occurred to him that Grace would be gorgeous. Jesus. She was simply angelic lying there with moonlight illuminating her blonde hair and sweet, sleeping face. He was frozen in place for several moments before he returned to the comfortable angry place he’d stubbornly settled into that day.

He shook his head.

You’d think, being Ethan’s daughter, she would have some clue of what was going on. She didn’t even have the doors locked for God’s sake
.

Sarge stepped into the room. The position Grace slept in made her look wild. Her hands were thrown up over her head, her legs frozen in a moment of action. She was beautiful, simply beautiful.

He moved closer to her, ran his gaze over her flesh, and admired the reckless tangle of planes and curves that was causing his dick to get hard.

“Grace?”

She jerked awake and looked around the dark room and then scrambled off the bed when she saw him standing next to the bed.

“Hold on. Hold on,” he said, holding his hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m Sarge. I’m friends with your dad.”

“What are you doing here?” she said on a gasp. “You scared the shit out of me!” Her voice was so…gentle, so meek, it reminded him of a phrase his mother used to use…shrinking violet.
Now
he knew why he was there. She was sweet. Too sweet to make it through this on her own.