Seducing Anne (36 page)

“Yes, Mistress Anne—I already know who she is going to be delivered to. I plan to bypass the king, tell him of his daughter’s existence and where to find her a few weeks later after the effects of time travel have worn off. I am not as cruel as all that to land her at his doorstep without any warning. It will be near the time history said she was born, even if that is actually a few months from this month we are in.”

A few months forward, and almost five hundred years backward.

Guy moved closer, kissed the baby’s little feet. He couldn’t get close enough or memorize the velvet feel of her brand new skin.

Once more, Anne sighed.

Guy did, too. “Thank you, Nick. I know this is difficult for you, as well.”

Nick blinked and groaned, fiddling with his phone, reading something on the Internet.

A moment later, he turned to Anne and dropped to his knees.

He pulled out what looked like a very sharp pocketknife. “Close your eyes,” he said, tugging her leg over the side of the bed, so her right foot touched the floor.

“No! What in God’s name?” Guy lurched after him, but Nick had already cut through the skin in her ankle, and had yanked out a long, metal band that had been hiding beneath her flesh.

Anne bit back a fierce scream—probably for the sake of the baby. One of her hands fisted in the bedsheet.

Guy flew around the room, grabbing medical supplies, and then he was sanitizing her wound and followed it up with using super glue to stitch her ankle back up.

“You stupid fuck! Why did you do that to her?” Guy hissed over his shoulder at Nick, now standing in the doorway.

“I just freed you both. Take your baby and run south. I will not follow.” He held up his phone. “I already called it in a half hour ago—told the agency you had delivered the baby and that I would be there with the package in three and a half hours.” He dropped his head, and tears sprung in his eyes when he looked back up. “They have already killed my family. I checked right after I called them. History has been changed. I am done. I will not end another life. Take Elizabeth and live. Only do not come back here. I cannot bear for all three of your deaths to be on my conscience.” Nick whispered his goodbye and ran through the house, out the front door and drove off.

They were their own agents of time now.

Never to be found again.

Sparing Amy: SHROAG Novel 2

Chapter 1

Nick’s hands shook as he drove down the road, his vision blurring and his teeth grinding.

He alternated between fighting off tears and allowing the rage to come spewing out of him as he shouted obscenities at the world.

How could the agency do this to him? Why did they think he would remain ignorant of it?

Did they think his mind too feeble to figure out how to navigate the Internet or use a cell phone?

Well, they underestimated him.

Guy had taught Nick anything he had wanted to know, including how to kill a man.

Or many men, and one woman in particular—Kara Howser.

She was the most despicable of them all, and he knew she was directly responsible for ordering his family’s deaths to be carried out.

She alone sent people through time and gave them their assignments.

Nick shifted in his seat as he arrived at the headquarters in Los Angeles.

It was blinding how shiny and bright everything was.

He glanced away, unbuckled himself, turned off the car and dropped his head, taking in a large, exhausted breath.

Elizabeth would survive, and so would he.

“You are indebted to a lifetime of servitude,” he reminded himself.

Those had been SHROAG agent one’s words.

If Nick failed, he would be in their hands for the rest of his life.

He had no idea how to travel and survive in other time periods, though.

That had not been his charge.

He stepped out of the car, locked it up and roamed inside, bowing at everyone he passed, except one—Kara.

“Where’s Elizabeth?” she screeched, stomping straight toward him.

“She died. She was stillborn. The cord had a knot in it. There was nothing we could do. We did our best to resuscitate her, but she was gone. Had been dead probably during most of the labor,” he lied coolly.

Her eyes twitched. “If that’s true, then where are Anne and Guy?”

“They buried her, and then Guy attacked me. They got away,” Nick said, pointing at the rip in his shirt he had fabricated, along with the scratch marks he’d also made with his own bare hands.

He had to take his anger out somewhere.

She scrutinized him. “I don’t believe you.”

“Fine. Have a doctor look me over. He bashed my skull into a wall several times. I’m lucky I was able to drive myself here at all. My vision was blurring severely.”

She took his head and turned it to the side.

Sure enough—there was a bruise forming there.

Oh, that. He gladly rammed his head into a brick wall several times as he howled and mourned the death of his wife whom he’d loved dearly.

His
wife
, Elizabeth Bryan Carew—oh,
Bess
. . . His sweet Bess had been stunning with her summer wheat-colored hair and her light brown eyes. She had freckles that bridged her nose that he adored and loved to trace with his fingertip after he’d enjoyed a tumble with her.

“You’ve failed,” Kara said, her expression flat.

“I am aware of it. What now?”

“You have nowhere else to go but stay here and do as we say,” she remarked, pointing at the closest debriefing room.

“What do you plan to do about Guy and Anne?” he asked before stepping in, his hands on his hips.

“They’ll be hunted down, of course.”

Nick shrugged. They obviously had no idea he’d chucked into the ocean Anne’s anklet that had kept track of her.

“Best get to it right away. They have a decent head start.” He stepped into the room, and there sat Johnathan Smith, SHROAG agent seventeen—the man that fell in love with Anne Boleyn before Guy Moore did and had failed with his mission.

His dirty blonde hair was slightly wavy and greasy at the roots. Didn’t they bathe in this time period? Anne did—frequently, and so did Guy, yet Nick was always surprised when he found people that reeked of body odor and failed to use the amenities in their home and take advantage of warm water at their disposal.

John’s jaw tensed, and his gray eyes followed Nick.

He was nearly the same height and build as Nick, but he was softer. It was easy to tell that John led a dream life without much manual labor and those muscles were for show. He probably couldn’t even open a jar of peanut butter without some assistance.

But then he was racked and tortured all those months ago at Henry VIII’s orders. The recuperation was probably grueling, and any man could lose muscle tissue and go a little soft after going through that.

Still . . . Nick could not trust this man and had to assume everything about him was a deception—like everything else about the agency.

“You know John, I assume?” Kara asked Nick.

He nodded and made a slight head bow to John.

“Of course we met, Kara. He was the one guiding me when I was locked in Anne’s world,” John said with a irritated sniff.

“And had you followed my advice, you probably would have avoided harm to your person,” Nick added.
And my family might still be alive now if it had not been for you.

John’s eyes went soft for some odd reason.

Nick sat in his seat and studied both John and Kara, his fingers flexing, ready to rip Kara apart.

“Well, you probably realize that John is incarcerated by us after his failure, and we were going to banish him until Guy messed everything up,” Kara said, dropping a manila folder in front of Nick.

He opened it and leafed through the pages. None of it made any sense to him.

“What is this?” He looked up at her.

“
That
is a two-man job.” She clicked her tongue. “This time John is the fixed point agent—there to help
you
. Since you’re the one that let Anne get away, and the reason our future’s fucked straight to Hell, you’re going to fix it.” She stabbed her finger at a picture. “This is Amara, but she goes by Amy. She’s your target. She is a direct descendant of Elizabeth the first.”

“Elizabeth never had any children,” Nick replied.

Kara’s stance widened and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Not that people know about. After her father passed away, she had an illegitimate child with Thomas Seymour. Their affair was brief when she was at Sudeley, under the care of her step-mother, Catherine Parr. They sent her away to Sir Anthony Denny’s home in the country for several months, and there’s no record of what happened while she was there. But we know.”

“How does this woman even exist if Elizabeth stayed here with Guy and Anne in your time period?” Nick asked, staring at the black and white photo before him.

Amy was very attractive with her dark wavy hair just past her shoulders and striking eyes with a heart-shaped face. She was a voluptuous woman based on this photo and dressed in a sleek, well-tailored female suit that hugged all her curves nicely.

Her appearance was completely opposite of what his wife’s had been in every way.

“It’s pretty obvious we caught Elizabeth at some point and returned her,” Kara said, tossing her long blonde hair over her shoulder.

Nick’s gut tightened, and he was queasy. Did this mean Anne and Guy were executed?

John tensed. Was he wondering the exact same thing?

“What’s the mission?” Nick slid the picture over to John, who pushed it right back.

“I’ve already gone through all the files and memorized them,” John answered.

Nick looked to Kara. “Orders? What am I to do?”

“This one’s going to be the toughest yet.” She bent over, resting her elbows on the table as her behind stuck out in back since she was standing up, rather than sitting like he was. “She’s fierce, this one, but she absolutely has to be impregnated. Her daughter is to become the first female president of the United States, and she prevents World War Three from happening, and with it, the annihilation of the United States and civilization as we know it.”

“Fine. I accept. When am I to leave?” Nick shifted away from her.

“Tomorrow morning. You have tonight to rest. No training required since you’ll have John there to guide you. He’s already received all the training required.”

“Why not just have him do it then?” Nick huffed.

“Because after being on the rack for days on end, he’s still in considerable pain and has trouble doing anything even remotely physical. His joints need intermittent therapy, and we can’t predict when he’s going to be mobile and when he won’t. He can be a point agent, though—he’s capable of that, and since he’s under our jurisdiction, we will always find some use for him and his
skiiiillllls
,” she drawled at the end, then stood up straight.

She smoothed out her blouse.

Nick stood and shook John’s hand.

“I shall see you tomorrow,” Nick said, bowing.

“That’s the first thing we’re going to have to work on. You’re too damn formal.” John chuckled.

“And you, sir, in my estimation—always have been, and always will be—an uncivilized brute, and I find you repellent.” Nick gave one more sweeping bow and left the room.

They were nothing to him. He’d kill this Amara first, then John—and come back here and wipe the rest of them out.

Tomorrow he would leave this place, find a way to end this accursed agency and dismantle Kara bit-by-bit.

Time would be left to destiny—not these people playing God.

Afterword

I wanted to make mention that I realize in the BDSM lifestyle, when a submissive refers to her Dominant, she calls him Sir, and it’s capitalized. In this story, however, since the term “sir” is used frequently along with others like “my lord,” I didn’t want to create confusion. It’s not meant to be disrespectful, just used for consistency when I went with lower case on this story.

Also, there will always be discrepancies when writing historical fiction on how various nobility titles should be handled. I based my decisions on how to handle those on what was shared in the
Chicago Manual of Style, edition 16.

I should also make mention that I’m not a big poker player, and information on this game of Primero, some consider the grandmother of poker, had limited information, so I took artistic license when I put in that Anne had a royal fluxux, or flush to us. I figured it stood to reason that if there was such a thing as a straight fluxus, then there had to be the royal as well. Make of it what you will, lords and ladies, but methinks this to be quite possible.

If you enjoyed this story, you’re in luck. This series will continue with Nicholas Carew, though he gets to travel deeper into the future. Though book one in the series falls into the genre of historical fiction, the series in its entirety fits more appropriately into the science fiction erotica category since all three books in the series involve time travel and have other science fiction elements to it. There will be snippets here and there of the past, but Tudor England for the most part is no longer the focus—the agency is now. Book two will not be as heavy on the kink, but book three will no doubt be immersed in it since Kara’s involved with the BDSM lifestyle, just as Guy Moore is. The third book will concentrate on Kara Howser and her possible involvement with the time turners manipulating history for their own reasons. Why is Queen Elizabeth in the center of all of this? Why does her birth matter so much? Keep reading as the books are published, and find out!