SHAPESHIFTER ROMANCE: Protection of the Wolf (Paranormal Shifter Army Navy Seal Protector Alpha Wolf Romance) (Fantasy Military Action Adventure Urban Werewolf Romance Short Stories) (32 page)

“Easy Lexi, lay down,” say Ryan, running over to me.

“What happened?” I ask Ryan this time.

“I’ll tell you all about it later,” Ryan answers. “Just know that you’re safe.” 

“Call Nancy and tell her I won’t be at work tomorrow,” I manage to tell Ryan.

As the ambulance heads towards the hospital, I drift back to sleep knowing that I still had Ryan and Gunner.

***

Aside from the bumps and bruises, the doctor reports no major injuries. The concussion I sustained was a cause for concern, so I have to stay longer than I would have liked. But after a few days in the hospital, I am good as new.

I return home to be greeted by the two boys that mattered most in my life. Ryan had been taking care of Gunner and taking him to school while I was recovering.

We enjoy the day together as I try to take everything easy. My body is still trying to recover. 

That night, with Gunner soundly safe asleep upstairs, Ryan and I take out two bottles of beer. We step out to the back patio, where the moon shone over us once more.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about Michael anymore,” Ryan informs me, and winks. “I took care of him.”

“I don’t want to know,” I say taking a sip of the refreshing beer. “Why did you come back?”

“I never left,” Ryan snorted. “I had to complete my mission, Lexi. I couldn’t leave my boys out there alone.”

Remembering how staying silent would cause Ryan to talk, I don’t say a word.

“The mission changed after we caught Adon. He told us everything he knew. After that we spent the majority of the time gathering more information about Cuba’s plans.”

“I didn’t forget about you two,” he says. “I had eyes on both of you ensuring that you would remain safe. Our recon mission was over once we were able to obtain as much information as we could. They’re sending another team out there. I’ve asked for leave in order to return to you.” He stops to look at me.

Relief fills me. “I’m glad you came back.”

“I was never serious about leaving you, baby,” Ryan says. He pulls me closer to him and kisses me. “I’ve missed you so much Lexi.”

I drop my beer bottle as my arms wrap around his neck, holding him tight.  I don’t want to let go for fear of not seeing him again.

I take in his scent, his breath, his touch. My hands come around to feel his hard chest pressed against mine. I nudge my groin into his, feeling his hard-on.

Ryan picks me up over his shoulders and carries me into the house. He sits me on the couch, then stands back up to take off his clothes.

As soon as I see his hard member, I drop down on my knees.  I take him in my hands and begin licking. My other hand cups his balls gently. I eagerly taste Ryan like I would never get another chance again.

I alternate between sucking and licking, changing the rhythm as soon as he starts enjoying it. I want to keep him guessing and build up tension.

I feel moisture dripping between my thighs. I’m so excited. I want him to touch me.

As if reading my thoughts, Ryan pulls me upwards. Our lips meet. He kisses me passionately as he rips off my clothes.

He pushes me back down onto the couch. I spread my legs wide open, and he takes full view of me.

“I’ve wanted to taste you so bad, my sexy Lexi.” Ryan whispers in my ears as he makes his way between my legs and went to town licking my pussy.

“Oooh. That feels so good,” I moan.

He keeps at it. I wrap my legs around him as I watch his head bob back in forth.

“Keep going,” I say.

His hands reach up to caress both my breasts. He glides his expert tongue up and down, in and out as I climaxed all over his face. Ryan pulls his head out between my thighs and kisses me as I tasted my own juices.

“Turn around,” he groans. I happily oblige, fully exposing myself to him.

He penetrates me from behind. I moan again as I feel all of him inside me. Ryan carefully pumps into me, slow and hard. His hands reach over to tease my sensitive nipples while he gently kisses my neck.

“This was all I was able to think about when I was away from you,” Ryan gently bites my ear.

“You don’t know how badly I wanted to feel you again,” he says as he pumps harder now.

“Oh yes, baby,” I moan again. His last pump is long and hard as he reaches climax.

We both wrap ourselves in each other’s arms.  Even though no words are exchanged in that moment, we both don’t want to let go for fear the other would slip away. 

“How did you find me anyways,” I finally ask. The question was in the back of my mind ever since I saw him standing in my garage.

“Well, I am a Navy SEAL,” he boasts. I roll my eyes and grin.

“And you can pretty much search for anything on the internet these days,” Ryan adds.

We both giggled like high school kids in each other’s arms. This is definitely what I’ve been needing all along.

THE END

Another SURPRISE bonus story is on the next page!

Bonus Story 7/10

Here’s what you most need to know most about Alexandria Bill: She hated New York City.

While most people were trying to get into New York, she was trying to get out. She’d grown up there, in the borough of Brooklyn, and had come to resent the concrete jungle, the towering peaks of buildings along the horizon, the rats that came out at night and scurried along the garbage bags stacked up on the curb.  She’d been trapped in a maze of sidewalks her whole life, but what she really yearned for were trees. Trees and grass and little creeks that made their way through meandering woods.

Ever since she was a young girl, she’d been collecting pictures of this other world she coveted. Her favorite section of the New York Times was the Sunday travel section and she’d cut out her favorite pictures of green paradises from all over Europe and the United States.  By the time she was ten, she’d selected Bavaria in Germany and Yellowstone National Park as the two top spots on her wish list.

To her father, there was no other place beyond New York.  He came from a long line of people who had spent their whole lives there, who had worked and breathed and lived and died in New York and it was unimaginable to them that anyone would want to live anywhere else.  To the Bill family, the city was the epicenter of the Universe and they knew its history and its neighborhoods and its nooks and crannies like the rest of the New Yorkers who believed the city belonged to them.

She had lived her whole life at 17 Quackenbush Avenue in Brooklyn, three doors down from her grandparents and two streets west of her cousins.  Her mother had left when Alex was two and her father had raised her alone.  His parents had bought them the house on Quackenbush and they’d become a tight family, sharing Sunday dinners, existing between the family homes spread out in the old Brooklyn neighborhood.  Her grandparents regarded raising a family as a communal process, something that was the responsibility of everyone that shared their DNA.

The only person who knew her secret dreams was her grandfather.  He’d taken her upstate twice when she was growing up----once to a state park that had a giant waterfall accessed by a long, winding trail and another time they’d stayed overnight in the hills of the Catskill Mountains. She’d looked at the ancient woods as a city all in itself, with its own towering structures and its own sounds, but it was a place of peace. She hadn’t missed the noise of the never-ending traffic and the bustle of people moving when she was in the woods, but had instead reveled in the solitude of the place. The silence seemed to be a sound all in itself.

Her father had been a doorman for most of his adult life.  The posh West Side apartment where he worked was a little world unto itself and he knew everything about the people who lived there.  He knew their names, their pet’s names and their children’s names. He knew who was divorcing whom, who was having an affair, and where they worked and what they were having for dinner. 

He’d never dreamed of doing anything else.  He felt like he was plugged into the heart of the city working there, as if he were connected to its soul with an electric cord.

Alex wanted nothing to do with it.

She thought the real movers and shakers in New York were the ones who made it sparkle.  Everyone else merely existed to keep those people happy, and her father was one of those people.  She thought he was lost in his own little dream, believing he was part of something bigger and greater than what it actually was. 

She had no intention of servicing other people for the rest of her life.  She wanted to move out west, live in a pretty little town somewhere and understand what it meant to be free in an expanse of endless open land.  The Big Apple was for big dreamers and her dreams were simple.

She had graduated Magna Cum Laude from City College two years before and was almost finished with her master’s degree in teaching.  As soon as her last grade was posted, she planned to apply for teaching positions in high schools throughout America’s west.  She had bid her time, had slowly and meticulously planned the rest of her life, often in secret.

The only thing that gave her pause about this plan was her father.  He loved her more than the Upper West Side apartment where he worked, which was saying a lot.   She was proof of something to him---proof that he was a capable man who could raise a daughter single handedly and raise her well.  The fact that she even existed made him proud and he fawned over her the same way he fawned over the people he served in the apartments.

“Alex!” he had said through the years when she’d described her vagabond dreams to him. “There are trees in Central Park.  There are trees and squirrels and rocks and ponds.  Why would you need to go anywhere else?”

Her dreams were an aberration to him, something he couldn’t even begin to understand and he wondered what wayward gene had been bestowed upon his daughter that caused her to dream of fleeing New York.

“My God Alex!” he’d say.  “Everything everyone could possibly want exists right here in your own backyard!  What else is there?”

His daughter was book smart, but her brain had somehow talked her into ignoring the fact that she was beautiful.  She was nearly six-feet tall, with blonde, flowing hair that reached her shoulders in gentle curls.  She had wide green eyes and a sculptured, classic face and even with her glasses on, she was every bit as beautiful as the models who lived in the infamous apartment building where he worked every day.

The irony was that she didn’t know it.

She glided down the streets of New York like a wandering cloud, as if she wasn’t sure where she was going, always oblivious to the glances of men and the envious stares of women.  Her clothes were plain and her eyes were always cast downward, but still her beauty shone through the cloud that seemed to follow her.

He didn’t think she’d ever leave him.  He didn’t think she had the strength to go off on her own.

*****

When the fall had come and gone and Alex still hadn’t heard from any of the schools she’d applied to, she decided she would have to come up with Plan B.

Alex wasn’t used to having a Plan B.  Her plan A’s had always come to fruition.  She never found it difficult to set a goal and forge her way there---sometimes rather effortlessly.

She still kept in touch with her mother although she didn’t visit as regularly as she once did. She lived in San Francisco, having headed west she’d met another man and moved west.  The details of the story remained frozen in time at the behest of her father, but she knew her mother had fallen in love with someone else who turned out to be a very wealthy man.

Her parents had married when they were young and “before we knew who we really were,” her mother had told her.  She had wanted Alex to join her in California once she got settled with her new husband but her father would not hear of it.  As the years went on, Alex was glad that she’d stayed in New York.  Her mother was now mothering a stepchild part time and it was confusing for her to see her mother nurturing another child when she’d missed out on so much of it.

They lived a different life than Alex and her father did.  They were part of the cocktail set and they owned a boat and a private company plane and there was a private school for their son Thomas.  Alex wasn’t comfortable there, and as time went on, she spent less and less time with her mother in the summers.  She explained to her that she had friends and activities now that kept her in New York and although her mother seemed sad about the circumstances, she eventually relented and let her have her way.

The phone rang one day while she was scouring the Internet for teaching positions and she was happy to hear her mother on the other end of the phone.  They talked for a while about what Alex was doing and how she hadn’t had much luck finding a job.

“Well, that’s why I’m calling,” she said, her New York accent still evident in her voice.

Her husband Tom was grooming his son Tom Jr. to take over his wine distribution business. He’d been working for his father for two years now and his assistant had just quit to get married.

“You are perfect for this job, Alex,” she said.  “You are certainly bright enough and you have a lovely presence.”

“But I’m a teacher,” Alex said.  “My experience is with children in the classroom.”

“You may only want to do this for a year,” her mother said. “But it involves travel.  You’d get to see the world, sweetheart.  That’s something you want to do when you’re young. You can teach until you’re old and grey.”

Her mother explained the role Alex would be taking.  Assistants, she said, did a lot of the travel planning, event and meeting planning—and some grunt work, like getting coffee and bringing in meals.

“And it pays $80,000 to start,” she said.  “Plus bonuses.”

Alex stammered for a minute.  $80,000 a year, she thought? And travel! It all sounded too good to be true, but she’d never been fond of her stepbrother. There was, of course, a lot of jealousy between them and Alex had always thought of him as a spoiled brat.

“It’s an exciting job,” her mother said.

Alex knew her mother was offering this to her to help her broaden her horizons.  She’d always wanted more for Alex than Alex had wanted for herself.

“I’m just worried about Thomas,” Alex said. “It’s not like we’ve ever been the best of friends.”

“Thomas has changed,” her mother said. “He’s an adult now.  He’s not going to give you any trouble.  I think given the chance, the two of you will get along very well.”

It was one of those synchronistic events that never happened to Alexander Bill.  There was no question in Alex’s mind that she’d be accepting the job.  This was her chance to leave New York for a while, to explore the world beyond Brooklyn.  She was having dinner with her father and her grandparents’ house that night and she’d broach it with them then.  She knew it would be a battle, but she was determined.

“Thomas Cooke?” her grandfather said.  “That’s your mother’s husband’s business!”  Why aren’t they looking for a candidate with a business degree? You’re a teacher!”

“They’re looking for someone intelligent,” Alex said, blushing a bit. “They need an assistant.  A lot of the work is mundane.  How smart do you have to be to get someone coffee?”

“Then it’s beneath you,” her father said, with an indignant tone in his voice.

“Now just a minute,” her grandmother said, putting her fork down on her plate with a loud thud. “This sounds like an incredible opportunity and we all need to stop yakking and listen to Alex.  What young girl doesn’t want to see the world?”

“Yeah, and it pays more than $80,000 a year to start,” Alex told them, somewhat hesitantly.

The room became silent.  That’s more than anyone in the room had made as a yearly salary their entire lives.

“Oh, lord,” her grandfather said.  “How can our Alex say no? This sounds like it could be something good.”

Alex’s father looked lost.  He stared down at his plate with a look of sadness on his face.

“You always knew this coming,” her grandmother told him. “You can’t keep Alex in a cage. She needs to go and find out who she is.”

*****

Two weeks later, Alex was on her way to a private airport on Long Island to catch a private plane to France.  She’d be meeting Thomas Jr. in Paris.

Her father had hired his own private car to take her to the airport, and they’d all crawled in---her grandparents and her father and one younger cousin, too, who didn’t want to miss the chance to see inside his first private jet.

Her father held her hand all the way there.  He was miserable to think she was finally leaving the nest, but he was proud of his little girl.  He’d even started bragging about her over at the apartment building.

When they arrived, her grandfather took her aside. 

“We love you,” he said. “If you need us, you know where we live.  You can come home.  And don’t ever compromise who you are,” he said. “Stay true to yourself.”

The airport manager showed her to her plane and her father asked if they could get on board and say goodbye to her there.

Alex was a bit embarrassed when they all got on the jet, inspecting every inch, completely in awe.  Most of her relatives had never left the United States, not to mention being escorted onto a private jet to France.

“Break a leg, kid,” her father said when he left, looking a little teary.  He hugged her for a minute too long when he said goodbye.

They stood and waved from the parking lot as the plane took off to head northeast into the clouds to France. Alex could see the towering skyline of New York in the distance and she was surprised to find she, too, was a little teary.  She had waited her whole life to leave and now that the time had come, she realized she was saying goodbye to the first chapter of her life. 

It is one thing to want to grow up and another thing entirely to do it.

She’d studied Thomas Cooke’s company like an encyclopedia in the weeks before she left and had begun to form a better idea of who he was and what he did. Besides the wine distribution business, they were importers of goods from dozens of countries overseas.  They had subsidiaries around the world and Alex took out her notes to study them again.  She wanted to present herself as ready to work from the moment she got there.

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean she was served lunch, and after that she slept.  She was awoken just before the plane was due to make a landing in Paris.