At His Command (22 page)

He cupped her head and slowly drew her mouth up to his, his eyes on hers as their lips met.

She took his kiss, letting her eyes drift shut as sensation after sensation poured through her. He slowly lowered them both to the bed, where he rolled her beneath him and continued his sweet seduction. Their clothes didn’t come off in a frenzied rush, but with slow deliberation. As if they both needed to offset the harsh reality of what they’d been through with something pure and honest.

They took turns slowly exploring each other, delighting in discovering again what made them gasp, what made them moan. It was slow but complete capitulation where nothing was held back, nothing was hidden.

When she finally rolled to her back, taking his weight fully on top of her, it was as if she’d reached a golden point, a place she’d been trying to get to for a long, long time but could never quite find. That place where life suddenly became more complete and took on even greater meaning.

Without a word, they locked gazes and he slowly pushed into her, not stopping until she’d taken him fully inside of her. She wrapped her legs around him, holding him there, taking a moment to wallow, to revel a bit, in the supreme pleasure and contentment of being joined to that person who was to be hers.

And in that moment, despite all the fears, all the work yet to be done, and the promise of the future that lay before them, one thing was certain: her time spent with this man was going to mean something to her for the rest of her life.

The rest she let go, and willed herself just to feel, to truly live purely in that moment and that moment only. She moved first, pressing her hips up into his. He began to move inside of her, so deep, filling her so perfectly. It wasn’t wild, it wasn’t frenzied; it was powerful and necessary. He slid one arm beneath the small of her back and lifted her hips even higher so he could sink into her even more deeply. Their gazes caught, held, and their thrusts came faster, deeper. She watched him climb, watched as his need for her strengthened, felt his muscles gather and bunch as he drew ever closer. She tightened around him, needing to know she could take him to that place, give him that sweet bliss that he so effortlessly gave her, and found herself shuddering, too, in intense satisfaction as he growled through a pulsing release.

He kissed her, pressed another kiss to her temple, and then dropped another one just below her ear before rolling to his back, pulling her with him, and settling her body alongside his.

She fell against him with her body as she’d fallen for him with her heart. She didn’t question it. Her eyes were already drifting shut as she shifted enough to press a soft kiss over his heart before tucking her arm across his body. Then she draped her leg across his, needing him as close to her as he could get.

It was okay to let go completely; he was there to catch her.

“Chris,” she said as the light faded from outside and the city quieted.

“Yes,” he murmured.

“In case I forgot to say it. I for—”

He covered her mouth with a kiss, his lips soft and warm. “I know.”

Epilogue

“C
hris,” she puffed, “wait for me.” He turned and smiled at her.

“Well, come on, slowpoke.” He waited while she slipped her arm through his.

She huffed in mock anger. “You’re not carrying around a bowling ball in your stomach, mister, so just be patient with your pregnant wife,” she said, laughing as she made the last few steps to the rotunda of the Navy Memorial.

“I said to wait until after the baby was born to do this. You, on the other hand, acted quite unreasonable. ‘No, Chris,’” he mimicked in a high falsetto voice, “‘I have to be there on the anniversary of my brother’s memorial.’”

She laughed until she was breathless. “You know this is important to me, so you even drove me all the way from Norfolk. It was just a few hours’ drive, anyway, and I’m not due for another two weeks.”

He looked down at her enormous stomach and sent his hand lovingly over the huge mound. “It feels risky to me.”

He held her hand as they made their way to the plaque. She stood in front of it and smiled at the handsome picture of her brother. Gently, she ran her hands over the words:
In honored memory of Lieutenant Rafael Soto, loving brother and son, keeper of freedom and liberty, and lover of jelly beans.

He would have been happy for his sister and his best friend. Sia and Chris had been married now for two years. Two wonderful years. It hadn’t been smooth sailing that whole time, mostly because she was stubborn, but Chris had always been there for her and she for him.

Suddenly the dull ache she’d had in her back all the way from Norfolk intensified. There was a popping sound and a rush of water that left a puddle beneath her.

Several people were milling around the other memorials and they turned to look at her. One woman covered her mouth as her husband whipped out his cell phone and dialed.

“Oh, damn,” Chris said, looking down, then looking at her. “Is that what I think it is?”

She smiled, not at all panicked as she took Chris’s hand. “Yes. We’re going to have a baby.” Chris didn’t move, just stared at her, dumbfounded. “Now, Chris.”

“Right, hospital.”

He took her hand and started to pull her when a strong contraction took hold of her, sending pain across her abdomen and stabbing into her lower back. She doubled over and several people asked Chris if he needed help. He just shook his head and waited out her contraction.

When it was over, Sia knew. “Ah, Chris, we’re not going to make it to the hospital.”

“Oh, damn,” he said again as he looked frantically for a place to set her down. “That bench.” He dragged her over and helped her lie down. He settled her jacket over her hips and legs as he removed clothing to make way for the baby.

“I think I’ve been in labor all day,” she said, breaking off as another searing contraction tightened her stomach into a hard knot of pain. She cried out and Chris went white.

“Hang on, honey.”

“I didn’t know it was labor pains,” she panted. “They were so mild.”

“You’re just one of the lucky ones.”

She cried out as another strong band of pain contracted and she felt a pressure in her groin. “I feel the need to push,” she said, the unmistakable feeling of bearing down overwhelming her.

“Then push, honey. I’m here.”

Sia let her body take over, since it seemed to know what it wanted to do.

After several minutes, Chris cried out, “I can see the head. Keep going.” He ripped off his jacket and his T-shirt.

Sia continued to push and Chris asked her to stop momentarily as he navigated the shoulders. She could hear the sound of an ambulance in the distance. She remembered someone had called for one when they saw her water break. But they were going to be too late as she felt her child slide from her body. Chris caught the small bundle in his hands and wrapped the baby in the soft cotton of his shirt as Sia heard the first cries.

“It’s a boy,” Chris said, looking up at her with a joyous expression on his face, wonderment in his eyes. And Sia reached down and touched her son. The little boy turned his head, and, like lightning, Sia was struck with instantaneous love, a bond that filled her with the same wonder she’d just seen on her husband’s face.

She stroked his head and said softly as the paramedics rushed up to them, “Hello, Rafael.”

* * * * *

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Mercenary’s Perfect Mission
by Carla Cassidy!

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Chapter 1

T
he Wyoming woods atop the tall mountains that cradled the town of Cold Plains were just beginning to take on a fall cast of color. This worked perfectly with the camouflage long-sleeved T-shirt and pants that Micah Grayson wore as he made his way through the thick brush and trees.

Although a gun holster rode his shoulder, he held his gun tight in his hand. Despite the fact that he had only been hiding out in the mountainous woods for two days and nights, he’d quickly learned that danger could come in the blink of an eye, a danger that might require the quick tic of his index finger on the trigger.

Twilight had long ago fallen but a near-full moon overhead worked as an additional enemy when it came to using the shield of darkness for cover.

As an ex-mercenary, Micah knew how to learn the terrain and use the weather to his advantage. He knew how to keep the reflection of the moonlight off his skin so as not to alert anyone to his presence. He could move through a bed of dry leaves and not make a sound. He could be wearing a black suit in a snowstorm and still figure out a way to become invisible.

The first twenty-four hours that he’d been in the woods he’d learned natural landmarks, studied pitfalls and figured out places he thought would make good hidey-holes if needed. He’d also come face-to-face with a moose, heard the distant call of a wolf and seen several elk and deer.

He now moved with the stealth of a big cat toward the rocky cliff he’d discovered the night before. As he crept low and light on his feet, he kept alert, his ears open for any alien sound that might not belong to the forest.

Despite the relative coolness of the night, a trickle of sweat trekked down the center of his back. During his thirty-eight years of life, Micah had faced a thousand life-threatening situations, the latest of which had been a bullet to his head that had sent him into a coma for months.

When he finally reached the rocky bluff he looked down at the lights dotting the little valley, the lights of the small town of Cold Plains, Wyoming. His brother Samuel’s town. Micah reached up and touched the scar, now barely discernible through his thick dark hair on the left side of his head, the place where Samuel’s henchman, Dax Roberts, had shot him while Micah had sat in his car. Dax had left him for dead.

Fortunately for Micah he hadn’t died, but had come out of a three-month coma with the fierce, driving need for revenge against the fraternal twin he’d always somehow known was a dangerous, narcissistic sociopath.

Unfortunately, Samuel was also charming and slick and powerful, making him a natural leader that people wanted to follow.

Five months ago Micah had been sitting in a small-town Kansas coffee shop where he’d landed after his last mission for a little downtime when he’d seen a face almost identical to his own flash across the television mounted to the wall.

Stunned, he’d watched a news story unfold that told him his brother Samuel was being questioned by the FBI and local police in connection with the murders of five women found all across Wyoming. All the women had one thing in common: Cold Plains, the town where his wealthy, motivational-speaker brother wielded unbelievable influence and power.

Micah had immediately contacted the FBI and been put in touch with an agent named Hawk Bledsoe. The two had made arrangements to meet the next day but, before Micah could make that meeting, he’d caught the bullet to his head.

He’d been in the coma for ninety-three long days and it had taken him another two months to feel up to the task he knew he had to do—take out Samuel before he could destroy any more people and lives.

Which was why he’d spent these last two days and nights in the woods adjacent to Cold Plains.

Minutes before he’d made his way to the bluff, he’d met with his FBI contact, Hawk. Hawk had grown up in Cold Plains and after years of being away from his hometown had returned to discover that the rough-around-the-edges place where he’d grown up as son of the town drunk had transformed into something eerily perfect. A town run by a group of people who others referred to under their breaths as the Devotees and their leader, the movie-star handsome, but frightening and dangerous Samuel Grayson.

For the past two nights Micah and Hawk had met at dusk in the woods so Hawk could keep Micah apprised of what was going on in town and how the FBI investigation into Samuel’s misdeeds was progressing.

As he thought about everything Hawk had shared with him over the last two days, a dull throb began at the scar in the side of his head. He drew in several deep, long breaths, attempting to will away one of the killer migraines that the bullet had left behind.

He turned and started off the bluff, deciding to make his way down the mountain, closer to town. The only time he dared to do a little reconnaissance of the layout of the town was at night. He knew that if anyone caught sight of him it would be reported back to Samuel, and the last thing Micah wanted Samuel to know was that he was not only still alive but he was also here and working with the FBI to bring him down.