Read Burn This! (A 300 Moons Book)(Bad Boy Alphas) Online
Authors: Tasha Black
J
ohnny was playing it cool
.
They’d made it through the takeoff without any issues. But now the entire cabin seemed as if it were about to explode with excitement at his presence. All it needed was the tiniest spark.
“That’s
him
,” a little voice insisted loudly from a few rows down.
And there it was.
“Hush, Layla,” a woman’s voice said.
“No, but it
is
him,” the little voice insisted.
“He’s just riding an airplane like we are,” the woman said firmly. “Now hush, babe.”
“Yeah, but is he gonna say it?” the little voice demanded.
“No, honey, he’s not going to say it,” the mother whispered. “Play with your iPad.”
“Why won’t he say it?” Layla asked plaintively.
“Oh hell,” Johnny muttered to Neve.
He turned himself in his seat and looked back at the little girl. Her eyes opened wide in amazement.
“Arooooo,” he crooned to her.
“
He said it!”
the girl cried.
There was tittering in the surrounding row.
“Do you know the other words to that song?” Johnny asked the girl.
She was suddenly struck shy and buried her face in her mother’s arm.
“Oh yes, she knows them,” the mother assured him. “Her big brother is a fan.”
“Let’s get a picture then,” Johnny said. “No, let’s make a video for him.”
By the time the plane landed, they had sung through Johnny’s repertoire and made a concert video for Layla’s brother Sam. Johnny had listened patiently to stories of other passengers who were sure they had a great song idea for him, or who wanted to tell him how much his music meant.
Now he just wanted to get his woman home to the family. She was his mate, not just his woman. She knew it too, though she didn’t have the words yet to back it up. He would explain - they had time. Maybe he could take her up in the barn loft, his favorite place to get away in childhood, and whisper with her there about what it meant to be mated.
The short ride from the airport passed in a flash, and before he knew it, the taxi dropped them off at the foot of the hill.
The old sign for
Harkness Farms
on a wooden, pumpkin shaped cut-out had been recently painted. The sycamores leading up to the farmhouse had just begun to turn.
Neve walked beside him, the contented expression on her face pleasing his dragon.
You see, she knows. You’ll give her the proper words for it, but she’s not worried about anything, because we are going to protect her no matter what.
“Johnny,” Mom’s voice carried over the meadow. She ran out of the old white stucco farmhouse, her familiar apron slung low on her hips as usual, her long hair escaping her pony tail.
“Come on,” he murmured to Neve, grabbing her hand and running for his mother. “You’re going to make her so happy.”
“Who’s this?” Mom asked, her blue eyes were bright with excitement.
“Mom, this is Neve,” Johnny said proudly.
He watched as the two women eyed each other up.
“It’s lovely to meet you,” Mom said, her voice hushed.
“Thank you for allowing me to visit,” Neve replied with a smile.
It seemed to Johnny that something passed between them. They were similar, come to think of it. Funny that he had chosen a mate who was so much like his mother.
Suddenly Mom wrapped Neve in her arms and gave her one of her patented bracing squeezes. The air whooshed out of Neve in a soft laugh, and Mom joined her.
“Come inside,” Mom said, releasing Neve from the hug, but keeping an arm around her. “I’m sure you’ll want a warm bath and a hot meal.”
Neve smiled at the older woman and Johnny felt his heart fill to bursting.
But there was something he needed to do.
“Not yet, Mom,” Johnny interrupted. “I need to keep her to myself for just a little bit.”
“Alright, but your brother will be here any minute,” Mom warned him. “I still can’t believe what happened to him. And wait until you hear about my Darcy.”
She shook her head as she walked back toward the house.
Darcy was probably the smartest and toughest Harkness kid of the bunch. What could have happened to Darcy?
“So what do we need to talk about?” Neve’s husky voice drew Johnny’s attention back to the situation at hand.
He smiled down at her, feeling pleased when she smiled back so hard her lashes kissed her cheeks.
“What
don’t
we have to talk about?” he asked as he walked her toward the barn. “You’re not afraid to climb a ladder are you?”
“Uh, no, I’m not afraid,” she said, but he could tell by her tone that she was.
This was going to be fun.
The dragon rustled his leathery wings in delight.
Johnny smiled.
Things were going to be just fine.
***
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D
erek Harkness gazed
out the incredible wall of windows in his corner suite office.
The elevated view included the glassy glamour of Glacier City’s architecture and the delicate spires of the ornamental bridge stretching from downtown all the way to suburban Greensburg. The few lonely clouds above drifted past, their reflections echoing madly in the glass of the nearby buildings.
But Derek’s eyes were trained on the motionless green postage stamp of a park far below, where a few trees competed for the bit of soft autumn sunlight that filtered through the towering edifices above. He could almost feel the cool dirt beneath his feet, the brisk air blowing through his fur.
“Damn it,” he muttered, wrenching his eyes from the park.
The bear inside him grumbled and tossed his snout in the air in a flash of teeth.
When he caught himself in moments like these, Derek wanted nothing more than to shoot himself with a tranquilizer gun.
He knew the key to control over the beast was eternal vigilance. But these last few weeks the creature would come to him any moment he let his guard down. No sooner did Derek relax than the bear would sneak into his consciousness as it had just now, subtly pushing his senses toward its wild agenda.
Derek would never let it take it over again, never. But the act of caging this thing, which used to take a fraction of his mental energy, was now requiring a strength of mind he wasn’t sure he could maintain.
In desperation, Derek had even snuck out to go to the discount book store in Cobble Slope last night, where no one would know him, and read self-help books in the aisle.
You are your own worst enemy
.
They had all boiled down to that.
The authors had
no
idea.
He’d given up and left again, even as the bear threw itself against the bars of its mental cage when the pretty check-out lady with the blue hipster glasses asked if he’d found everything he needed.
The worst of it was that the bear had… certain
advantages
.
Derek was smart, disciplined, strong. He was close with his foster siblings and had a handful of friends, in spite of the high demands of his career.
Women seemed to like him, and he’d been told that he resembled some dark haired, blue-eyed movie star or other. Even before the money, there were always plenty to choose from.
Now, at twenty-nine, he was one of the youngest CEOs of a major corporation. Derek was proud that he had earned every millimeter of the climb to the top with hard work and focus.
But a little voice in his head always reminded him of the bear.
The bear that had wrested him from his biological family by pushing itself on him too soon and too hard, had also pushed him up the corporate ladder.
Derek was an ethical person. He tried to do the right thing. But putting the shareholders first meant making hard calls when it came to colleagues, employees and even those who had been higher than he was on the food chain.
Each time he found himself at some crux of his career, it inevitably began with him looking at the person right in front of him and trying to make a judgment call.
Had that outraged employee actually embezzled funds, or re-organized the data for the quarterlies to take the heat off their own department, or slept with the intern?
Was the woman across from him actually the perfect choice to fix a problem department, or would the unpleasant new assignment run her off to another corporation, losing one of the best brains at his disposal?
Each time he combed his mind for rational answers, and generally made sound decisions on his own. And based on that, he would have enjoyed a reasonable level of success.
But some calls had to be made on instinct.
And the times when he chose fastest and best, those moments that had shaped his career and built his business, each of them were times when the bear chose for him.
The first time had broken his heart.
Gretchen had been a beautiful junior VP whose green-eyed smiles caused him to splurge two months’ salary on an obscenely large diamond ring that was burning a hole in his pocket waiting for their Valentine’s Day date. She was everything he could want in a wife, smart, beautiful, and career-minded. Best of all, she had a quintessential New England family with whom they had spent Christmas. Those few days had filled holes in Derek’s heart that he hadn’t even known were there.
One afternoon in late January, Gretchen dragged Kurt Engle, one of the accountants, into his office, practically by the ear.
Kurt was unlikeable.
There was no beating around the bush. He complained at every staff meeting, he blew his nose so loudly in his cubicle that other accountants held a lottery to swap seats further away from him. He enjoyed sniffing out and announcing the minor mistakes other employees made.
So when Gretchen stood before Derek and accused Kurt of embezzlement, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to believe her. Firing Kurt would have been satisfying and would have made everyone happy.
But as the miserable man stood, sniffling and red-faced before Derek, repeating endlessly that he’d done nothing wrong in his grating, nasally voice, Derek had stopped to consider for a just a moment.
And in that moment time stood still.
The bear poked out his nose from the cave of Derek’s mind and sussed out the situation instantly from the note of acrid sweat under the locks of Gretchen’s hair.
“Gretchen, give me your phone, I’m going to call security,” he’d barked so suddenly that she chose not to question him.
When security arrived, he’d instructed them to accompany her to the lobby to wait for the police.
He would never forget the exact instant when she realized he knew. Her lovely face twisted into an expression of absolute hatred for a moment before she got control of herself.
“Derek, I wouldn’t. I would never,” she babbled. “I love this company, I love
you
.”
But no one had ever
really
loved Derek.
She only wanted his money. And apparently, she wasn’t patient enough to wait for him to give it to her.
He turned away from her to find Kurt, staring at him slack-jawed.
“You saw something in the books, huh?” Derek asked.
“Y-yeah, I brought it to Gretchen, but—” Kurt stammered.
“Next time, bring it to me,” Derek told him.
Kurt pulled a wadded up napkin out of the pocket of his discount slacks and blew his nose like a trumpet.
“Thank you, Mr. Harkness,” he said at last, with feeling. “You can count on me.”
Before Derek could chase him out of the office, the bear asserted that it was true, Kurt could be counted on.
“Thanks a lot,” Derek muttered sarcastically to the bear.
“Anytime,” Kurt answered sunnily, not picking up on the sarcasm and assuming Derek’s words were meant for him.
Behind the glasses, Kurt had intelligent dark brown eyes which Derek now noticed for the first time.
“Hey, you want to go get some lunch?” Derek heard himself ask.
Derek’s friendship with Kurt had ended up being the second best decision he ever made, business or personal.
Bear -2, Derek - 0.
But he knew that wasn’t all the bear could do.
The bear had wrecked his relationship with his birth family. Given its freedom it would party and carouse with every woman in sight, luxuriating in temporal pleasures, surrendering to mad furies, and forgoing the orderliness that gave Derek’s life comfort.
And it would trample over his plans for a quiet family life and a happy future.
So the bear, while cunning, must be kept at bay at all costs.
The buzz of Derek’s cell phone was a welcome distraction from this line of thought.
He glanced at the Caller ID.
“Hey, Mom,” he said with a smile, stepping out of his office and onto the catwalk that overlooked the massive entryway to Harkness Assets, Ltd.
“Derek, are you behaving yourself?” Kate Harkness barked, her straightforward manner making him smile.
“I’m trying my best,” he admitted.
“Well, we all know that’s true,” she said. “When are you coming home?”
“It’s a little early. Harvest Festival isn’t until next month.”
“We have more to celebrate this year. It’s your 300th moon, you remember that, right?” she asked impatiently.
Oh boy.
“Do you, uh, think that’s a real thing?” Derek hedged.
“Do you think Gloria Cortez would do magic that didn’t work? Yes, I think it’s
real.
”
“Work is very hectic—” he began.
“Don’t even try it. I’ll expect you home by the end of the week,” she said firmly. “If you don’t show up, I’m sending someone after you. Are we clear?”
Why had he thought he could argue?
“Yeah, Mom, I’ll be there,” he assured her.
“Good boy. I love you and I’m proud of you,” she told him. “The kids are cooking up a storm, hope you’re ready.”
“I’m ready,” he smiled, thinking of all his little foster brothers making corned beef and cabbage and freezing pies to prepare for the homecoming of the first group of Harkness kids.
“Okay. Go check out your hip when you have a sec. Bye!”
She hung up before he could ask what the hell she was talking about.
Check his hip?
“Mr. Harkness, your four o’clock is here,” Lena said from the doorway.
Lena was very attractive with her long legs, pixie-cut hair, and seemingly endless array of tight skirts. But Derek had stopped carrying on with the assistants long ago. It had tripled his productivity.
The way she was studying him today was more intense than usual, though. Her lips parted slightly and her pulse thrummed at the base of her neck.
Oh hell, he could smell the arousal coming off her, under a thin layer of fruity perfume.
The bear in his head stood and shook himself off, ready to claim her. Derek fought him down.
Why was the bear so insistent? Maybe there was more to this 300th moon thing than he thought.
He needed to remove the distraction.
“Lena,” he said to the ground, not wanting to make things worse. “Would you please do a quick coffee run? The usual.”
“Huh?” she said, snapping back to herself. “Oh. Yes. Absolutely, Mr. Harkness.”
But she still stood there for a few seconds before scurrying away - like maybe it had taken her longer than it should have to recover from the chemistry of the moment. She’d definitely caught him checking her out by accident a couple of times before, but this was different.
If this
did
have to do with his 300th moon, it was a bad sign. It wasn’t even dark yet.
Derek took a deep breath. He had to get hold of his body before stepping into his next meeting.
Naturally, the bear was still pacing in his chest, eager to explore and claim the tasty female.
Go back to sleep,
Derek implored it.
Please.
T
HE END
of Chapter One of Bait This!: A 300 Moons Book.
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