Remy (9 page)

Chapter 13

Monroe’s hand absently pressed the intercom button on his phone as it buzzed.  He’d been pouring over invoices for hours. While it was Mason’s job to ensure finances were in order, every once in a while, Monroe liked to double-check to ensure there wasn’t anything his CFO missed.

“What?” Monroe growled, knowing his assistant Lilly was used to his abrupt demeanor.

“Uh, I’ve got a caller on the line demanding to speak with you.  Says it’s urgent, but won’t provide a name and no number is showing up on the caller ID.”

Monroe lifted one hand, the other keeping his pen gliding over the paperwork beneath his fingers.  “Put it through.”  The line clicked and there were two short beeps before the call was transferred.

Monroe picked up the phone.  “What?” he barked, annoyed that the caller had the audacity to contact him without willingly providing even a name to his assistant.

“They found you!  You’ve got incoming!”

“What?” he snarled again as his hand stilled in its task of signing papers.

“ETA five minutes, Monroe!  Get your people secure. Trouble’s coming to your fucking door!”

He recognized the voice.  “HEY!” he shouted, trying to hold the caller on the line.  “Who?  How? When?”

The sound of gnashing teeth carried over the line.  “It’s them!  And they’re coming RIGHT FUCKING NOW!”

“Get your ass here!”

“No.”  The caller retorted.  “And if you send Walkers after me, they won’t be coming back!” 

The line went dead, and Monroe stared at the receiver for only a moment before shooting up from his desk and bellowing, “KING!”

***

Aaron rolled his eyes as he stood with Harlow’s former human team, milling about outside the chow hall after lunch.  “I don’t believe in romancing,” he declared, responding to a verbal jab from Josef regarding love.

Brian gave him a high five. “Hell, yeah!” 

Beside him, Josef smiled with an approving thumbs up.

And Harlow had had enough. Absolutely, positively, one hundred percent Enough!  Her day had started out crappy when she’d confessed her true feeling to Remy. She’d hid out in her barracks until lunch then, like an idiot, she’d opted to sit with her old team at chow. And that had been a terrible mistake, as she’d had to endure listening to them disparage women for over an hour.  “Present company excluded,” Aaron kept chiming in, smiling at her. 

They’d groaned about how
needy
women were, they’d joked about how
easy
women were, and then they’d all taken turns regaling each other with stories of their exploits.  Harlow was Fed. Up.  Turning to Aaron outside the chow hall, she gave him an angry sneer.  “Do you believe in pussy?”

Aaron’s brows hit his hairline.  “
Excuse
me?”

Harlow shrugged, trying to rein in her anger.  “If you believe in pussy, you’d better get acquainted with romance, real quick,” she snarled.  “You won’t get the first without the latter.  Not for long, anyway.”

Aaron scowled. “I’ve had plenty of sex without romance.”

“Exactly.”

Confusion clouded his face as he crossed his arms over his chest.  “Meaning?”

Harlow turned fully to face him.  “Meaning, you’ve had ‘sex’, Aaron.” She cast her gaze to include Josef and Brian.  “You all have.  But if you’ve only ever had sex without any romance involved, then you’ve never shared any real intimacy with a woman. I’m sure you’ve fucked in every position imaginable.” She cocked her head.  “But what women allow you to take from them is nothing compared to what it can be like when it isn’t you taking, but a woman giving.  A woman sharing.”

“I’ve never forced anyone,” Aaron snarled.

Harlow chuffed a laugh.  “I didn’t say you did.  What I’m saying is you’re merely fucking, and probably doing it wrong at that.  All of you.”  She smirked.  “How many of you even make sure your female gets off before you, or gets off at all for that matter?  Let me explain something to you, boys. If you two are together, and she doesn’t come but you do, then you didn’t fuck her, big boy,
she
fucked
you
!  And that’s the problem.  Fucking has nothing on the gift of a hot, wet,
eager
pussy.”

Harlow didn’t notice that Remy had exited the chow hall and was standing behind her.  She was also unaware of how her words slammed into him, ripping the air from his lungs. To hear those graphic words spoken from such dainty lips had his balls tightening and blood flooding his cock.

“Sure, women let you fuck them now because you’re hot,” she continued.  “Let you do things to them.  It won’t last.”  She waved her hand toward Aaron. “Because believe me, boys. You won’t be hot forever.”

Remy’s angry eyes shot to Aaron. 

“But when you romance a woman, she’ll want you to enjoy the gift of her.  She’ll want to reward you for your consideration.  She’ll appreciate your efforts and return them in kind.  She won’t just let you do things
to
her because she thinks you’re hot, she’ll do things
with
you.  She’ll do things
to
you
because she wants you, not the package you come in.  You’ve had sex.  You’ve
fucked
.  But you have no more knowledge of a woman’s body than a fifteen-year-old boy.”  Her lips curled mockingly.  “The route to mind-blowing sex comes by way of intimacy, by way of a woman’s heart, and you’ll never be intimate with a woman until you learn to romance her.  There is no alternate route.  You avoid romance because you’re one of a million males just like you, who believe that romance leads to love.  Like the greedy, carnal beasts you are, you don’t
want
to make love.”  She leaned in. “Isn’t that right?  No, you don’t want to make love.  You want dirty, hard fucking.”

Behind her, Remy inhaled slowly, trying to still the jolt that shot through him.  Blood thundered in his ears and he swore he grew dizzy on her words.

“Guess what, big boy? Women don’t want to make love to
you
either.”  She shrugged one slim shoulder.  “We don’t mind dirty, hard fucking.  But what we really want is intimacy with a
real
man.  And more than that, we want a man who knows how to get there on his own without us having to draw him a fucking map.”  Leaning back, she sighed shaking her head.  “You want to impress a woman,
boys
? You need to seduce her soul.  Do that and she’s yours. 
All
yours.

But none of you will figure it out until it’s too late. You men are such a disappointment nowadays.  So narcissistic. You all think that
you’re
the prize in this game.  You think that piddly little thing between your legs is
so
worth a woman’s effort.  Newsflash, assholes.  Women.  Don’t.  Need.  Men!”  She smiled in satisfaction at the look on their faces.  “You can’t give us anything we can’t get ourselves.  Homes, jobs, money, cars…
orgasms
.  I can attain all those on my own.  Hell, I can even get pregnant without the need for a man to ever touch me! 

You are all becoming obsolete, yet you still have your eyes so glued to the mirror that you don’t even see it.  If a woman lets you fuck her, Aaron, it’s because she wants to, not because she needs to.  You’re an option, not a necessity.  As easy a decision to make as sneakers or stilettos, a red shirt or a blue one.  You’re a woman’s whim.”  Her smile broadened at his suddenly ashen pallor.  “And here you thought you were in charge.”  Her lips pouted in an exaggerated
moue
of sadness.  “Withholding romance to teach us lowly women a lesson.  Trying to make us beg for something you should be chasing us down to lavish on us.”  Her sarcasm vanished, replaced by her own dark scowl.  “
Cowards
. The lot of ya, and selfish ones at that.”  She crossed quickly to stand directly in front of Aaron.  “You don’t believe in romance?  Care to guess what
we
don’t believe in?  Men!  Real, honest-to-God men. They’re mythical. Fucking unicorns!  They died out, were wiped out in the wars, or died of old age.  What’s left?”  Her eyes slid up and down his frame condescendingly.  “Unfortunately for women, not fucking much!”  She turned and slammed right into a massive chest. And of course, because wasn’t that the way, it was one she instantly recognized.  Her ears burned as color suffused her body. 
Oh God!
  Had Remy heard her whole speech?

“Jeez,” Aaron wheezed, glancing at the other men standing beside him.  “We were just messing, Harlow.  Talking, how guys do.”

“Hit the field!” Remy barked.

Aaron, Josef, and Brian hurried to do his bidding, but when Harlow made to follow Remy caught her arm. 

“What in the hell were you doing?”

She didn’t look at him.  “Nothing.  Talking. 
Arguing
.”  She amended.

“That was not arguing.”  His hand was still clamped on her arm.  “It was inciteful.”

She stammered, “Uhh, thanks?” 

“Inciteful with a ‘c’, not an ‘s’,” he growled.

“Oh.” She ducked her head.

“Why are you stirring them up?”

“I wasn’t,” she defended.  “I was educating them, and…”

“Talking about your hot, wet pussy isn’t education, Harlow!  It’s enticing and,” he licked his lips, “distracting.  It’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“What if they’d been aroused by it?”

“Aroused?”  Her mouth fell open.  “I was talking about…”  Her cheeks flamed.  Somehow it was harder to say the word in front of Remy.  “Pussy,” she whispered, then more loudly, “in general.   Not mine.  And I sincerely doubt just the words were enough to arouse anyone.  I…”

Without a word, he fisted her wrist, forcing her hand open before placing it on the hard bar of his cock.  “They aroused me,” he ground out, tightening his grip on her arm when she tried to pull her hand back.  “You see!” His eyes narrowed on her.  “Had the other Walkers heard your little speech, they’d be fighting for the right to mate you.”

“Okay.” She actually felt contrite.  Jerking her hand back, she was relieved that this time, he released her. 

“Hit the field,” he ground out.

Without another word she raced to the field, well aware of the fact that Remy was just steps behind her.   The second her feet hit the training area she and Remy typically used, it was as if he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her.   She was spun and taken down in a heartbeat, but it wasn’t like training at all.  His movements were quick, but his hands were gentle.  She was lowered down more than taken down, and once Remy had her pinned beneath him, she stared up at him in shock. 

The hard bar of his erection pressed into her where he rested in the cradle of her thighs and sent her pulse sky rocketing.  His face was mere inches away, only a breath separating them.

***

Remy watched confusion swirl in Harlow’s haunted green eyes.  He didn’t blame her, hell,
he
didn’t know what he was doing.  He just knew that, if he didn’t get as much contact with her as possible, as soon as possible, he was going to lose his fucking mind.

Unsure what else to do he simply lay on her, holding her arms pinned over her head as she rested beneath him.  By the Gods, what he wouldn’t give to have no clothes between them! 

Over the past few days, training had grown damn near impossible.  He couldn’t find it in himself to let the other Walkers go hands-on with her, and doing so himself only seemed to heighten the attraction smoldering between them.  The sweet scent of her arousal carried to him often—just as it was now—and he knew the other Walkers scented it, which led to smirks and odd looks when he demanded that she train only with him. 

As he held her pinned beneath him, he had to admit that she was getting a lot better at training. Well, her defense anyway.  It was her offense that needed the most work. 

She doesn’t belong here!
  The thought had been drumming through his head since she’d returned from her stint in the infirmary.  Why in the hell Mason would risk her after his many years of searching Remy didn’t know.  What he did know was that if Harlow were his, she’d be tucked safely back at the Estate where she belonged! 

“A-are we training, Commander?”

Fuck no, he didn’t want to train!  He wanted to fuck, and it was all because of the words he’d heard tumble from her hot little mouth.  When he’d listened to her description of the man she wanted, he desperately wanted to step forward and profess to be that man.

“When you’re going down,” he began, trying to force himself back on task, but his voice was too deep, animalistic.  “You’re always gonna be smaller, so you need to use my weight to your advantage.  Use leverage, take advantage of my weight coming to you, and then be planning your next move.”  His breath fanned her cheeks as he studied her face.  They were both breathing heavily, him trying desperately to ignore the way each breath she took pressed her breasts into his chest.

Harlow nodded.

“If I…”  Remy suddenly quieted.  His body went rigid, and his attention snapped away from her, listening carefully.