Too Long a Soldier (Kingdom Key Book 3)

by TylerRose.

  “You wouldn’t believe me,” she said, heading for the bathroom.

  One cologne on the wide sink counter. Polo Sport. Straight razor with heated shave cream dispenser. He wore a goatee and shaved the cheeks and neck around it. New toothbrush. Cap on the neatly rolled toothpaste. Clean toilet and counter. Clean mirror and floor. Clean shower. He wasn’t perfectly neat and tidy, but he wasn’t a slob.

  She changed clothes.

  “I was right,” he said when she came back out. “You do look hot in my tank top.”

  She sat first and eased onto the bed. He tucked her in under the sheet he’d gotten out and stretched out on top of it.

  “You’re going to sleep on top of the sheet?”

  “Yep. I can’t get pushy that way. This is me not pushing.”

  “You gentleman you.”

  “I’m not that much of a gentleman. Having you here is very selfish of me in every possible way,” he admitted.

  “Can we smoke a doob?” she asked.

  “Sure, babe.”

  He turned to reach into the drawer, finding the dish with his fingers and bringing out one of the twenty joints rolled and waiting.

  “What languages?” he asked, getting back to the previous topic of conversation.

  “K’Tran, Common Voranian, Royal Voranian, Landers, Rom.”

  “Rom? What’s that?”

  “Language of the Gypsies. Deek’Traiian, and Sistarian. Oh, and Drakkorian. I think that’s it.”

  “No shit? Eight languages?”

  “Nine if you count Earth English. I can understand almost any language if I have someone through whom I can translate telepathically.”

  “Cool.”

  “Comes in handy. I can go anywhere on Earth and communicate with anyone, pretty much.”

  “Have I told you lately that you’re an incredible woman?” he said.

  “Um…I don’t recall. Say it again.”

  He slid down to be on eye level with her. “You…”

  A nice, warm kiss.

  “Are one…”

  Another kiss just like the first.

  “Incredible…”

  Deeper, longer kiss.

  “Woman.”

  With tongue this time, and lip mauling. He brought kissing to an end and turned off the low lights by remote control.

  “Go to sleep, little girl.”

  “Why do you call me that?” she asked.

  “To remind myself.”

  Silent in the dark. It was good to hold a woman in his arms, in his bed, to not be alone.

  “It feels good to be held again,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

  He refrained from asking if she’d read his mind, instead kissing her warm forehead. “I’ll hold you all you want, babe.”

  Chapter Four

  Gable half dragged Starbird up the stairs to his room, door slamming shut behind him.

  “Alright, Red Sonja. Prepare to be defeated.”

  “Huh?” she stared at him, at a loss for his meaning.

  “I’ll show you the movie tomorrow. Prepare to be vanquished, woman.”

  Grappling commenced at once, noisy and violent, with slaps to arms and face going both ways. Starbird was one tough chick. A seasoned soldier, in the guards on Taverages and then in her father’s armies. She punched hard and didn’t care if she got punched back. Her low level Staff Power, inherited from Adamantine, healed minor contusions in minutes and gave her fantastic endurance. Their one rule was that she could not use it to zap him.

  He flipped her, was flipped in return. Tight hold around her shoulder and she rolled out of it.

  “Come on, Earthman,” she taunted.

  “You are so gonna get it, Spacegirl!”

  “You been sayin’ that for three months.”

  Another round, over the bed to crash hard onto the floor. Her shirt got ripped half off. He kicked his shoes off while she discarded the shirt. He got her into a grapple and both hands to her pants to find the clasp.

  “No, you don’t!” she growled, and broke the rule.

  “Ha! Penalty! Pants off, Spacegirl!” he crowed, letting go of her. He took his shirt off.

  “Shit!”

  But she did it, and for the first time, he saw her underpants. Form fitting, barely there fabric, sheer as a veil.

  “Ooh, I like them,” he said, taking the moment to get a good look.

  She punched him hard in the chest. He regained his footing and went in with a feint to the left that she fell for. Shift to the right and he got her over the shoulder and with a hand to her crotch. She gave a surprised shriek, elbow jacking him upside the head.

  “Oh no,” he said, not giving in to the jarring swirl.

  A huge thump in the middle of the building, one that shook a small glass dish off a shelf by the door and smashed it into pieces, and Star was distracted for half a second.

  “What was that?”

  Gable scooped her up by arm and thigh and pinned her on his bed.

  “Ha! Got you!”

  “That’s not fair! There was a noise.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “It distracted me,” she protested.

  “So what. I won fair and square. Your distraction is your fault.”

  He ripped her panties off and had his pants open in a flash of genetically enhanced speed.

  “You’re mine, Spacegirl,” he declared, and thrust into her to the hilt.

  A deep groan of satisfaction from him, one of shocked surrender from her. There the speed and force ended. They both had tremendous endurance and he kept her going off and on all night.

  “Admit it. you like losing,” he smiled around two in the morning.

  “Never. If we fought again right now, I’d beat you.”

  “It’s just a good thing my win is good until dawn then, isn’t it?” he retorted, and made her pay up again. This time with a blow job in the shower.

  Drying off, she went to his bed while he poked his head into Tony’s room. Bed untouched and the weekend bag was missing from its hook. Hm. He wasn’t going anywhere for a couple days, far as Gable knew. Weird.

  Back in bed and they slept until Gable’s alarm went off at nine am. He did her again because she let him.

  “Shit!” she cursed when he was getting out of bed.

  “What?”

  “It’s, like, three hours past dawn. You weren’t entitled to that one.”

  He laughed a deliberate “HA HA HA, I got a freeeebie and youuu let me!”

  She slugged him in the arm in passing. He captured her, pinned her to the door for another kiss. Arms pinned, naked pelvis to naked pelvis, she melted against the hard wood at her back.

  “You aren’t putting up much of a fight, Spacegirl,” he said low.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” she said, and kissed him.

  “What about tonight?”

  “Tonight I have to sleep. If you’re gonna keep me up all night fuckin’ when you win, then you have to give me the next night to sleep.”

  He grumbled in his throat but gave her a begrudging “Oookaaay.”

  One more kiss and he let her go. “I gotta get down to the shop.”

  Dressed in two minutes, he jogged down while she went to her own room to put on clothes. She was down three minutes after him, grabbing the smaller jug of orange juice out of the fridge.

  “Where’s Tony?” she asked.

  “Not here,” Jerome replied, the paper wide open between his hands.

  “Who put that hole in the wall?”

  “I did,” Jerome replied, turning the page.

  “What happened?” she pursued.

  “I thought it was a good place for a hole. I don’t wanna talk about it.” He looked to Gable. “You got someone to mind the store this afternoon?”

  “Carl will be in two to close.”

  “Bring the sales tax I.D. The wholesale place will want it.”

  “Right.”

  Starbird glared at one and then the other and went down
the hall to the Command Center.

  “What happened last night?” she asked in Taveragian. “Jerome won’t talk and Tony’s not here.”

  “Tony said something he ought not to have said and Jerome responded to protect the lady’s honor.”

  Eyes narrowing as she deciphered his meaning. “Gotcha. I’ma go down to the basement and start moving things out of the way so we can put cots directly into place and have room for the supplies they’re going to start bringing.”

  “Good idea,” he replied.

  Tyler was a one woman buying machine.All three of them had a pallet. Single file, they formed a train up one aisle and down the next. Hers for household. Gables for warehouse and Jerome’s for Safe Haven.

  Jerome had already talked to Meechi about it and Meechi was ready to move anything brought. He welcomed the heads up that something big was coming.

  So far, all three held two 96 count cases of toilet paper, five ten pound bags of coffee beans ready for grinding (for the guys’ pallets but not the household), a gallon each of ketchup, mustard and mayo for the house but not the others. Those would be purchased closer to the actual date of the battle so they wouldn’t expire in the meantime. Biggest jugs of laundry soap all around. Packs of softener sheets. Diapers in three sizes onto two pallets along with the biggest packages of wipes.

  “Only one of those?” Jerome questioned.

  “There will be more by the time I’m done. Just trust me.”

  But she went for the trial size shampoo bottles rather than the jumbo ones. And hotel size bars of soap. Bulk boxes of toothbrushes. Sample size deodorants for men and women. Packs of tampons and pads.

  Jerome stared at the things piling up on his pallet and was disquieted once more. The reality of women not having feminine supplies and people needing toothbrushes struck him in a particularly disturbing way he hadn’t been prepared for.

  She wrote down everything she selected into a list with two columns, one for the warehouse and the other for Safe Haven.

  “Safe Haven is a bomb shelter, isn’t it?” she asked.

  Jerome needed a second to shake off his concerns about refugees. “Yes. There are rooms underground,” he replied while she moved big-ass cans of tuna and beans to the pallets.

  “Yes, socks!”

  One pack in each size from infant to adult men into both pallets and she took a pack for herself.

  “Hey, I need some to,” Jerome said as he reached for his size.

  “Me too,” Gable reached as well. “This place is great.”

  Next, batteries. D, double A and triple A, 9 volt, one pack of each into all three pallets.

  “This ain’t all gonna fit into the van,” Gable realized as they pushed toward the vehicle.

  “Ya think?” Tyler replied. “Open the doors and push your pallet close as you can get it.”

  Jerome opened the doors and Gable pushed the Save Haven pallet behind it. She stood next to it, drew in a big breath and exhaled slowly in a long hiss of air. Everything on the pallet vanished to reappear a second later inside the van.

  “Now the warehouse.”

  Repeated, right down to the exhale but the stuff was just plain gone, teleported into the basement.

  “Household.”

  A third time and a second complete vanishing.

  “Want me to come?” Gable asked Jerome.

  “Nah. You go with Ty and put stuff away. I’ll be back eventually.”

  For the first time, Gable experienced the jarring shunt through space/time. One second he was behind the van, between the two doors, and the next he was in the middle of the kitchen and a startled Roc dropped her glass of water with a shriek.

  “Oh shit. Sorry, Roc,” Gable said, getting a hand towel to clean it up.

  “I need to rest,” Tyler said, fatigue washing over her. “Don’t do anything to the stuff in the basement. I’ll be down in time to make dinner.”

  She ported to her room.

  “What did she do that was so exhausting?” Roc asked, sweeping up broken glass.

  “Go look in the pantry.”

  She did. “My goodness!

  “There’s another whole pallet downstairs. Jerome is taking the third to Safe Haven. She ported that into the van. Plus the walking of actual shopping. It’s not easy for her to be with people. It really takes a toll on her. Then she ported me and herself back here. Tony been up yet?”

  “For ten minutes. He packed two bags and left. He did not open Titans today. Landra called his manager to do so.”

  Gable made a face and finished the cleanup, sending Roc on her way. Landra Ahr came into the kitchen after a moment.

  “Tony has temporarily moved out. Tomorrow his manager will begin to open the gym each day until Jerome hires someone to fill out the shifts.”

  “Is it the right thing to do?” Gable asked, hating to see the two guys close as brothers suddenly at odds over a woman.

  “For the peace of the household, yes. Jerome’s need to protect Tyler outweighs Tony’s right to live here if Tony is going to be so derogatory toward her.”

  “Will he be there in February?”

  “Yes. Jerome will make a point of maintaining their friendship away from the warehouse. You should as well. When things cool down, Tony will return to work in the gym and perhaps return to live here.”

  Gable made no reply, going into the store room to begin putting things away. About four in the afternoon, he carried up two packages of toilet paper for both the upstairs toilets, leaving two outside the girls’ door just as Tyler opened it. She saw, eyes eerily unreadable.

  “Don’t bring us more. We won’t need it.”

  “Won’t need it?” he questioned with a quizzical expression that matched his thoughts.

  She took one from his arm and within seconds they were surrounded by twenty 4pks of toilet paper and she was walking away.

  He looked down, looked around, turned around, and breathed, “Can you do that with pot?”

  She smiled and ported the two of them into the basement. Lights on, she went directly to the pile of stuff they’d bought. Hand on a pack of batteries, there were five more packs of batteries against the far wall. Hand on a pack of diapers, there were five more packs of diapers on the other side of the room. Every package she replicated.

  “Keep the originals separate and I can make more whenever we need them.”

  “There’s a little room in the corner I can put them into. It’ll be the magic pantry that never runs out,” he said, realizing the value of this one ability of hers.

  Mothers fleeing with their babies and not having diapers…

  “This is about to get really real,” he said, disquieted in the same way Jerome had been, but closer to tears with the implications of it all.

  “In ways you cannot yet comprehend, Gable,” she replied in the same tone. “Once it’s done, nothing will ever be the same on Earth.”

  They walked up the tall flights of steps and set about getting supper together. Tonight was baked, breaded chicken breasts with a béchamel she turned into a white parmesan sauce with peas, pearl onions, sliced baby carrots and yellow and red bell peppers.

  Jerome had returned, and sat on an island stool to watch dinner prep. In a minute, he found himself recruited to rinse and spin the water out of lettuce in the funky contraption she’d bought at the warehouse store. He watched her as he sliced off the ends of the romaine and separated the leaves into the basket. She knew exactly what she was doing. Not a second’s hesitation as she moved from one task to the next with a confidence he found very sexy.

  “That water boiling yet?” she asked, bending over to get the zipper bag of cooked noodles from the bottom drawer.

  “Almost,” Gable replied, lifting the lid.

  Bag in the sink, she sliced a cold stick of butter into a bowl and added brown sugar, a scoop of flour, cinnamon and a few things from the new spinning spice rack up in the small cupboard over the stove.

  Oh that’s what that tiny cupboa
rd is for.

  “Here, play with this,” she said, placing an apple peeler thing in front of him with six apples.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  She put the corer/slicer on the counter. “This too.” Next a bowl. “Into here.”

  “I just came in to watch,” he said good-naturedly.

  “No such thing. If you’re in my kitchen, I’ll put you to work.”

  “Your kitchen?” he teased.

  “Unless you wanna do all the cooking,” she shot back.

  “No!” Roc, Star and Gable all said at once.

  “Hey, I do steaks on the grill too. Ya’ll like that.”

  “Which reminds me. Get out a pack of the skirt steaks and put it in the bottom bin of the fridge,” she said to Gable.

  He went to the task while Tyler took apple slices Jerome had already cut and sliced them into chunks. She stirred the sauce and peeked into the oven and brought Roc a spoon of sauce to try.

  “Where have you been? I can eat again.”

  “Wait until you try the apple crisp.”

  Heavy pan on the stove, she started melting margarine. Jerome finished up the apples, cutting them as she had. Into the pan they went with brown sugar, flour, and the same spices she’d put into the other bowl that had been sitting in the fridge since she started. Out again, a wire curve in her hand, she went to work jabbing into the bowl. Set aside, she tossed the apples.

  “We need white wine,” she thought aloud.

  Gable got one from the cooler beside the refrigerator and opened it. Glasses poured around while Tyler sprayed a glass baking dish. Noodles into the boiling, salted water and she stood straight, looking up to the ceiling.

  “You feel that?”

  “Feel what?” came from Gable and Roc.

  “Yep,” from Jerome and Star.

  “What was it?” Roc asked, following the group out the door.

  Tyler was looking to the western horizon, feeling and smelling. “Take everything in to the dining room,” she said.

  “Why? The sky is clear,” Roc said.

  “It won’t be in twenty minutes,” she replied, heading in to finish compiling the apple dessert.

  Poured into the glass dish with the crumble on top, the chicken came out and the crumble went in. Pasta drained and back into the pan, she ladled in a few scoops of sauce with as few vegetables as possible. Lid on, she had Gable shake it up vigorously while she poured the sauce into a bowl. Noodles left in the pot with tongs, chicken breasts cut in half and on a platter, plain Italian loaf bread with margarine. Everything on the inside dining table, more wine poured, and Tyler served out. All dished out, she had to get the crisp out of the oven. Returning, she found they had waited for her.