by Evelyn Glass
He turned the key in the ignition and drove his classic car towards the woman he had fallen in love with over the last few days. He found a spot outside of the emergency room, assuming that was the best way to find out what was going on. It took twenty minutes of charming nurses and security guards, but he eventually got the name of a surgeon and a promise that someone would let him know what was going on when she was out of surgery. After all, they didn’t have any information on her next of kin or her family, and it’s not like he knew who to contact, outside of Cassidy, and he didn’t have Cassidy’s phone number. Magically.
In the movies, people got a nice cut scene while surgery passed. In real life, people had to wait through every long minute, staring at the digital surgery board to see when their loved one’s code had moved out of the operating theater into recovery. After an indeterminate stretch of time, a tall black woman wearing scrubs and a cap appeared and called out Emma’s number. Dean stood, and the woman gestured him to a small alcove. Nothing like those hospital shows on TV, he thought to himself as he followed her.
“Everything went very well,” she said as he stepped inside the small room. “She may need one or two more procedures over the next few days, and we will be watching very closely for sepsis. There was some damage, but nothing that will likely affect her quality of life. She’s a very lucky woman.”
Dean felt himself release a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
The woman looked down at his hands and seemed to note the bracelets circling his wrists, and the dark tattoos that marked him as a member of the Night Titans. He couldn’t cover all of them, not without a head to toe suit. “GSWs of course need to be reported to the police, so expect a detective to come by her room at some point. But I’ll show you back to recovery if you like.”
“I like,” Dean said. He had to wipe moisture away from his eyes again, and he didn’t bother trying to hide it from the doctor. Not for a moment.
Emma was in bed, her eyes drowsily opening and closing. She focused on the door when it opened, and a slow smile spread across her face.
“Hi,” she said, drawing out the vowel in the word and carefully stretching a hand towards Dean. “I hurt.”
“You said,” he replied. “They had to do some work to fix you up, I hear.”
“Yeah,” she said back. “Said I’m gonna be okay, though. So, you’re not rid of me yet. Hope that’s okay with you.”
He settled into a chair by the bed and took her hand tight in his. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that’s just fine with me.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Emma
Emma still winced a little bit when she stood up too fast, but other than that, she had no real reminders of the gunshot wound that had marked the end of her adventure with Soren Jay. At least, not when she was dressed. When she was naked, an impressive scar spread out over the hip where his gun had fired. In the end, she’d lost the ovary on that side, but she’d avoided sepsis, and her doctor assured her that there was no reason she wouldn’t be able to have children someday… if she wanted to. When she looked at Dean, late at night, sometimes she thought she might want to, but when she took Mia’s hand, she thought that maybe her family was already complete.
“Ready to go, kiddo?” she asked, and Mia gave her a solemn nod. She shouldered her purse while Mia tossed on her backpack, and they walked out to Emma’s small subcompact. Emma was dropping Mia off at Abbey’s before she and Dean went out for dinner.
Mia had started calling Dean “Daddy” a few weeks after the incident, without anyone really explaining the details of the relationship. Emma had watched Dean’s eyes well up with tears, and to her pride, he hadn’t tried to hide the groundswell of emotion from his daughter. Now, Mia spent time with both her father and the woman who had done the lion’s share of raising her. Emma was still something of an enigma in their lives. So much was in flux, she didn’t want to demand that they understand how she fit in right now as well. Besides, she was completely content with how things were playing out with her and Dean. Maybe a little way down the road, they’d formalize things. For now, everything was fine.
She saw Mia into Abbey’s apartment, and then drove to Dean’s to change out of her dowdy school wear into something a little more fun for a night out. A loose, jersey skirt and a tunic top that flowed over her curves and in a bright blue color that made her skin shine seemed absolutely perfect. Dean appeared in the bathroom door as she was putting her finishing touches on her makeup.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said and gestured at the loose curls of her hair. “Looks like we’re taking the Grand Sport tonight, huh?”
“Boy, you know how much I love your car,” she replied with a wink, and Dean laughed.
“Yeah, that’s fair.” He stepped in closer, pressing his lips to the back of her neck. “You know, we still haven’t had sex in that car.”
“I thought we were going out to dinner tonight.” She laughed, tilting her head to give him better access. He hummed against her skin, and a flurry of desire ran through her fast and hard.
“We are,” he said. “But I could still watch you put your feet up on the dash and fuck yourself until you scream. I’d even let you bring that pretty little blue vibe you bought last time we were downtown.”
Emma felt her cheeks heat up. She hadn’t realized that he’d seen the small bullet vibrator in her underwear drawer. “You don’t mind—”
He shook his head, his teeth nipping gently at her skin. “Anything that makes you feel good… I’m a fan.”
“Then take me out,” she said, turning to wrap her arms around his neck. “And I’ll show you just how loud I can scream.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
His lips came down on hers, and she kissed him back, deep and strong. She’d never wanted anything more than to repeat that kiss every day for the rest of her life.
THE END
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SAMSON’S BABY: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance
By Evelyn Glass
SAMSON WON’T RELENT UNTIL I GIVE HIM WHAT HE WANTS: A BABY.
He owned me from the very beginning.
With his eyes, his lips, his brutal hands.
I couldn’t say no.
And I didn’t want to.
What I wanted was more of him, all of him.
And he made sure I got it.
But I didn’t know back then who he was.
Or rather, WHAT he was.
Samson wasn’t just a random man.
He was a cold-blooded killer.
And somehow, he’s the only thing keeping me alive.
If I want to stay in one piece, I have to do EXACTLY as he says.
Go where he commands.
Give him what he needs.
But Samson’s protection comes at a price.
A steep one.
And by the end of all this, I’ll have a killer’s baby in my womb.
Chapter One
Anna
I try to focus on the book as the locker room jostles with life around me. Elle is especially bad. Maybe it’s because she’s tired of seeing me with my face buried between its pages, or just because she likes to hear me swear. But as I study the anatomy of the dog, she peers over the edge of the book, wriggling her eyebrows and honking to the tune of the announcer’s voice.
“We’re almost on,” she says, and her eyebrows do a dancelike side-to-side.
“Fine,” I say, closing the book. Every time I close the book and go to dance, I feel as though I’m becoming someone else. One moment I am the woman who has to be persuaded to turn away from studying; the next I am a cheerleader for the New York Nicks, smiling, empty-headed, vacuous, nodding. One moment I am a mind; the next I am a body. Or maybe I’m just getting overly philosophical about all this and I s
hould take Elle’s viewpoint as my own: Just get on with it, she often says.
“Soon your life will be hurt paws and aching doggy jaws.”
I roll my eyes. “Hopefully, Elle, hopefully.”
There’s about a minute to spare until we begin our bouncy procession out onto the basketball court, to be gawked at by thousands of people, many of them red-faced and hungry-looking men. The changing room is alive with activity as the girls put on finishing touches. Many of them stare into little pocket-mirrors, brushing their cheeks, testing their smiles. Elle hops from one foot to the other, contorting her face as she always does, making sure she can plaster it with her fake ear-to-ear grin. I lean against the lockers, the metal cool and oddly comforting on my back, and think about dogs.
It calms me.
First, I think about dogs in general. Not even a particular breed, just dogs. I imagine I am standing at the turnstile of a giant field, a horizon-touching field, the grass stark and bright and lush. Then, as I walk farther into the field, hordes of dogs bound over the horizon toward me, tongues dangling between smiling teeth, tails wagging. They jump around me, bumping into each other for attention. I stroke as many as I can, giggling like a maniac. I know this would be some people’s idea of hell: being mauled by dogs. But I can’t stop smiling—in the dream. But soon my smile spreads from the daydream and into the locker room, and Elle taps me harshly on the shoulder.
“Earth to Anna,” she says.
My head snaps up and I see Elle staring down at me, her lip curled in mock disapproval. Elle is tall, sleek, and red-haired like some kind of Viking princess: an inversion of me, in many ways. I am short and blonde and busty.
“You were thinking about the field of dogs again,” Elle comments, with a small grin.
“Maybe.”
I made the mistake of telling Elle about the daydream while we were drunk about half a year ago. First she nodded along, listening. Then she began laughing, and then chortling. But she never told any of the other girls, and that’s how I knew Elle saw something in my daydream, the peace of it, maybe. It doesn’t matter that this is her aspiration, she is living it; she wants to be a cheerleader. It doesn’t matter that perhaps I make the other girls feel uncomfortable when I talk about veterinary college, but I think Elle sees the sense in my dream.
What in the name of all that is holy am I doing? I ask myself, as the girls begin to file out of the locker room.
I’m standing here, caught up in my thoughts. Elle tugs at my wrist and I grin sideways at her. “I was miles away,” I say.
“Oh, I know,” Elle says. “You had that goddam puppy love look in your eye. Makes me sick.”
People who don’t routinely work with crowds will see them as one big bulk of a thing, one beast, sprawling and many-armed. Like a giant mound of insects whose movement becomes something larger than any individual ant. But whenever I stand in front of a crowd, I see the individual people. As I walk onto the court today to the raucous cheers of thousands of Nicks’ fans, I see a man with his collar pulled up around a sausage-fat neck, face beetroot-red, clutching onto a huge pot of popcorn with two hands. I see a mother sitting with her daughter on her knee, both of them looking up at the man to their side, who leans forward and ogles us and even licks his lips. I see half a dozen frat boys, each of them with a letter drawn on their chest, red cups clasped in their hands. I scan their expression, and in each one there is something subtly different: open lust, resentment, shame, and anger.
But while we cheerleaders—or stand-up comedians or actors or ballerinas or motivational speakers—can spot things in the crowd, little snapshots of people, a crowd member would have a difficult time if he tried to spot something in us. All of us are smiling widely, all of us are grinning like madwomen.
We bounce onto the court with our pom-poms waving and our butts wiggling, smiling radiantly at the crowd.
I get into position without having to think about it. I’m twenty-five now and high school seems way further back than it should, but I was a cheerleader then and my body remembers. I’ve danced this routine live four times now; it’s rote. My arms and legs pump to the beat without me having to think about it.
As I dance, my gaze moves naturally over the crowed. I can’t look here or there whenever I like. I have to turn my head as the dance dictates. About halfway through, my gaze moves across the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.
I’m not one for ogling, gawping, leering, creeping—or any other nasty verb which means openly declaring to a man with my eyes that I want him. I’m shy by nature. I don’t ogle or gawp or leer or creep. I just glance at the man each time my eyes move to him in the course of the dance. I’d guess he’s around my age, perhaps a few years older. He’s blonde with close-cropped hair, and he wears an expensive-looking gray suit. His face is square, clean-shaven, strong. And his eyes, even from where I dance in the court, are blue. Not just blue, but summer-sky-blue, deep-ocean-blue.
My body responds to this man almost instantly, my heart speeding up past what the dance demands, my palms sweating more than they usually do. Because this man is watching me. His piercing blue eyes are trained on me. And then they move. I follow their trail. They glance to his left, to the man two people over from him.
It takes all my training as a dancer not to fumble. I have no idea how I manage to keep the rhythm of the dance. I’m reminded of when you’re walking a dog and a car backfires. No matter how well-trained the dog, it will invariably bolt—at least on instinct—before you call it back. But somehow I manage to keep going.
The person who the gray-suited man watches is my ex-husband, Eric.
Until just now, I didn’t know he was out of prison.
Eric.
He was a hurricane of violence and stress and anger and hate. The kind of man to hurl a mug at the wall and watch as it shatters into dozens of pieces and then gesture at you with a broad-faced hammer and demand that I pick it up. What the hell is a nineteen-year-old girl in too deep meant to do against a brute of a man like that? More of a silverback gorilla, without any of the nobility. Just a big lumbering ogre, all bulging mounds of muscle, a dormant sack of power waiting to twitch into action. Two heads taller than me and three times as wide.
He was charming at first, as they always are. I know that now because I’ve read up about it on the internet. That’s how narcissists and psychopaths get you. They play the proverbial Prince Charming, make all the right gestures and do all the rights things. They compliment you and they give you flowers and they always open doors for you and they make you believe—believe without question—they are this man they’re pretending to be.
And so you move in, and get married. Then it starts. Odd little things. That was the way with us. I remember putting on a dress for one of my friend’s birthdays, a short pink dress I’d bought in the January sales a few weeks ago, a dress I’d been waiting for a chance to wear. Standing in front of the mirror, looking myself up and down, thinking I looked pretty good. But then Eric appeared at the door, filling the doorway with his unnecessary bulk, and sniffed the air as though something rotten.
“What the hell is that? Are you tryin’ to show the world your pussy or what?” he’d growled. Pussy! He’d never used the word before. “Take it off. Wear something that doesn’t make you look like a goddam hooker.”
He’d never been like that before. He’d always been kind. If he’s getting angry, the logic of my warped brain told me, it must be my fault. Instead of nipping this in the bud, defying him and wearing the dress and showing him that I wouldn’t be bullied, I changed. I changed, and that was it. He had me.
Two years of my life wasted on that man. I’d wanted to go to college earlier, but Eric insisted that I worked as a waitress so he could have pay check from me every week. When I asked to put some aside to save, he laughed. When I told him I wanted to save for college, he laughed even louder, a mean laugh which didn’t reach his eyes.
“You’ve got a life, haven’t you? You’ve got a husba
nd and you’ll have a kid soon.” He had said. But I didn’t want a child, not with him, and I didn’t want the life I’d been tricked into.
The first time he hit me, it was because I’d accidently dropped the television remote and the batteries had fallen out and one of them had rolled underneath the dresser. The gap between the bottom of the dresser and the floor was too small for even my hands, and when I stood up and told him it was no good, he backhanded me across the face. Casually. That was the worst of it. It wasn’t dramatic in the least. It was mundane. Just a casual backhand across the jaw.
It took every ounce of willpower I had to leave him, gathering my things in the night and running into the dark corners of New York’s underbelly, staying at hostels and women’s shelters until I could get back on my feet. The only things that really made it alright—apart from the restraining orders—was when I heard he’d gone to prison for assault. A bar fight, apparently, and Eric was locked up.
