The Surrogates: The 5 Book Paranormal Pregnancy Romance Box Set

by Angela Foxxe

  I didn’t cook in my little kitchen, instead I joined the rest of the servants down in the main kitchen where most of the workers had their meals.. They had access to just about anything that they desired and there was frequently a few members of the staff who ate together. I joined in the group and was welcomed easily. Everyone there was so nice and eager to do their jobs; they were paid quite well on top of having their housing and food paid for. It seemed somewhat strange to see so many people so happy at their jobs.

  I had been at the house for almost three days when I saw him. I was outside, climbing out of my car to go to work and he was up there, above me, looking down. He was staring and I couldn’t quite see the look on his face. I felt a shudder run through my spine as I looked up at his form. He was silhouetted by the light from his window. It was dark in the yard, with cleverly placed lights illuminating the ground just enough to make my way to the house.

  I moved quickly, feeling strange as if I was watched from above. Something about the mansion whistled an empty lonely feeling, like the stones at the top of mountains that made music when the wind flowed through them. I felt the strangeness as I glanced up at him repeatedly. I was no longer feeling a strange kind of fear; instead I was worried about how he was going to look at me when I walked out of his life in less than a year. I knew then, that I wasn’t going to stay here. I had no wish to become a nanny. It would hurt too much.

  I looked down, my feet were shuffling on the cold gravel, each piece, though surrounded by so many others, looked as lonely as my life felt at that day. My own home was warm. A small crappy apartment so full of life and love. We were not related, my roommates and I couldn’t be more different some days, but still we were family. Sisters who never had anyone else to cling to.

  Here I had none of that. I was trapped in a sea of extravagant loneliness. No one deserved that. The kind man that looked down at me was lonely. I had known that about him since the first time that I had met him, looking across that desk and wondering what I would do with a world like the one he possessed. He had control, more than I had ever known, but hadn’t ever really been ready to let someone in.

  I tried not to look at him. It was better that way, because even in our tiny communications, our passing greetings and hurried small talk, I found that there was something about that man, something that intrigued me. There was mystery in his eyes and there was something more that drew me in, made me wonder.

  He might have been dangerous. At the time, I couldn’t have answered whether or not he was. I did know that he required something from me; I needed to help him continue his line. I stepped through the door and he was not watching me anymore. He couldn’t watch me where I was. I felt the pressure off my shoulders, but it wasn’t comforting. I was alone again; the fleeting moment of being together even when separated by that great distance was gone, flitting away like a bit of paper that had been carried off by the wind. I sighed and walked toward my apartment.

  He stopped me on the way, his eyes flickering with some sort of intensity. I couldn’t understand what it was, not then, not really. It wouldn’t be long until I found out. “You look tired.”

  “Have you ever worked at a call center?” I laughed, but my voice barked hoarsely instead. I had been talking all day. “It’s a special kind of hell.”

  “It can’t be that hard.” He smiled. “You’re only talking on the phone.”

  “Disgruntled customers that don’t have to look you in the eye.” It was all I could say, but I think that he understood what I had said. “They hate me for even existing.” I shrugged. “I get used to it, but sometimes it’s harder to deal with.”

  “Did something happen?” He reached out. The caress of his soft hands held a brooding electricity. I nearly jumped at his touch.

  “No, not really. It just wears down my faith in humanity some days.” I shrugged. “I’ll get over it.”

  “Is there anything that I can do to help, anything that I can get you?”

  “A nice stiff drink.” I laughed, but I was half-serious. I could have used one, but I knew that I wasn’t supposed to be drinking at this point. I was going to be going to the hospital in the morning to have embryos implanted in my uterus, at least that’s what the doctors told me. My mind was still spinning about the possibilities. What would it feel like? They told me that it wasn’t going to hurt, but somehow I couldn’t believe it. I knew that it had to hurt. I had to feel something, something different than I had ever felt before.

  My heart started to race as I watched his eyes roam over my body. “I don’t see how it could hurt.” He shrugged.

  “I’m not supposed to, remember.”

  “Yeah, I know, but they don’t have to know.”

  “You want me to lie to the doctors?” I stood there and stared at him in the foyer. I couldn’t believe what he was suggesting.

  “I talked to them about it. They said that they recommend that, but the risk of it is pretty much nonexistent. It’s more about scaring people off drinking after the procedure. They don’t even put you out for it. You’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t know about this.”

  He held his hands up. There was a certain uncanny warmth on his face. I couldn’t quite understand it. “I’m not going to force you, but I was going to have a drink too. This is a lot to handle. I know that everything has been planned out. But still something about tonight feels strangely overwhelming, almost as if we’re standing on the verge of something momentous.”

  I whispered quietly. “I feel that way too. I can’t really explain it. It should be so simple, so easy to do. It shouldn’t feel like this.”

  His hand grazed my face. “But it does.” I followed him. It felt kind of strange, almost as if I had left my body for a moment, as if my body was doing what it wanted to do, of its own accord. I can’t really explain the spell that I was under, but it felt unreal. Still I was making the choice, and it was only after I had decided to have that drink that I felt that way. Maybe a part of me knew what was going to happen, the love that we were going to make, the panting sweating nature of passion that was locked between us.

  I couldn’t tell you who started it. We were talking, then we kissed. It should have felt wrong. I should have known that something was wrong. He looked at me, guilt dangling in front of his face. He apologized and all I could do was nod my head. His lips had been hot and sweet and I could still taste them as I locked myself in his eyes.

  I couldn’t deny the fact that I wanted more. I whispered the truth to him and he groaned. He wanted me too. He knew it was against his better judgement. He knew that he would regret it, we both were going to regret the actions that were about to happen. It didn’t matter. We were trapped in a moment that swirled in bad choices.

  He took me to the bed, laying me down near the foot, across the bed. I was laying sideways near the bottom of the bed. It felt a little strange. I didn’t get out with men often, and that meant that my sex life would suffer pretty regularly. My roommates had noticed. What was I doing? I should have focused on the handsome man who was fumbling with his clothes across the room. Lust seemed to take over the moment. I shifted my skirt, lifting the long fabric up and nearly to my waist. He walked over to help me, leaning over me. I could feel the heat of his skin even through the clothes. He was panting, his eyes unable to deny what he had been seeing in me all along.

  He paused and I moved my body, showing him that I was begging for him to continue. I wanted more and with one deep plunge, we were neck deep in rivers of lust. We moved in unison and I couldn’t get over the fact that my body seemed to be lighting up in a thousand or so different places, electricity was flowing through my body. I didn’t care if it was against my better judgement. I didn’t care if this was something that I should have known better than doing. It’s a bad idea to sleep with your boss. I knew that, but I didn’t care. I had to do it. Something told me that I needed to be with him.

  I moaned and reached around him, wrapping my hands to his back. My nai
ls dug in and I could hear the ripping of fabric. The sound only seemed to spur him on. His body clenched and thrust into me. He told me that he needed me. He moaned my name as I clenched him with my entire body.

  We rode the waves of our pleasure, our bodies overwhelmed by the sensations that were floating around like some kind of electric current. We needed this, to be together for a fleeting moment that would probably never be repeated. When it was over, when our waves of passion had finished the tsunami of pleasure, we were embarrassed. I hurried from the room, pulling my clothes over my body. I was still dressed, but the mortification was starting to kick in. “I slept with my boss.” I whispered the words once I was alone. I whispered it, completely alone and the words seemed to echo right back to me, growing with intensity. I knew that I should have felt a lot worse about it, but I did not.

  CHAPTER THREE

  If I was to have to make a judgement, the appointment was pretty uneventful. They were right. There were a few pinches and tugs, but otherwise it wasn’t painful. I won’t bore you with the details of insemination, but suffice it to say, it wasn’t nearly as frightening that I thought it was going to be. I thought that it was going to be some terrible ordeal, but it wasn’t, not really.

  Other than being in a hospital, I was surprisingly comfortable. These must have been the type of doctors who saw the rich on a regular basis. “I could get used to this.” I grinned, rubbing my belly, wondering how long it would take to find out whether or not it worked. I couldn’t understand it, not really.

  Living with this kind of luxury can be a little addicting. I was already getting used to it, but I just wasn’t ready to say that out loud yet. I needed to call the girls and that’s exactly what I did. I called them and told them about the procedure, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk about the intimate hour that I had spent in the arms of my employer. I sighed. There wasn’t much to do now.

  It was all some sort of waiting game, but my mind played with the irony that this might have been something beyond what it seemed. I wondered if maybe he had gotten me pregnant before the appointment. It would have been utterly ironic and something for the record books, I suppose. I laughed a little as I remembered the moment when the doctor asked about my recent sexual activity. I had glanced at my employer and the decision was reached in silence. “No.” It was the answer that had to be said. Neither of us were willing to admit our lapse in judgement.

  I stared out that window for a good long time, trying to figure out exactly what I was going to do. “What?” I swear that I could see movement. Something large down on the grounds. I was two floors up so I couldn’t see any details. I opened the window and leaned out, but still there was nothing. I couldn’t lean out very far because of the screen.

  There, out of the corner of my eye, again. There it was. There was something down there, I just knew it. I reached for my bed and pulled the blanket off the sheet-covered mattress. There was a chill in here that had only intensified when I slid the window open.

  The blanket was thrown over my shoulders and I continued to search the grounds outside of my window. I swore that there was something out there and I could feel the shudder starting to form at the base of my spine. It was watching me. I could see yellow eyes flicker occasionally, just quickly enough to make me doubt myself.

  I wasn’t sure if it was actually something that I was seeing or not. It was always just out of my vision, always just out of sight. It was a large something, but I couldn’t tell what. It had the glowing eyes of a predator. A cat or a dog, I couldn’t tell what it was. I’m not exactly and expert at that kind of thing.

  I shivered again and pulled the blanket tighter on my shoulders. It was hard to figure out how to respond to it all. Something about the figures just didn’t feel right. Seeing them seemed to invoke something deep inside me. Something that existed in the realm of instinct. There was fear flooding through me. I wanted to scream and I felt like I was somehow stuck in a world where there were monsters, but that couldn’t be it.

  Whatever was out there seemed to be moving more and more as the night got deeper. My heart raced and my mouth was dry. It was clear that there was something out there, and I had no idea what the creature’ intentions were, because it was clear that this thing wasn’t human. It must have been an animal, some sort of beast.

  When morning came, I had gathered a few more clues about it. It was large, a creature, maybe two different ones, that were larger than a dog. The creature never seemed to make a movement that wasn’t planned. There was a certain stealth to the beast, like it had the habit of slipping through the shadows, but I don’t believe that it was used to being observed from above.

  I had stared at the creature as it looked up at me. At one point during the cold night, our eyes had met. There was a brilliance behind the eyes, hidden by the glowing evidence of night vision. I shuddered and broke eye contact first. . I couldn’t stand to stare at it anymore. When I had looked back up the creature was gone.

  I sat down in a chair near the window and wondered. I was in silence for a long time after the sun came up and the blanket was still wrapped around me. I dozed a bit, maybe. I’m not sure. When you exist in that kind of tired state, it is hard to tell if you’re dozing off or not. I groaned when the knock sounded. I had been asleep. “Is everything all right?” The voice was timid. I almost didn’t recognize it at first.

  I stretched and walked over to the door opening it. “Yeah?”

  “I was just coming in and checking on you because you hadn’t been out for breakfast.” Torrance looked at me carefully. I could see the worry on his face and I looked down.

  I knew that there were bags under my eyes, but I tried not to show them to him. “I’m fine. I’m not really hungry right now.”

  “C’mon. I brought you something.” He let himself in, or rather, I moved slightly to the side and he seemed to understand the invitation. It was unspoken, but went smoothly. He put the covered plate down on the small table that he had provided for me. I looked at him. It was just a quick glance, but he must have seen something around my eyes. “Is something wrong? Are you feeling all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” I tried to laugh it off, but I was too tired to carry on with the farce.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing, I’m just seeing things.” I shrugged. I was trying to minimize the panic that I felt the night before, but it wasn’t working. My mind was racing, working overtime to find some justification. Everything that I had tried the night before felt wrong. It wasn’t an animal that lived in the area. I was certain of it, but still I wasn’t quite ready to admit what I had seen. Or what I thought that I’d seen.

  “That isn’t one of the side effects that were mentioned, was it?” His hand trembled a bit. His eyes were locked on my face, but they wouldn’t match my gaze.

  “No I don’t think so.” I shrugged. “Why would fertility drugs cause that kind of thing?”

  “I don’t know anything that might cause that.” He reached over to the small desk. I had piled the paperwork there. Quickly we shuffled through the piles. “No, nothing.”

  “There’s something out there.” I pointed to the window.

  He looked out of the window. “I don’t see anything.”

  “I haven’t seen it since the sun came up.” I didn’t know how else to tell him. “It was big. Huge, whatever it was.”

  “Do you have any ideas?” His hand stopped trembling. He was looking at me now, taking in the worry in my eyes and mirroring it back at me. Maybe I was seeing things.

  “I don’t know, some kind of animal, I think.” I looked back out of the window. I didn’t really know what was going on, but there had to be something happening. I stared out of the window. “They were out there.”

  “They? More than one?” He seemed bewildered, but there was something else behind his words. A strange kind of knowledge. That idea frightened me. I was worried about the look on his face. He should be more shocked. I was convinced of it. />
  “Yeah, more than one.” I sighed. “Look, I’m not crazy.”

  “I don’t think you are.”

  “Then why are you looking at me that way?” I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept all night and I only had so many days of vacation that I would be eligible to take from my job. I knew that they couldn’t fire me for being pregnant, but still I didn’t want to destroy my almost spotless record with a bunch of extra days off. I was supposed to have the next few days free.

  “I don’t know. Are you sure it isn’t a dog? It was dark. You said that. Or maybe a mountain lion came down from the mountains.”

  I chewed on my lips. I didn’t know how to answer at first, but it came to me all in one magical flash. “Maybe.” I left it at that.

  “This can be a really creepy place.” He reached out, placed a hand on my shoulder. I took some comfort with that. He sat by my bed until I fell asleep and it didn’t take me very long. My eyes drifted shut while I looked at him, noticing all of the little details of his handsome face and wondering why it had taken me so long to notice that someone like him could walk into my life.

  I could see the concern on his face, even if he didn’t believe me. He watched me in silence. Occasionally I could feel his hand brushing the hair out of my face and I snuggled deeper into the bedsheets with a satisfied sigh. I felt safe when he was there, like the dangers of the night couldn’t touch me as long as he was in the room with me. It was a nice feeling, but it always feels a bit wrong. I had always stood up for myself. Never before in my life had I relied on anyone that wasn’t my mother, and now she was gone. She had been gone for two years now. All I had were friends that had become family.

  ***

  The next two weeks went by in a blur. I didn’t mention the creatures outside to Torrance anymore, but I was still seeing them. They were trying to hide a little more now. I saw them still, but I wasn’t spending all my nights looking for them. I locked my windows and tried to sleep, but there was a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach. It was almost like I was being watched.