The Watchers

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  That was what was wrong with her! Being with Dante had felt right even though she knew in her heart, mind, and soul that it was as far from ‘right’ as it could possibly be.

  She needed Nick to oust that experience and every memory attached to it! Nick was ‘right’ and Dante was ‘wrong’ and she needed an exorcism!

  “Shhh! Hey everybody’s tense—scared shitless. I’m going to get you out of here, babe. Just give me a little bit. Transport is hard to get hold of at the moment.”

  Claire pushed herself up and twisted around to stare at him. Right up until he’d baldly stated the situation she hadn’t realized that most of her desperation was her survival instincts kicking. She wanted desperately to escape to a place where she felt safe. Away from sinkholes and alien-angels and a hopeless attraction that would end up destroying her.

  To think she’d been concerned about Nick breaking her heart! “You think you can?”

  His smile was crooked and sexy as hell! “Abso—fucking—lutely!”

  Claire couldn’t help but utter a choked laugh. “Language!”

  He settled next to her, grinning, and then leaning close to kiss her forehead. “That’s my girl! That’s better.”

  Claire swallowed, meeting his gaze with an effort as he leaned away again, wondering if he really meant it—and in just the way it sounded—or if it was no more than a habit with him to tease women with the possibility of something significant.

  He saw the doubt in her eyes. Grimacing, he got up and resumed the massage. “Just relax, babe.”

  She didn’t think she’d be able to but he was very, very good with his hands. Not only did she relax, she was completely focused on him—on his voice, on the touch of his hands. And when he began to massage her in a more sexual way, she quickly warmed until she was restless for penetration. She pushed against him, indicating that she wanted to get up. Instead, he sprawled on top of her. Slipping a hand beneath her pelvis, he lifted her hips up just high enough to shift the angle of her entrance and pushed into her from behind.

  It was an unfortunate decision since Dante had also entered her from behind—even if the position was different—and only the night before. For a handful of seconds as he struggled to achieve penetration, she feared she would lose focus again. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

  Truthfully, beyond his decision to enter her from behind, there was nothing similar about the two males—and it went beyond the fact that Dante was clearly not human!

  Relieved to discover she not only felt desire for Dominic, but a rapid rise in passion that focused her completely on him, she relaxed. As he managed to penetrate her fully and began a slow, stroking cadence that was almost an echo of the external massage he’d just performed, she allowed the building pleasurable tension to take her to that peaceful place where all that existed was her and her lover and the pleasure they gave one another.

  She discovered it was amazingly gratifying to feel his hair roughened, heated skin rubbing against her back. She’d had no notion her back was so sensitive to touch stimulation! The heat of his breath as he nibbled the upper slope of her shoulders and the side and back of her neck pebbled her flesh, making it even more sensitive and the muscles along her channel spasmed in reaction.

  Dominic sucked in a sharp breath and paused. Claire could feel a deep trembling in his muscles as he held himself perfectly still. She was torn between pleasure at his reaction and impatience.

  Dismay flickered through her when he withdrew completely, but he merely turned her onto her back, settled once more in the cradle of her thighs and entered her again. This time the rhythm he set was swifter, more powerful, and far more focused. Claire recovered from the dip in her heat index and then some. It began to feel almost like a race to the finish line with Claire struggling not to think about what coming in second meant—no cookie! It was touch and go for a few seconds when she felt Dominic stiffen and he hesitated once more, leaving her teetering on the brink. When he resumed by slamming into her hard and then pounding in and out frantically, though, it was what she needed to push her over the top. Her climax was powerful enough to inspire a grateful salute at the top of her lungs. She was still singing the closing bars, and reeling with the after-quakes, when Dominic shuddered to a halt and collapsed on top of her, forcing the final note out of her chest in an inelegant grunt.

  Peace and satisfaction settled over Claire like a warm, fuzzy blanket.

  Until she opened her eyes and discovered Dante standing over the bed looking like a thundercloud. He met her gaze for a long, heart-stopping moment and then simply vanished.

  Apparently Dominic sensed her sudden tension. “You ok, Babe?” he asked in a slurred, muffled voice, his face still burrowed deeply into her pillow.

  Claire forced herself to relax, trying to convince herself she’d only imagined she’d seen Dante. They’d locked the door …. She tensed all over again when she realized they hadn’t locked the door!

  She didn’t think.

  She’d opened the door to Dominic’s knock and then flung herself at him. She remembered him waltzing her inside. She didn’t remember him locking the door.

  “Did you lock the front door?”

  He tensed, but he didn’t respond for several moments. Finally, he relaxed again and then rolled off of her. “Damned if I can remember.”

  Irritation flickered through her. She’d thought when he relaxed it meant he remembered locking the damned door!

  She rolled off the bed. Grabbing her robe from a chair near the bed, she shoved her arms into the sleeves as she moved to the bedroom door to check. Her heart skipped several beats when she discovered the front door of her apartment was standing wide open—not locked. Not even shut!

  After glancing around quickly to make sure the room was unoccupied, she rushed across the living room and closed and locked the door.

  Now she didn’t know whether she’d imagined Dante standing over her in the bedroom or not!

  Dominic dragged her back down on the bed when she got back to the bedroom, pushed her robe open, and began exploring her.

  Claire struggled with her uneasiness about the incident she wasn’t even certain had happened and finally turned her mind to the promise Nick had made. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the offer to help, Dominic, but I don’t want you to do anything that might get you in trouble.”

  Dominic paused in his examination and looked up at her face. His expression was dead serious for once. “You let me worry about that, alright?”

  Claire studied his determined expression for several moments and finally lifted a hand and traced one finger along his hard jaw. “You are a control freak, aren’t you?” she murmured teasingly.

  Something flickered in his eyes. He made an attempt to grin, but it looked more like a grimace. “So I’ve been told.”

  Claire frowned. “Hey! I didn’t mean that … not that way. I do appreciate you trying to take care of me ….”

  “Not doing such a hot job at it, huh?”

  Claired sighed a little testily. “If you want to fight you’re going to have to go find somebody else. I make it a policy not to fight with people bigger and stronger than I am.”

  Dominic looked torn between surprise and irritation for several moments. “You aren’t worth a fuck at this, are you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You ought to,” Dominic responded with a chuckle. “That was your cue—your second one, actually. The proper response should be ‘That’s not true, Nicky, baby! You’re fantastic at taking care of me!’”

  Claire couldn’t help but smile. “You want me to call you Nicky? Or baby?”

  He gave her a look. “You don’t think Dominic sounds a little formal since I’ve been all inside you?”

  She felt her face heating, but it wasn’t entirely from embarrassment. “What was the first one I missed … Nick?” Truthfully, she’d mostly thought of him as ‘Nick’ since they’d met. She just wasn’t sure he would be ok with having hi
s name shortened to the diminutive/informal form and Dominic DiCarlo, despite his apparent easy going nature, wasn’t the sort of man people tended to take lightly.

  “The one about you being my girl.”

  “Oh. I thought that was just something you told all your girlfriends,” Claire responded pensively.

  He chuckled. “What makes you think I have a lot of girlfriends?”

  “Don’t you?”

  He frowned with mock anger. “What does a guy have to do to get a compliment out of you?” he asked.

  Claire grinned. “Ok—because you are so deliciously handsome!”

  He laughed out loud at that. “Delicious, huh?” he murmured, leaning down to nuzzle her neck. “That’s more like it.”

  “Wait! I meant devilishly handsome.”

  He grinned against her neck. “That works, too.”

  Chapter Six

  Claire was sure the respite was good for her, and yet the moment Dominic … Nick left her anxieties not only seemed to all crash down on her again, it almost seemed twice the load. She supposed that was because Nick had given her the window of respite from shock she needed to think straight.

  Shock had cocooned her from the worst of it. Now it was gone.

  Or maybe it was simply that Nick had made it real by telling her he was going to try to make arrangements to get her out of the disaster area? And that she was not to leave the apartment until he came for her because it wasn’t safe to be in the streets.

  Because martial law had been declared and soldiers were crawling all over the place—and looters.

  Her mind leapt from the implications to her sister, Madelyn—who she’d pestered to come until she’d agreed!

  She’d said she was coming, but she’d never called back to say when she’d be coming in and Claire couldn’t comfort herself with the belief that Maddie had simply gone back to her digging and forgotten.

  Could Maddie be stuck at the airport, god forbid?

  Surely the planes would have been turned back if they’d been in the air when the collapse happened? She knew they would have, but that didn’t stop her from worrying that the plane had been on the point of landing when all hell broke loose. Or possibly even on the ground.

  She knew even that wasn’t logical, though. Madelyn would have called her before she boarded and she would’ve been able to if it was before the disaster. So it was highly unlikely that Madelyn was stuck at the airport and her sister wasn’t likely to get a plane into Florida anywhere at this point.

  She doubted she could get anything leaving, for that matter.

  So the chances were that she was stuck unless Nick did manage to make arrangements to get her out of the state.

  She paced for a while, trying to decide what to do, but finally decided that as insane as the idea was that she’d been toying with, she was going off the deep end not knowing what was going on. She desperately needed to see the sinkhole, to see if it was as bad as she’d heard and thought it was. To see if she felt threatened by it or if she would be able to convince herself, having seen it, that she was safe where she was.

  The phones were down and the only reports on the TV or radio were from news sources too far away to know what was happening themselves.

  She finally decided just to go see if she could get close enough to discover what was going on.

  She didn’t actually succeed in getting far at all. She hadn’t even managed to leave the grounds of the apartment complex when she ran afoul of the National Guard, who were systematically going from apartment to apartment emptying them of the residents and forcing the people into trucks.

  She tried to ignore them and bypass the line.

  “Halt! Ma’am! Ma’am! I ordered you to stop, ma’am!”

  Claire felt cold creep up her spine when she heard a rifle being cocked. She halted abruptly and turned to look at the soldier in disbelief.

  “We have orders to evacuate everyone. Looters will be shot on sight.”

  Claire’s jaw sagged even lower. “Why the hell would you assume I’m a looter?”

  “Get on the truck, ma’am. Or I’ll have to place you under arrest and charge you with intent to loot.”

  Someone moved up behind her, close enough she could feel the heat of his body. He encircled her from behind with his arms. “That won’t be necessary. She’s coming with me.”

  Right up until he spoke, Claire had been sure it must be Nick come back to rescue her. The moment he spoke, she twisted her head to look up at Dante jerkily. He was staring straight at the soldier that had threatened her and when she turned to look at the soldier she saw his eyes had glazed over.

  Mind control! He could control minds, manipulate them to serve his purposes!

  Was that why she’d had great blank spaces in her memory, she wondered?

  Then she heard the rustle of wings, felt Dante’s arms tighten around her, and her belly dropped to her feet as he shot skyward. There was a smattering of gunfire, but Claire was too terrified at that point to consider that it was soldiers firing at them—or maybe just Dante—who was holding her!

  She got a bird’s eye view of the new Florida trench, a special treat she was completely ungrateful for. She’d wanted to know what was going on for the danger it might represent to her. She hadn’t actually wanted to see it!

  You were willing to risk getting shot to see it.

  “I didn’t expect to get threatened when I left the apartment,” Claire responded indignantly!

  Ah! Like most humans you expect that rules and laws only apply to others, not you?

  “Smart ass! Ok, so I’d heard that they’d declared martial law! I just didn’t expect to run into the guardsman the minute I left the damned apartment! And what the hell were you doing in my apartment earlier anyway?”

  I was watching you fuck the warrior who pulled you out of the sinkhole.

  Shock ripped through Claire. She hadn’t expected him to admit being there! She was uncomfortably aware that it wasn’t just shock she felt, however. Heat spiraled through her the moment he mentioned watching her.

  Which was insane since she was so very far from being voyeuristic!

  But then again, just being so near Dante was creating havoc with her libido, making it hard to think straight.

  Despite the distraction, she was still so shaky from the flight that her knees nearly buckled when he landed on the rooftop of what appeared to be a deserted mall and released her. She put some distance between them immediately. “So! You admit you were in my apartment!” she snapped when she’d recovered enough to summon a spark of anger.

  His eyes narrowed. “Imagine my surprise to find my lover fucking another?”

  Claire’s jaw dropped. She struggled with a sense of guilt that threatened to overwhelm her. “Your …! Well! I damned well didn’t consent! You needn’t act like I was cheating on you!”

  He moved so fast she couldn’t even see him move. One second he was a reasonably comfortable yard or two away from her, the next he was standing toe to toe, one hand riding familiarly along her waist, the other cupping her face. “And yet I do not recall a protest. I do recall many gasps and sighs of pleasure. I do recall your cries of release when I made you come. Even now, I hear your heart racing at my nearness, smell your desire.”

  Claire blinked at him, torn between embarrassment and outrage. “Smell …,” she echoed in disbelief. “You did … something to me!”

  Amusement flickered in his eyes. “We are both animals,” he murmured. “I have not lost the ability to detect subtle fragrances like desire.”

  He shifted closer, nuzzling her ear and making goose bumps leap to life and race in every direction. Her nipples puckered in response.

  “Indeed, I did do something to you. I kissed you—every inch of you. And then I drove my cock into your hot, wet ….”

  Claire decided she had no desire to go down that road. She pushed against him in a silent demand to be released. To her surprise, and with a touch of unacknowledged disappointme
nt, he released her at once. “What are you?” she demanded, stepping away from him, refusing to examine the mixture of disappointment and guilt and anxiety that tickled at the fringes of her consciousness that he’d so easily dismissed her.

  His brows rose but amusement lit his eyes. “I am an angel.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “And I’m neither religious nor simple minded. I don’t believe in magical beings.”

  Surprise flitted across his face and then a touch of irritation, but she thought she saw a trace of admiration, as well. “What are you?”

  Startled by the question, uncertain of which answer he was looking for at first, she blinked at him. “Human.”

  “I am not human. I am angel.”

  Anger flickered through her and then disappeared as understanding dawned. He wasn’t trying to convince her he was a magical being. He was simply answering the question she’d asked. “That’s what your species call themselves?”

  So angels weren’t actually just a concept? Something ancient man had dreamt up to comfort and/or scare themselves with? They’d seen these beings and decided they must be magical because they were so technologically advanced. It made sense—except for the part about angels having the ability to travel to Earth from whatever their origins thousands of years ago when mankind was just emerging from hunter-gatherer status. Well, not far beyond it. Several thousand years from the capability of space flight of any kind and still probably decades or maybe even centuries from being able even to travel to another solar system.

  Strange that she didn’t feel the least bit inferior to him just because his people had mastered space travel … so very long ago! “Your kind has been here before,” she said flatly, wondering if he would deny it, wondering if he would admit that they’d played gods and tried to interfere with the development of mankind—had interfered because there were any number of people who still believed they were magical beings, and religious fanatics had done more to retard the growth and development of mankind than any other single impediment. And they were responsible for more violence and death than every other ‘excuse’ thought up for war combined.