Shades of Pink

by 33 authors

  Lola sat up, flabbergasted, and confused. “But Jack. I’m nothing much. Not really. And what the hell would I do on tour with a ridiculously famous band? Hide away for three months? You barely know me, you could end up hating me.”

  Jack grabbed her hand and kissed the top. “Lola, I don’t see why you have such a problem with self esteem. But I could never hate you. You know my song lyrics right? About finding the girl of my dreams, finding her, and keeping her close?”

  “Yeah of course I do. But why do you think that’s me? I live in a shabby council house with my parents and live off of a small wage from working at McDonald’s.” Jack raised his eyebrow. “Yeah you heard me. I can’t just quit my job and leave with you.”

  Jack grabbed Lola’s shoulders. “Yes you can baby, please live your life. Just leave with me! We will be fine, I have such an addiction to you right now. Call me a fucking idiot who just wants pussy, but I don’t. I want love, and I want it with you.”

  Before Jack could mutter another word, Lola grabbed his cheeks in her hands and kissed his lips, hard. She wanted this, she wanted to go on an adventure. Yeah, she’d known him twenty four hours, but he was everything she wanted. It was only three months right? Who knows, he could be hers forever.

  Falling back into the sexual desire, Jack stopped kissing her for a second. “So is that a yes then?” He asked, humour playing on his lips.

  “Yes baby, it’s a yes.” Sitting up together she kissed him, and he continued his journey south, that he already intended.

  “Lola you’re so fucking beautiful.” He muttered under his kisses. “Your skin is fucking flawless.”

  Lola surrendered under his words, as his tongue worked against her nerves. He licked and toyed with the nub at the apex of her thighs, until she felt herself come apart. When she felt his finger slip inside her, she lost it. The orgasm took over her, consuming her in its fire. Her body shuddered and she could feel Jack smile against her.

  “You’re so responsive baby, we’re going to have so much fun.” To Jack’s surprise, Lola sat up and stood up.

  “Sit, don’t move.” Lola demanded. Holding his hands up in retreat, he did just that. Lola lifted her tank top and pulled it over her head, her lace bra the only item of clothing left on her body.

  “You’re fucking killing me.” Jack said through clenched teeth, and ran both hands through his hair.

  Lola reached around and pulled her hair from its ponytail. She then unclasped her bra, pulled it away and dropped it to the floor.

  Jack sat there, stunned and ridiculously turned on. “Fuck this.” He muttered to himself and ran to her. Lifting her easily, Lola squealed and he pressed her back against the wall. Behind them was the stage, they were hidden from everyone. The bass ran through Lola’s body, and Jack let his fingers run all over her body. Kissing each other’s mouths like there was no tomorrow, Jack finally got his jeans undone and off. Lola wrapped her legs around his waist, and sinking into her slowly, Jack took her against the wall as Lola relished in the feeling of fullness.

  * * *

  Five weeks later.

  “So are you happy then Lola?” Asked Jake, Misguided Ghost’s manager. He was a frumpy looking man, with absolutely nothing good to say about anyone, or anything, ever.

  “Never better.” Lola amused his question, and Jack’s arms curled around her shoulders.

  “You’re having an amazing time aren’t you baby?” Jack asked, and gently kissed her neck.

  “Never better,” Lola whispered, “And I don’t hate you yet.”

  ~~~

  Bethan Cooper spends her days working 8 hours at a well known restaurant and yawning - a lot.

  But her vulnerability behind the uniform is her writing, having being obsessed with writing short stories and song lyrics from her teens, she has finally put pen to paper and started a novel.

  She is married to the love of her life whom she met when she was 17.

  So writing romance is a must, especially lots of kissing and hot guys. ;)

  www.facebook.com/bethancooperauthor

  IN LOVE WITH TERESA MARCH

  T. Hammond

  Navy man Sebastian enjoys his sister’s email and photo updates, but it’s the second woman in each picture, his sister’s best friend, that holds his attention—and, his friend David’s. Both men are coming home, and each has his objective: the Siege of Teresa March.

  ~~~

  Author’s Note:

  Sebastian Declan and David Preston are main characters from the Team Red Series, written entirely in the female protagonist, Teresa March’s, point of view. In the novels, two ex-Navy men pursue Teresa, and there has been a reader split between Team Bas, the quintessential playboy, who makes no secret that he has loved Teresa for years. Or, Team David, the playful, intense Warrant Officer who fell in love with a woman through her photos. Both men have their eye on winning Teresa’s heart. For the Shades of Pink Anthology, I thought it would be nice to give readers part of the story based on both men’s POV during the first book, Blind Seduction.

  DAVID’S STORY

  Yeah, I’m a dope. Who falls for a woman in a photograph? Granted, she’s crush-worthy, but if someone told me they were instantly fascinated by a picture, I’d be sending them to the medical tent to talk to one of the psychiatrists. I know guys that have movie star photos pinned to the inside of their lockers, or folded up in little squares so the picture can be tucked away in a uniform pocket. Soldiers fantasize about their pin-up crush in stolen moments, when they need to remember all the things they’re fighting for. What I felt was more than a crush or infatuation. When I looked at the pictures of Teresa March, I wasn’t thinking about sex; I was thinking about forever.

  First time I saw her picture was after Bas, Senior Chief Sebastian Declan, read me a letter from his sister Janey. It was a light-hearted narration of everyday events, told by a sweet woman who obviously loved and missed her big brother. Bas motioned me toward his computer so I could look at the photos she had attached.

  Janey looked like her brother. She was a Barbie doll personified with long, fluffy blond hair, clear blue eyes, and a pretty bow-shaped mouth in a heart-shaped face. She was a lovely girl, well, a woman really, since Bas told me she had just turned twenty-seven. Her figure was voluptuous, with full breasts and wide hips, emphasized by a tiny, nipped-in waist. Janey’s sex symbol body was startling when matched with her wholesome features.

  I like blonds, they always drew my eye when we visited the bars off-base. In each of the sixteen photos attached to the letter, Janey was laughing and vamping for the camera. She was adorable. But it was the woman next to her in every picture that caught my eye.

  Bas told me her name was Teresa March, and he planned to marry her one day.

  I think her eyes were the first thing that caught my attention. Deep, dark brown, with touches of green like spokes of a wagon wheel, flaring away from her irises. The thick, black lashes are long, curving away from her gorgeous eyes in soft arcs. In every picture I’ve seen of her, her face has been bare of artifice—no makeup.

  Maybe it was her smile I first noticed. She has a great smile, wide and welcoming. I pull out the folded picture I printed off my computer and feel a grin tug my mouth. I can’t help wanting to smile right along with her, to share the joke or that moment in time that brought the sparkle to her eyes and the tilt to the corner of her lips.

  Teresa is one of the few natural beauties I have ever seen. She has one of those faces that the longer you stare at her, the more striking she becomes.

  There were a few full-length pictures of the two women, so I was able to contrast and compare the dainty blond Janey, to the tall, dark-haired Teresa. Bas tells me she’s five-foot-ten, the perfect height for my six-foot-five frame. Teresa isn’t skinny like a fashion model, although she’s certainly beautiful enough to be one. She has curves, but not the over-blown ones like Janey. Teresa is elegant. Statuesque.

  God, I even like her name. In the privacy of my room, I
sometimes lay in my bunk and just whisper it aloud. Making it real. Teresa. Teresa March. Teresa… Prescott. Crap! The first time I said that, I freaked myself out. Thirty-eight years old and mooning over a girl. Damn, if I had a spiral notebook, I’d probably be penciling hearts framing her name, with fucking arrows running through them, because this was the woman Bas thought he was going to marry.

  Bas, my best friend, whose goal in life was to sleep this way through every woman he met until he finally caught Teresa March. Am I the only one that sees something wrong with this? Crap, Bastian told me the last time he saw Teresa, she had caught him in his parents’ kitchen, sticking his dick in an ex-girlfriend. The bastard even told me that he was on leave and had fully intended to bed the elusive Ms. March, but was side-tracked during his morning run. The dog! I couldn’t understand how Bas could profess to love one woman, but feel it was okay to sleep with a bunch of others. His reputation was legendary, as was the size of his dick. I hadn’t even met her, and I found I couldn’t even stir up any interest in another woman. So I definitely couldn’t understand how Bas, who knew her, could even look at anyone else. I love Bas like a brother, but he’s a player. Maybe one day he’ll see a woman, and she’ll bring him to his knees, but I don’t think he loves Teresa. I think he’s fixated on the one that got away. Once he nailed her, I was pretty confident he would soon be looking for the next conquest—oh, maybe not right away. But, I didn’t have much confidence in his staying power.

  Over the next few years, I learned about every scraped knee, prom date, and teenage trauma of the two girls in those sixteen pictures—as well as the dozens that followed. I learned about Janey’s fairy princess bedroom set with the pink canopy beds and matching pink bedspread, with gold-trimmed white furniture. I heard about Teresa’s off-the-chart IQ that seemed to intimidate the foster parents that adopted her when she was four years old. Bas told me about Janey’s love of German shepherds, and Teresa’s essay on Germany. Janey’s love of being photographed, and Teresa’s love of being behind the camera. For every story about his sister, Bas told me one about his sister’s best friend. I slowly started to build a file in my head about all things Teresa. I was friggin’ smitten. What a loser.

  Recently, Bas and I have started to talk about getting out of the Navy. I had already put in twenty years, while Bas was at nineteen. We are looking at May 31st to catch a flight home. I’m a computer guy; I’ve gained a rep for developing a few computer software programs that I sold to the military for a healthy sum. Once the military owned the program, I trained end-users and refined the specifications to meet current mission needs. Bas was assigned to my unit a couple years ago as an end-user who took my designs out into real-life situations (aka: war zones). His feedback and ideas helped me develop a better software design for topographical mapping. We were a great team, and we wanted to continue working together in the private sector. Ha! Private Sector. Civilians. What a joke; we’d still be working with the military, only we’d be paid obscene amounts of money for essentially doing the same jobs. We were going to be partners. Partners probably pursuing the same woman if I couldn’t get a handle on this obsession I’d developed.

  Obsession. Fixation. Lust. God, it was all tied into what I felt for her. I may not have been interested in another woman this past year or two, but that didn’t mean I didn’t fantasize. And, damn, did I have a stellar love life with an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven inch photo and my right fist. I felt like a sixteen-year-old, the first time I jacked off to the picture I had printed out. I remember standing there in the shower with my palm holding the photo pressed against the tile, as I gripped my cock in the other hand and stroked myself to one of the most intense orgasms I had ever experienced. The picture was completely destroyed in the steam and the sweat of my hand, but I was able to reprint another to replace it. And another a few weeks later.

  The very next morning, I had woken up with a hard cock and her name on my lips. And thus marked the beginning of the illicit affair with my palm and my best friend’s prospective future wife. Each night I made love to her in my dreams, and every morning I groaned her name as I ejaculated over my hand. I dreamed of her laughing eyes, and her generous mouth. I fantasized of tasting her skin, and smelling the fragrance of this woman and her sex on my sheets. I started to fall in love.

  It took me two nights at the bar to realize I was ruined for other women. I’m a decent looking guy, even standing next to Bas, who attracts more than his fair share of attention, I rarely left the bar alone. Oh, the women are still interested, and I enjoy their company over beer and burgers, but not in bed. In bed, I’m only interested in one woman. I’ve always been a one-woman-man, never a player.

  So, I wait. I’ve been celibate since the first day I saw her picture, because, that’s just the kind of guy I am. Faithful, even if the woman doesn’t even know me to appreciate my loyalty. It’s a couple days before Halloween, and that will mark seven months until we are stateside. Finally out of this arid, mountainous hellhole where we have been refining the accuracy of the drones we use for the topographical mapping.

  I can’t wait to see her. To hear the sound of her voice and watch a smile light her face. Bas is stiff competition, and there’s a history they share already. But, I don’t think it’s love. I don’t think what Bas feels is enduring. I’ll know when I see them together. If it is obsession and not love? Well, then Bastian is going to have some competition in the Siege of Teresa March.

  * * *

  BASTIAN’S STORY

  I didn’t always love her, but sometimes, times like now, I look up and see her head thrown back with laughter dancing in her eyes, and I think I’ve loved her forever.

  Her name is Teresa March. She’s my sister’s best friend and I’ve known her since Janey brought her home one afternoon after kindergarten. They met the first day of school, and became Best Friends Forever over crayons and coloring books. It was an unlikely match-up: my sister the girly-girl, who always wore pink and anything with frills or sparkles, and Teresa, who dressed like a tomboy in jeans and t-shirts. Janey was always dragging her around, like a large, life-size doll. Oh, this didn’t mean that Teresa was a pushover, because I’ll tell you right now, I’ve never met anyone as strong or as strong-willed as that dark-haired little girl with the flashing eyes and the stubborn chin. Teresa was content to let Janey be the social director of the duo; but, when Teresa wanted something, it was a thing of beauty to watch that little five-year-old work the manipulation to get Janey pointed in the direction she wanted to go.

  Teresa had been a constant visitor to our house for almost ten years, but one afternoon I looked up and saw her. Not Janey’s best friend since kindergarten. Not the tall, gawky kid that came over every weekend ‘cuz her adoptive parents had better things to do than raise their brainiac daughter. I mean, I really saw her. I saw the potential her and me. The potential of an Us.

  For the first time, I noticed the long dark hair that fell in a straight, sable curtain to brush the upper curve of a gorgeous ass. High and tight, maybe more rounded than current fashion dictates, but ask any guy what a nice ass looks like, and they’ll be picturing one that fits snugly into the curled grip of their hands. I have large hands.

  Teresa has deep-set, chocolate-colored eyes. Dark chocolate, with long, thick lashes and black brows that curve in high arches with finely tapered ends. And then there’s her mouth. A sarcastic mouth that tilts up at one corner just before it becomes a full-blown smile. And from one minute to the next, I suddenly wanted that mouth in places I’m sure that mouth had never been before.

  Damn, she was only fifteen. Fif-fuckin’-teen. And I had just turned twenty-three the week before. I was home on leave from the Navy, considering if I was going to extend my service or just get out when my remaining eight months was up. It was at my birthday party that I had the epiphany, this girl could be ‘the one’. That thought, right on the heels of the words ‘statutory rape,’ scared the hell out of me.

  Even as a twenty-three y
ear old, I was what you could consider sexually experienced. After nine years of fucking, I would go so far as to admit I had some pretty sophisticated tastes. I’m somewhat blessed in the looks department—go ahead, call it vanity, but fuck, I’ve looked at this face in the mirror every day and I know I meet, and in many women’s opinion, exceed, the standard for male good looks. If my sister Janey is your classic Barbie doll look-alike, I’m your classic Ken… well, except for the fact I am anatomically correct. I have dirty blond hair, a set of almost true-blue blue eyes, with the high, defined cheekbones and manly jaw-thing goin’ on. Women seem to think my mouth is sexy, I think it looks a bit full and maybe too wide. I’m a tall guy, six-foot-three by the time I was sixteen. Add all the weight training I’ve been doing for years, and you have a fairly nice package: wide shoulders, layered muscles, and abs so well defined and rock-hard that even men stopped to stare at me when I took my shirt off in the gym. Yeah, that was a bit disconcerting the first few times I noticed it happening.

  I’m pretty much The Total Package. Yeah, and speaking of package, I should probably admit to being well-hung. The face and body may catch a woman’s interest, but the ten inches pressed against the zipper of my jeans is what lost me my virginity at the ripe young age of fourteen. Courtesy of my friend Jon’s big sister, Candi. The first time she saw my cock she almost changed her mind. “Oh. My. God. It will never fit,” she told me. Luckily, she was intrigued enough that she talked herself into it. That first time she touched me, I didn’t last any longer than the first three strokes of her two fists, curled tightly around the girth of my dick, gliding from root to tip. With the energy and enthusiasm of your typical, hormonal teen, I was hard and ready to go ten minutes later.