by Selena Kitt
As he undressed her and she saw the hungry look in his eyes, she was sure of this was exactly what she wanted. Along with his arousal, his touch grew rough, his caresses impatient. She was wet and ached for him and, when he took her, their bodies entangling, his hard cock a warm and welcome intrusion, she simply and completely melted.
“Trevor,” she sighed. Nothing more could come out, she had no other words to say. All her energy, her entire being focused on the beautiful way they moved together, the way his raw sexual power surged through her body, exciting her at least as much as his cock did, maybe even more. She was overwhelmed by how wonderful it made her feel to be possessed by this man, to be aroused and consumed by the fires his body stoked in hers. And she came, in a glorious whirlwind that swept him up, and made him lose that fierce control, emptying himself inside her.
Trevor snored softly, tangled in the sheets as she slipped herself out of his arms and went in the bathroom to shower. The hot water felt wonderful cascading over her sore and tired body. When she finally shut off the water, stepped out and dried off, she put on a terrycloth robe she found hanging on the door. It was big on her and smelled like Trevor. Perfect.
He still slept, so she tiptoed through the bedroom, heading to the kitchen.
Starting a pot of coffee, she rummaged in the refrigerator and found bacon and eggs. A cast iron skillet beckoned from the stove and soon she had the bacon frying. When she went to put the salt and pepper and butter on the table she found a couple of college catalogs. She picked them up and saw several pages were marked or dogeared. Next to the catalogs, a manila envelope held a sheaf of papers too. They were application forms for graduate schools. He had copies of his transcripts from school, and surprisingly a letter on the letterhead of the Army Psychological Services. It was from Paul, recommending Trevor as someone with great potential as a therapist.
“He insisted on writing it.” She looked up and saw Trevor watching her.
“That was nice of him.”
“I would never have asked him to do that. Seems that Paul is a good guy. He was helpful in talking me through the medical discharge crap too, and getting me connected with a counselor who will make sure I get any benefits I’m entitled to.” He smiled at her. “I’m not surprised that you and he were lovers for a time. You have good taste.”
Even though he meant it as a compliment, but it made her uncomfortable to have Trevor talking about her past relationships. “Yes. I liked him. It didn’t take long to learn that it wasn’t more than that though.” She grinned. “A lot of like and a little lust.”
“He was disappointed. Losing you hurt him. Despite my vested interest, I can’t blame him. That’s why I thought it was rather cool of him to write this.”
“It was just like him though. He is a good friend to anyone who lets him be one.”
“So what do you think?”
“About what?”
“Me going to grad school, studying to be a therapist. I’d like to focus on learning how to help returning vets. The schools I picked are known for leading the way in that work.”
“I think that’s a brilliant idea and that you’d be fantastic at it. You already know how to establish a rapport—that’s the hardest part. The rest you can learn. It won’t be easy but you’ll do it.”
“What is easy? An I want to do it. It means something to me. I’m sure I can hack it.”
“I know you can. I noticed that these schools are on the West Coast.”
“So they are.”
“I’ve never lived there.”
He cocked his head. “What does that tell me? That you’d go with me?”
She smiled. “Why not? I’ve already quit my job. Can an unemployed shrink tag along? I’d help you.”
“I don’t know. Is it right for you? You know that Paul would hire you back in a heartbeat.”
“Yes, I was given a clean bill of health and, without a hint of irony, told to go and sin no more.” She smiled. “But that also means I’d have no trouble getting a license out there. I could start a small practice near wherever you get accepted. Or maybe work in a clinic. I’d have to see what was available.”
She saw relief on his face. “Are you good with that though? I mean, what about your future, Di?”
“My future? I’m a therapist. I’d be helping people. Wherever we go I can find work and for now doing more with my professional life is less important to me than finding out what life can be like with you. I’d have my office hours and you’d have school. In the evenings I’d make sure you did your homework.”
“How would you punish me if I didn’t?”
“I could make you go to bed without pussy.”
“Such cruelty! I’ve never seen that dark side of you.” He took her in his arms. “I rather like it. It makes a nice challenge. But seriously, is being with me what you want?”
She kissed him. “Yes.”
“Then you’ve got me.”
“I love you and I feel I owe it to myself to see where that leads, Trevor. In the short time I’ve been around you I’ve seen a new side of myself. I’m not suddenly a wild child or something, but I want to do new things, and take a few chances. I want to gamble on you and with you. I don’t know how it will work over the long term, but I need to find out, if you do.”
“So you’d follow me?”
“Wherever you lead. I know you will always need to be the man in charge.”
“And you are good with that?”
With her face pressed to his chest, she let her breath out slowly and listened to the steady pounding of his heart. She’d never heard, felt something as alive. When she reached down, she found his cock and she wrapped her fingers around it. She wanted him, wanted him to take her. “Try me. Let’s find out. But I think I’m wonderful with that.”
She smelled the bacon starting to burn as he slipped his hand under her robe, making her body tingle as he caressed her ass. “I might have to enforce a bit of discipline now and then to make sure you stay good with it.”
She kissed his chest as his fingers gripped her flesh tight. Her breath grew ragged. “I certainly hope so.”
He let go of her and turned off the stove, then grabbed her and bent her over his kitchen table, raising the robe to expose her ass to his hands. She gripped the edge of the table and moaned as he spread her legs apart. When he grabbed her hips and pulled her close, she braced herself. His cock penetrated her and she cried out. The table rocked under them as Trevor began to fuck her. She wanted this delirious sense of pleasure to be endless.
With luck, and a lot of work, it might be.
About the Authors
Alana Hart
Alana Hart is an American romance writer who decided that writing with friends is better than writing alone. Hartfelt Books brings together a huge group of sweet and steamy romance authors, collaborating on a new line of books that will have your heart pounding.
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Marlena Dark writes to understand emotions, relationships and all the things that go into being human, whether that means digging into the good and bad, light and dark, or optimistic and cynical parts of our
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Spring Tide - WARRIORS (Military) by Tami Veldura
Foreword
Cancer is the watercraft-branch of the privatized Zodiac Forces. If you can float a boat, you'll find Cancer operatives on the water investigating. Whiplash and Cardinal are two soldiers off the coast of Italy, hot on the trail of an ivory smuggling gang.
Instead of ivory, they find a message in a bottle calling for help. It's ten years old and the case is probably cold, but Whiplash knows a proper adventure when she sees one and Cardinal is along for the ride. It gets personal when the trail leads back to the very smugglers they were tracking. Both Whip and Cards are kidnapped and the woman who threw that message in a bottle: she locked Cardinal in the forward berth of the ship herself.
Was it a trap for the Zodiac women or does the lady pirate want out? Separated from her partner and supplies, it's up to Cards to keep it together and get herself free. If it means pretending to cooperate, even pretending to fall in love, Cardinal won't pull any punches.
Chapter 1
The sea moved. A few feet below the surface, Cardinal and Whiplash had no choice but to bend with the tide. They were geared for diving—masks, tanks, and wetsuits. Down here, anchored under the waves, the surface crash was nothing more than a dull roar of bubbles and distant hiss of sand. In the distance, a boat motored by. Its propeller sound bounced off the seafloor. The depth wasn't helping. Currents dragged at them, tugging them further out to sea. Without the anchors, they would be lost.
It was beautiful, even down here, but Cardinal was well aware of the danger. She checked the seal on her full-face mask and dug her shovel into the mud again. Behind her, Whip turned in the water, her rebreather catching the bubbles of her sigh before they could escape.
"This is what I mean, Cards. Digging up pottery? Collecting Sicilian gold? I signed up for adventure, not ... not ..." Whiplash made a waving gesture at the muck, slowed by the water.
Cardinal adjusted her grip on the shovel and pushed a pile down current. The dirt slumped to the sea floor and grayed the water. "Not recovering lost history at the bottom of the Mediterranean?"
"Well ..."
"Whiplash, we are quite literally digging up a pirate's buried treasure."
"Yeah, well it sounds more glamorous in the movies." Whiplash sighed again and the echo of it ricocheted in Cardinal's earpiece.
Cardinal dug her shovel into the mud. She'd take recovering ivory off the sea floor over a face-to-face conflict any day of the week, but she knew that wasn't how Whiplash worked. "Would you rather they had kept it aboard and forced you to shoot it out across the bow of the boat?"
"Yes!" Whiplash thunked the butt of her shovel into the dirt. It clouded up around her fins. "Yes, I would have." She put a hand on her hip.
Cardinal laughed. "I'm so sorry to have deprived you."
"Darn right you are." Whiplash sighed again with emphasis. "Hammerhead approaching at seven o'clock. Counter-clockwise."
Cardinal glanced up to her left and spotted the predator gliding leisurely in their direction, checking them out. The counter-shading made it hard to spot against the bright surface of the water, but it eventually decided they were doing nothing of significant interest and moved on. Cardinal shoveled another loose layer of dirt to the side.
"I guess I'm wondering why these guys would bother with smuggling in the first place—isn't kidnapping and extortion where it's at now? They need to get with the program."
Cardinal smiled down at the mud. Whiplash was never satisfied with the jobs that were easier. Jobs that didn't involve the possibility of dramatic injury. Her shovel lodged into something that gave by inches. A digital readout on her mask blinked. She prodded twice to make sure. "Whip, I've got something here."
Whiplash swam around to help move sediment. "I was really hoping you wouldn't find anything, this is too easy."
"Such a pity to have a completed job in your mission file. Such a hard job to enjoy Italy for two weeks with hazard pay." Cardinal held the laugh in the back of her mouth.
"Shut up." Whiplash grumbled.
Cardinal took Whip's shovel so she'd have both hands. "Just open it."
Whiplash cut the twine holding the bag shut and reached in. She dropped an old boot to the sea floor. "Seriously?" She upended the burlap bag. Boots and empty wine bottles tumbled across the mud. No smuggled ivory. No illegal rhino horn. Not even a branch of endangered wood. "It's just a bag of junk." Some bottles had peeling labels. The boot leather was cracked.
Cardinal fished a bottle out of the pile. "There's something stuffed in this one. It's sealed."
Whiplash bundled the bag under her arm. "Bring it up. This was a waste of time and now they've got a day's lead on us."
Cardinal had to agree. In retrospect, it had been too good of a chance. What kind of pirate taunted Zodiac operatives with their contraband, anyway? "At least I shot the one in the arm." They pushed off the sea floor and followed the anchor line all the way up to their boat on the rocking surface.
Whiplash said, "See, gunfights are always easier. Very straightforward. If they're shooting at you, they're the bad guys and you should shoot back. I'm pro gunfights."
"I'm pro not getting shot." Cardinal said, following Whip's kicking fins.
"No adventure that way." Whip hit the surface and pulled her mask up. She tossed the mag on board and popped up out of the ocean. She gave Cardinal a hand up.
The boat rocked in the setting sun. Cardinal stripped off mask, flippers, and tank with a sigh. Her wetsuit squeaked. She handed the wine bottle into Whiplash's wiggling fingers.
Whiplash lay sprawled on the deck, much like a displaced starfish, still geared and not caring. She pulled the cork in the bottle. It came out with a wet pop. Whiplash pulled out a single small rolled paper from inside. She frowned and flipped it around in her hands.
Cardinal hauled up the anchor, a crank on the side of the boat. "What is it?"
"I don't know. It just says, Mom, I'm still alive. It's signed Natalie Bowman and dated ten years ago."
"Message in a bottle? How's that for buried treasure?" Cardinal checked their heading and started the small live-aboard. It rumbled, bubbling and churning water through the engine.
"This name sounds familiar." Whip stripped her scuba gear. "I'm going to have Cleo run it."
"It's a decade old, you won't find who wrote it."
"No appreciation for a mystery. You don't want to know who wrote it? Why?"
Cardinal turned them toward the mainland. "It's just not the right medium for an EDS. Mom, I'm still alive? An email would have been more effective. Or a phone call."
Whiplash smiled. "Maybe she was kidnapped! Oh, I love a good kidnapping." She hurried down the stairs to radio their Aries intelligence contact, Cleo.
"Ten years ago ... oh, forget it."
"You weren't hugged as a child, Cards!"
Cardinal shook her head and revved the boat toward town. Whiplash went looking for adventures wherever they went. If deployment to Italy during a beautiful July wasn't going to stop her, nothing would. She pushed the throttle up and let the boat come up on plane.
Chapter 2
Cardinal leaned against the side wall of the boat with one eye on her radar. The engines screamed, pushing the boat forward—a constant din of white noise that made thinking difficult. The floor vibrated the floor beneath her feet until her ankles were numb. Wind pulled at her short hair and the salt spiked it up in awkward directions.
Whiplash came back up dressed in her Cancer-blu
e fatigues with a box-hat tight over her brow. She waved Cardinal away from the wheel, who gave it up eagerly. Driving into the setting sun was tough.
The radio crackled as she descended the steps. It sounded like someone on the other end had pushed a button to talk but wasn't speaking. Cardinal paused to listen, but she couldn't hear anything over the noise of the engines.
