Lunatic Fringe

by TL Schaefer

  He grasped my hip with one hand and snaked the other between us, squeezing and playing with breast. It was torture. It was heaven.

  He kept it up forever, never changing that steady pace, alternating between my pleasure points until I was a wreck, sweating and swearing until my voice went hoarse as I finally pled for relief.

  That seemed to trigger something within him and he anchored both hands on my hips and began to thrust harder, faster, his hips slapping against my ass, driving me deeper into the couch until all I could do was hold on for dear life.

  We came together, both of us unintelligible as we released, both of us so sated, we collapsed right there on the sofa, Heath blanketing me from behind. Which should have been horrible, but I was so blissed out I didn’t feel his weight. Just his presence.

  He finally pushed away and scooped me up in his arms, settled us on the couch and pulled a throw over us as we came back to earth.

  When he tipped my chin up so we were eye to eye, my mouth went dry. Because for the first time, he wasn’t wearing a mask. He wasn’t Heath the NSA agent, or Heath the asshole or even Heath the Talented. He was just Heath. With remarkable blue eyes that seemed to see right down to my soul.

  “I love you Moni.”

  His words stole my breath.

  “I think I always have, though it was certainly lust early on.” He grinned, dropped down for a quick kiss. “You don’t have to say it back, you know. This has come at you pretty fast and everything has been weird. I just wanted you to know.”

  I leaned up into a kiss of my own. “I don’t have to wait. You’ve pissed me off for over a decade, but everything I’ve felt with you, even when you made me see red, was real. True. And now, after everything we’ve been through, I know why. It’s because you’re mine. I love you too.”

  I snuggled back into his arms. Something inside, a circuit maybe, had become complete as the words left my mouth. My kid was safe and the man I’d lusted after for thirteen years had become the man I loved.

  Life didn’t get any better than that.

  Chapter Eighteen

  WHAT CAME BEFORE...

  Holy shit, I’m pregnant.

  I don’t know what to think, what to feel.

  Joe, a lawyer I hooked up with in a bar after one too many tequilas for both of us, has insisted on doing the honorable thing. In this day and age it’s adorable, but not necessary. But he insists and I remember what it was like after Papa died. I don’t want my child to feel that same vacuum.

  We had fun together, so maybe we can make it work. God, I hope we can make it work, because as soon as I got the results, it was as if a calm settled over me. Made me grow up in a way Afghanistan and Iraq hadn’t.

  And because of that, I quit drinking the same day. For the baby, and for me. I should have seen how similar I was to Mama, in trying to find love at the bottom of a bottle. I thought I was stronger than that, than her. I was wrong.

  But now I have Joe, a family.

  I only separated from the Air Force six months ago. I applied to the Dallas Police Department and got picked up pretty quickly. Right now I’m still on probation, which means I’m riding with a partner or doing shitty paperwork, so not that different than the military. Doing it pregnant will be tricky, but being a cop is the only thing I really know, so I’ll figure it out.

  Last night Joe and I went out to dinner with his best friend from college, Heath. He’s gorgeous, and something in his eyes, in the way he holds himself, makes me want to ruffle his feathers, make the ice around him melt. It feels wrong to think about him that way when I’m with Joe, when I’m pregnant with his child.

  So I put Heath in the friend zone.

  Because dammit, my kid is going to have a father. I’m going to have a family. Nothing is going to endanger that future.

  Not even Joe’s sexy best friend.

  Now... Colorado Springs

  We drove through the gates of CASI, and my heart did a little roll. Today was the day. Tori was officially enrolling.

  She’d spent the first week here after everything went down as kind of an experiment, just to see if it fit. Then we went home to Dallas and tried to resume our normal lives.

  But nothing looked the same anymore. Even Dallas in full spring looked like a big city to me, industrial and gray, though the rolling plains were only an hour away in any direction. Humidity drained me, even as I missed Heath something fierce.

  But we’d gone over a decade without being in each other’s chili twenty-four/seven. And I needed to reconnect with my kid, figure out what in the heck we were going to do.

  Things between Tori and I were still a bit strained. And even though I had no control over the situation, I understood her trepidation, and the fact it was easiest to blame me. I still blamed me, to a certain extent, though that was beginning to fade.

  But every decision I made was going to be based on what Tori did, what she decided, so we waited. She went back to her private school. I went back to work. Skyped with Heath most every night. Sometimes naked.

  Joe and I had come to an even bigger détente than before. I think now he understood me better than I did myself. And he’d said if Tori chose CASI, then he wouldn’t argue. His parents had been harder to convince, but Joe did have primary custody. Something we were going to remedy in the near future, now that I wasn’t waking up screaming anymore.

  Didn’t really matter if it was the CBD oil or the fact I was shielding myself unconsciously, the results were the same. No nightmares. Steamy dreams? Sure. But nothing that bolted me out of sleep at 0300.

  Heath made it clear that if I wanted to, if Tori decided on CASI, I could live on premises and figure out my Talent. Or stay in his condo in Denver.

  Tori had decided three nights ago that she didn’t fit into her school in Dallas anymore, that she wanted to try out CASI for the rest of the year, even through the summer.

  And that quickly, my decision was made. I could apply for a PI license in Colorado. But I didn’t want to live in Denver. Too many memories.

  There was an amazing downtown historic district in Colorado Springs. The homes were the exact opposite of my house in Dallas. Full of character and charm and history. It would be the perfect place for Tori to come home to if she wanted a break from the school. The perfect place for me to set up shop and begin to truly investigate my Talent. The perfect place for Heath and me to explore what I knew was the real deal. Without making any sudden moves that might spook both of us.

  I already had a real estate agent looking into availability and had listed my place in Dallas, since Joe didn’t really care one way or the other what we did with it.

  But in the here and now, the mansion housing CASI loomed ahead.

  I was almost as nervous as Tori.

  What we were doing? It was embarking into the unknown for both of us.

  Arin and Jonah met us at the top of the stairs, with Brian and Sara waiting in the wings.

  Joe and I settled Tori into her room, then joined the rest of the crew in the library. What had felt strange and frightening just a month ago now felt like a homecoming.

  It was here I’d begun to come to grips with my Talent, had found a way to begin to control it. This school was as close to a birthplace as Waco had been almost forty years before.

  It felt like old times as we sat around the library table, with Joe as a welcome addition.

  My ex had formed an unlikely alliance with Kavenaugh over the last few weeks. For the FBI’s part, the Foudy/O’Donnell connection just couldn’t be ignored, not with the amount of noise they could make. Heath was of the mind Kavenaugh was just fine with the way things had turned out, and I could see it. He hadn’t been bothered in the slightest at Heath’s threat to out the entire gig via Cam if the government stepped out of line. And now we had Joe involved.

  Tori and Benny and all of these kids were as safe as they could be.

  Sara started with something none of us had really anticipated. “I saw Benny’s future this
morning, and given what I saw, I think the tragedy Asa saw was if Grace made it into Northwood. Made it to Benny.”

  “We know he’s a healer,” Heath began, and Sara’s mouth tipped up in a smile. Benny’s grandmother had enrolled him at CASI a week after Denver. Had also cut off her worthless daughter and son-in-law, and sicced the Taos DA on them. Which of course ended up involving the FBI because selling kids was a felony, and state lines had been crossed. So of course, Kavenaugh was involved. It was frighteningly incestuous.

  “He’s a hell of a lot more than that,” she said. “He can actually manipulate cells. Do you know what this is going to mean for gene research? For cancer? For the diseases that have plagued us for centuries? We might wipe them out in one generation.” She turned and looked directly at Heath and me. “Because you two stopped her from getting into the building. If you hadn’t, his Talent would have been monetized, weaponized. I don’t have to be Asa to see that.”

  Silence met her words. Not shocked really, because the potential of all of these kids was off the charts. No, this silence was more contemplative.

  “It’s going to be a strange new world a few years down the line,” Joe said, and I thanked God that he had seen enough to convince him CASI was the best thing for Tori.

  “It’s been strange for quite a while,” Roney said. “We’re just now seeing what the Talented may be capable of. Of their potential influence on medicine and music and psychology and basically everything.”

  I let that truth sink in. Wondered what my life would have been like if my parents hadn’t hypnotized my Talent into my subconscious. But then I wouldn’t have Tori, wouldn’t have the potential for an amazing adventure with Heath. It’d been worth it.

  Beneath the table, I slipped my hand into Heath’s and he turned and caught my gaze, gave me a wink.

  Yeah, it had been totally worth it.

  I wouldn’t change a single second.

  ~The End~

  About the author

  I’M A GREAT BELIEVER in Fate. Yeah, with a capital “F”. And I write in those terms. Why? Probably because my beloved husband said he fell in love with me the first time he saw me. You might ask if it was a two-way gig... In a word, uh-uh. Not that he wasn’t fine to the extreme, but I wasn’t looking for forever, but rather a fun vacation experience. Yeah, so now we’ve muddled our way through over three decades of marriage, and I have to admit to his superior intuition on that one!!

  So if you’re looking for Alpha heroes who just happen to “know” their life-mate when they see them, don’t be overly surprised.

  You’ll get a variety of genres from me (romantic mystery, romantic thrillers/suspense, paranormal romance), but in each of them you’ll find a hero and heroine who kick ass and take names. And then have their happily ever after.

  So if you like your heroes in uniform (be they cops, firefighters, or military) and your heroines with a bit of quirk, wing by my website (www.tlschaefer.com) and check out my booklist and see what we’ve got on sale this month.

  Thanks for reading with me!

  Also by TL Schaefer... visit www.tlschaefer.com/all-books/

  The CASI Series

  Behind Blue Eyes

  Crossfire (Book 1.5, free novella to newsletter subscribers)

  Shoot to Thrill

  Lunatic Fringe

  The Mariposa Series

  The Summerland

  The Brotherhood

  The Paladin

  The Fated Fae Series

  Baptism by Fire

  Ends of the Earth

  Sea of Dreams

  Breath of Heaven

  Fated Fae box set

  Stand Alone Titles

  Something Witchy This Way Comes

  Redemption (coming Fall 2020)

  Writing as Keira Ramsay

  Into the Fire

  Blink of an Eye