Into The Sunset: An Erotic Romance Anthology (8 page)

With a smirk, he tugged her panties aside and
pressed his face into her wet heat, mouth open, tongue moving. He
circled her clit with one finger, not quite touching it. Two
strokes of his finger on her sensitive nub of flesh, and she
shattered. The heat inside her blazed bright and sparked up her
spine and down to her toes. She bit her lip on her cries, holding
onto Rex’s hair. He kissed her still pulsing sex, a soothing
gentleness in the aftershock of her orgasm.

He cuddled up to her, beaming with pride. “Was
that good?”

She could only nod and grin at him.

He wrapped one arm around her and stroked her
back. Being pressed up against his naked body was making her hot
again. She kissed him, tasting her pleasure on his lips. She wanted
more.

She found her jeans on the floor. “We don’t
have to,” she said, holding up the condom.

Rex took it from her with a shy smile. “I’d
like to.”

She watched him put it on, fascinated to see
him touching himself. He blushed under her intent gaze.

“
You make me feel like a
teenager,” he confessed.

Rose kissed him, her heart squeezing bright
and sharp in her chest—but it was a good pain. The pain of new
growth, new beginnings. “And you make me feel.”

* * *

The way she looked at him—the fire
in her dark eyes, light glinting on her wet open lips—made him feel
like he was her whole world. And her words,
You make me feel.

He had to be inside her. He had to know what
they felt like joined together. He had to show her how she made him
feel: That life was amazing, that he could start over with her and
be amazing.

He didn’t trust himself to speak
the words, so he used his lips to tell her that she was beautiful,
to ask her to stay. She kissed him back, her mouth hot and fierce
on his. It was like she was chanting one word over and over to
him,
Yes, yes, yes
.

He rubbed his hardness on her slick heat. He
was about to ask if she was sure, but she was canting her hips
under him. She grasped his head and guided him into her tight
sheath.

He moved and had to stop, willing himself to
calm down. He wanted this to last. He wanted it to be good for her.
He wanted her to come.

Her hand was gentle on his cheek and she
turned his head so he stared down in her eyes. Her other hand was
on his hips, urging him forward. “You can let go, Rex. I just want
to be with you.”

It wasn’t the sex she wanted—it was the
closeness.

With a breath that sounded almost like a sob,
he took her. She opened her body to him and he moved. She kissed
him and held him. She swallowed the cry from his lips when he
came.

They lay in each other’s arms, talking. She
slipped away a few hours later. After all, it wouldn’t do to
surprise Annie.

* * *

She woke to a drumming that for a moment, her
sleep addled brain had thought was rain. It was Annabelle Lee
drumming on their door.

“
Are you making me a baby
brother?” she asked.

Rex flushed red. “I wished your mother hadn’t
said that to her.”

“
She’s
your
mother-in-law. You could have
intervened.”

He poked her in the side and buried himself
under the covers. When they’d caught Lily giving Annabelle Lee an
abbreviated explanation of the birds and the bees, they’d both
fled.

“
I can hear you,” Annabelle Lee
said. “Can I go see the new foal?” She drummed her fingers on the
door. “If you don’t say anything, I’m going to take it as a
yes.”

They tried to smother their laughter, but it
was too easy to picture her peeved expression.

“
Hey, you’re my parents. You’re
supposed to be concerned for my welfare. You should be saying
something like, ‘Make sure Mister Josh goes with you and don’t
bother the guests.’”

Rex cleared his throat, and said in an
officious voice, “You can go see the foal Annie. Just make sure you
take Josh with you, and mind you don’t bother the
guests.”

They started laughing then, hearing her stomp
her foot in annoyance.

“
Whatever. Enjoy your honeymoon,”
she said.

Rex and Rose smiled at each other. “When she
turns into a teenager, she goes back to just being your daughter,
right?”

He hit her with a pillow.

She could never have guessed, flying out of
Boston, nervous and edgy about the future of her parents’ ranch,
that a fairy tale ending was waiting for her in the town of
Fricksville. She’d gone from being the lonely ice princess in the
tower, to having a family all her own. And unlike all those Grimm’s
stepmothers, she wasn’t about to squander one second of her
happiness with greed or vanity. No, she was going to live on this
ranch, help her parents grow old, love her husband, love her
daughter, and maybe, once things got settled, see about making
Annabelle Lee some siblings.

Her phone rang—a trill of Vivaldi.
Alfred Faulk had programmed the ring himself. She couldn’t tell if
he was the dragon in the story or the fairy godmother. Despite his
reassurances that she
was
working part time, he appeared to be grooming her
to take over for him at the Kimbell.

***

If you enjoyed this story, we
suggest a title from the same writer:
The Love of Violetta
by
Antoinette M. Available now!

Owned By The Alpha

By Vivian Wood

Watching the last fleeting rays of red and
orange trace the Atlanta skyline at dusk, Lucas Kiern couldn’t
suppress a shiver as he stared out the twenty-foot-high glass wall
of his penthouse office at Luna Corp. The color red had been on his
mind much of late.

Not the deep amaranth slipping from the sky as
the sun finally sank, no. It was a fiery copper hue that occupied
his thoughts, brushed the edges of his mind as he tried to sleep. A
rich, sweet, warm color that was nicely complemented by stunning
sapphire eyes, creamy pale skin, and freckles dusted across the
bridge of a pert nose.

His wolf stirred within, struggling to
surface. Heat bloomed in his chest, the soaring teak-paneled walls
of his office seemed to encroach, confine. Lucas had but to look at
the calendar to understand his malady.

Heedlessly stripping off the jacket and tie
from his Kiton suit, he tossed them onto his desk and braced his
arms over his head and leaned against the window. Lights flickered
to life across the city, and in the growing darkness he could see
both the changing night-scape outside and a faint, blurred
reflection of himself in the window.

His 6’3, tightly muscled frame was
unsurprising. He was, after all, the paradigmatic specimen of a
werewolf. Big without being bulky, long-limbed without sacrificing
speed. His kind were Vikings, Spartans, Highlanders.

Swallowing, Lucas reached down and clawed the
first few buttons of his shirt open, giving himself more room to
breathe. He could feel the walls pressing in on him. Or perhaps
instead his Berserker ancestors, watching and silently judging from
their places of honor in Valhalla. They’d launched fleets of ships,
waged war, conquered foes. Lucas’s life couldn’t be more different;
his wars were in board rooms, his fleets were complex computer
software systems, his foes were Japanese innovators that he admired
and occasionally befriended. His ancestors would probably be
disgusted by his soft, cultured lifestyle.

Blinking, Lucas focused on himself once more.
Wavy blond hair, cut stylishly. A bit longer in the front where it
curled, a prominent gray streak in his forelock that women seemed
to admire. Rather than age him, it brought the frozen steel of his
gray eyes to a stormy sheen. Tan skin, from head to toe, no matter
the season. Teeth so perfectly straight and white, no one would
ever guess that they grew into gruesome fangs under the full moon’s
pearly spell.

A growl ripped from his chest, startling him.
His visage, the source of so much pleasure from so many eager
bedmates over the years, was not his friend tonight. Staring at
himself wasn’t going to fill the massive void of want that had
opened within him.

Pushing away from the window, he returned to
his desk and sat on the edge. Sweeping his coat and tie to the
floor, he revealed the pale blue file folder once again. Sighing,
he reached out and slid a finger under the cover, slowly baring the
file’s contents to his hungry gaze.

Aurelia Gilson,
he read. His eyes dropped down the page,
following the now-familiar path of statistics and facts that made
up the woman who’d become his obsession.

Date of Birth: 1982. Age: 31.
Birthplace: Austin, Texas. Family: Brother, Edgar Gilson, Resides
Peacefully In San Francisco, CA. Education: Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, First and Second Degrees in Computer Science and
Computational Linguistics. Wanted By: Interpol, CIA, FBI, and
Police in Dubai, U.A.E., New Zealand, France, Norway, Namibia, Cote
D’Ivoire, Italy, United Kingdom, and Greece. Bounty:
€
1.5 Million. Current
Residence: Unknown. Last Seen: Nuit Du Hack Hacker’s Convention, 25
June 2012.

Flipping the first sheet over, Lucas skimmed
down the list of Aurelia’s offenses, what his private investigator
had referred to as her “mile-long rap sheet”. She’d phreaked,
sniffed, spoofed, socially engineered, phished, pharmed, and whaled
her way into the elite community of top-level hackers at a mere
fifteen years of age. Just that many years later, she’d been caught
and exposed for the white-gloved criminal she was, her identity
leaked to a number of national security agencies. It had only been
a matter of time before his poor girl had been banished from every
technophile locale in the civilized world.

Flipping another page, he came to a map. A map
of Sri Lanka, to be precise, with a fat red circle drawn around the
commercial capital of Colombo. Aurelia’s current location,
according to the detective.

Unable to contain his eagerness now, he
flipped the page again. A fat, glossy sheaf of photographs awaited
him.

Older photos first. Childhood and teen photos
of her with her brother, her only living family member. Then
college, photos of Aurelia posing with her friends on the MIT
campus. And just as the college photos tapered off, came his
favorites. Aurelia, the naughty vixen, had taken some very explicit
and high-quality striptease photos for some Suicide Girls-esque
knockoff. That red hair pinned up in a pile at her nape, shapely
long legs and tiny white panties and a yellow baseball t-shirt,
those big blue eyes flirting while her pink lips pouted at the
camera.

As the photos progressed, the shirt edged up
to showcase a flat stomach, then came off to reveal stunningly full
rose-tipped breasts. Then Aurelia slowly stripped off the panties,
allowing the view of her curved ass. She spread her legs, giving
just a hint from behind. Then she rolled toward the camera,
sprawling, her legs opening to reveal…

And that’s where it
ends
, Lucas thought with a curse. He’s
made a single call, purchased the whole damned smut operation in
the hopes that there were more photos and they’d just held some
back as a tease. Then he’d had the investigator track down the
photographer, search his studio for the negatives. Surely there
were more, to sate his curiosity.

Denial, swift and aching. He was hard now, his
need painful as his body begged him to let his imagination fill in
the gaps. He wouldn’t do it, of course.

No, no. Lucas was the CEO of one of the most
powerful tech companies in the world, an aggressive alpha werewolf,
and a competitive bastard who got every single thing he wanted,
when he wanted it. And now he wanted Aurelia.

Surging forward, he pressed the intercom
button on his phone.

“
Leila!” he barked.

“
Y-yes, Mr. Kiern? Do you need me
in your office?” came the immediate response. Her voice was
throaty, a promise. His feisty little she-wolf secretary, who
serviced his needs and defended his office with equal
vigor.

“
Not right now. I need Walker. And
Ben, too. Have them come in, please,” he requested, easing his tone
a bit.

“
Yes, sir,” she replied, all
business now. He loved that about Leila, he honestly
did.

Minutes later Walker Black and Ben Fincher
entered his office, curiosity about his summons evident in their
expressions.

“
Sit, please,” Lucas waved at
them, studying the two males as they dropped into the chairs across
from his desk.

Leila had once teasingly referred to Walker
and Ben as Lucas’s ‘book ends’ because they frequently flanked him
during meetings, trips, and any other important interactions. The
two were nothing alike, and little like Lucas either, which made
them such a powerful team.

Walker was a hair taller than Lucas, with rich
mahogany hair and piercing brown eyes. He was even more muscular
than your average wolf, and often intimidated humans to the point
of terror. He spoke little, but every word was pure seriousness. If
Lucas were the alpha of a pack, Walker would be his beta and main
enforcer. As it stood, he was the COO of Luna Corp, and a vital
part of keeping everything running. His wolf was an immense timber
wolf, which reflected exactly his serious and direct
personality.