ROMANCE: BIKER ROMANCE: Werewolf Rider (MC Shifter Pregnancy Romance) (New Adult Paranormal Romance Short Stories) (110 page)

Chapter Five

Survivor Guilt

     Three weeks later, Dr., Bethany Pierce had only one good thing to say about her newest patient, Jaxson Palmer. He was indeed a man of his word.

     True to his promise on the day of their meeting, Jax refused to communicate, share or divulge a single detail of his life or concerns to her. Instead he challenged her to everything from board games to staring contests, told lots of tasteless jokes, and demonstrated his military borne proficiency for vivid and highly illustrative profanity.

     She sensed furthermore that he had yet to surrender his wild party going ways; for while he never divulged a single detail of his personal life, his bloodshot eyes, frequent yawns and lingering aura of feminine perfume told the tale for him.

     Finally one day she decided to try a last ditch effort; one that while on the surface appeared to be a ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ response to his situation, actually held a far deeper significance.

     After sauntering in ten minutes late to his scheduled session, Jaxson’s bleary eyes flew wide as he saw that his therapist’s office boasted a most unusual piece of furniture: a small round table that came topped with what appeared to be a checkerboard.

     “Well why on earth do you have a game board set up right next to the couch?” he blurted out, shaking his head in a show of sheer wonder as he added, “Did your first patient of the morning have a bizarre addiction to terminally boring weekend past times?”

     Bethany shook her head.

     “Not at all,” she replied, adding as she pulled up her office chair to the far side of the board, “You told me during our first appointment that you liked to play checkers—and that you would in fact prefer to engage in a hearty round of checkers, as opposed to talking to me about your problems and feelings.” She paused here, adding with a smooth flourish across the surface of the checkerboard, “So fine then. Let’s play.”

     Jaxson froze.

     “You’re not going to psychoanalyze my every move are you?” he asked her, adding as he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, “If I pick up the red checker first, you’ll assume that my mommy never loved me….”

     Bethany had heard enough.

     “Shut up and play,” she commanded.

     Heaving a sigh of reluctant resignation, Jaxson rolled his eyes heavenward again as he took a seat on the couch and retrieved a black checker from the surface of the board; frowning in contemplation as he seemed to concentrate on the opening move of the game.

     This frown dissolved into an open mouthed gape seconds later, as his now trembling fingers dropped the checker piece to the surface of the board and let loose with an anguished gasp.

     “Jaxson, are you all right?” Bethany asked, tone laced concern.

     Jaxson was frozen.

     “I just remembered something,” he softly blurted out, his body trembling, “My doctor told me that, on the day of the bomb blast, my friend Tommy and I had been playing cards on the deck of our ship. Well we weren’t.”

     Bethany nodded.

     “You were playing checkers?” she asked, tone soft and gentle.

     Jaxson nodded.

     “I
remember
now,” he told her, voice thick and stricken with frustrated emotion. “I remember my friend—his smile, his laugh. The way we used to laugh and joke around as we played every game in sight. Now who knows if he’ll never smile, laugh or play again, he’s
still
in a coma and it’s
my fault
!” he paused here, bellowing out as he pitched his head back, “It should have been me. I should have been the one to be lying half dead in a coma, instead of my brother. I wish I could trade places with him. I should have suspected there may be a bomb and been more careful.”

     Surging to her feet, Bethany cleared the corner of the board in one smooth gesture and touched his trembling shoulders with a solid, reassuring hand; gifting him with a quick squeeze as she whispered, “But you lived, Jaxson. And as Tommy is indeed a valued and trusted friend, he would want you to lead a happy and worthwhile life. It’s not over, he still may recover.”

     Jaxson nodded.

     “I know Doc,” he acknowledged. “How do I do that, though? How do I make my way back, nothing makes sense, it’s like
I
don’t even know who I am.”

     Bethany leaned over closer to him, staring with warm tenderness into his eyes as she told him, “Before you can even begin to move on Jaxson, you have to remember,
everything.
You’ve been through worse, given what you do, but this sealed the deal and you’ve gone into emotional hiding. I would suggest that we try a round of hypnosis.”

Chapter Six

Deeper

     He knew better than to agree to this nonsense; really he did. He’d always known that hypnosis was nothing more than a bunch of mumbo jumbo practiced by charlatans and second rate magicians.

     Somehow though, he found that he just couldn’t say no to the woman before him.

     Although initially transfixed by the ethereal black haired beauty of the voluptuous Bethany Pierce, he did not at first differentiate her from the gaggle of pretty bar hoppers who all competed to take him home, if they should get so lucky. 

     Yet none of these women spoke with the wit and intellect displayed by this amazing lady; someone who he had come to respect and admire, even if he never admitted as much.

     Now that he really got to know her for the kind, genuine person she is, witnessing the deep warmth and concern in her eyes, he knew that he could deny her nothing; even her request to dive into the bottomless hell that was his inner psyche.

     Closing his eyes and listening intent as her smooth sonorous voice soothed and lulled him into an impenetrable haze, he succumbed finally to the power of suggestion as his public surroundings dissolved around him.

     Suddenly he envisioned himself trapped in a sphere of pure unyielding azure; swimming with effort against the tide as he went in search of a certain destination.

     “Someone needs my help down here,” he thought, diving deeper into the waves as he sought the whereabouts of a man who—or so he thought—was in dire need of aid. “Where is he?”

     Then in a flash of movement he saw the victim’s body, sighing with relief as he put forth his best effort to save the man’s life.

     He felt his entire body shudder as a multitude of disagreeable sights and sensations suddenly invaded his psyche. He felt the eerie soft limpness of the body in his arms, and saw a blinding flash of light. Then all he felt was pain; terrible, unbelievable pain.

     “No!” he bellowed out, wrenching himself from the realm of unpleasant memories as he felt his hands clawing a surface of soft pleather.

     Moments later he found himself coiled into a fetal position on the surface of Dr. Pierce’s couch; trembling and gasping as his ears still rang with the sound of a mighty blast.

     His quiet gasps and quakes stilled the instant she touched him; his body relaxing and his spirit calming as she laid a healing hand on his massive deltoid.

     “It’s all right, Jaxson,” she whispered, voice soft and nurturing. “It’s over.”

     Jaxson shook his head.

     “No, it’s not over, yet” he countered, but offering a look of sheer warmth, “but thanks to you I have the feeling that it soon will be. I get it. That memory came out of nowhere, but I feel a huge relief inside, for just letting it out”

     These words echoed in Jaxson’s mind later that evening, as he once again found himself ensconced in the soft cotton sheets of his basic camp bed.

     Only this time, he mused, he was alone; and for once he had no desire to share his bed with some random stranger he picked up at a bar.

     Instead he shared his space with the notion of the one very special woman he couldn’t get off of his mind.

     “Dr. Pierce—Dr. B., as she now allows me to call her, is the only person who sees me for who I am, deep down,” he thought, shifting restless in his sheets.
“She even sees beyond my cocky arrogance and sarcasm, the man I am beneath it—or at least the man that I was on my way to becoming, when I was serving my country and making my family proud as an officer of the Navy Seals. If only she could have met me then…. when I was so strong and confident.”

    
If only, he lamented, they had met on a blind date with her in a softly lit restaurant, instead of in a therapist’s office; then he might actually have a fair shot at the woman he had no chance of winning.

    
“This woman is stunningly beautiful, warm, kind, humble, and sexier then hell, not to mention smart and funny” he observed with a smile. “She's also a down to earth, non-judgmental and deep. Oh sure she’s tough on me, but she has to be to penetrate the reams of bad attitude constructed and I’ve been shoving at her since the moment we met. A woman who lacked her intuition and wisdom would have sent me packing long ago, and transferred me to some old male therapist.”

    
He paused here, casting a wayward gaze out a nearby crystal paned window to observe the star strewn, moon kissed beauty of an ethereal Florida night.

     “But she is different. She holds a higher standard of me, higher than my own, that she expects me to live up to. As if she really knows my potential, it seems,” Jaxson thought, casting a random wish to the moon above him as he added, “I might as well admit it. I’m falling for her—oh God.” He paused here, adding with a deep sigh, “I might as well forget it and stop thinking about it. She’d never be the type to get involved with one of her patients, like me—she’d go for a charismatic, wealthy Real Estate Developer or Lawyer.”

     Ah, but he figured he could still dream about the black silky-haired wonder who filled his heart and mind; and now he nestled deep beneath the covers and shut his eyes tight, so he could do just that.

Chapter Seven

UnSEALED Fantasy

     OK then, one thing was for certain; a specific therapist really, truly needed to get out of the house.

     Nestling deep in the soft satin sheets of her lavender canopied bed, Bethany Pierce struggled to cap off a full day’s work with a night of restful, fortifying sleep. Yet every time Bethany dared to close her eyes, she found her psyche penetrated and invaded by the vision of wide azure eyes and silky dark brown hair; along with a soft, sensual smile that seemed intended for her.

     In the past few weeks a certain Navy Seal had visited and haunted her dreams; revealing his hard muscled body to her as he cradled her in two strong arms and tempted her to engage in acts of pleasure that made her entire body throb with desire
.

     “I can’t believe that I’m having these thoughts about one of my clients,” she pondered now, sitting up in bed to bury her addled head in her hands and shake it from side to side. “I should lose my therapist’s license just for considering these notions. I also can’t believe that Jaxson Palmer, of all people, is the subject of these fantasies.”

     Of course, being a heterosexual female as well as a flesh and blood human being, she’d noted the physical attractiveness of this fit, muscular, outrageously handsome Navy Seal the moment he’d first stepped into her office. Yet at that point, her strong code of professional ethics had worked in tandem with his awful, overbearing attitude to subdue any semblance of attraction that might have been lurking anywhere in her heart or body.

    
“Ah, but Jax has changed,” she mused now, smiling at the thought of the transformed man who’d been visiting her office these past few weeks. “This week I actually found cause to ask him, ‘Who are you and what have you done with Captain Cocky? No matter; wherever he is, he can stay right there!’”

     The new and improved Jax, while still occasionally sarcastic and impatient, listened careful to her questions and instructions and worked with her to uncover more of his memory and resolve a good deal of his inner turmoil.

    
And in the process, he’d revealed to her a whole other side to him; a softer, caring, protective, more biddable side that infinitely appealed to her own feminine, more intimate side.

     “Too much so,” she released on a groan, jumping up suddenly from her bed and heading for her corner clothes closet. “Getting involved with a patient would mean disaster for my career as well as his. How can his commanding officers trust the word of a woman who is personally involved with him? I just can’t do this!”

     What she did need to do, she figured, was hit the town for a rare night out; to just cut loose and enjoy a night of fun and lightheartedness.

     Club Flamingo was not the kind of place that a trained psychotherapist generally found herself. Yet Bethany didn’t feel like herself tonight; quite the contrary, she felt restless, even a little mischievous and a little dancing would be just the thing she needed, she convinced herself.

     So after applying a rarely worn shade of darker colored lipstick, covered with a nude  gloss, and slipping into a favorite black dress, she headed out to the chic low lit night club that shown from the outside in a sleek surface of pure pink sandstone, and within from walls of shiny pink brocade and low hanging crystal chandeliers.

     Sidling up to the polished mahogany bar that formed a far corner of the club, Bethany ordered a scotch and soda on the rocks; wondering vaguely if she’d ever before used the phrase, “On the rocks.”

    
“Oh well,” she arched her eyebrows, taking an invigorating swig of her fresh prepared drink. “Tonight I live dangerous, out on the town alone, a definite first.”

     “
Well hello there Doc.”

     She jumped at the sound of a deep sonorous voice that resounded right at her side; a voice whose familiar—and very sexy—tones sent shivers all the way down her spine.

     “Uh oh,” she worried in silence, adding aloud, “Hello Jaxson.”

    
Raising her gaze to the source of the sound, she almost gaped outright at the sheer vision of masculine beauty presented there before her.

     Bathed in the low soft lights that illuminated the night club, Jaxson likened an angel with his aquiline blue eyes, his chiseled flawless face and thick mane of dark brown tussled hair; features emphasized by the fit of the soft black t-shirt and black dress pants that he wore that evening, which emphasized and accentuated every muscle of his planed chiseled form.

     “You look very nice this evening,” she told him, adding as she arched her eyebrows to humorous effect, “Of course, that’s a bit like saying that Michelangelo’s Statue of David cleans up real good.”

     Pitching his head back, Jaxson let loose with a smooth deep chuckle that brought a smile to her face.

     “It’s nice to hear you make a joke,” he praised her, adding as his azure eyes took an appreciative walk down the length of her voluptuous form, “And you yourself are looking extra devastating this evening, I must say.”

     Bethany’s grin widened as she considered these flattering words.

     “Why thank you,” she acknowledged his compliment, adding as she cleared her throat and squared her sturdy shoulders; “I thought we agreed though that you would steer clear of the bars for a while.”

    
Jaxson shrugged.

     “For the most part Doc, I have been steering clear of my old watering holes. For some reason though, I just had to get out of the house tonight. So what about you, Bethany? What’s a nice psychotherapist like you doing at a place like this? Scouting new patients?”

     Bethany chuckled.

    
“Touché,” she acknowledged, adding as she sipped her drink, “You have to understand Jaxson, that my friends and family always expect me to be Ms. Bethany Beneficent; the prim and proper doctor who is also the perfect daughter, the perfect big sister…and while I am indeed pleased to play all of those roles, sometimes I just need to relax and cut loose a bit, to just be carefree.”

     Jaxson nodded.

     “I hear ya’,” he acknowledged, adding as he rolled his eyes, “Believe me, my family also expected me to play the role of the perfect son. That is why I joined the Seals in the first place. And while I love my job—I lived for it, as a matter of fact—I always heard my wild side calling to me, tempting me to try daring things, to explore life to the extreme, and allow my male animal instincts out.” He said these last words in a low sultry tone that made Bethany’s heart beat just a little bit faster.

     “So what about you Doc?” Jaxson asked her, moving just a little bit closer to her at the bar. “Surely at some point throughout the course of your training, you’ve done studies about the detrimental effects of repressed emotional needs and over exercising your control over your deeper desires. Sometimes it is better to throw caution at the wind. You know what I’m saying?”

     Bethany did not resist as Jaxson followed these words with a sound dose of action, extending his hand to her as he asked, “Care to dance?”

     Soon Bethany found herself square at the center of the Flamingo Club dance floor, her arms wrapped around the body that had ruled her dreams and fantasies for too many nights.

     For a few moments she lost herself in all things Jaxson; her hands scaling the length of his planed back as her breasts pressed against his hard massive chest and his trim hips gyrated suggestive and slowly against her own.

     She found herself basking and reveling in the muscled embrace of the patient that had become so much more; his magic hands running like warm water down the length of her spine as they moved and swayed across the floor.

    
“You’re stunningly beautiful, Bethany,” he involuntarily whispered in her ear. “You are an amazing woman, please forgive my honesty, I’m not sure what is taking over me right now, I’ve been attracted to you since the first moment I met you. I can only dream you feel the same way.”

    
Bethany nodded ever so slightly.

     “Jax,” she sighed with deep longing, “You know just as well as I do the terrible risk that we both are taking, just by being seen here dancing together, let alone going any further.”

     Jax shrugged.

     “Well just let me prove something to you right now,” he released on a growl. “I, my dear, am worth the risk.”

     She gasped as her dance partner drew forward suddenly, seizing her lips in a passionate kiss, one hand firmly holding the back of her head, the other on her low back.

    
Swallowing her startled breath, his full moist lips massaged hers as their tongues entangled between them.

     Angling his head toward her mouth, an impassioned Jaxson growled against her lips as his long wet tongue lapped her tongue.

     Leaning deeper into his kiss, Bethany felt the public surroundings dissolve around her, as they bodies seemed to merge into one, moving suggestively on the dance floor together, his lips smacking against hers as she inhaled his citrus-tinged scent.

     She moaned in protest moments later as he finally broke their kiss; staring deep into her eyes as he urged on a whisper, “Let’s get out of here, Bethany, somewhere private.  .”

     The next several hours passed in a delightful haze for a stunned, aroused Bethany; whose senses reeled as she found herself being carried over the threshold of her front apartment door by a disarmingly handsome and oh so chivalrous Navy Seal.

     Sitting her on the edge of her luxurious lavender bed, an ardent Jaxson stripped her feet of their confining high heels; suckling her toes and licking her tired pads as she sighed with delight.

     “Just relax and let me do everything,” he urged on a whisper. “Everything for your pleasure.”

     Kissing and licking his way up her long legs, and across the breadth of her toned thighs, Jaxson soon delved daring beneath her dress as he raised it higher and higher; grasping the border of her black silk panties firm in his teeth and dragging them down the length of her legs—soon leaving them in a cloudy mass beside them on the floor.

    
Immediately returning to the source of her pleasure, he bowed his head reverent above her femininity and opened her feminine folds with a resounding lick; securing his full warm lips around her throbbing clit and suckling her slow and sweet.

     Gracing her with the intimate kiss, Jaxson shifted his head from side to side to intensify her pleasure; sending shards of intense erotic sensation to touch every part of her body.

     She gasped out in a fit of ecstasy as he continued to lick and suckle her; his hands massaging her voluptuous breasts as the tip of his long wet tongue struck like a sensual lightning shard against the surface of her nub.

    
Finally and with a long last lick, he sent his lady careening across the bounds of an intense orgasm; her body radiating in a wave of sensual feeling that thrilled and invigorated her.

     Surging upward onto the bed, Jaxson caught her trembling body in his two massive, strong arms and pulled her closer than close into his impeccable chest; growling his desire as his ravenous lover stripped away his black, tight T to reveal his bronzed body.

     A lusty Bethany kissed his hard chiseled pecks, tracing her fingers around the grooved muscles, and tickled his washboard abs; grinning giddy as she next reached for the belt buckle attached to his black dress pants. Slowly she peeled them down the surface of his long solid legs; revealing as she did a long hard manhood that was more than ready for what was next. She gently and eagerly took his manhood into her mouth, beginning at the head, in an endless teasing, suckling, stroking, and flicking her tongue. Finally, moving his hard dick deeper and deeper into her mouth he groaned uncontrollably. She lost full sense of herself, letting herself enjoy the intense lust that filled every cell of her body. They both shook in ecstasy, as she swallowed his hardness deeper and deeper in a perfect rhythm, while holding his shaft firmly to keep him from releasing.

     Collapsing in the luxury of the silky comforter that lined Bethany’s bed, the couple’s lips collided in a passionate kiss as he unzipped and stripped away the fabric of her black body-hugging dress; their lips smacking together and their tongues entangling as he caressed her full breasts and brought her nipples to hard erect points beneath his tender touch. He kissed around the nipples of her breast, tracing his tongue around and around, one and then the other, teasing to no end. Finally he took each nipple and breast fully into his mouth, flicking his tongue back and forth and settled in exploring each breast fully, with his mouth and wandering fingers.

     Their arms and legs entangled between them as they rolled free and wild across the bed; her breasts crushing his chest as their hips and thighs interlocked between them.

     Continuing to kiss his lover senseless, Jaxson ran two adoring hands through her long mane of jet black hair before massaging her back and shoulders; gyrating his hard trim hips against hers as his reverberating shaft soared upward to tease her tender femininity.

     Grazing his back with fire red fingernails and wrapping her legs around his trim waist, Bethany threw herself deeper into the luxury of his all-encompassing embrace; clinging to his hardness even as he kissed her lips and kneaded her spine with the most tender of care.