ROMANCE: Lion Protector (Paranormal Shifter BBW Military Romance) (Shapeshifter Alpha Male Short Stories Book 2) (43 page)

Chapter 25: Kelly

Just like always, making love to Anthony was amazing. He had always been great in bed, but he’d gotten even better as he learned what things turned me on and exactly where my buttons were. He pressed them like an expert, triggering orgasms that took the top of my head off, but they also did something else. They touched my heart. That scared me.

I had always been a wild, carefree, devil-may-care type, just like the bikers I loved to hang out with. I’d gotten a little bit more serious when I’d started to school and was working on making something out of myself. Though that wild nature was still there, it was fading fast, and I was struggling with watching it go away. If that wasn’t scary enough, I also had a lot of questions about Anthony’s secret life.

After trying to have a talk with Pepper, I realized that, though he didn’t say it, what he told me through his actions was to just stop obsessing over it. The fact that he wouldn’t even consider picking up the envelope spoke volumes to me. The problem, however, was that those volumes didn’t answer my questions. Pepper either knew everything about Anthony’s life and wouldn’t give up his secret or he didn’t know Anthony’s secret and didn’t care either. He hadn’t even shown curiosity.

For more than a week, I’d flipped back and forth between the two extremes, trying to make sense out of what I had read in the envelope, who had delivered it, what Viktor was trying to get me to do, Pepper’s reaction and what my own heart was telling me. The last one was the least useful of all of them, because it was going in every different direction. Inside, I knew that Anthony was kind and loving, especially toward me, but he did have another side to him that was dangerous and scary. I simply couldn’t decide if that mysterious side was capable of killing people.

Evidently, I wasn’t hiding my internal struggle very well because, when we were snuggling after making love, he was definitely trying to draw out whatever was bugging me. But could I open up that subject? If I accused him of something that he had no involvement in, would it tear everything apart? What if he was involved? How would he react then? Would he become suspicious of me and Viktor? I had to come up with something to stop his questioning, but I also needed answers.

What I finally decided to do was just push past it. Maybe if we just ran away from it all, maybe if we…
Steamboat Springs, Colorado
. The thought jumped into my mind from out of nowhere. Thoughts that come to me like that made me think of some sort of divine intervention, though God knows, neither of us deserved help from anyone. In short, however, the moment that the thought came into my mind, I recalled how much he had loved it there. It also gave me an idea for a new tactic. It didn’t matter what he had been into, I’d simply convince him to give it all up and we’d go to Steamboat and start a new life together. That would get both of us away from Viktor, Shovelhead and the danger that I knew lurked around that world of outlaw bikers. That solved my problem. I wouldn’t have to know. Maybe he’d tell me someday when it no longer mattered.

“Actually,” I said, finally answering his question with my new tactic in mind. “I was thinking about Steamboat Springs.”

“Ah, I see, so that’s why you were so far away,” he laughed. I could tell that he was relieved. “You want to take a trip there or something? We can go anytime you want.”

“If we go, I don’t want to come back.” I turned toward him and searched his eyes for a reaction. He hadn’t caught on.

“Yeah, I always feel that way whenever I’m there.”

“No, babe, I’m serious. Why don’t we just pick up and go there?”

“You mean to stay?”

“Yes. We both love it there. Isn’t it the perfect place?”

“Have you ever been there in the winter time?”

“How bad can it be?”

“Let me see if I can answer that. If you look at the ski reports in, like, January, you’ll note that they get maybe a hundred inches of snow. You could stand on my shoulders and your head still wouldn’t be above the snow.”

“Your math is horrible,” I laughed. “So, we’d go to Florida from November until March.”

“Do you want to move to Florida or Colorado?” he teased.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Which one?”

“Both, if that’s what it takes.” I realized that I had tipped my hand and he was becoming suspicious.

“If that’s what it takes for what?”

“If that’s what it takes to have you all too myself?” I suddenly saw images of an airplane going down in a cartoon:
Mayday, Mayday, we’re going to crash.

“What’s really going on, babe?”

His eyes penetrated straight through me. I was sure that he could see that I’d met with Viktor. I was sure that he could see my doubts. I was sure that he would instantly believe that I thought he was a killer. I knew that he saw right past my words and would know what I was trying to do. “I just want something different for us, something that’s our own.”

He turned away and stared off into space. I assumed he was trying to figure out how to end things with me.
After all, how can he stand to be with me if I don’t trust him or believe in him?
The moment the thought entered my mind, I realized the truth. My heart screamed out a response to it. When it came right down to it, I loved the man, and I knew that he loved me. Did anything else really matter? I knew that he was a bad boy when I started seeing him. I’d watched the way he’d dealt with Shovelhead and felt a thrill rush through me as I watched him work with such precision to beat the bigger man. I knew by the way that he faced down Viktor that he was a man who would stand his ground. I knew what SEALs were trained to do. Furthermore, I had Pepper’s unspoken testimony.

His question cut right through my thoughts. “You really want to go to Steamboat?”

“I want to be wherever you are,” I answered. It was the truth.

“You’re getting a little bit serious, babe. You talkin’ wedding dress, babies and that sort of thing?” he grinned at me. I could tell that he’d switched to the teasing mode by the twinkle in his eyes.

“God no!” I smacked him. “I’m not ready for that yet.”

“You know what?” His expression turned serious as he rolled me onto my back so that he could hover over me.

“What?” I whispered.

“I promise to take you to Steamboat. Just me and you. Our own place together and the whole thing.”

I could feel the “but” lingering in the air, so I filled it in: “…but not right now.”

“Not right now,” he repeated, before lowering his mouth to mine.

For a moment, I was a little bit disappointed. I’d hoped that I could convince him to get out before Viktor or Shovelhead or someone else came along and hurt or killed him. However, I also knew that he wasn’t someone who was going to run away from his problems. It was that very thing that made me both proud of him and scared the living hell out of me.

Chapter 26: Sabre

I’d hoped that Kelly would buy into my plan once she started to realize that Razor was the one who killed Clap and Gonzo. The evidence against him was cooked up some and made to look like a thorough investigation by a PI firm, but in reality there wasn’t a great deal to go on other than what Shovelhead had told me. The thing was, for Shovelhead to make up something like that and put his life at risk didn’t make much sense, so I believed him.

Using Al Gentry to look into the “FBI agent” who had been seen on a stakeout was one option, but I had to be careful. I trusted Gentry, but he wasn’t the only cop who was friends with or on the take from biker clubs. Being too obvious about what I was looking for would have tipped off the enforcer, especially since they’d already been watching me pretty closely, and likely knew my connection to Gentry.

To be perfectly honest, I was walking blind along a very thin and dangerous line and I was trusting someone who had an enormous grudge against my enemy to walk along it with me Worse yet, it was someone who was also a member of a rival club. It had crossed my mind numerous times that Shovelhead was setting me up, but he’d proven himself several times and I was eager to do something to get some form of justice for Clap and Gonzo. It also pissed me off that Kelly was with the son of a bitch.

When Shovelhead sat down at the kitchen table, telling me that he had a new idea, I was skeptical, but eager to give it a shot. He led into it in an odd way, but the opportunity that he was presenting to me was just too good to pass up.

“I’m in something of a fix,” Shovelhead sighed and then took a long pull on his bottle of beer.

“Aren’t we all?” I muttered.

We were silent for a few minutes. “They’re starting to watch me pretty close.”

“The SB?” I was pretty sure that’s who he meant.

“Yeah. Mostly Pepper and Razor, but they’ve got some of the other guys checking me out and asking some pretty uncomfortable questions.”

“So, you’re saying that we don’t have a lot of time before they start to put this all together?”

“Something like that,” he replied.

“So?” I wasn’t sure if he was asking me to help him get out or what he was really up to. I waited, taking another drink.

“I think we could use it to our advantage.”

That was exactly the reason that I kept thinking that Shovelhead was alright. He never backed up. He was always pushing forward. “How?”

“I think we can use it to create a trap.”

“I’m listening.” I’d hoped to set a trap by using Kelly, but since it hadn’t worked out very well up to that point, I was open to making use of another tactic. The thing with Kelly might still work, but I was starting to get desperate. I’d even considered using Gentry to just remove the problem, but I seriously couldn’t give up that vision of watching the look in Razor’s eyes while my knife sliced his throat.

“I am thinking of doing something very obvious that gets Razor to come after me.”

“Would he do that? From what you’ve told me, he is pretty cagey and has a tendency to smell a trap.”

“That’s just his rep,” Shovelhead countered. “In reality, I think that if I piss him off, he’ll be right on my ass and coming hard. We hit him before he catches on.”

“What are you going to do to piss him off?” I asked. I didn’t mean to play up Razor’s rep or to argue against Shovelhead, but I felt like, to be safe, I needed to play the devil’s advocate.

“Same thing I did last time.”

“What did you do last time?”

“I messed with Sunshine.”

I really didn’t want him doing anything with Kelly. I still had some feelings for her even though her leaving had pissed me off. There was still a little bit of the protector left in me and I wasn’t sure if Shovelhead would respect that. “No. You leave her alone.”

“Use your head, Sabre,” he protested. “His greatest weakness is that girl. He’d come running to wherever I lead him, and throw caution to the wind if I had her as his motivation.”

“I don’t want to get her involved.” As soon as I said that, I realized that I’d already tried to involve her. I had tried to do it in a much subtler way, of course, but I was still trying to manipulate her into helping me take him down. However, my hope had been that she would do it willingly after seeing him as her own enemy, and come rushing back to me.
Jesus, Sabre, you sound like some fucking HBO drama.

“You’re already trying to involve her,” he argued, repeating my own thoughts.

“That’s different.” It was only different in that Shovelhead was involved in it. I didn’t like that. Was it jealousy, or was that just stretching my trust in him to a level that I wasn’t quite ready to go to?

“I’m telling you,” he continued, “if you want him to come running to you in a blind rage and give us the best opportunity to take him out, then use her to make him come to you.”

It was then that I realized that Shovelhead wanted Razor even worse than I did. He didn’t care who he use or how he went about it. More than likely, he didn’t even care who wound up as collateral damage. I’d known guys like that when I was in the Corps. When they went down, they took everybody down with them. I was also beginning to consider the fact that Shovelhead’s own agenda just might get in the way of the vision that I had already planned out for Razor. Maybe Shovelhead had worn out his usefulness. Maybe it was time to part ways with him before I became a casualty in his own private war. The problem, however, was that we were already in it together, and in it deep.

Having that sort of dependence upon Shovelhead hadn’t been something that I’d seen coming until I started to consider the possibilities of breaking away from him. If I told him to fuck off, then he’d go, but I’d never know where he was or what he was up to. I was pretty confident that I could handle whatever he brought my way, but what might he do to Kelly? If I kept him close to me, sticking to that old adage, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” then I was likely to become collateral damage.
You really didn’t think this one through, did you?

Maybe I could use the trouble that he was already in with the SB to eliminate him and then wait for Kelly to come around to my way of thinking. It was a long shot and hadn’t looked promising. I had to come up with a response to the problem with Shovelhead before I could deal with Razor. That’s the problem with relying on someone else for anything that you ought to be doing yourself.