Protecting His Pregnant Lover (Southern Soldiers of Fortune Book 1) Read online

  Also a first.

  8

  “What are you doing?” The question was out of his mouth almost before he was through the door to his apartment.

  All day, Levon had been daydreaming of the moment he would arrive home. Indulging in fantasies wasn’t exactly conducive to focusing on the mission, and getting the work done, but he couldn’t help it; the instant he let his concentration lapse, his imagination dropped him back in bed with Olive, petting her hair, just like he had the previous night. Allowing his hands to drift and start stroking other things—which hadn’t happened, but that didn’t stop his imagination from picturing how it could have gone. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep his thoughts from straying—and as soon as they escaped the half-hearted mental pen he had built for them, they got lusty. They got downright dirty. He knew things were difficult enough for Olive right now without him getting hard at just the thought of her, so he fought to master his desires, and looked forward to seeing her when he got home that evening.

  What he hadn’t expected to see was her duffel bag, already half-packed, and fast approaching its zipping point.

  Levon stood in the doorway to the bedroom and crossed his arms, filling the doorway until there was no way she could wrestle past his planted feet and squared frame. Olive paused on her way back from the bathroom with her toothbrush; she pushed her hair out of her eyes and looked him over. Assessing the situation. He saw it the moment she made the same calculation about fighting her way past him and almost had to laugh.

  Except nothing about this was funny.

  “I’m getting ready to go,” she said.

  “And where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m going home.” Olive now avoided his direct stare as she sealed her toothbrush inside its portable plastic case. “There’s no point in me staying here. I’m just getting in the way.”

  “You’re not getting in the way,” replied the man who had made it his current mission to get in her way.

  He watched Olive bite the inside of her cheek, and wondered if she was angry. He could deal with her anger—what he couldn’t deal with was her putting herself in harm’s way when she had the option of staying here, where she was safe.

  “Listen, Levon. I’ve been thinking.” She straightened and folded her arms.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “You don’t look like you are. Not with an open mind.”

  “Why don’t you try me?”

  Olive huffed her frustration, and the breath she directed upward fogged her glasses. It was one of the single most endearing things Levon had ever seen her do, but he ordered himself not to be distracted. Focus. “I get that it’s not safe for me to stay home alone. But that doesn’t mean I have to stay here. I’ll go to my neighbor’s. You met Tom this morning. He’s an ex-cop. His wife’s super nice too. If anyone can look after me, it’s someone with law enforcement experience. Plus, he has a great security system. I already called him, and he didn’t ask for any sort of explanation. He said I’m welcome to stay as long as I need to.”

  Levon didn’t relax a muscle. He wanted to refuse outright; to demand; to direct. He wanted to tell Olive exactly how it was going to be... but he saw the way she jutted her chin stubbornly, and he saw that spark of challenge in her eyes. She was ready for him. This might well end in a skirmish if he didn’t think his way tactically through their conversation.

  He needed to keep her close. He needed to protect her. But he didn’t have to pitch it to her that way.

  “Olive, it’s your choice where you stay, but before you go...” He swallowed, not to suppress his own words, but to lubricate his throat for the thing he knew he had to say next. “It’s not my usual M.O.,” he said finally. “To ask for help.”

  “Help?” Olive stared at him like he had just grown a second head, like maybe it was that head asking her for help. Levon couldn’t blame her for reacting that way. He’d always been something of a lone wolf, and that inclination certainly hadn’t changed over the years.

  But he’d do just about anything to keep Olive from walking out the door right away. And it wasn’t a lie to say he needed her help—he really could use her more intimate knowledge of their hometown. If she ended up staying over at his place for hours to answer his questions and help with his investigation and it just happened to end up being too late for her to go to her neighbor’s…well then, wouldn’t that be a shame? But she could crash again with him for another night, no problem. He’d keep to himself that he had already gotten used to seeing her toothbrush on the shelf.

  “You want my help?” Olive asked incredulously. “Is that what you’re saying in this roundabout, won’t-come-out-and-just-admit-it way of yours?”

  “You know your students.” Levon leaned against the doorframe as he studied her.

  Olive pushed her glasses up the crinkling bridge of her nose. “I should hope so. Though I’m starting to wonder if I know them as well as I think.”

  “Well, I think you do,” Levon confirmed. “Current students and past ones. Our intel suggests they’re recruiting young guys just out of high school or still in it. Guys who don’t know enough about the criminal world to realize they’re getting in over their heads. I think you can help me figure out who they might be.”

  “You think some of my students are involved with the gang?” Olive followed after him into the living room, and Levon was pleased to see she had left her packing incomplete in the bedroom; in fact, she appeared to have forgotten her scheme to escape him entirely. Instead, she retrieved her messenger bag from the hall and joined him in the kitchen, opening her laptop at the table.

  “If your instincts are telling you something’s off with any of these guys, then I believe you,” Levon said. “Think you can get me those kids’ names?”

  “Already on it.” Olive’s fingers tapped industriously as she typed. “Some graduated in the past year or two. A few of them are supposed to be current students, but they have dropped out already. The rest seem on their way to dropping out if I don’t do something.”

  “One thing at a time,” Levon consoled her as he opened his own laptop, then dialed a number on his cell.

  Olive paused to watch his procedure with interest. “Who are you calling?”

  “Ordering pizza.”

  He grinned as Olive snorted and rolled her eyes. “What is this, a study session?

  “In a way. Something tells me we’re in for a long night.”

  Their long night seemed to fly by in no time. Five hours in, and Olive was so focused on their collaboration that she hadn’t even noticed how late it was getting.

  “Another slice?” he offered as he got up to raid the pizza delivery box for the third time. Olive nodded thankfully, and leaned in to look at a spot of interest on Google Maps. Perfect. He didn’t want her going hungry, but he didn’t want to give her the opportunity to glance at the time emblazoned on the microwave oven, either. He plated their pizza and quickly punched in the heating time, then watched the slices rotate and irradiate until they were sizzling once more. “Know what this reminds me of?”

  “Our old lab days?” Olive supplied. Levon turned back to face her, surprised, and found that she had surfaced long enough to grin at him from behind her laptop.

  “How did you know?” He was genuinely thrown for a loop in that moment. He looked back on their partnership in high school fondly, but had always assumed the memories meant more to him than they did to her.

  “I’d been thinking the same thing.” Olive accepted the reheated slice of pizza when he brought it over to her.

  “Well, this might be the first time our brains have operated on the same wavelength,” Levon said as he sat back down. “It only took, what? Ten years?”

  “Ten years on and you talk a lot more now,” Olive pointed out. “Could be our thoughts aligned more than once before then and you just never said anything.” She grinned. “I always assumed my Big Brain Energy intimidated you.”

  The comment
was playful, and completely in line with the teasing atmosphere he had been trying to set up between them in his attempts to flirt with her... but there was something else. Levon paused, and set his pizza down. “Olive, your brain is a gift,” he said gravely. “You know that, right? Because something tells me you never thought of it that way before. Not back in high school.”

  Olive shifted uncomfortably, and her lowered eyes broadcast more to him than any direct gaze ever could. “It never felt like a gift,” she admitted quietly. “Not when the person I wanted to talk to most would barely talk to me. I wanted to use my intellect to connect with people, but it just seemed to intimidate them, instead.”

  Levon’s hand beneath the table clenched into a fist. He had to physically bar himself from admitting the truth: that Olive’s mighty intellect had intimidated the hell out of him. That it still did. It wasn’t what she needed to hear, and it was his own hang-up to deal with in private.

  It wasn’t Olive’s fault he had a soft spot for smart girls.

  “This may be the dumbest thing I ever say, and I’m about to say it out loud...” Olive trailed off, laughed awkwardly, then revealed what was weighing on her in a rush: “I don’t feel amazing. Not then, and not now. I feel lonely. I feel like... like any man I may want to attract, or impress, will look the other way as soon as I open my mouth.” Her eyes seemed to be begging him for something, anything, but Levon couldn’t assess what it was she needed in that moment.

  Maybe he needed to stop thinking for the both of them.

  “Maybe...” He drew her chair around the table to bring the two of them closer, and Olive leaned in attentively. “... when you open that mouth of yours, and a man goes quiet, what he’s really thinking is...”

  Levon caught her chin between his fingers and pulled her in. He stifled Olive’s gasp of surprise with the firm press of his lips: a firmness that soon gathered strength and became a demand. He gripped her waist and pulled her in against him, forcing her to occupy the space between their chairs; she was half in his lap by the time he decided their situation was untenable and gathered her into his arms. “Levon!” His name was a protest on her lips as he lifted her up and carried her into the bedroom. Levon shoved her duffle bag off the bed, spilling its contents on the floor. He ignored the bag and deposited her in its place instead. They wouldn’t be needing any clothes at all for what he had in mind.

  He stretched out beside her, partially covering her body with his, but still mindful of her baby bump. Their encounters that first night had been hurried and desperate, each of them knowing it would be over all too soon. Now, he wanted to take his time with her, savor every second and every inch of her from the top of her curly head to the tips of her cute little toes.

  To that end, Levon kissed her, gently at first, then gradually deepening his kisses until they were both breathless and gasping for more. Then he pulled back and rested his forehead against hers as he slowly worked the hem of her black dress up her legs with his hand, stopping frequently to stroke her soft skin and silky thighs. Her eyes slipped closed as he ghosted his palm over the front of her panties and her neck tipped back as she moaned and arched beneath his touch.

  Levon chuckled, low and deep, nuzzling that sensitive spot just beneath her ear as he slid his hand higher, over her quivering abdomen, taking her dress up and up and up until her bra was exposed. Then he leaned in to kiss her breasts, inhaling her sweet scent as he licked and nipped the skin atop the white cups, one hand settling over one of the soft mounds, stroking her taut nipple through the fabric.

  “Levon, please…” she said, her voice pleading and he felt that sound straight to his groin.

  “What, sweetheart?” he asked, moving from one breast to the other, teasing her, tempting her. She plunged her fingers into his hair, and for the first time he was glad it was longer now. That way she could pull and tug on it as he brought her pleasure. He growled, and reached behind her to unhook the bra and move his hands beneath it, greedy for her flesh against his palms.

  “Oh God,” she whispered. “What are you doing to me?”

  “Whatever you want,” he said against her nipple before taking it into his mouth. She groaned and held him closer, as if afraid he’d leave her, but Levon wasn’t going anywhere. “Tell me what you want, Olive.”

  At first she didn’t answer, too busy panting and moaning, but then her pulls on his hair grew more insistent and she shifted beneath him, bringing his face closer to the heat between her legs. “I want you,” she said at last, her tone needy now.

  “Yeah?” He lifted his head away from her belly, where he’d been kissing her baby bump. “How do you want me?”

  She blinked at him down the length of her body, her cheeks flushed and her lips parted. She still had those glasses on too, and man oh man. Talk about Hot for Teacher. “I want you inside me.”

  Levon raised a brow at her, pushing her, needing her as hot for him as he was for her. “You want my cock inside you? What about my tongue? My fingers? Tell me, sweetheart. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  Speaking of his cock, it was so hard it hurt, pressed between his body and the mattress below. He was so turned on, it would have only taken a few strokes to get him off, but he wanted this to last all night.

  Olive’s pupils dilated at his question, the black nearly obscuring the lighter brown irises as she licked her lips. This time it was his turn to groan, thinking of all the places he’d love her to lick on him. His cock twitched in agreement. “Yes.”

  “Yes what?” he frowned.

  “Yes,” Olive repeated. “I want your cock in me. I want your mouth on me too. I want every part of you, Levon. I want you to fuck me.”

  Hearing such dirty words out of this prim and proper teacher nearly had him coming on the spot, but he held back through sheer force of will. Hoping to distract himself, he concentrated on her instead, helping Olive sit up so he could tug her dress over her head. Her bra went next, followed by those panties she was wearing. Not exactly the granny variety but close to it.

  Funny, but he even found those sexy. Hell, everything about Olive was sexy to him.

  He left the glasses on.

  “Your wish is my command, sweetheart.” He kissed her again, hot and hard and deep, then nuzzled his way down her throat to her breasts, paying homage to them again before kissing her baby bump on the way to paradise below. After parting her thighs, he bent her knees, then just lay between them for a moment, enjoying the view and scent of her arousal. She was wet, so wet, for him. Wet and ready and wanting. It was a good look on his Olive.

  Mine.

  The possessiveness jolting through him like a live wire would have worried him at another time, but right now, all he could think about was touching her, tasting her, hearing her call out his name as he made her orgasm over and over again in his arms.

  He leaned closer and licked her slick folds, bottom to top, stopping to kiss her swollen clit before repeating the gesture. Olive gasped and arched again, her nails digging slightly into his scalp, but it hurt so good. He parted her with his fingers and licked again, this time locking on to her most sensitive flesh and suckling gently while sliding two fingers inside her wet channel, making good on his promise.

  “Levon. Oh God, Levon.” She held him tighter, her knees jostling around his head, his shoulders keeping her thighs parted as she rode his hand hard and ground against his palms while he made love to her with his fingers, lips, tongue and teeth. Soon, the tension inside her coiled tighter than a cobra ready to strike and he wiggled his fingers inside her, hitting that spot that he knew from experience drove women wild. Wanting to see her face as she came, he leaned up slightly on one elbow, using the pad of his thumb to circle her clit once, twice, and bam. She was off like a rocket, his name on her lips as she climaxed sounding like a sweet hymn to his ears.

  “Yes! Oh God, Levon. Yes!”

  Continuing to stroke and suckle her through the waves of ecstasy, he eventually kissed his way back up her body as she
settled against the bed at last, smiling and sated, her fingers still caressing his hair. Eventually, he was beside her again and leaned down to kiss her. “Good?”

  “So, so good.” Olive pulled him in for another kiss, then skimmed her hand down his chest to the waistband of his jeans. “Now, let me return the favor.”

  Levon wanted to protest, but he was too far gone to try. So instead he let her roll him over onto his back, then watched as she climbed to her knees beside him, more than happy to let her take the lead here.

  She touched him all over, as if learning the terrain of him, memorizing it. His pecs, his abs, his nipples—which she found made him moan when she nipped them gently with her teeth.

  Then she was between his legs, flicking open the button of his jeans and drawing down his zipper and—sweet Jesus on a pogo stick. If this didn’t kill him, he wasn’t sure what would.

  “Is this good?” she asked, stopping with his fly half open.

  Levon nodded, not trusting his voice at the moment. There was nothing he loved more than a good blowjob, and the thought of his Olive pleasuring him that way was his every fantasy coming to life. If he could just last through this sweet torture, that was.

  “Awesome,” she said, settling in again to finish with his zipper. Once she had his fly undone, Levon dutifully lifted his hips to allow her to slide his jeans and boxer briefs down and off his body, leaving them both completely naked. Well, except for the glasses.

  Olive straightened them on her nose then narrowed her gaze on his hard cock. For a terrifying minute, he thought she might stop, but then she leaned closer and wrapped one hand around him, stroking him from root to tip. Levon couldn’t stop his groan of need.

  Looking wickedly pleased with herself, she swiped her thumb over his sensitive head, then lifted the drop of moisture there to her mouth and licking it off. Levon froze. Yep. That was it. That was how he was going to die. Death by sex. But what a way to go. A slow smile broke across her lips as her gaze met his up the length of his body. “You taste good.”