Unleashing the Storm by Sydney Croft Read Free Book Online Page A

leaving Ender alone. Like Ender was supposed to
give a shit. This wasn’t the dating game, but if it was, he would’ve already
been far in the lead.
    He
sat back in his chair, stretched his legs out under the table so they locked
around the legs of Kira’s chair possessively. Even pulled it enough toward the
table so that both Kira and Derek noticed.
    He
sent a good ole boy smile Kira’s way, and yeah, her eyes lit. Then she flushed
slightly and started dishing out heaping helpings of something that was
supposed to resemble food.
    “What
is this?” he asked.
    “It’s
asparagus, tomatoes and curried tofu. You’ll love it.”
    He
looked at the pile of tofu and vegetables in front of him, knew nothing in
there was going to satisfy him well enough—he was going to need some red meat,
and soon.
    Maybe
Deb would be good for something, after all.
    “Kira,
this is amazing. Makes me think about coming over to your side,” Derek said as
he dug in enthusiastically.
    Ender
snorted and Kira looked over at him.
    “You
don’t like it?”
    “Tofu’s
not really my thing,” he said. He grabbed a piece of bread from the plate in
the middle of the table and loaded it up with margarine.
    “Most
people usually try it, just to be polite,” she said.
    “I’m
not most people,” he said, took a bite of bread and washed it down with
lemonade.
    But
Kira wasn’t going to give up. She just looked at him with those wide amber eyes
that reminded him of a contented panther lying in the afternoon sun and then
she looked back down to his plate.
    “I
went to an awful lot of trouble,” she said.
    “Didn’t
ask you to. Ma’am.”
    “I’ll
take his share,” Derek said, as he continued to shovel in the tofu-curry crap.
    “You’re
not welcome to anything of mine,” Ender told him, then let one bare foot linger
against Kira’s calf under the table even as Derek turned to her and dabbed at
some tofu-shit that had spilled onto her chin.
    “Let
me get that,” Derek said. Ender upped his foot action against her calf,
satisfied when he got a response from her.
    Kira
seemed to be enjoying the whole two-men-vying-for-her-attention routine. Which
meant it was time to rotate the game right back on her.
    Easy
enough. He didn’t have to pretend to play hard to get because he was hard to get. His longest relationship of note was forty-eight hours in Fiji on
a private beach with a married twenty-four-year-old heiress who didn’t mind the
fact that he fucked her brains out and didn’t remember her name half the time.
    “So,
where does Deb stay?” he asked, figuring two birds with one stone and all that,
then reminded himself he probably couldn’t say shit like that out loud around
Miss Militant Vegan. Kira’s eyes widened slightly. Derek just shook his head.
“What? Did you want a piece of her?” he asked Derek.
    “You
haven’t changed a bit, have you, Tom?”
    “I
think Deb will get in touch with you if she’s interested,” Kira told him.
    “I
think she’s interested.” He stabbed his fork into the tofu and took a few reluctant
bites as per his plan, ignoring Kira and Derek as they chatted about the day’s
work and the refuge and chores to be done the next day.
    He
looked up when he heard a small crash, saw Derek’s lemonade spilled across the
table. One of the cats leaped to investigate, but Ender grabbed the animal and
mopped up the mess fast. That’s all he needed was to hurt her babies.
    “Derek,
you look kind of pale,” Kira was saying as she leaned to touch Derek’s arm.
Derek groaned in response and looked at Ender, his eyes fuzzy. He mumbled,
“Ender,” but it came out more like “under.”
    Ender
pushed his own plate of tofu away and grunted. “Something’s wrong with this
shit.”
    “It’s
not shit. And I’m fine,” she pointed out.
    “Yeah,
for now.” He put his head down on the table and Babs licked his face. “Christ,
get this mutt away from me.”
    Babs
completely ignored him, probably because