The Phoenix Agency_Her Uncommon Protector Read online

  The drapes were still drawn in her bedroom, making it almost dark despite the edges of light seeping around them from the rising sun. They weren’t all that thick and could only hold back the day for a bit longer. Her grip had slipped a couple of times over the thorns, and she could feel blood trickling between her fingers and thumb, but she didn’t care about that. I’ll grab a Band-Aid after I kill him.

  Funny how easy it was to go from bringing life to being willing to take it. To wishing she hadn’t said no to a gun so quickly. Because she had zero doubt she’d be willing to shoot him right between the eyes. Not only did the bastard want to use her in ways she found repugnant, his glee in the description, and familiarity with the step-by-step plan to use his office as a dungeon led her to believe she wouldn’t be the first to be so used.

  Thinking of the people who’d gone missing from the village before their arrival, the unwillingness of the rest to discuss where they thought they might have gone sent rage from her fingertips to her eyes, which she kept cast down. She couldn’t let him read her anger, her intentions to fight.

  When he tossed her onto the bed, she landed on the stick and winced. One more thing he’d pay for, although among the least of them. A particular child, little Manuelito, thin arms and legs in stark contrast to his swollen belly, a child who lived with his grandmother. He’d started to tell her about his mama going with the soldiers when his panicked abuela whisked him away. What had her name been, the mama?

  She propped herself on her elbows, the stick in her hand concealed by a fold of sheet in the brightening room. The sick bastard was occupied several feet away from her, unfastening his pants, so she kept her gaze up, level with his eyes.

  The mama was Ronica. A Dutch name. There were a number of people there with Dutch names, some with blue eyes and pale hair in stark contrast to the tanned skin they all had. The little boy… A deep breath in, slow out, repeated a few times until she felt enough in control. The alarm in her head quieted, showing she was making the right moves. Inhale. Exhale. Hold the stick.

  Where was Clive? Had his security team arrived? She couldn’t hear anything from outside, but her excellent windows and doors prevented much sound from entering. Why had she thought that was a good thing, buying them to start with? Bead curtains all around once this was over. Or perhaps she’d just dig a cave in the hillside and hand a curtain over the front.

  Keep him talking. She heard the words as clearly as if they came from another person in the room. But she knew the voice. Her guardian angel, guiding spirit, she didn’t know what to call it, but it had saved her and helped her save her crew over and over.

  “So, tell me about Ronica.” Maybe not the perfect choice, and she cringed, waiting for the sirens to start, but to her astonishment, her captor grinned and sat down next to her. Okay, so he closed his hand around the stiffy poking out of his pants, but at least he wasn’t touching her.

  “Ah, someone told you about your predecessor.” He licked his lips, his mud-brown gaze distant. “She was a tasty piece. Dark hair, blue blue eyes, and pale skin. Deliciosa.”

  She repressed her shudder. Just barely. “Was? Did she leave?” If she’s dead you are, too. “You are seeking a replacement, yes?”

  “Oh.” His elbow moved. The bastard was jerking off! “Don’t be jealous, preciosa. She was nice. But fragile.” He tsked. “I hope you have more stamina. It’s such trouble to train a woman to my particular tastes.”

  Her heart slammed against her ribs, her breaths still even but only by great force of will. “Fragile?”

  “Yes, she…broke.” He shrugged. “They all do, eventually. Like that silly hidden well. I blew it up you know. Why would you think you could teach them to defy me? When I return home, I will make them all pay. While you watch.”

  Their well? The source of fresh, clean water for desperate families with thirsty children?

  He’d already made them pay….

  All?

  Something inside her cracked. The veneer of civilization peeled away. The image of little Manuelito, who wanted his mama, snapped her control.

  And the first stripe by the spiked cane was right on top of his pathetic dick. The second tore the skin on his balls. And the third and fourth repeated the action, sending blood droplets flying through the air.

  As he tried to protect himself, howling his agony, she leapt to her feet and pounded him with the weapon, shrieking words even she didn’t understand. She just couldn’t anymore. Couldn’t take it. Small men with a little power who used it to torment the vulnerable…

  Chapter Eight

  Clive heard her scream just as a man came stumbling up and Trent called, “Frank!” So, he’d survived. Probably making his rounds when the premature explosion happened.

  “Penny!” Clive stumbled over a beam and regained his feet then raced for the house. “Penny, I’m coming.”

  Behind him, the thunder of feet echoed, every member of the security team following him, at least he thought it was all of them. What happened? His pulse pounded as he mounted the steps to her porch and tore through the door. Where were the men left to guard the premises?

  Lying on the floor by the stairs to her bedroom. They were unconscious, but he didn’t think dead. He’d let Trent see to them. Taking the steps two at a time, he flew up to the top of the A-frame. As he reached the landing, a hand grabbed his arm and spun him around.

  “Stop!” Trent hissed. “You know better than to run in when you don’t know what’s going on.”

  “But he has her.”

  “Who?”

  Clive tried to tug free. “I don’t know.”

  Trent’s big hand held him fast. “And what is he or are they doing if there is more than one?” Trent’s low, urgent tone helped him calm enough to be useful to her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “And what are you going to do about it?”

  He sagged. “Okay, point made.” He’d been in too many tight situations to act like an idiot. “Let’s get closer and see what we can hear.” Besides his woman’s loud, unintelligible cries. He must be hurting her.

  Although.

  “She doesn’t sound like she’s in pain, does she?” He took a step closer, hugging the wall.

  “She sounds mad.” Trent followed him, dropping to hands and knees and peering around the doorframe. “Holy shit. You’re not going to believe this. Take a look” At the admiration in his tone, Clive leaned past Trent and took a gander.

  “Wow.” His sweet sexy professor, friend to students and thirsty people all over the world, was beating the shit out of a huddled man with his exposed dick and balls bleeding all over the sheets. He held his arms over his body, but the weapon in question was covered with the most vicious-looking spikes Clive had ever seen.

  And as she wielded it, she cursed in a way he was pretty sure sailors would not be able to keep up with.

  “Quite a mouth on your woman,” Trent muttered. “She talk like that often?”

  “Not that I know of. Even in bed, she…well, anyway, I’ve never heard her curse. Of course, I haven’t known her long, but, wow.”

  They watched for another minute while Professor Penny shrieked about wells and kids and cruelty and someone named Ronica. It made no sense, but he could ask questions later. For now, he had to stop her from doing something he would ordinarily say she’d regret. Killing marked a person, no matter how much the man deserved it.

  If killing needed doing, he’d be glad to add one more to his tally. To save her from it.

  “We should intervene,” he murmured. “Don’t you think?”

  “Go ahead.” Trent straightened and flexed his leg. “She scares me.”

  “Me, too,” he admitted. “But I guess I’d better save him…er, her.” By now, he could hear other shoes pounding up the stairs, and the sense of urgency increased. “Okay. I don’t want anyone else to see her like this. Spot me.”

  “You got it.” Trent’s voice held far too much levity for the situation. “
I’ll grab the guy. After you take away her stick.”

  “I only hope I don’t lose an eye in the process.” He waded into the room as if into a lake filled with alligators. “This is going to be fun.”

  Clive stopped outside her arm’s reach, gauging what to do, how to defuse the situation without endangering Penny or himself. She had a nice rhythm going, he noted, and timed it. She pounded from the guy’s shoulders down to his balls with a few extra thumps on his dick on the way back up.

  When she gave the final thwack to the guy’s dick—even in this situation he felt an involuntary urge to protect his own junk—he grabbed her arm. “No more.” She struggled, but he held firm, turning her away from her victim and letting Trent slip past to tackle the guy. Sounded kind of squishy when he did. “Penny. You have to stop. You’ll kill him.”

  He led her away, prying her bloody weapon from her hand, noting the cuts in the palm as he did so. Where had she gotten this thing anyway? He passed it to one of the crowd of men in the doorway, all wide-eyed and silent. “Put this somewhere safe.”

  The guy nodded and stepped back, as did all the others, and Clive led a vibrating Penny down the stairs to the living room. Outside the open front door, sirens and megaphones were loud, but inside, silence still reigned. He pressed her into the couch, and she huddled there, rocking back and forth, a stream of tears rolling down her cheeks.

  He heard a whisper from one of the guys. “She turned his junk to junk.” And to my shock, she started to shake, doubled over.

  He patted her shoulders whispering “Sshhh,” until it hit him that she wasn’t crying. “Are you laughing?”

  “Did you hear what he said?” she gasped, looking up at him from her lap. “I turned his junk to… Oh my God.” And the tears were back.

  Glaring around, he waved everyone outside. Trent was still upstairs with the guys whose junk was…yeah. It was junk. “It’s okay. I’m sure he was here to kill you, anyway. And you didn’t return the favor.”

  Straightening, she lifted her face toward him, and he stumbled back a step at the utter devastation there. “No, but I would have. If you hadn’t stopped me.” Penny drew a shuddering breath. “I wanted to.”

  “Okay.” Clive sat down beside her and took her hands in his. “Just try to hold it together for a little while. The police have arrived, and they are going to want to get a statement from you. Let’s make them wait until you have a barrister at your side. We will get this straightened out, but for now, just stay quiet, okay? Well explain you’re in shock.”

  Which, she clearly was.

  A tall, white-haired man in a Cedar Valley Fire uniform stepped inside. “Where is she? Where’s my little Penny?”

  “Chief Mac!” She leapt to her feet and raced to the man. “Thank God you’re here.” He enfolded her in his arms, and she burst into tears again.

  Clive rose and turned away, feeling more helpless than he ever had in his life. The woman he’d been hired to protect. What a great job he’d done with that. When the action ended, she sought comfort from someone else. He started for the stairs, wanting to help with the cleanup, but her voice stopped him.

  “Clive? Where are you going?” And she was at his side, taking his arm. “Come meet Chief Mac. He wants to thank you for saving me.”

  All he’d saved her from was murdering the bad guy. But he shook the man’s hand, accepting his thanks and promising to come to dinner before he left town so he could meet the rest of the family. Penny clung to him like a limpet, a helpless limpet who could barely stand without assistance, but he remembered what he’d seen in the bedroom upstairs. She might look delicate, but Professor Penelope MacKay had balls…so to speak.

  As the police filed up the stairs, after asking them not to leave the premises, Penny told her relative—he wasn’t certain if he was an uncle or grandfather, but he’d find out—what had happened that night, and Clive learned what it took to make his sweet professor into a murderous banshee.

  “He said he ‘broke’ Manuelito’s mother. That sweet little boy’s mama… And he blew up the well. He was a heartless bastard who deserved to die.”

  “Umm, he’s not dead, Penny,” Clive murmured.”

  “Whatever.” Then her eyes widened. “Clive, if he goes back, he’ll hurt more people. We can’t let that happen…”

  “If who goes back where?” Trent sauntered down the stairs, followed by a stream of police. “I couldn’t find anyone up there, Clive. The intruders must have run when the gas blew out in the garage apartment.”

  What?

  “Miss MacKay?” A deputy approached, holding a tablet. “This gentleman has given us an outline of what happened here, but we have question for you, too. First, do you need medical assistance?”

  Chief Mac stepped up. “We’ve checked my niece over, Deputy, and she’s just banged up. Weird that the gas blew out in the garage just when she was being robbed.”

  “Yeah,” Clive said. “Lucky coincidence.”

  The deputy made some notes on his tablet then looked up. “And, sir, you are…?

  “Professor MacKay’s fiancé, here from England on a visit.”

  “And where were you when all this went down?”

  “Getting my luggage from the car. By the time I got in, they were gone.”

  “Out the window,” Trent put in.

  “Err, Miss…Professor, did you hit them with that stick?”

  She broke into sobs, and Chief Mac enfolded her in his arms. “Let my niece have time to calm down, and I’ll bring her by for her statement, Deputy. You can understand how upsetting this all is for a sensitive girl like her.”

  The man eyed them all as if about to question them further, but his phone buzzed and he read the screen. “Okay, the sheriff says we have enough and that you can come down and make a statement, both of you, in the morning.” He shrugged. “We’ll leave you to clean up.”

  Penny lifted her face to the Chief’s, one brow arched. “Do you know what’s going on here?”

  “I know you’re okay. And I am also pleased to report that our South American allies have shut down a certain drug factory and a well company is hard at work making repairs.”

  She rested her cheek on his chest and sighed. “Thanks, Chief.”

  “Don’t thank me.” He turned her toward Clive who took her in his arms. “You’d better be good to her.”

  “Chief, we just met!” she protested, but the patriarch ruffled her hair before heading for the door.

  “I will, sir,” Clive replied before bending to kiss her. “If she’ll have me.”

  “I’d better,” she said when they broke for air. “I really like this ring.”

  Epilogue

  Lord Henry’s gardens made an idyllic spot for a picnic with the roses in full bloom and the woods in the distance providing a deep green backdrop. Penny cooed at the baby in her arms. “Oh, Amelia, he’s the most beautiful baby. My uterus aches just looking at him.”

  “And how about your son?” Amelia pointed to where little Manuelito ran along between Clive and Lord Henry as they strolled the path. “He looks so much healthier now.”

  “Yes. I had some hope his mom might have survived…” She sighed. “But the rest of the village is doing much better, and his abuela loves living on the estate. She asked us to adopt him, you know, and we agreed only if she would come along as part of the package.” She stood and handed the baby back to her cousin. “This time next year, we’ll have a little sister for him.”

  “You don’t miss teaching at the university? Not that I am not thrilled to have one relative close enough for weekend visits.”

  “I do a little, but I’m teaching online and working the administrative end of Friends of the Streams. After the baby comes, I’ll take on more. Right now, I’m taking a little break from most things. I don’t like to admit it to Clive, but what happened threw me off for a while.”

  Amelia lowered the neck of her peasant blouse and brought the baby in close to nurse. “He knows. He j
ust isn’t the type to pressure you. But don’t be afraid to share anything with him. Like his boss, he has broad shoulders.”

  “Doesn’t he, though?” She wiped a tear form her eye. “Darn pregnancy hormones.”

  “Did they ever tell you what happened with the bodies?”

  She shook her head. “Nope, and that I don’t need to know. It was only one body, I think…but I don’t know what happened to Diego. I do know he never returned to his country. And that’s enough.”

  Resting a hand on her swollen belly, Professor Penny felt the kicking baby. “My daughter says it’s lunchtime. Let’s get the men back here before Abuela has to speak sternly to us. The older woman sat in a chair in the gazebo, head nodding. “Or before she falls asleep.”

  “You love the old thing.”

  “I do.” The tears that came so easily flowed again. “I love my family, the old and new, and I adore my husband.”

  The men in question arrived back without being summoned and Manuelito kissed her belly, hugging her around the waist. “Tengo hambre, Mama. I want to eat.”

  Clive helped her up and hugged them both. “You heard our son. Let’s eat!”

  They formed a little parade, Professor Penny and Clive, Lady Amelia and her husband and son, all led by Manuelito toward where Abuelita drowsed in the shady gazebo. Life had taken a lot of turns and the H20 Commando was taking a little downtime, but her team still worked, led by Cindy who she’d trained quickly once she realized the girl was a natural.

  The world would always have need of her, and she and Clive would be a team, after the baby came, partners in life, parenthood, and bringing fresh, clean water to those in need.

  Life was good for them.

  And they’d help make it so for as many others as they could.

  Kate Richards

  Kate Richards divides her time between Los Angeles and the High Sierras. She would gladly spend all her days in the mountains, but she’d miss the beach…and her very supportive husband’s commute would be three hundred miles. Wherever she is, she loves to explore all different kinds of relationships in her stories. She doesn’t believe one-size-fits-all, and whether her characters live BDSM, ménage, GLBT, spanking, or any other kind of lifestyle, it’s the love, the joy in one another, that counts.