No Ordinary Love

Back Cover A Sci-fi Erotica Short Story by Kate Lynd A human rebel against the Capturian Forces, Caliope was enslaved for five years and tortured. She never expects to meet James, a half-breed too human for his own good. Their connection is electric. Their love is forbidden. Their daughter may be Earth’s only hope.

No Ordinary Love© 2011 by Kate Lynd All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or events, is coincidental and not intended by the author. A MuseItHOT Publication MuseItUp Publishing 14878 James, Pierrefonds, Quebec, Canada, H9H 1P5 http://www.museituppublishing.com Cover Art © 2011 by Delilah K. Stephans Edited by Anita Baron Copyedited by Greta Gunselman Layout and Book Production by Lea Schizas eBook ISBN: 978-1-927361-04-7 First eBook Edition *October 2011 Production by MuseItUp Publishing

No Ordinary Love

Kate Lynd

MuseitHOT, division of MuseItUp Publishing www.museituppublishing.com ADULT CONTENT: Contains sexual content.

Dedications For Daniel Craig whose Jake Lonergan inspired my James Lawton

Acknowledgements Thanks to my best friend and screenwriting partner Missy Goodman for all her support during the rough patches. To my parents Faye and John Keough for letting me be me and indulging my writing dream.

Chapter One I should have died in the trenches with the rest of my unit. The battle for control of the Southeastern United States with the Capturians had been long, protracted, and bloody. I was one of the last remaining members of the Resistance, determined to fight until my dying breath. The only thing I feared more than death was imprisonment on the Capturian slave ship docked on the planet Mars. It was dark. It was cold. It was eerily quiet as I lay there with injuries no human could heal. I knew I was going to die. I’d been shot, and I was wounded and bleeding. The poisonous gas I’d inhaled was making it harder and harder for me to breathe. And then I saw something, or rather someone, standing over me. He stooped down and gently brushed my matted hair from my face. The man had blond hair and blue eyes that sparkled in the moonlight. He held his hand over me and ran it from my forehead to my feet and back again. He looked toward the sky and scanned the horizon. “All right then,” he said softly, “I have to get you out of here.” He lifted me up and carried me to a hovercraft with a topper and laid me in the backseat, fastening me in. He hopped in the driver’s seat and turned the ignition key. He looked over his shoulder at me. I realized right then he wasn’t human. It was something in his eyes that gave it away…but there was something else, too, something that let me know he had no intention of harming me. In any other circumstance, I would have tried to kill him on sight. But when he said, “You called out for me. So I came.” I knew an old friend had returned, and I began to cry. I knew that if he was who I thought he was, I was going to be okay. “James…” I croaked. “Don’t fret, Caliope. You’re going to be alright. I promise.” I wept hot tears. James was special. Only I knew how much. And I had promised him I would never give up looking for him. He told me if I was ever in trouble, just to call for him and he would find me. He had kept his word. He had kept his word. Now I would keep mine. ****

When I woke I was in a small room, naked except for the salves on my skin and a warm blanket wrapped around my body. I looked around. James was sleeping in a chair next to the bed with a shotgun at his side. I tried to sit up and his eyes flickered open. “Keep still. They’ll sense you.” His nearness was enough to make me yearn for his touch. Relationships between Capturians and humans were taboo by their very nature. But James himself was an anomaly. He was the offspring of a Capturian Master and his female human slave. He never talked about it, but I knew it left him with a bitterness and heaviness that not even the oldest of human survivors had. He’d been a guard on the slave ship I’d been sent to early on in the fighting. The ‘experiments’ had been torturous. During my first six months there, they tried to break me. Every night I cried. Angry, bitter, terrified tears. When I slept there was no relief, as I was haunted in my dreams by the things they had done to me in the day time. Eventually I lost all sense of time or place. I was about to fall on my sword when James was assigned to watch me and make sure I didn’t rally the other human slaves. Instead of plunging me into utter darkness and suspending me in air, he’d come to me that first night, and held me through it. His touch had been the first gentle thing I’d known in almost a year. I’d clung to him against my better judgment. He’d whispered to me before morning came. “I have to suspend you again now, not by choice, but to save your life.” This went on for three months, until things took a serious turn between us. I lay back down. When I spoke, my voice was scratchy and hoarse. “James…why? Why now? Why didn’t you leave me to die?” “Shhh. I won’t be able to protect you if you insist on talking before you’re completely healed.” I struggled to sit up again. The heat pooling in my gut and spreading through my body was intense. James’s touch had been intoxicating. He’d warned me when we’d made love on the slave ship that if we slept together, I would only ever crave him. He’d also said that while he might seek out other women to satisfy his desires, none would be able to satisfy him in the way I would. I had been in such pain it hadn’t mattered, and I had been so in love with him at that point, I wasn’t thinking about the consequences of sleeping with a man who was part enemy, part savior. He sat next to me on the bed. “What have they done to you?” He was distressed when he

asked it. I could read his thoughts and emotions now. Being with him had done that to me. But only with him. Not anyone else. When he touched my face I leaned in, familiar feelings bubbling to the surface. He wiped my tears away. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed everything about you.” The heat from my body dried the last of the salves. He lowered his head and kissed me. His tongue slid inside my mouth as his hand pulled the blanket away, leaving me naked and vulnerable. His roughened hand caressed the length of my body as he lay down beside me. Stopping at my breasts he cupped them; kneading them, squeezing them, pinching my nipples into hard nubs. His touch was orgiastic as I trembled, remembering our times together. He deepened the kiss as I fumbled with his belt buckle and zipper, pushing his pants down from his waist with my feet. I reached between his legs, wrapped my hands around his enormous cock, and began to stroke it. He moaned and broke off the kiss. “Go easy, Caliope, or I’ll explode too fast and you won’t have the pleasure of feeling me inside of you,” he whispered hoarsely in my ear. His hot breath rolled down my neck as he nipped at my earlobe, slipping his fingers inside my hot wet, pussy and stroking my clit. I gyrated into his touch. I was going to come as fast as he was. His cock was huge and hot in my grasp as it swelled and threatened to spring free from my touch, his jizm oozing between my fingertips. As roughened as his hands were, the rest of his body was soft, smooth, and warm. I kept one hand firmly around his dick and kissed him savagely. I plunged my tongue into his mouth. He tasted the same as he had five years ago. Salty, sensual—like he’d been waiting a lifetime for me. He pushed his fingers hard against my clit just as he sank his teeth into my neck, bringing me to the edge of ecstasy. I thrilled from head to toe as I always did when he touched me. He was the only one who could do this to me. His mixed blood reacted chemically with mine, causing our souls to meld each time we made love. The reaction was explosive. It caused souls to merge. And for five years I had been bound to James Lawton. For five years I had craved him. Craved this. “Do you want to feel me inside you?” His rich voice curled around my senses and sent delicious shivers up and down my spine. My legs quivered as I wrapped them around his waist. “I want you. Now. Fuck me before I

come without you.” He plunged his hard, hot cock into my soft, wet, tight pussy and suckled a nipple voraciously. I gasped and shouted his name out loud several times. He tortured me with long, slow strokes as he suckled at my other breast. My senses blurred, and I closed my eyes tight in ecstasy as my fingers dug deep into his skin and scratched his back. His bright, luminous eyes glowed, and his well-muscled and toned body rocked me demandingly as he captured my lower lip with his teeth. He was on the verge of losing control. His soul was opening up, and suddenly I saw his pain in sharp relief. He was bleeding from an emotional wound that was bigger than anything I could fill without sex. With my eyes closed, I could still see his soul. I arched up as my climax crushed and exhausted me. I screamed for him the way I did when we were on the ship. Our souls cleaved anew, and I was blinded for what seemed like forever. He thrust hard into me, and our bodies were one. He thrust his tongue deep inside me and I came again. And again. And again. By the time he was still and collapsed on me I was trembling, covered in his sweat and mine. His pain coursed through me as surely as my pain coursed through him. The exquisite pain was almost too much for me to bear. But if he could bear it for me, I could bear it for him. My voice shook. “Who hurt you?” “It doesn’t matter. Right now I have to get you to safety. Your survival is vital to the continued life of humans on this planet.” I would’ve laughed if his pain weren’t so acute. “Me? Yeah right!” He kissed me again sensuously. He gazed down at me with such pain that tears came to my eyes. I touched his face. “I’ve missed you.” “I’ve missed you too, Caliope.” “Promise me you’ll never leave me again.” He looked more hurt. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” He kissed me again. And when we made love this time, gone was the rushed desperation. It was a languid, calm union, reminiscent of the time we had made love last before that day. I prayed it wasn’t a sign of things to come.

Chapter Two When I woke up he was standing at the window, peeking through the blinds. All his body was tanned, including his ass. Capturian skin had that wheaten honey hue. He looked like an earthling from fifty years earlier—a surfer dude. But his blond hair was short, and you could bounce quarters off his abs. Hell, you could bounce quarters off that ass of his, too, for that matter. I climbed out of bed and walked up behind him. My skin warmed his as I wrapped my arms around him and he took my hands, lifting them to his lips and kissing the tips of my fingers one by one... “What is it?” I asked him. “I’ve searched for you for so long…I feared you dead so many times, so when I saw you lying on the field in the snow…I thought I had failed you.” “James, you couldn’t fail me. You didn’t know where I was.” “The Capturians need me to fail. They’re hunting for you and they will do anything to cut me off from you, including obscuring our binding to one another.” He turned and faced me. It was hard not to feel the heat emanating off him. He was already hard again. Just touching his skin made me want to come. It was almost as if our reunion had put me in animal heat for him. He grinned devilishly. “It’s funny you should think of our attraction to one another that way.” I forgot. Our binding had made him just as privy to my thoughts and emotions as it had made me to his. I blushed. “No embarrassment is necessary. I crave you just as much as you crave me. It’s part of what sets us apart from other humans and Capturians. We were fated to mate for life. It’s just unfortunate that we met under the circumstances that we did.” I wound my arms around him and pressed my cheek to his chest. He buried his face in my hair and stroked me up and down from my shoulder to my ass. Pressing me close and squeezing my rear, he lifted a lock of hair and breathed the scent of me into his lungs. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed your touch and I’ve missed your voice. I’ve missed fucking you, the scent between your legs when I fuck your pussy with my tongue, the way you taste when you come in my mouth. And now that I have you here I don’t want to share you with

anyone, for any reason.” “Then fuck me,” I teased, squeezing his ass and running my tongue along his chest. “Ye gods!” he said, drawing air in through his teeth, “when you touch me I sometimes forget there’s so much more at stake.” He was caressing me, nipping at my chin, sucking my tongue into his mouth with powerful kisses. I reached down between his legs and let his cock weigh heavy in my hand for a moment, titillating us both, before fondling it into a fully erect state. I moaned as he pushed it inside me. “Just what is at stake?” “I was born to protect you and our child,” he said, hitching my leg over his hip as we moved in unison, pushing ourselves into intense ecstasy. “Child? What child?” “Our child. Our daughter. The one you will be carrying by the time we set out tomorrow.” I trembled at the thought. “Why am I so important? Why will our daughter be so important?” I gasped as he thrust harder and harder into me. “She will lead the Resistance in driving out the last of the Capturians.” He had me against the wall, my arms pinned over my head as he made love to me, fucking me into completeness. “I love you, Caliope,” he said, his thrusts ever more and more forceful. “No matter what happens, never doubt it, never forget it, and always believe it.” He thrust one last time and our souls merged again, only this time I watched a star fall, glowing, between us. He whispered into my ear. “Our child, our daughter.” I came so hard my knees buckled, and he had to hold me up. “I love you,” I shouted as I collapsed. “I love you,” I whispered as the tingling sensation ebbed. He lifted me up and took me back to bed. He had given me his love. He had intoxicated me with it. Now he would demand nothing less than the same in return. I rolled him to his back and straddled him. I was going to rock his world and brand him, just as he had branded me. He ran his hands up my back as I took his cock inside me and pressed my skin to his. “I will never leave you by choice.” At the time I didn’t understand those fateful words. Before it was all over, I would understand perfectly.

**** The gestation period for a human child is nine months. For a child with a significant amount of Capturian blood, it is reduced to a mere fortnight. Travel was out of the question. A pregnant human can expect great changes and a flood of hormones that places terrible stress on her body. For a human pregnant with a Capturian child, the risk is a hundred times greater. The very fact the child’s parents are bound to another is the reason for this. Capturians, when they are soulbound, are so purely for sexual reasons and the purpose of bringing forth more Capturians. Humans are soulbound for a multitude of reasons. Yes, they are bound for sexual reasons. Yes, they are bound for purposes of bringing forth human life, but the most veritable reason they are bound is because they are in love. If they are bound against their will, it kills them. James’s mother had been raped; she survived long enough to give birth. Then she was murdered by his father performing a soul-breaking ritual…but not before she put her mark of humanity on James. James and I had consummated our relationship only after weighing the risks and committing ourselves to one another when we were not together. Being pregnant with his child could kill me. The only thing that could save me from being poisoned with Capturian blood at the birth would be the act of lovemaking for the first ten of the fourteen days. Then we had to be naked in one another’s presence for the last four days without giving in to primordial urges that would threaten to break us to their wills. I lay in his arms sighing. “I never thought I’d see you again after you helped me escape.” He looked down at me, stroking my arm. “From the moment we touched I knew we were destined for something greater.” “Yeah, right.” He stiffened. “Sorry! I didn’t realize you were being serious.” “My mother left an encoded message for me to find when the time was right. I’d been waiting for the human who would change my life.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and gazed down at me. “Your soul reached out to mine from the moment the Capturian Slave Foreman placed you in my charge. I’m sure he never expected me to stand up to him and finally acknowledge my humanity.” “I’m sorry you had to lose them to be with me.”

“Lose who? My father’s family? As if I care. The only thing of theirs I’m grateful for is their ability to conceal things as they are, to make someone see what they want to see. It saved me on more than one occasion, and it enabled me to fall in love with you undetected.” “I remember a time when I had a family to love and support me. Dad was a lawyer, Mom was a teacher, and I had an older brother to protect me. Then the invasion came and Dad and Mom were taken captive. Kalen was murdered while protecting me. And suddenly I was alone. When I joined the Resistance I felt so isolated and angry. Ironically I had no one—until I was sent to die in your watch. I owe you everything, James.” He ran his thumb over my lips. “Mmm, it’s I who owes you. My mother’s letter talking of salvation, humanity, love, and destiny were foreign concepts to me until my half-brother assigned me to Death Row. Had I suspended you every night, you would have died. When they placed you in my arms and you opened your eyes, hope flickered defiantly. It reminded me of my mother’s letter. So in the dark I held you. And eventually you trusted me enough to cling to me. Your touch was unlike anything I’d ever known. I don’t think I could have survived another year without you at the time.” I clasped him tight. I felt our daughter move inside me. I took his hand and pressed his palm to my swollen belly. His eyes lit up with joy…and sadness. I ran my foot up and down his leg. It sent shivers through my body. It eased the pain I was going through with such an accelerated gestation period. If we broke our spiritual bond, we would both die. I needed him in a way I had never needed anyone else. He sucked and nipped at my neck, and as I moaned with desire, I knew he was trying to distract me. With much regret I pushed him back. “What’s wrong?” I asked, searching his worried gaze. “Promise me you will do everything to protect yourself and our daughter.” “Of course I will.” “Even if it means sacrificing me.” Fear seized my heart and a terrible pain ripped through my soul, twisting my body in the kind of wrenching agony I had never experienced, not even on the slave ship. I curled up in the fetal position. “Caliope. Look at me,” he ordered through the pain-induced noise reverberating inside my head and heart. “Caliope!” he shouted again, shaking me.

I screamed in pain. I was vulnerable to the thought of our possible separation. I was sweating all over, and though I could see his lips moving, I couldn’t hear anything over the din of noise and pain and the sound of my own sobbing and screaming. It felt as if I were being torn apart and ripped away from my only life force. My heart strained to keep up with the pulsing of my blood; they were working at cross purposes. I was poisoning myself and I couldn’t stop. He rolled me to my back and cradled my face. I could barely feel his touch until I saw his aura glowing brilliantly, his eyes translucent and bright blue. Soon his mouth was on mine. Soft, tender, and gentle, his tongue explored my mouth, breathing healing breaths and incandescent life into me. The pain ebbed and suddenly I could feel his body, smell his skin, and feel his flesh again. And when he broke away he whispered, “Don’t you dare ever do that to me again. Promise me.” He held me so close I could feel his heart pounding in time with mine. “I promise.” He kissed me again. Only this time he was sharing his heart with mine. I allowed myself to be swept away in his touch and slowly fell under his spell all over again.

Chapter Three It was day thirteen and I was throbbing all over. I’d never been so hungry—or so horny—in my life. Nor had I ever been pregnant, for that matter. I nestled quietly in his arms as he ran his fingertips up and down my back. I sank my teeth into his nipple and he moaned. “You scare me Caliope. I’ve done horrible things and yet you love me.” “Do you love me?” “If the Capturians kill you, I would have no choice but to murder the ones who ended your life.” “Would you die if our binding were to be undone? Or does that just happen to the woman?” “No. I would just wish I was dead. It would mean I had failed. It would mean I had failed you and that I would have to raise our daughter alone. I would have to keep going for her.” “What happens to me if you die?” “First you would go insane. Then, you would die.” He held me close and touched my stomach. “But I won’t let that happen.” I felt the warmth between his legs, his hair brushed my inner thigh, and my abdomen tightened. “I would go crazy without you. I don’t want you to be anywhere but with me as we raise our daughter.” He buried his hands in my hair. “You made me more human than I could have ever hoped to be. I often wonder what my Mother went through. I’m surprised my Capturian owner ever treated me above my station as a Non-Human, Non-Capturian. He tried to make me over in his image for eighteen years before sending me to work on the Slave Ship as a Death Row guard. I suppose whatever made me human was what made me respond to you. My mother’s letter said I was special. In your arms, I feel like I can be the man I was always meant to be. “Before you and after you I had lovers but there was always something missing. Like a hole in my heart was going unfilled. “Without you I was a mere shell. Useless. I took no joy in anything. I had no reason to live. For three years, I drank rotgut whiskey and smoked black-market tobacco. It was hell. And then one night, as I was getting loaded and fucking three Capturian females who wanted to slum it,

the closer I got to coming the more I felt your presence. They started shrieking that awful dolphin squeal Capturian females yelp when they’re having an orgasm. It was then I saw you, like an apparition standing in the corner of the apartment. You had such a look of betrayal I went flaccid before they were finished. They didn’t take it well, but I kicked them off me. Just in time, I grabbed a wastebasket and got violently ill. I threw them out before they got a chance to get dressed and took a scalding hot shower to get their smell off of me. I stripped my bed and dressed it clean. I bundled the sheets and all that ever marked me as a Capturian and incinerated everything. I slept in the nude that night for the first time, and prayed for the Gods to send you to me.” “I was with a man for a few years. He wanted to get married, start a family. But I could never say yes. I told him I couldn’t be the wife he wanted. When he asked me why, I told him the truth. I said my soul was bound to another.” James gazed at me, his brow furrowed. “He didn’t hurt you did he?” “He called me a whore and a traitorous bitch, and then slapped me across the face.” His countenance darkened. His feral nature as a Capturian coupled with the rage of his humanity was a big turn-on. That I could inspire anyone to feel that was amazing and empowering. “I’ll kill him.” It was stated matter-of-factly. “He killed himself when it was revealed he had impregnated a Capturian spy in our midst. I mourned him. That is to say, I mourned what I had believed was good about him. The fighting got worse around two years ago. The Capturians were pushing into Kentucky, and the best we could do was throw more bodies at them. It was fierce, it was bloody, and it was nasty. I was leading the unit that was our last hope. So many young boys fighting on the front lines. So many women and girls being taken by the Capturian forces. Lying there, I thought, it’s over. They’re going to win. The earth is going to die. My species is going to be enslaved. And the only man I’ve ever loved is never going to know how much I would give up just to see him one more time.” My voice cracked. He wiped away a tear and touched my stomach, and our daughter responded. I warmed at his touch, my heart healing just with his presence. “I was in Hell. Without you I was in Hell. And now, I’ll do anything to make you whole again. To keep you happy. To see to it that this world thrives with our daughter and us driving the Capturians out.”

“But…they’re your family.” “I am the child of a rape. I know there are women—my mother was one of them—who would have raised me in nothing but love. My Owner decided my mother should be bound to him for his pleasure; she sacrificed herself so that I might have a chance to find you. I may be a half-breed Capturian but I’m a half-breed human as well. And I love you with my soul. My mother’s soul. You, Caliope, and our daughter, are the only family I need.” She moved inside me again. I moaned. He pressed his palm to my stomach again and the pain eased. I gazed into his eyes and I knew what he was saying. Half- breed families by choice were rare. There was a long road ahead of us. We would need each other to survive. “Make love to me James.” He lowered his head and kissed me, gently at first. I parted my lips and slid my tongue into his mouth, urging him to deepen the kiss. I went to reach between his legs but he stopped me. He burned me with a fiery and passionate kiss as he pinned my arms at their wrists above my head. He hungrily moved his mouth down my chin, leaving wet, scorching kisses and bites in his wake until he reached my swollen breasts and began to suckle them. He nudged his knee between my thighs and spread them apart. When he pressed my clit, I gasped at the suddenness of the orgasm that crippled me. As he continued to suckle, he thrust his fingers inside me, working me into a mindless frenzy of small orgasms, each flowing into the one before it, creating a blur of pure sensation emanating from my pussy all the way to my fingertips and toes. I shook so hard that when he freed my breasts and trailed his tongue and mouth down to my belly, my emotions collided with his sexual energy, making me beg for the ultimate release that only he could give me. When James placed his face between my legs, I cried out, craving more. I was panting and begging him never to stop. His tongue ran over my clit as he growled, sending waves of vibration through my whole midsection. I started crying from the desire, so great it made me sweat. And when he plunged his tongue inside me, ravishing my pussy from the inside out, I screamed with pleasure as he set my soul on fire. He lifted my legs and wrapped them around his broad shoulders, the muscles in his back rippling against them. Grabbing my ass he squeezed hard, and I began to rock against him. Out of my mind with desire, I came hard. I was out of control as wave after wave of intense orgasm

crashed our hearts together. In my mind I could see his eyes in the eyes of our daughter, who would be born four days after that day. I began to weep at the awe and love I knew we would always have for one another. Finally the blur cleared and he was lying over me, looking like the fierce half-breed warrior that he was always meant to be. He settled his cock between my legs. I realized he was claiming me. I would never desire another. Half-breed unions were illegal. This, and the birth of our daughter, would be our wedding ceremony. He eased into me. I came again. He never took his eyes from mine. I touched his face tenderly as he made love to me as only he ever could. “Now we belong to one another for eternity. I will love you as I have never loved another. I will always be at your side. I will always protect you. I will always love you and our family.” “And I will always be your wife.” He thrust one last time and climaxed. He collapsed into my arms and murmured, “And I will always be your husband.” **** It was time. The sun was barely up and the contractions had started. It was hard to believe we had spent ten of the last fourteen days making love and committing our lives to one another. Now the daughter I had seen conceived on our first night back together was coming into this world. James wiped my face with a cool facecloth; he’d set up the room as a makeshift delivery suite. He had no pain killers or epidurals to give me, and I was afraid. Humans who were slaves often died when they birthed half-breeds. Capturian blood was poison to humans unless the right precautions were taken. James knew this. He took my hand and brushed my cheek with his thumb. “You’re not going to die. I’m not going to let you die. “Capturian blood is poison to human blood. We don’t exactly have a syringe full of antidote. I don’t want to lose you or our daughter. “My mother said in her letter this time would come, when my betrothed human would be in grave danger because of choices we made…circumstances that were out of our control. She said there was only ever one thing that could keep my blood from poisoning yours.” “What’s that?” “You have to let me take the pain of childbirth along with you.”

“Who’s going to deliver the baby? Even Capturian children need to be cared for when they come out of the womb.” “I will. But you have to trust me. Do you trust me?” I was terrified. Yet I trusted him. On the slave ship I had trusted him. I nodded and he took my hand. “A Capturian birth happens much faster than a human birth. Just like the gestation period.” He positioned himself between my legs, pushed the blanket back, and parted my knees. “No matter how much it hurts just squeeze my hand, I can take it. Now push.” The first contraction hit and I screamed in agony as I pushed harder than I’d ever pushed in my life. But a magical thing happened when James let go of my hand and pressed his palm to my swollen belly. The pain disappeared. His jaw was clenched. “Push again, she’s almost here.” I pushed against his pain and he smiled. “One more push, Caliope, and our love will be here forever.” I pushed against his pain. He smiled again as he caught our daughter when she made her entrance into the world she was destined to save. He cleaned out her mouth and cut the umbilical cord, placing her gently on my stomach as the afterbirth came out, unknown to me. She cried. She had his skin, his eyes, his hair, but she looked like me. I began to weep. “She’s so beautiful. So perfect.” I looked up at him. “So much like you.” “No,” he said with emotion in his voice, “so much like us.” He slid into bed next to us and took us both in his arms. And for just a little while we could be worry-free. “I love you, James Lawton. What shall we name her?” He ran his thumb over her hand and said, “We name her what she is to us, to our home.” “What is she to us?” “Our Destiny.” He kissed me tenderly. For now, we had it all. A home. A child. And each other. I wondered, how long was it going to last? He tenderly kissed my temple. Suddenly, the future didn’t matter. We had right now. And compared to the hell we’d been through, that was all that we needed.

About the Author Amy makes her home in Mount Washington, KY with her neurotic kitty Chyna. She bleeds Kentucky Wildcat blue and loves to hear from her readers. So if you’ve got something to say she’d love to hear from you.

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