The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage Read Online Free PDF Page B

girlfriend had been here with him, like this, a couple of years before.
    Conscious thought was nearly suppressed by feeling and by lust, except for a driving need to lay my claim, to mark this territory and erase any impression, any trace, any mark left by the guy who’d been here before.
    I’d never been so turned on.
    We’d talked about it over the last eleven months. Lina would do anything, really anything, with me, so long as I didn’t actually put myself into her. I’d always gone along with that, even if I didn’t understand it. I was nearly certain she wasn’t a virgin. What was it about us that made that off limits?
    Her fingernails dug into my shoulder, and her breath was short and hot against my neck. I was pushed up hard against her hip. She pushed, soft and wet, against my moving fingers.
    Today was the day. No more limits. No more boundaries. No more excuses. I was hers. I needed her to be mine.
    It’s easy to tell when your girlfriend is about to come when your sense of smell is discerning enough to read a person’s mood and physiology through their sweat and pheromones, when you can sense a heartbeat and blood flow from your fingertips. I brought her over the edge with my hand.
    I was utterly engulfed in her scent, her sounds, her taste. I was past thinking; at that moment I was nothing but want.
    While she bucked and gasped, I pulled her arms above her head, took both her hands in mine, positioned myself between her legs, and sought her out.
    Her body came back to her as her orgasm slid away.
    “Nate…c’mon…”
    Her tone wasn’t encouraging.
    I could feel her wet, warm lips against my dick. So close. I bit into the underside of her upper arm; not hard, just enough to hang on, to hold on.
    My peripheral vision contracted to narrow focus on pieces of her. Her ear. Her hair. Her breast. Her lips.
    She had become discrete instances of stimulation, each adding to my exponential drive to possess the whole.
    “Nate…I don’t…”
    She twisted her hips, denying me. I slid along her inner thigh.
    I let go of her arms.
    I propped myself above her on an elbow and a knee. Her eyes were cloudy with afterglow and just a degree away from being entirely with me.
    The hazy, humid dream of her snapped.
    I sat up.
    “Sorry.” I was shaking. My dick twitched in time with my racing pulse, unaware the rest of me had been reintroduced to my humanity.
    “Sorry. Sorry.”

Marc Teslowski – One
    A shitload of Friday afternoon traffic turned the drive home from the TV studio into a three-hour ordeal Marc was sure they could have avoided if the damn lawyer hadn’t wanted to debrief after the show. Shyster was right there for the whole damn thing. Debrief, why, exactly? Just another excuse to rack up some billable time.
    Marc listened to KABC for most of the drive until—like it damn near always did, eventually—the discussion on the talk radio station turned to the Sovereigns and Declaration Day and even some talk about Byron. After the taping, Marc was pretty well fed the hell up on that subject. He flipped back and forth between KMET and KLOS the rest of the way and let Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, and Zebra take his mind off things for a while.
    Marc opted to pass the El Toro Road exit—it would be a bitch in the middle of rush hour—and got off on Abbeque Valley Parkway. He saw Jeri’s face tighten as they passed the high school. He felt the same tension in his jaw and neck.
    Byron had ruled that school. Lorded over it. Any sport, you name it, if the school had a team, Byron tried out, and when Byron tried out, he got picked. And when he played, he was the best anyone had ever seen.
    Marc had loved imagining the other dads giving their kids shit, pushing them to be as good as Byron fucking Teslowski. He remembered hearing the other schools’ coaches digging into their players when no one—no one—could get anywhere near his kid.
    Byron Teslowski had been on his way to any athletic scholarship he wanted,