Walk on the Striped Side Read Online Free PDF Page B

for
them to grate on each other’s last nerves. Gage had later said it was the
strain of animal like sexual attraction between them. But for Elena, it had
been lust at first sight. Now it was the dreaded four letter L-word. And how
she wished that lust , was still the word that fit that description, but
instead it was love .
    She was holding out hope that her
mother was wrong. That all men weren’t lying, conniving, cheating dogs who
couldn’t be trusted with a woman’s vulnerable heart. She could tell Gage how
she felt, and then hopefully he would tell her that he loved her too. Perhaps
then, Elena could then take him home, introduce him to her man hating mother
and wary two sisters, and show them that there were in fact good men out there.
Maybe after that one of her two sisters would break the Demos ‘no long term
man’ rule and go out and find a stud of their own. Cynics could be converted
into believers.
    All she had to do was break the
news to the man she loved first. Which needed to be done tonight since she was
out processing from the Army and headed home to Swansboro, NC in two days. She
probably should have mentioned it to Gage beforehand that she hadn’t renewed
her enlistment due to her mom’s baffling illness, but had never got around to
it. It was hard learning to open up and share your personal life with someone of
the opposite sex when you weren’t used to having anyone around to care about
these things. The two of them would need to talk about how often they could
visit each other now that her living arrangements were going to be drastically
different.
    Easing silently out of the bed, she
picked Gage’s t-shirt up off of the floor and pulled it on over her naked body.
Not that she had a problem with nudity, especially in front of her insanely
sexy man, but his voice was starting to get louder as if he were irritated with
someone. She didn’t exactly feel comfortable butt ass naked if he was going to
be in a foul mood. Curious as to what had riled her lover up, she tip toed to
the closed bedroom door and convinced herself that it was not wrong to
eavesdrop on the man you planned to inform had been elevated to boyfriend
status. Being someone’s girlfriend gave you rights to snoop a little. It was
written down in the women’s laws somewhere, she was sure.
    Placing her ear on the door, she
closed her eyes and concentrated on what was being said on the other side of
it. There was a muffled sentence before a short span of silence, and then Gage
spit out a “Fuck you Alec.”
    Aha. He was talking to his brother.
Elena had been astounded when Gage had told her he was one of triplets. At his
size, she could only imagine how big of a baby he must have been. And while he
said his sister Lulu was nowhere near his height or size, apparently Alec was
just as tall and broad as his brother. She could practically feel her womb
rejecting the idea of carrying even one baby that size. Let alone a second one
or a third spare smaller one for the hell of it. All of her internal parts that
scientifically classified her as a woman threatened to jump out into oncoming
traffic if she even entertained the idea of two of them.
    Returning her concentration back to
Gage she heard a few more murmured sentences, and then he seemed to snap. “Hell
no she’s not my mate! Do you take me for some kind of idiot? There’s no way it
could ever work out between someone like her and someone like me. Elena’s a hot
piece of ass, but it’s not worth going through all of that trouble to make this
something more than that.”
    In that moment, her heart felt like
it was shriveling up in her chest and dying an excruciating death. Every dream
she’d barely realized she’d been having, withered away and disappeared. Leaving
gaping holes inside that she wasn’t sure could ever be filled again. Even her
uterus, which had been protesting almost violently moments ago at the imaginary
future triplets she and Gage might have one day, seemed to