Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 42332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 212(@200wpm)___ 169(@250wpm)___ 141(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 212(@200wpm)___ 169(@250wpm)___ 141(@300wpm)
I was the shield. If you crossed into our world without permission, I was the last fucking thing you saw. I didn’t make threats. I made ghosts.
So when someone came to us in need of our skills, and King gave the nod, we’d make them disappear.
WITSEC had nothing on us. And we did it without the government leash.
Cuing up another time stamp, I pulled up footage from two nights ago, and my eyes scanned every inch of the diner’s interior. My posture was relaxed, but every cell in my body was dialed in.
That was when I saw them.
Four men walking in. Their movements weren’t aggressive, but they were synchronized. Average height, average build. Nondescript clothes. Like all the others, everything about them was designed to be forgettable. But there was something wrong about how they moved. Controlled and too damn clean.
I’d seen that kind of posture before. Quiet alert. But I hadn’t seen these men before, not in this town. They weren’t in any of our flagged feeds. And they sure as hell weren’t local.
I kept watching.
That was when she stepped into view.
I didn’t recognize her at first. But since I knew Susan, the other server on duty that night, that meant the woman on the screen was Maren Whitlock.
She appeared at the edge of the footage, stepping into the light as she greeted the men. The glare from the overhead fixtures caught her just right, and it felt like the rest of the screen went dark.
Fuck.
The air in the room shifted. Or maybe it was just me.
She was something else.
I’d never really noticed her before.
In all the footage I’d scrubbed, I’d missed her somehow. The lighting was low, and the servers had just been in the background since they didn’t need to be watched. But now that she was in the spotlight, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
She’d been working at Fuel & Flame for a month now. I knew because I’d signed off on her background check myself. We vetted all our people—every bartender, mechanic, and server. Nothing slipped through the cracks. She was clean, young, and kept mostly to herself, as far as I could tell.
I remembered that she’d grown up here, but in the years since I’d moved to Riverstone and patched with the Hounds, our paths had never crossed. Probably had a lot to do with the fact that she was nineteen and I was thirty-five.
Way too fucking old for her.
But my body didn’t seem to give a shit about that.
Her figure was soft, all gentle curves and subtle sway, her hips flaring sweetly beneath the snug black fabric of her work pants in a way that made my jaw clench. Her shirt clung to the shape of her tits—full, high, and perfectly fucking bitable. A thick, long braid, the color of deep auburn fire, was slung over one shoulder, resting exactly where I wanted to put my mouth.
But her face…fuck.
Round and untouched by the weight of this world. Pale skin with a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks, like someone had kissed her skin with the sun and then walked away.
The lashes around her wide blue eyes brushed the tips of her cheekbones when she blinked down at the menus in her hand. She had a cute little nose and a kissable mouth. Full, soft, and pink.
My cock punched to full attention.
Shit.
My hand tightened around the arm of my chair. Blood pumped hard in my veins, heat coiling low in my gut like a detonation fuse lit from the inside. I hadn’t felt this kind of immediate want in a long damn time—if ever. My dick was already straining in my jeans, heavy and aching, and all I’d done was look at her. Just one frame.
I reached for the keyboard and froze the screen, ignoring my dick as I leaned in closer.
I wasn’t a man who got distracted by pretty women. Not on the job. Not in the field. Not ever. But something about her had hooked deep and fast, dragging me under.
Although pretty didn’t even begin to describe her.
She was beautiful. But not just in a sweet way. Something about the softness of her made my hands itch. Not to hurt or destroy, but to possess. To cradle. And also to mark.
I wanted her naked and spread out beneath me, her braid undone, and my fingers delved into the silky strands. I wanted to taste every inch of her heated skin. To feel her breath stutter against my mouth while she writhed under me, bare and begging, back arched, whispering my name in ecstasy.
My hands itched to grip her hips, pin her down, and claim her. Hard, slow, and thorough. Until she forgot every man who came before me.
Fucking hell. Pull it together, man.
I swallowed hard, furious at myself for reacting like this to a surveillance recording. But the instinct was primal. Bone-deep.