Under Pressure

by Zoë Normandie

  But she’d really known it all along, just like she’d known that he had never been a monster. He could be wicked—but never malevolent.

  Suddenly, her phone pinged, and with one hand she fumbled for it in her tote while holding Leo in the other hand. It was Lily.

  I opened an unmarked envelope this morning—with the results from that glove. Jesus, you are not going to believe this.

  Kendra read and re-read the text message several times.

  For something she would have jumped at just days ago, now she was holding back. There was a voice inside her head whispering things she didn’t expect. Holding her phone, she rocked Leo, grazing her lips on him, listening to herself, listening to how she felt.

  Delta had shown another side of him. He’d shown her that he could control himself. He could control it.

  She started typing out a message to Lily, carefully reading it several times before sending. Was that really what she wanted? She sucked in a quick breath and hit send.

  Shred it.

  As she watched the message get delivered, she saw everything she’d been obsessing over rinse away. She didn’t need it anymore.

  Tucking her phone back in her tote, she poured all her love into her son, knowing that things were going to be different.

  “Hey.” Delta came up behind her.

  She turned around, looking up to Delta as he strode toward her, light catching off the gold buttons and medals adorning his white uniform. The way his uniform hung on his fit, muscular body was something like a dream.

  “Congratulations.” She grinned as he stepped closer, putting his arm around her back and looking down at Leo.

  He leaned in and kissed her slowly, whispering how much he loved her. When he drew back, his dark gaze quickly assessed what she’d been trying to hold back—a sadness in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” he quizzed.

  She shook her head, not wanting to ruin the moment or his day.

  He pulled her closer to him and placed his other arm around Leo. Breathing down into her hair, he said, “It’s because I’m leaving today, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “It’s not going to be easy for us. I’m gone a lot and my job is dangerous.” He kissed her hair.

  She grazed her lip with her teeth, guilty that she would put it on him. She was truly so damn proud of him. It was a day for celebration, not pain.

  Then he tilted her chin up to look at him, his focus drifting back and forth between her and Leo.

  “Kendra, I was running from all this. I thought you guys were better off without me.”

  He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a small royal blue velvet box. She watched him absently turn the box in his fingers and glance out of the window.

  He looked back at her, confiding, “I wasn’t going to show up to this ceremony. I didn’t want this medal.”

  “But you deserve it,” she replied in a soft voice, confused.

  “Do I?” He shook his head, at first in disbelief, but then he said, “Maybe I do. I don’t know. Things have changed. I’m changing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of you. You gave me a reason.”

  He locked his dark eyes onto hers, melting her. He grinned and popped open the box to show her a gorgeous, way-too-expensive sapphire ring surrounded by diamonds laid over a white-gold band.

  “When I rotate back, I want to marry you,” he stated, watching her carefully. “I want us to be a family.”

  She gasped and he scooped up Leo from her arms, holding him against his shoulder with one arm. They were so at ease with one another, so natural, that no one would have believed that father and son had really only just met. Seeing them together, bonding and connected, filled her heart in ways she’d never felt.

  With the other arm, a determined Delta held the box in front of her, waiting for her reaction.

  “I’m not promising it will be easy and I’m not promising that I’ll be perfect,” he added. “But I’m promising to love you, and I’m promising to try.”

  She flitted her focus between the ring and his gorgeous face, her chest feeling full, her head feeling light.

  “What do you say, little guy?” Delta asked their son. “Should Mommy and Daddy get married?”

  Kendra didn’t know if it was fate or coincidence, but Leo let out a big smile as he started sucking on one of the gold buttons on Delta’s uniform. She reached forward to the box, removing the ring and slipping it on, seeing how it sparkled on her hand. It was heavy and beautiful—and made her want to cry. He’d done all that for her.

  She just felt speechless, taking him in as she gazed back up. Just the way he looked down on her, the sunshine catching his golden face, their son pressed against his white uniform—it was all too enchanting. A part of her wondered if she was about to wake up from another dream—a remarkable, unbelievable dream.

  “So, what do you say?” Delta demanded again in his low, seductive voice. “Mrs. Kendra Valente?”

  The way it dripped off his lips gave her chills. She bit her lip in her usual way, her eyelashes flickering up to him.

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  Then he dropped his head and kissed her, showing her just how much he loved and wanted her.

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  Wicked Games: Twist My Heart

  Brooke Taylor

  Excerpt

  Newly retired Navy SEAL Nikolas Steele rolled an Atomic Fireball around his tongue as he debated continuing down the highway with a tornado watch in effect. The safe thing to do would be to hunker down for a bit, but Nik’s mood teetered precariously toward danger.

  Retired.

  Nik didn’t feel retired. He felt cocked and loaded.

  ‘You’ve been their weapon, now find your peace,’ his teammate Will’s pregnant wife, now widow, had told him before he’d left Coronado.

  Clamping the spicy cinnamon jawbreaker between his molars, he crushed it to get to the sweet. How the hell was he supposed to do this ‘normal life’ thing when he’d rather risk driving into a tornado than be alone in a quiet hotel room?

  Sticking a fuel nozzle into his four-door, matte black Jeep Rubicon, he set the handle to fill it with gas. Kansas prairie air hung thickly charged and stale all at the same time. The unstable weather in Goodland amplified his thrumming nerves. He just needed to come down off of this last deployment. After his teammate Will’s death, it wouldn’t be easy, but when was it ever?

  He’d been invited to go with his best friend Coop and Coop’s brother Leo out to a private island owned by the reclusive billionaire Coop worked for. A little sun, sand, and sex therapy on Marakata Cay was exactly what Nik needed to detox the past several months of adrenaline and anxiety out of his system. Get clean, so to speak. He just had to get to Chicago, his rendezvous point with the guys, and in a couple of weeks maybe normal wouldn’t itch so badly.

  Right now, what Nik really needed was a drink, and if he got a drink, he’d need a room, and if he got a room, he’d need… Well, there was only one reason an insomniac like himself could stand being in an uncomfortable hotel bed and sleep had nothing to do with it.

  What was he in the mood for tonight? Sweet or spicy? Hardly mattered really, it’d been so long. But given how bad his anxiety had ramped up over losing Will and leaving the Teams, it’d be a miscalculation to hold out any longer for an exotic islander. A Kansas farm girl would do perfectly fine, thank you very much.

  If Nik were the kind of guy who believed in signs, he might’ve considered the base-model, white Ford truck screaming in hot and skidding to a stop at the pumps to be one. A blonde with country-girl braids and gold-mirrored sunglasses swung from the truck and quickly jiggled a gas nozzle into the tank.

  Pouring from the pickup’s cracked windows was his teammate’s favorite drinking song—Johnny Cash’s Cocaine Blues. Replacing the graphic images of Will’s death, which had haunted Nik most of the cross-
country drive, was the vision of the shaggy-haired, surfer-turned-SEAL passionately belting out the lyrics as if he were the infamous Willy Lee on the run from the sheriff of Jericho Hill. The way Will would’ve wanted to be remembered.

  The blonde’s hips shifted to the train-chugging rhythm of the rockabilly song as her fingers combed her braids out. Lifting her arms, she fought a gust of wind as she whipped the waves into a ponytail. The motion pulled her oversized hoodie high enough to reveal one of the best asses he’d seen in a long while.

  Despite the jumpy energy of the old-timey classic, the pumps continued to run super slow and her wild ponytail danced as she sprang impatiently on the balls of her feet. She might as well have been Tigger the Tiger from the Pooh books—bouncy, flouncy, trouncy… He definitely wanted to pouncy.

  Nik knew enough women to realize Tigger’s antsy energy meant she was probably more batshit than bouncy, but crazy sure could be a hell of a lot of fun for a night. And one night was all he had to offer.

  The last trace of sun slipped below the wheat tips on the horizon as the ominous cloud cover turned what should be a dusky blue-gray sky into a nearly black one. Activated by a light sensor, yellow and red station signage flickered and fluorescent white overheads surged to ignite. Tigger jerked the hood of her sweatshirt over her head, casting her high cheekboned profile in shadow. Nik squeezed his brows and dropped his chin. With a little chuckle, he briefly considered opening with, Who knew the Unabomber had such a smoking-hot ass?

  Despite the humor of it, he couldn’t get past the hoodie. The jagged edge to the atmosphere no longer bit down, but the humidity still threatened to choke him out. And she was in a freaking sweatshirt. Women. Why were they always so cold?

  Leaning back against his Jeep, Nik crossed the Nile croc cowboy boots Coop had talked him into spending a small fortune on the last time he’d visited Texas. He pretended to check his phone while he kept eyes on Tigger, waiting for his opening.

  Her attention, however, had caught on a horse trailer in front of her. The rig had pulled in a few minutes before and Nik had quickly determined that offering to pump the elderly driver’s gas while she went inside would likely earn him an earful, as she was not your average granny. It wasn’t just the long, silver ponytail she sported, either. There wasn’t a single thing soft or round on her lean, work-toned body, leaving Nik quite certain not only that the lady had hooked up the six-horse gooseneck trailer she was hauling all by herself but that she’d also bucked the bales of hay stacked on top.

  Tigger panned the convenience store parking lot before climbing up on the fender step to stroke the brown and black muzzles poking through the aluminum slats. After slipping something to them—an apple core, maybe?—and a couple of quick pecks to their soft noses, she hopped down with a little bounce before the lady returned to catch her.

  Nik’s fingers worked to unwrap another Fireball. The kissing bandit would turn his way soon. Not to be cocky, but it was surprising she wasn’t already showing interest.

  Years of working Special Ops made observing people second nature, and he paid extra attention to the ones who didn’t fit perfectly in their boxes. Tigger had definitely bounced out of her box. She was attractive, but didn’t call attention to it with makeup or clothing. Small-framed, but her posture carried her taller. Imitation gold aviators hid her eyes despite night coming on. And she wore that awful baggy hoodie and jeans even though the heat along the dry line crept up to the mid-nineties.

  More annoying than the sweatshirt, the hot-blooded Kansas farm girl was more interested in kissing the lips of horses than the cold-blooded American soldier trying to catch her eye.

  He wasn’t the only one frustrated. Tigger repeatedly clasped the fuel nozzle, trying to get it to pump faster. Damn, if those delicate pink-tipped fingers were closing around him, neither one of them would be frustrated for long.

  Or if she’d only turn his way, he could take care of them both.

  Gather some quick intel, disarm her with a grin and maybe a subtle shot of his abs, divert her to one of the dive bars farther off the highway and buy her a round before finding a hotel and going a different kind of round…or two…or four. Simple.

  The mission fresh in his mind, and tired of waiting for her to initiate contact, he rocked his body off the Jeep. Discreetly he shifted his concealed carry holster from appendix to hip, because flashing the six-pack with a semiauto sticking out of your waistband tended to send the wrong message. Run, so I can use you for moving target practice wasn’t the look he was going for in this particular application. You live. You learn.

  His Sig P365 safely out of sight, Nik strode forward with a good ol’ boy swagger the Lucchese boots lent him. At the first scuff of his leather soles, her mirrored-sunglass gaze snapped his way. One side of his mouth cocked up. Tigger was paying attention after all.

  God, having her full focus turned Nik’s blood a little wild, his breathing just south of controlled. His gut flickered with vulnerability. Feelings he was accustomed to having while palming sketchy explosives, but never from a woman.

  Damn if he didn’t love things that go boom.

  With calculated casualness he stroked his palm up his stomach, bringing the hem of his black T-shirt with it… Just a peek. Okay. It was a cheesy move. Maybe not as blatantly so as the ol’ yawn and stretch, but he’d fully admit it was the male equivalent to pushing one’s boobs together. Like the boob-squeeze, the ab-flash was a seasoned hook when time was limited. Know a good place to get a drink around here? hovered over his tongue, but she held up her hand, ensuring the words never made it past his teeth.

  “Save it, cowboy.”

  Cowboy? Coop would get a kick out of that.

  The sexy curve to her bare, pink lips teased him closer as her patronizing tone backed him off. All he could do was hold position on the oil-splattered pavement. Before he could even ask her if she wanted to save a horse and ride him instead, she cut him off. “From the way you’ve been staring at my ass, you’d only last two minutes, and I don’t even have time for one.”

  His bouncy little Tigger was a tiger after all. Even better. “In that case, darlin’, which would you prefer—I wreck your plans for the next several hours defending my stamina or accept the challenge of getting you done in one?”

  Her plush lower lip plumped between her teeth, a clear indication she was considering picking the former. But as easily as she threw the nozzle at the pump, she tossed back at him, “Get yourself done in one.”

  Nik blinked.

  His speechlessness was rewarded with a devilish smirk as she swung her hot tail into the truck and peeled away. In true Tigger fashion, she bounded over the curb to avoid oncoming traffic. A protest of honking followed in her wake.

  Nik chuckled. Sweet and spicy. Yep, she’d be one hell of a tiger to have by the tail. With any luck he’d have another shot at a piece of it farther down the road.

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  About the Author

  I’m a mom with three sweet young daughters. I have three jobs - mom, author, and analyst. Years ago, I grew up in a military family, went to a military university, worked alongside the military as an intel analyst, and my husband is (surprise!) a veteran. I’ve tried to write for anyone who wants to feel what it’s like to be with someone from that world - with all the good and the bad.

  My heroes are grounded in reality, and are inspired by guys I know in the special forces. Guys who’ve been in combat, tasted war, and fought for what they believed in. They are really heroes, but raw and rough and broken in their own ways.

  My heroines similarly come from the best parts of the women I know, and the challenges we all face. The relationships that they fall into have familiar characteristics for many, myself included. These heroines r
epresent all of us, with our good and our bad laid bare.

  In my stories, I illustrate, romanticize, and celebrate the harsh realities of duty, service, and sacrifice.

  Zoe loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website details and author profile page at https://www.totallybound.com