I was ready to drop out of high school and get my military career started right then and there, but the recruiter convinced me that it would be better to get my diploma and placed me into a Delayed Entry Pool.
The rest of high school was spent getting through the weekdays. The weekends were what it was all about for me. That’s when I, along with all the other members of the delayed pool got together with recruiters to go over military knowledge and get us ready for what was to come.
Two weeks after graduating, I was shipped out to Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina to begin basic training. From day one, I knew I was on a level all my own. While other cadets struggled with the initial physical fitness test, I breezed through it with flying colors.
While others were dropping out of night training and hand-to-hand combat, I was showing them all how it was done. And when it was time for the end-of-cycle test, I had perfected everything the Army had taught me.
I gained the attention of all the right people and was sent straight from basic into advanced training. They had me pegged as a lifer from the beginning, and to be honest, that’s where I saw myself as well.
Promotions were easy for me, and I rose the ranks quickly. I spent six years as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. The only problem I had was with teamwork, but I subscribed to the fake it until you make it philosophy. I was always there for those who counted on me.
But In reality, I was, and still am, very much a loner. There are only a handful of people in this world that I consider to be friends, and those few were soldiers I met when I was a paratrooper.
After six years and three deployments, I was ready to get out. I saw what war was all about and I was done with it. The Army did everything they could to entice me to stay. They offered promotions at first, but I wasn’t interested in the added responsibilities and the headaches that were sure to come with it.
They offered me a position behind a desk, but there was no way in hell I was going to accept that. I still wanted action, just not in the middle of a war.
Despite their best efforts, I left the Army. Shortly after, I was contacted by a private government agency and was brought on board. For the next 12 years of my life, I was what most people would refer to as a mercenary. The only difference was that I was working on American soil and sniffing out those who wished to do harm to the country.
The money was great, far better than anything else would have paid, but after putting my life on the line for 18 straight years, I was ready for something different. I wanted to finally feel like I was making a difference, so I made a phone call to a contact I had in the FBI.
Because my mercenary work with the government was off the books and not in any way official, the FBI wasn’t able to bring me in as an agent. They were able to, however, bring me in as a contractor, which was perfect for me. I’ve never been the type to deal with all the red tape anyway.
Never did I imagine that the contract would bring me to Vegas, yet there I was, my new home for the foreseeable future. I was there to search out and eventually shut down the activities of the Heartwell Organization.
The organization was the lowest of the low. They are licensed as a non-profit organization, but that’s just their cover. They’re the center of one of the most profound human trafficking rings in the history of human trafficking. Just thinking about what they do makes me want to puke.
I’ve tried to settle in the best I can, but the scenery doesn’t really do it for me. When I was doing my mercenary work, I operated out of Tampa, Florida, which is the same place I grew up. I was used to seeing beautiful women on the beaches nearly every day, and while there are some attractive women, it just wasn’t the same.
There is one woman, however, that has caught my eye. I’m not one to believe in fate, but I’ve literally been seeing her everywhere. That’s not an easy thing to accomplish in a city as busy as Vegas.
It almost seems as though she’s there every time I turn around. I’ve seen her at the coffee shop. I’ve seen her out for morning runs. I’ve seen her at the same restaurants I frequent. She’s unmistakable with her thick, long red hair and the most beautiful clear blue eyes I’ve ever seen.
She is curvy with the kind of hips you just want to grab onto and never let go. She has a full, lush ass that I just want to smack again and again. She’s got perfect breasts with nipples that I just bet are waiting to be put into clamps. She’s even got flawless, smooth alabaster skin.
Every time I see her, I want to approach her, but I can tell that she’s the good girl. She’s precisely the type of girl that should be staying far, far away from a guy like me. I would corrupt her so severely that she wouldn’t remember who she was before I sank my claws into her.
Still, there was something about her that I couldn’t get past. There was something about her that was calling out to me. I followed her to her car one afternoon and wrote down her license plate number. A quick search revealed pretty much everything there was to know about her.
And it was fucking darker than I could have imagined.
Chapter 1
Hannah
The time I’d been waiting for had arrived. All of my hard work was about to pay off. At last, I was going to have something to show for all those sleepless nights spent studying with only coffee and Monster energy drinks to keep me going.
Although it felt like the day was never going to come, I was finally sitting among my University of Nevada, Las Vegas classmates inside the Thomas & Mack Center as we waited for graduation to begin.
It felt a little strange to be sitting in a chair on the floor, looking around at the 18,000 chairs that I’ve sat in for so many basketball and hockey games, and concerts.
The day had been bittersweet for me. On the one hand, I was so excited to be putting my education behind me and moving onto the next chapter in my life. I was graduating near the top of my class.My future certainly looked bright, but I didn’t really have anyone to share it with. While I am a very friendly person, there are very few people in life that I consider to be actual friends. It’s always been hard for me to get close to people.
Getting close to people has never worked out for me. If there is one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that everyone leaves eventually. It doesn’t matter if they promise they’ll be there forever, they always leave. It’s been easier to hide my feelings and avoid the closeness altogether.
I’ve always been more of a loner, and a lot of that can be attributed to the fact that I am the very definition of a Type-A personality. I don’t consider myself to be OCD, but others may disagree with that. While my private personal space is an organized mess, it’s essential to me that I keep everything that can be seen publicly organized and uncluttered.
My private personal space is the bubble where I allow chaos to rule. Outside of that, the chaos has to stay away.
My entire life has been filled with heartache and pain. My childhood is mainly a blur. While most kids remember things like birthday parties and events at school, my first memory is from when I was five-years-old. I see it almost every time I close my eyes: my mother lying dead at the bottom of the stairs.
Everyone leaves eventually. That’s been my motto ever since that day. Yes, even as a child, I knew it to be true, and it’s been proven over and over again by everyone who has entered my life.
I can’t afford to focus on things like that, so instead, I focus on what I can handle: running. I like to go on long runs to burn off all this extra energy I have. More importantly, it does a great job of keeping my mind quiet.
Since then, it’s just been my father and me. He stepped up in a big way after my mom died and he’s easily the person I’m closest to. He played the role of mother and father the best he could, and he made it clear that he would always be around for me, which was why I was upset when I looked around the gathering audience and didn’t see him anywhere.
He had made such a big deal about how excited he was to finally see his only daughter graduate
from college, so it was worrying me not to see him there, especially since the ceremony was so close to starting. I only hoped he’d be able to slip in before I actually walked up to receive my degree.
About the Author
Derek Masters is an erotic romance author from the Kansas City, MO area. He graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in criminal justice, but discovered that writing was his true passion. You can often find him talking sports at local hole in the wall bars or working on his next novel in a crowded coffee shop.
www.derekmasters.com
[email protected]
Also by Derek Masters
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Stalker
Twisted Steel
Only You
Only Me
His Vegas Bomb
His Nasty Nerd
Bought
Bent
Broken
A Magical Trip Page 3
