Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 66977 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66977 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Date is a PLACEHOLDER .
Will change closer to release.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
Slater
See, this is why they teach you to always clear your fucking corners first.
Deep, low, groans of discomfort rattle my already unstable frame as I struggle to find my footing – both literally and figuratively.
I mean…it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve been electrocuted.
Fuck, it’s not even the first time I’ve been electrocuted this year.
But I swear six ways to Sunday this shit better be the last.
I’m so fucking done with battling electricity.
And I’m really fucking done with damn near losing to it.
Lifting my eyelids is the first action I successfully complete and strangely enough it occurs simultaneously with someone else falling to the ground beside me. Who he is or why we’re now floor buddies are two questions I want answers to, just not at this moment.
Not when I have to get my ass up and save my woman’s life.
Saving her is the only thing that matters.
It’s the only thing that’ll ever matter.
A faint voice I wish I didn’t recognize quickly inquires, “Are you alright, Arlette?!”
“Did you just punch that guy in the face?!” the love of my life squeaks back in total, impressed surprise.
Great.
Now, her ex is the hero, and I’m just the asshole who’s lying around on the job.
You know.
Just the shit this situation needed.
“Where did you learn to punch someone?!”
Punching someone isn’t hard.
She could punch someone if she tried.
Perhaps him.
Maybe she should practice on him.
I vote she practices on him.
“I know my way around the ring,” Seventeen confesses a little more clearly, indicating my senses are returning to a more stable condition.
The ring?
Doubtful.
I’ve got five hundred bucks and a bottle of unopened aged whiskey from a diplomat whose son I rescued last summer that says it was a lucky hit.
“How did I not know that?” Arley asks, voice seemingly moving closer to me.
“Guess I’m not the only one with things to learn over dinner.”
Oh…this shit just keeps getting better and better.
Instead of worrying if I’m okay or even alive, he’s flirting with her?
Trying to make a goddamn date?
Over. My. Dead. Body. Evander Phonyfield.
And despite how it looks, I’m not fucking dead yet.
I fight the aftershock trembles trying to keep me immobilized prompting her to cry out, “Ohmygod, Slater!”
The sweet sound of her voice does what it always does.
Encourages me to keep going.
Lifts me higher.
“Please be okay! Please tell me that you’re okay!” Prying my torso off the ground barely precedes her sweet voice croaking, “Say something! Anything, Cowboy!”
Unfortunately, there isn’t time to do that or threaten the man who now owes DPD a hefty donation from my Fast and Furious reenactment due to the individual beside me shaking away the oversold punch. His eyes suddenly meet mine, widen in what I imagine to be fear, and begin frantically searching the scene for his lost weapon. Rather than give him the opportunity to locate it, I deliver an elbow drop center mass, not only knocking all the air out of his lungs but crushing his ribs in the process of pinning him beneath me.
Ignoring the small tremors still doing their best to rattle my system, I mercilessly clamp my hand around the assailant’s throat and bark, “Secure the weapon!”
The lack of hesitation Arley exhibits is both surprising and exhilarating. One moment she’s fearfully screeching in the doorframe – sounding and looking helpless – yet the next she’s standing over the attacker with a pistol locked, loaded, and ready to shoot when I give the command.
Pretty sure if it wasn’t so goddamn painful to simply move, my dick would be standing at full attention over that shit.
I can’t be bothered to hide the crooked grin that grows upon meeting her gaze. “That order wasn’t for you, Angel Cake.”
She shoots me back a cocky smirk. “Okay, but you didn’t not say me, Cowboy.”
“Alright, but I didn’t mean you.”
“But I didn’t know that!”
“I never mean you when we’re in the field!”
“Are we in the field!?”
Seventeen cuts off my ability to respond with his panicking, “Do you even know how to use that thing?!”
Rather than retort with words, she fires off a single round into the floor space directly beside the aggressor’s ear, missing it by mere centimeters, an action that causes him to twitch around in my hold. “I think I’ve got it covered!” Her face winces at the ear-piercing sound that’s now reverberating throughout the empty hallway. “Forgot how loud that is without plugs!”
“We don’t exactly wear ‘em for fun, Angel Cake,” I mutter more to myself than her considering the ringing she’s experiencing is probably too loud for her to hear me. Moving myself upward to a sitting position is accompanied by forcefully slamming the male into the nearby wall for additional securing. “Kill him if he moves.”
“Roger that,” my woman instantly acknowledges as though she’s done this shit a million times.
Which she hasn’t.
Or…at least…I don’t think she has.