Protection Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue – Nick

  Epilogue

  Blurb

  Nicole

  Nick

  Would You Like More of This Couple?

  Author’s Notes

  Keep in Touch with Jay, Kendra and Savannah!

  Protection

  A Military Bad Boy Romance

  Jay S. Wilder

  Kendra Wild

  Savannah Knight

  Contents

  Blurb

  Prologue – Nick

  1. Nicole

  2. Nicole

  3. Nicole

  4. Nicole

  5. Nick

  6. Nick

  7. Nicole

  8. Nicole

  9. Nicole

  10. Nick

  11. Nick

  12. Nick

  13. Nick

  14. Nicole

  15. Nicole

  16. Nick

  17. Nick

  18. Nicole

  19. Nicole

  20. Nick

  21. Nick

  22. Nicole

  23. Nicole

  24. Nick

  25. Nick

  26. Nicole

  27. Nick

  28. Nick

  29. Nicole

  30. Nicole

  31. Nick

  32. Nick

  33. Nicole

  34. Nicole

  35. Nick

  36. Nicole

  37. Epilogue

  Would You Like More of This Couple?

  Author’s Notes

  Keep in Touch with Jay, Kendra and Savannah!

  COPYRIGHT

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Protection

  Copyright © 2017 Jay S. Wilder

  All rights reserved

  Blurb

  They’ll ask me to kill her, but I’m going to make her mine.

  I was raised to kill. With no family ties, the army trained me and sent me to war. When that was over, the Company hired me for my special skills.

  I solve problems.

  To the Company, that’s what Nicole Hunt has become.

  Nicole witnessed a secret meeting. It’s bad enough that she stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. The problem is, she took a valuable piece of technology for safe keeping. Which is why they sent me to watch her.

  Big mistake.

  And all I can do is stare at her mile-long legs and sexy curves. One touch and I’m f**king addicted.

  She’s a good girl.

  I’m a cold, hard, filthy killer.

  Together, we’ll break every rule to stay alive.

  And when it’s all over, I’ll own her.

  Prologue – Nick

  Rockland County

  “Make love to me,” she repeated in his ear.

  It wasn’t a good idea to read too much into that one word he had evaded all his life. Love wasn’t for him. He’d never felt it, not with a father he barely knew and a mother who gave him away. Sure, his adopted parents had tried, but he always felt like a hand-me-down.

  He’d never let a woman get this close enough. Ever.

  Yet, Nicole spread out underneath him, naked and unafraid, asking the sweetest request of all.

  Nick adjusted above her and began kissing and licking his way south, appreciating every inch of her as he made his way down. As his lips pressed against her flat stomach, her hands pushed his shoulders, silently begging him to pick up the pace. Sweeping his tongue along her lower belly, he stopped at her moon-shaped birthmark, causing her to moan out another plea and raise her hips up, giving him easier access.

  He moved further down still, closing in on her pelvis, and lifted a hand to play with her erect nipples. The way she responded to every move he made was just beautiful. He wanted to savor every moment and make sure Nicole would remember this time, if nothing else.

  Close now, he lifted up slightly, hovering over her pussy as Nicole called to him, pleading for his touch. He shifted his eyes up to hers and spread her legs wide across the bed. Once he had her full attention, he returned his gaze back down at her pink slit. God, she was perfect. It was something he didn’t get the luxury of enjoying while they were crammed inside the airplane restroom, using each other’s body for pure primal. Now, he could stop and appreciate all of her.

  Now, she was glistening with need, primed and ready for him.

  Dragging his thumb up to her center, he indulged himself in the absolute pleasure of her wet heat. He heard her quick intake of breath hissing in and out, as she tried to maintain control. Too bad she’d already handed that over to him the second she asked him to take her.

  Nick adjusted, stretching out on the large bed as he lowered his mouth to touch her hot skin. Gently, he nipped at her folds, then went all in with his tongue, licking her swollen nub.

  “Oh, Nick… yes.”

  He nipped his teeth against the nub, teasing it as he pulled a hushed cry from her. Loving the sensation as much as her voice, he gently licked her, slowing down each pass of his tongue because he wasn’t ready to stop just yet. With a slight shift of his legs, he adjusted to a kneeling position, spreading her out more widely, parting her flesh. He pressed his mouth against her, this time to feast on her. He wanted her to remember how it felt having him fuck her with his mouth too.

  Hard and rough.

  Soft and slow.

  And everything in between.

  “Oh God, Nick… what you do to me… it’s so amazing.”

  “This is mine,” he muttered against her glistening clit.

  The words caught even him by surprise, and he stopped, glancing up her body. Their eyes locked.

  Yes.

  Nicole would remember this for a long time.

  He watched as her eyes fluttered closed, and her body writhed to encourage him—beg, really—to continue. He took the invitation to keep going when she raised her hips and pressed her pussy toward his mouth. After a few second of making her wait, he lowered to her again, delivering what she needed until she cried through her approaching orgasm.

  Nick had never seen anything more beautiful, sexy, and wanton in his whole life. She was wild, witty, sweet. Something special. Nothing else mattered. Not their escape from the airport. Not his job. Not that goddamned data drive.

  His mouth.

  Her pussy.

  Her orgasm.

  His pleasure.

  In the blink of an eye, Nicole had become his everything.

  1

  Nicole

  Silicon Valley, California

  “Don’t work too late, Nicole,” he said, punctuating his words with a wink.

  That fucking bastard, she thought, but lifted her hand to wag her index finger at him.

  A grin swept over his smug, selfish, smoking hot face. Ryan Malone was taunting her, putting Nicole in her place as his subordinate. He did this all the time, as if it was fine for her to keep working at one-thirty in the morning until she was bleary-eyed and too exhausted to have a social life herself while she covered for his incompetence. And he treated her this way just so he could get to the bar down the street to make last call. A drink.

  A few drinks.

  She let out an aggravated sigh that lifted her long, brown hair off her forehead for a second. It had happened again. She’d let that prick drown her in work—his work—so he could pick up some woman waiting at the bar for the last guy possible, get good and laid, and then drink his sorry ass into the next afternoon, on most weekdays. Now, it was Friday night, so that meant the son of a bitch could start his weekend early. She thought she was being a team player for agreeing to it the first time. Good old Nic
ole showing she was just as good as the other programmers. Okay, she’d helped out more than once. Twice was maybe a little naïve, but night after night throughout this entire eighteen-month project?

  She gritted her teeth together. “You’re the biggest fucking idiot,” she muttered as she gripped the computer mouse as if they were Ryan’s balls in a vice.

  This stint in software development at the Silicon Valley head office of Terratech Incorporated was only supposed to be a ten-month gig for Nicole. However, Ryan liked her work so much he extended her contract for another ten months. She should have turned him down, but she loved the work here in the San Francisco area and participating in projects that meant something and made a tangible contribution. Terratech was a software and hardware tech firm, handling military technology contract work exclusively for the military departments of the United States government.

  Nicole had graduated from college at the top of her class. Because she had enough extra hours in computer programming, she fast-tracked through a master’s degree in record time. She could have had her choice of many top firms through the country and abroad, but, of course, being an Air Force brat, she knew the calling toward government work would eventually be too loud to ignore. Her father, retired US Air Force Brigadier General Harlan Hunt, could have made a few calls, pulled a few strings to help her get a job at the Pentagon, but Nicole struck out on her own, landing this contract with Terratech. The work was perfectly suited to her training and prior experience, and the money was damn good.

  Not that she ever got the time to spend any of it, but whatever.

  From her workstation, she lifted her eyes and tilted her head to watch Ryan’s tight, sexy ass as he stood waiting for the elevator. She blinked hard, trying to imagine what he’d look like without those well-fit jeans on, but her computer beeped at her, bringing her back to the fact that he had a life and she did not.

  She sighed again and started moving her fingers over the keyboard. Even getting to check out Ryan’s fine piece of ass every day wasn’t worth this. Her own tasks on the project were challenging enough, but adding his duties on top of hers, well, it was just one big headache. Her days ran into each other with the long hours, shitty meals from crap restaurants and fast food places, shifting priorities, tight timelines, no lag time, and damn near becoming one with her office chair as she constantly stared at what felt like miles and miles of code scrolling across her monitor. Now, she had to deal with this arrogant, lazy, sexy bastard of a project manager.

  He might have his choice of women at the bar tonight—any night—while Nicole didn’t even have the energy to muster up a quickie with her dildo when she got home.

  Ding.

  Nicole shook off the image of her lack of sex, even with herself, as Ryan stepped onto the elevator. She watched him turn to hit the button that would take him to his prime parking spot in the underground lot. Before the doors closed, he lifted his hand and blew her a kiss.

  Well, fuck me.

  That man could manipulate, and as usual, Nicole fell for it. It was another late night, pushing close to their deadline, and now she had to handle the rest alone. She pressed on, telling herself she’d only stay for another two hours.

  Nicole pored over lines and lines of code, rewriting and calculating, toggling from one screen to the other. Keeping busy like this was good for her because it kept her mind off her personal life—or her lack of one—and the fact that she hadn’t spoken to her father in over a month. Her relationship with her father became strained after Nicole’s mother died twelve years ago. Nicole was not quite twelve herself when her mother died. Her father was still active military then, so Nicole was mostly alone since then. Whenever her father was around, their interaction was strained and… unnatural. The love and affection in their household always stemmed from her mother,.

  A day didn’t pass by without a memory of her mother’s ivory face and dark hair. Every time Nicole looked in the mirror, her mother’s eyes always stared back. Maybe that was why her father was so withdrawn from her over the last decade. She looked so much like her mother. Or maybe it was because Nicole knew the truth…

  “God, don’t go there,” Nicole spat out at herself, her words echoing throughout the empty office suite.

  She jammed her fingers into her loose hair and rubbed her aching skull. Two hours turned into five before she even realized it. All that time was a waste, considering that she’d been consumed with a few hundred lines of code that at the moment, kicked her ass into submission. Glancing at her clock didn’t help, and only contributed to a longer, more ragged release of air with a low groan. The morning sun was coming up, casting a golden hue of glare on her monitor.

  Time to wrap up and go.

  With a few flicks of her wrist and fingers in synchrony that only comes from habit, she logged out of her workstation, stood up, and stretched. She looked out over the cubicles in her section, and not a single head bobbed in front of any of the computer monitors. She was usually in before anyone else, but this being a Saturday morning, no one would be arriving anytime soon. Even though they were so close to the project’s deadline, no one had opted to come in yet over the weekend to put in some extra hours. Unlike her, they were either asleep in their beds, or in someone else’s bed, with said person, each of them fucking the other’s brains out. Hell, Ryan Malone was probably doing the latter. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the image, as well as the ache in her stomach that reminded her how much she missed being touched by a man in all the right places, and reached for her water bottle.

  She stared at the curly pink letters on the container that read ‘Janine’s Bride Tribe – Nicole’, a useful and non-dick decorated keepsake from her friend, Janine’s bachelorette party in Haight-Ashbury six months ago. Janine certainly wasn’t missing a man’s touch. In fact, she was already three months pregnant.

  Nicole let out another sigh, realizing she was absolutely parched and needed to rehydrate before making the twenty-minute walk to her loft apartment. It was a cute rental she’d snagged from an online site and was great for the short-term period of her contract with an easy month-to-month option. She’d love to find something permanent—apartment, job… man—and really make a commitment to the San Francisco Bay area, but having lived the roaming life of a military brat, shorter assignments and brief contracts were best right now.

  As she made her way toward the lunch room and the perfectly cold water cooler humming just inside the door, she spotted her image in the reflection of the shiny supply cabinet. Her long, brown hair was a bit of a mess, but still framed her face nicely. At five-foot-six, she was fit, but not too skinny, athletic, but not overly muscled. People told her she was pretty, although she never really understood comments like that.

  So what’s the damn problem?

  She stared at herself and wondered.

  What was wrong with her? Did she not deserve happiness? A social life? Sex? God forbid… love? She’d had a few short-term relationships in college, but nothing serious or lasting and certainly nothing here in the Silicon Valley since she started working here at Terratech. Was she holding herself back too much? Was her affair with the programming job taking her away from having a real life?

  This was asinine. She shouldn’t be doing this to herself. She was smart, had a good job, and made a decent salary. Everything would come in due time. She needed to get over her anxiousness and anxiety. These swirling thoughts were simply a result of overwork and lack of sleep.

  Nicole continued down the hallway through the maze of cubicles. Since no one else was here, she thought she’d take a shortcut to the water cooler by cutting through the corridor to the executive boardroom near the back entrance to the kitchen.

  She filled the personalized water bottle and drained it in short, quick gulps, enjoying the feel of the cold liquid sliding down her throat. As she refilled the bottle, Nicole paused, thinking she heard voices. She snickered to herself at the small victory of someone else actually coming into work
. As she sipped her water, though, it didn’t exactly sound like another programmer from the team or even one of the managers.

  She poked her head out into the hallway only to hear the voices—more than one—rise a bit. It wasn’t uncommon to hear the odd person on the phone or a small team using the board room to do a brainstorming session. However, to hear what sounded like a formal board meeting at this time on a Saturday morning was definitely out of the ordinary.

  2

  Nicole

  Had Ryan come back in? Struck with guilt? Calling a managerial meeting to praise her for her dedication.

  Nicole stopped in her tracks when she heard what was definitely… another language?

  She tucked her water bottled in the crook of her arm and cocked her head to the left to listen closely. Although the sun was teasing through the tinted windows of the building, it provided just enough light for her to make out the figures of two… three… four… five men inside the conference room. Each was overdressed for o-dark-thirty on a Saturday morning, as if they had an important business conference to attend.

  Leaning back into the doorframe, she held her breath. The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention as her female intuition kicked into high gear. Not over anything maternal or sensual or physical, just that something was… off. Terratech dealt strictly and exclusively in US military clients, but these guys in the boardroom certainly weren’t spit shined and polished in dress blues or camouflage or sporting any ribbons, stripes, or medals. These men were more off the pages of an Armani ad.

  She understood having high-ranking brass up here to schmooze during office hours by the VPs and other pricks around here. However, this pre-dawn gathering veered toward the clandestine end of things. She thought for a moment of being helpful, going back to the kitchen area and maybe putting on a pot of coffee for the meeting attendees. That would only come off as a suck-up move, and just wasn’t in her DNA. She was all about doing the job, doing it right, and taking the praise for doing it well and delivered on time. Just like the data project she was working all night.