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  “I really don’t want to talk about it.” The glacial air wasn’t so attractive now. She surged to her feet, intending to go in, ask to use the phone at the hostess stand, and call one of the girls from work to pick her up. It was well past Racer’s bedtime, and part of Sage’s treatment plan for her postpartum depression included regular sleep.

  She had to slide against the wall to get back to the door. The wall that Suit Stud was easily able to use to his advantage.

  As he straddled her head with both his hands, he pinned her lower body inside the cage of his legs. “Then let’s not talk, beautiful.”

  He could not be serious. “I—I think you have things a little twisted, buddy.”

  He scowled at her. He was probably pretty cute when he wanted to be, and the bewilderment in his eyes spoke volumes about this being a tried-and-true tactic for him.

  “King Kong dumped you, right? So screw him. Time to take back your life.”

  Damn. Okay, he was serious. “And you’re here to help?” She quirked an eyebrow.

  Suit Stud leaned closer, dipping his dark-blue gaze to her mouth. “Don’t get mad. Get even.”

  “No.”

  The growl, so vicious that she wondered how it didn’t visibly knife the air, made Suit Stud shift back a little. Two seconds later, he was forcibly hauled back by six feet. Even then, Zeke didn’t let the poor guy out of his grip. He sat the man in a large decorative planter, face branded in wrath, lips curling in rage.

  “The only ‘getting’ around here is lost, asshole. By you. If you dare even peek at her while you leave, I’ll grab you again for a little neck-breaking practice, got it?”

  Chapter Five

  “Zeke!”

  The horrified glimmer in Rayna’s eyes cut deep into his gut. The stare was identical to the one she’d worn when he’d been ready to kill Mua’s men for attacking her in the street outside Bastille last year. And God help his fucked-up soul, a lot of that same protective fire burned through him now.

  After collecting himself on the dance floor, he’d scoured the club looking for her, needing to make sure she was all right. She’d left her purse at their table, and he didn’t think she was distraught enough to leave without it, but he couldn’t be sure, and that scared the crap out of him. Christ. Her collar had only been around his fingers instead of her neck for ten minutes, and he already felt as aimless as a lion tamer in Antarctica. Or perhaps the lion itself.

  After prowling through the place, including a sneaky check of the ladies’ room with his own eyes, he’d caught sight of her outside, being hit on by fifty shades of smooth operator. And his world had gone code red.

  The color still fringed his vision as he parked pretty boy’s ass more firmly in the planter. “Go inside, Rayna,” he growled.

  “Zeke, he didn’t do—”

  “Go inside, Rayna.”

  As the glass door whooshed open and then shut, pretty boy glowered at him. “Look, asshole. I was playing nice. I don’t make women do anything they don’t want—”

  “Who the hell are you calling ‘asshole’?” He yanked the guy up by his trendy tie. “Last time I checked, the umbrella of that definition was big enough to include dickheads who openly move in on someone else’s woman.” He leaned over the guy farther, grimacing at model boy’s glare of defiance. “Does that sound like playing nice, pretty prince?”

  The guy held up his hands. “Hey, I apologize if I misread the situation. I didn’t know you two were just having a spat. Looked like a breakup to me. She’s not wearing a ring. You can’t blame a guy for making a play to be rebound man, right?”

  A couple of new sensations curled through Z’s chest. Shame. And regret. He swallowed hard before letting the guy loose. “No,” he muttered, “I guess I can’t.” Hell. He’d definitely made plays to be rebound man a few times in his wilder days. Scorching sex, no strings; a coveted gig, indeed.

  His stomach churned at the thought of doing something like that now. It roiled harder when he thought of anybody being Rayna’s rebound man. Ever.

  He mumbled an apology to pretty boy, which the guy easily accepted. But even after the man returned to the bar, his words clung to the air and chilled Z’s bones deeper than the winter mist.

  She’s not wearing a ring…can’t blame a guy…right?

  His bones were freezing. But his spirit was galvanized.

  With a pace he usually reserved for busting in on terrorists, he stormed back inside. As he’d prayed, Rayna was still there. She sat at their table with her coat on and her phone in hand, fixated on the screen as if debating who to call for a ride home. A knot of dread and urgency formed in his stomach. He rocket-boosted the speed on his advance. Put the phone away, Ray-bird.

  As soon as she saw him, she stood. She wasn’t on her feet for very long. He grabbed her, hauled her against him, and crushed her to him in a smash of lips filled with one purpose. Raw, pure possession.

  “Ummm…huh?” she murmured when he let her go, many minutes later.

  Z gazed at her, tugging at her scalp with the same unalterable command that laced his response. “I’m—” I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry. I was wrong. Worse than wrong. I was an idiot. “I’m—”

  Her eyes warmed with gorgeous green lights. “What?”

  “I’m—taking you shopping tomorrow.”

  The lights disappeared. Her gaze narrowed. “Shopping? Why?”

  “You’re going to pick out a ring.”

  “I’m going to what?”

  “You heard me.”

  Her whole face crunched. “No, I’m not sure I did.”

  The adorable pinches at the corners of her mouth were open temptations to kiss her again. Instead, he gripped her head tighter and made sure his gaze drilled deep into hers. “I’m saying…that…I never want this to happen again, okay? You’re mine, Rayna—and damn it, I want the whole world to know it. So let’s go do this thing. I’m ready.”

  Her expression only tightened more. Inch by excruciating inch, she slipped from his hold. As if fate knew he needed a helping hand, the band began a new song. He almost turned and gave the guys a fist pump of thanks. What could express things better in this moment than the classic Aerosmith ballad about not wanting to miss a thing about her? She had to understand things now, right?

  Wrong.

  The tangle in his gut cinched tighter as she stepped back again. “Thirty minutes ago, your story was different.” She shook her head, the move as uneven as her voice. “How have things changed in the eighteen hundred seconds since then?”

  He swallowed hard. Grimaced against the burn in his chest. He’d only known this feeling a few times in his life—every time the team had fallen short on a mission or lost a man in the doing. “Because they were the worst goddamn seconds of my life.”

  “Because I was outside talking to another guy?”

  The burn became a growl. “He wanted to do more than talk, bird.”

  “No shit, soldier. But I was fine handling the situation on my own, okay?” She threw up a hand when he drew breath to protest. “You may know how to fillet a man fifteen ways and jump out of an airplane prettier than an angel, but I went through the same basic training you did, Sergeant. I could’ve turned his backside into a weed just as fast as you did. Remember that.”

  Her rant pushed him down the hill straight into frustrated and desperate, though not before bouncing over boulders of seriously turned-on. The conflict left him standing in a weird paralysis, hands curling into fists, eyes fixed on their dinners, which could have been lemur shit for all the appetite he had now. Like anything about this situation felt any more comfortable. Even the tense moments on the dance floor with her had been better. At least he’d been able to rehearse all that. But this, right here and now…sucked. This was his emotional backside, bare and exposed, hanging off the side of life’s Black Hawk over the surface of fucking Mars. It was strange and scary, and he had no idea what to do except lift his head far enough to mumble back, “Duly noted.”


  The song ended. As the band announced they were taking a break, an uncomfortable silence descended. Rayna tugged at the cuff of her coat as she shifted from one foot to the other. “You know that I love you, Ezekiel Gabriel,” she finally murmured.

  Z let a dark rumble vibrate up his throat. “Yeah, firebird. I do.”

  “Then you also know I won’t go shopping with you tomorrow.”

  She took a soft step closer, which made him look directly back at her again. Fuck, she was so beautiful in the candlelight. Ethereal…and sorrowful.

  “You’re talking about opening up a big chunk of your soul, mister—because as your wife, I’ll demand no less. Less than an hour ago, that wasn’t a change you thought you could make.” She reached into his jacket pocket, where her collar was coiled at the bottom. She pulled it out and wound the leather strand around his fingers. “My heart is in your hands, Sir. Be true to yours in deciding what to do with it. I’ve earned that much from you, Zeke. No matter what you decide, I deserve your truth.”

  He couldn’t reply. But damn it, there was so much to say. She grabbed him in the gonads now just as hard as the night they first met, when the nastiness of doing his job had faded beneath the awe of her serene strength, the enchantment with her frank humor. With the clarity of hindsight, he realized he’d started to fall in love with her right then.

  Life had never been the same since. It would never be the same again.

  Every stunning glimmer in Rayna’s eyes told him that she knew that too, which meant her demand deserved every shred of honesty he could give in return. She’d given him nothing less from the start, in her friendship, her submission, and her love—and she’d offered him that truth even after discovering how ugly his really was. She’d accepted him, even after seeing his street rat past and his extreme Dom present. She saw how it all meshed to make him the soldier she supported and the man she adored.

  She loved him in spite of everything. Because of everything.

  But he’d been making her extend that love from a distance, behind some damn high fences.

  It was pretty fucking hard to get a ring on a woman’s finger through a fence.

  Could he take the ax out and do it? Let her into places in his life, in his heart, that nobody had been since his tenth birthday?

  He owed her an honest answer to that—no matter how shitty the answer might be for them both.

  Chapter Six

  For the six hundredth time in the last three days, Rayna was wide-awake at four a.m., thanks to the most masochistic question her conscience had ever created.

  Why didn’t you just say yes?

  She shook her head and stared at the ceiling, wishing for an answer to magically burn itself there. An answer that made sense, anyway. Because when the man of a woman’s dreams made her most precious fantasy come true, wasn’t she supposed to shut the hell up for all answers except one? Wasn’t she supposed to thank fate for the gift, unwrap it as fast as she could, and clutch it selfishly forever?

  “No.”

  She deliberately voiced the assertion aloud, breaking the thick silence of her bedroom. She didn’t yell or sob it. She only needed to hear it, soft and steady with conviction, reinforcing the power of no to the very depths of her heart. Sometimes, no had to be okay. Sometimes, no was for the best. She refused to settle for yes out of desperation, fear, and Z’s misplaced jealousy. She was better than that. They were better than that.

  She knew Zeke got that part, at least in his heart. But forcing his soul to slog through years of baggage for it too? Making the man look at parts of himself that hadn’t been vulnerable since he was a kid? Telling him he had to shuck the backpack of pain that he’d carried for twenty years and then jump off the ultimate cliff of commitment with her?

  As the days went by, she started losing hope about a happy answer to that.

  The conclusion, as quiet as her affirmation, somehow ninja’d past her composure and gashed into her heart. The tears she refused to shed were now impossible to fight, racking her as she grabbed for another pillow. His pillow. Every inhalation was filled with the smell of him. Every exhalation ached with the loss of him. She cried until exhaustion overcame her, dragging her into a sleep as bleak as her heartbreak.

  * * *

  What a weird but wonderful dream.

  The trill of an Irish whistle floated on the breeze, and a choir sang along with it. They sounded incredible, harmonizing perfectly on one of her favorite Celine Dion songs. Even the doves sounded pretty, cooing together as if trying to echo the chorus themselves. Crazy Mrs. Hopper from next door babbled something about them being hungry and she’d be right back after grabbing some bread crumbs for them…

  Mrs. Hopper? Talking to a bunch of doves?

  She bolted upright in bed.

  Okay, she was awake now. The drool and tearstains on Z’s former pillow were proof of that. But the choir was still singing. And the doves tried to warble with them again.

  “What the hell?”

  She shoved her hair off her face while shrugging into her robe. While she stumbled into the kitchen, she stubbed her toe. Since three out of the five toes on her right foot now screamed in pain, she determined she was really awake. Yet the music continued. Where was it coming fr—

  “What. The. Hell?”

  It was the last thing she stammered before her mouth popped open in shock. Perhaps permanently.

  The choir, probably twenty or thirty strong, stood on her front lawn. Their red and gold robes matched the dozen standing candelabra that flanked her front walk, all draped in red satin with their tapers alight. The sidewalk between them was swathed in a plush red runner. Standing in the middle of that runner was someone who vaguely resembled Zeke Hayes.

  “Vaguely” was an understatement. The man had slicked back his hair and shaved his scruff. His shoulders looked even more enormous with dual gold epaulets that draped over a fitted crimson jacket with military accents. His legs, encased in black pants, were covered to the knee in black Hessian boots. He looked gorgeous and nervous and sincere, a breathtaking prince right out of a fairy tale, which made her feel five kinds of perverted for wishing she could rip all of it off him and have her way with him right there on the sidewalk.

  Wild fantasy aside, her hand shook as she waved at him through the big front window. As he smiled back, a little of the Zsycho smirk appeared. He approached the porch while she opened the front door.

  “My queen, Rayna.” As soon as he murmured it, the choir faded their voices into soft hums.

  Her hand still trembled as he pulled it between both of his. “Errmmm…my king, Zeke?”

  She wanted to giggle, but his mien became even more solemn. She’d rarely seen this kind of intensity in him outside the Bastille’s dungeons. It made her knees turn to mush…and her pussy turn to fire. Thank God she was wearing a robe. And underwear.

  She had no idea what to expect next, but this man taking a knee before her certainly wasn’t it. His pride, forged as a boy in the crucible of the Seattle streets, was the one thing Zeke never relented to anyone. But here he was, bowing his head to kiss the tips of her fingers before he swept the incredible fire of his gaze back up to her.

  “You asked if I was willing to change for you, Rayna. For us.” One side of his mouth lifted a little. “But the truth is that I already have. You’ve changed me with your light and your love in my life and in my heart.” He pulled back to retrieve something from his pocket. Her collar. Though he only pressed it into her palm, the cool caress of the leather brought new tears to her eyes. It felt like heaven. Better still, it felt like home. “I love you, Rayna. And I need you. Kneeling at my feet as my submissive…standing at my side as my wife.”

  She barely suppressed a sob as the choir fell silent. A breeze kicked up down the street, but all the candles stayed amazingly lit. Zeke barely moved. She wasn’t sure he even breathed.

  “If she doesn’t say yes, gorgeous, you just bring that scrumptious ass over here.”

>   Everyone broke out in laughter at Mrs. Hopper’s flirtation. Through her giggles and her tears, Rayna looked down at the hulk who’d transformed into a prince for her. The soldier who’d fought so many of her enemies, including his own demons. And the Dom who’d set her free from her own dark nightmares.

  “I think I need to go get dressed,” she finally told him.

  Zeke’s brows waggled. “You look just fine to me, honey.”

  “Not if I’m going to let you take me shopping, Sir.”

  Zeke’s grin split his face apart as he surged to his feet and conquered her mouth in a consuming kiss. Cheers rose up, including Mrs. Hopper’s gleeful screech, as the wings of fifty doves beat the air in celebration. As Zeke kept kissing her, the choir started singing again.

  Aerosmith had never sounded so good.

  Diamonds in the Rain

  Ethan Archer and Ava Chestain

  Chapter One

  “Hello, Rock.”

  Ava Chestain made sure to issue the greeting beneath her breath even though her fiancé, Ethan Archer, was all the way across their suite at the Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay. He wouldn’t be happy to hear her talking to her engagement ring again. And he’d be outright seething, in a not-so-yummy-Dom kind of way, if he learned what she was calling the thing. But she couldn’t help it. The ring had at least twenty clear diamonds arranged in a burst pattern around a four-carat yellow diamond that had been custom-cut for the setting. Ethan had slipped it on her finger just three days ago, proposing to her—for a second time—on the Santa Monica pier at sunset in front of a cheering crowd.