Stripping Her Defenses E-Book

Amanda Adams

• Herausgeber: Tydbyts Media
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Daniel Martin is home after ten years serving his country, but war—and the secrets that follow him—hold him in an unrelenting grip.

There is no one he wants to see more than Chloe, but he missed his chance with her ten years ago. Pushed her away and told her to find someone else. He had wanted her—badly. But his life had been a mess, and they’d both been too young. He’d made her hate him, but he’d had nothing to offer her.

Now, protecting his unit comes at a high price. Falling in love is dangerous. Believing the past will stay buried, where it can’t hurt her, is a risk.

If he takes Chloe to bed, there will be no escape for either of them.

If he kisses her, he’ll never want to stop.

If he touches her, he won’t be able to walk away.

He needs to walk away.

Then he sees her…and it’s too late.

He will risk everything to make her his. But how will he convince her that’s he not the boy who broke her heart, but a man determined to cherish her forever?

Leseprobe

Stripping Her Defenses

Secret Maneuvers, Book 1

By

Amanda Adams

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

About Stripping Her Defenses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

Books by Amanda Adams

Copyright

Stripping Her Defenses: Copyright © 2017 by Amanda Adams

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, digital or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning or by any type of data storage and retrieval system without express, written permission from the author.

Published by Amanda Adams as Tydbyts Media.

Adams, Amanda

Stripping Her Defenses, Secret Maneuvers Book 1

Cover design © 2017 by ebookindiecovers/Melody Simmons

About Stripping Her Defenses

Stripping Her Defenses (Secret Maneuvers, Book 1) by Amanda Adams

Regret is a strange thing…sometimes it drops a man to his knees. But sometimes it’s more like a slow drip poison. I’ve only ever regretted two things in my life. Walking away from her was one of them...

Duty? Honor? Love? After ten years in the military, they all mean nothing to Daniel, nothing but pain. He's home now, but war—and the secrets that followed him—hold him in an unrelenting grip. It’s dangerous to fall in love, dangerous to believe the past will stay buried where it can’t hurt the people around him, where it can’t hurt her.

But one look at Chloe and he remembers a time when all he worried about was getting his hands on her. Does he deserve a second chance? Hell no. But he's got a new mission now: Strip every single one of Chloe's defenses and win back her heart. He'll use any means necessary to seduce her. And when the past comes calling, he’ll stop at nothing to protect her. Because when he's on a mission, he always gets his mark.

Chapter 1

Daniel Martin, Austin, Texas

Regret is a strange thing. It can be powerful, so crippling it will knock a man to his knees, or so soft and insidious it’s like a slow-drip poison in the mind.

On any given day, I feel both sensations. Not for the decision I made, but for what it cost every single one of the men on the team that day. The truth of the mission afflicted us all though none of us, had we known, would choose to bear this burden. And now that we’ve seen behind the magic curtain, it’s too late to go back. Troy is…gone.

And since time travel isn’t an option—

My six years of war have ended, and I don’t feel like I belong in a suburban home, any more than I belong in this strange echo of a previous life I am destined to live. But now I’m home, back in Texas, with my sister making a fuss upstairs and everything I own in a handful of boxes on her basement floor. The house, the town, the sights and the sounds; none of it has changed, but I have. I could never be the same man I’d been when I left. Standing here, with sunlight streaming in through the windows and the smell of the neighbor’s barbecue filling the air of my sister’s immaculate, eighty-year-old craftsman style home with a porch that seems to stretch for miles, Americana reigns. I half expect a little girl named Betty June to ride up on her Schwinn bicycle, sporting pigtails and bobbysocks, to sell me a ticket to an ice cream social. I am so far removed from what happened in that cave in the mountains of Afghanistan that I should be relieved. Happy. Content.

Not haunted by the ghost of a man the entire world believes to be dead. It’s not his fault, but I resent him, just a little, for the weight of the secret every man on the team now carries. Then again, I can walk down the street, eat at a restaurant and drive a car without constantly looking over my shoulder. It’s hard to hate a guy, a good man who can never go home again, when he’s got a target on his back.

“Daniel, are all of the boxes out of the truck?” My sister Sara’s voice echoes down the stairway, to the harsh surfaces of the finished basement as I bend over the last box, squinting to read the handwriting on the lid. The words looked something like “Iesh,” which probably means they are Josh’s things. No one can read his handwriting without a magic de-coder ring.

“Yeah, I got the last of them,” I call out and head back up the ancient wood stairs. Painted lime green and scuffed from years of footfalls, they creak with every step. The walls of the stairwell smell old, like dust and mildew under pine-scented cleaner. But it’s a place to lay my head at night, a place a bullet or a bomb isn’t going to force me from my bunk, so yeah. Not going to complain.

Standing at the top of the stairs, Sara brushes her hands on her jeans then crosses her arms while she awaits my ascent. She looks great, despite the dark circles I see under her eyes. Her long blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail and her face is bare of makeup. She’s my sister, but she’s cute. I’m not blind. Which is why it’s a good thing I’m moving in. She’s too beautiful to be living in the city without protection.

She’s smart, her eyes seeing more than I want her to as I pull myself up the stairs. My damn knee is flaring up, angry with me for all the moving and lifting.

I don’t care. I ignore the damn thing. I have a knee. I know a lot of guys that don’t.

Sara steps back as I reach her, letting me out of the basement dungeon and shutting the door behind me. “I guess the nice thing about you military guys is that you don’t have a ton of shit lying around.”

“That’s one way to look at it.” I left everything behind. Most of the stuff on the floor downstairs had been in storage the last few years, since the day I shipped out. I’m not even sure I’ll open the boxes. Everything I need to survive is in my oversized duffel bag next to the bed. “I learned quick to travel light, and besides, I don’t need much.”

“So you keep saying. But you’re going to have to get some clothes and more than just a single pair of boots.” Sara raises her eyebrows and gives me the same look I’d seen on our mother’s face about a thousand times—feminine horror.

My buddy Josh and I just got out of the service and his sister, Melanie, is right behind us, discharged just a few days after. Without anywhere else to stay, we planned to bunk down with Sara for the time being. It’s not the greatest arrangement. The house, small by today’s standards, only has two bedrooms and a low slung, damp basement, for what would soon be four people. It would have to work for the time being.

It’s not like we have anywhere else to go, so being picky would be a waste of time. Besides, temperature control, food, and not getting chowed by mosquitoes every night were my only real requirements. A reinforced box with a swamp cooler would do.

I follow my sister into the living room to find Josh sprawled out on the sofa. “Hey, did you get that last box?” Josh tips back a can of soda and grins at me.

“Yeah, thanks for the help, dickhead. You get lost on the way to the basement?” I drop the box in his lap. “Also, you write for shit. How did your SATs go? If they give out essay points for legibility, I’m guessing… hard zero.”

“It’s not my fault your dumb ass can’t read.” He opens his legs, lets the box settle between them and kicks back to take another pull on his soda. I take this move as an opportune moment to put him in a headlock. “Son-of-… “ He chokes and tries to fight back. “Made me spill my drink.”

“Boys, boys. Please. Not in the living room. At least do it downstairs where you can break your own stuff.” Sara rolls her eyes and pulls me away from Josh as she walks past us to the kitchen.

“You’re lucky your sister saved you.” Josh straightens his shirt and looks at his cell phone while putting his feet up on his box. “Melanie says she’s coming in tomorrow.”

I stiffen at the mention of Josh’s sister but do everything I can to hide my reaction. One drunken, stupid, impulsive night while on leave a few months ago, she and I hooked up. Everything moved so fast I barely knew what happened and I still regret it. I like Melanie—she’s gorgeous, funny and smart. But she’s not the woman for me. Now that we are out of the military, I know she’ll want a relationship, not realizing that I am the worst possible choice for her.

She and I were friends, but that’s where it ends.

She thinks she knows me, but doesn’t have a clue; I am damaged goods. I know the truth. But it’s not the nightmares or the memories that make me no damn good for anybody—it’s the secrets. The lies. It’s the paranoia I carry like armor, thinking every asshole in a suit is watching me.

Maybe they are. Maybe not. It’s not like I can walk up to one of them and ask.

Like a lot of men and women that have done tours, I saw things in the war that no one should ever see. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, and I’ve done things that bring back nightmares, night after night. I had to, and I’d do them again if given the same choice. I did my duty, did what I thought was the right thing, but it left a mark, a black smear on my soul.

No woman should have to deal with my issues. I have no job, no prospects and no idea what the hell to do with my life. A friend runs a security company out of Dallas, but Josh and I both turned him down flat. I’ve had enough of bullets and bullshit to last a lifetime. I’ve bobbed about, aimless and near to drowning, like a piece of driftwood for the past few years. I can’t bear the guilt of weighing a woman down with my baggage, least of all one of my best friends’ sisters.

Unsure about how to respond to Josh’s announcement about Melanie, I head to the kitchen and grab a cold soda out of the fridge. Beverage in hand, I walk back to the living room and kick his feet to one side of the box before sitting down and propping my feet next to his.

“So, Mel gets here tomorrow. That’s great.” It’s all I can think to say. Griping would just make me look like an ass and raise suspicion. Josh has no idea that I hooked up with his sister and I have no intention of telling him, besides the fact that he’d take me out back and shoot me for it. Everything that happened between Melanie and me lives in the past, and will stay in the past. Done with a capital D.

Move on motherfucker, words from my commanding officer that forever echo in my head. And I became very good at doing just that.

After multiple tours, I decided to get out of the service. It had been a few months since I’d made that choice, and I need to attempt a return to civilian life. I had nowhere to go until Sara offered her house, in my hometown of Austin, Texas. I didn’t take her up on it at first. She has her own life, and I knew that she didn’t have the room to put me up without putting undue stress on her, but my sister is just as stubborn as me. Somehow, she got me to agree to live with her. Next thing I know Josh and Melanie join in the party. It will be a tight fit, to say the least.

Sara and I, we grew up quick, we had no choice. Our parents weren’t around much so we became pretty tight. And in the service, the orphans and misfits created new families with each other. Head out on a few ass-clenching recon missions with the boys and it doesn’t take long to become closer than brothers. We all carried the same secrets; the sane ones needed to get out, before we joined the insane. And so we all headed home, one at a time, as our service was up.

That last mission had killed something inside all of us and there would be no going back to the way I’d been before. I know the same is true for Josh, but as part of the agreement, we never talk about Troy, never say his name. Try not to wonder where he ended up or what he might be doing. The big questions never leave my mind. Is our friend still alive? Did he make it out?

I have no idea. Might never know. And we were all dealing with it in our own way.

Sara returns from the kitchen with a soda in one hand and a brownie in the other. With her blond hair, blue eyes, and pretty face, she’s always received plenty of male attention. But now that I’m back, nobody will mess with my little sister. She isn’t some innocent teenager anymore. To become a physician’s assistant, Sara worked her butt off in school. All that time and effort changes a person. It forces them to grow, even if they were already strong to begin with. She loves to remind me that she is a “grown-ass woman”, and I should “keep my nose out of her business”. But I am her brother, which means I’ll kick the shit out of anyone who messes with her. If they are lucky, that is all I will do.

I shift in my seat and sigh as I push away the discomfort associated with my new situation. I raise an eyebrow, grin and nod to…Melanie’s brother… Josh, hoping not to betray my thoughts.

Josh shoots me a strange look and sniffs the air. “Dude, you didn’t.”

“Relax man. If I had, you’d be dead.” I grin, glad he’s not a mind reader.

Sara sinks onto the other end of the sofa. After moving shit all damn day, I just want to sleep for the rest of my life. You’d think being a crew chief on a Blackhawk would give me more stamina, but moving sucks no matter who you are. All the pushups and running in the world can’t prepare you for the mentally exhausting monotony of moving boxes of your shit from one place to the next. And we didn’t just move my stuff, we moved Sara’s things around to make room and then brought in my junk, Josh’s boxes, and Melanie’s things as well.

And the whole mess still sits in a clustered crap pile in the basement.

“I can’t wait for Mel to get here. I’ll be so happy to have another girl in the house,” Sara says with a sigh.

“Ooh, do you think you and Melanie are going to have a sleepover? Paint each other’s nails? I want to join!” Josh, making his voice obnoxiously high, only earns him a roll of the eyes from Sara.

“You know, you can always find your own place, bad boy. So you better watch yourself.”

“I’d rather watch you.”

Sara reaches back like a major league pitcher and throws a pillow at him as hard as she can… and misses badly.

The slight flush on her cheeks only serves to piss me off. “Dude, what the fuck. I’m sitting right here. Do not make me mess you up.”

Josh, using his best imitation of a girl throw, tosses the pillow at me. “Bring it on.“

“Didn’t I just say no fighting?” Sara fumes playfully.

“He started it,” Josh grumbles, but when Sara gives him the stink-eye, he laughs and my sister’s smile fades, pissing me off even more. This is not happening.

Did she look at his lips?

Oh, hell no. This is definitely not happening.

I lean forward and break her line of sight, since Josh seems unable to resist her tractor-beam stare. “So, you need me to do anything around here?” Sara always has something on her to-do list when I come home. Fix a leaky faucet. Replace a door hinge or change the oil in her car. Anything but watch her and my friend stare at each other like I don’t exist.

Josh with Sara? No. I’ve known him too long. I know what a player he is. I’ll talk to him about this later, when I beat the shit out of him in private to avoid my sister’s protests.

Sara turns her gaze to me. “You said you wanted to look at houses soon, right? You should call my friend Chloe.” She plucks a card from her back pocket and hands it to me. “She’s a realtor now. You remember Chloe, right?”

Gazing at the business card, I see Chloe’s face smiling up at me from the corner of the card and memories flood me. How could I forget our next-door neighbor, little Chloe B.? Back when Sara and I were kids, I put worms and grasshoppers in Chloe’s hair, just to hear her scream bloody murder. Okay, so I bumbled my way straight through the classic cliché of boys picking on girls because they like them. I still haven’t figured that one out, but I had definitely been guilty of it. Chloe was beautiful and sassy and smart, even at eight years old. Grasshoppers and worms, I discovered too late, didn’t earn a young lady’s affections.

It did, however, make her run around screaming, her long hair flying behind her like a banner.

The childhood memories weren’t the ones to really stick in my brain. The memory that did stick was of Chloe, just nineteen years old, running a hand down my arm and asking me if I’d like to come back to her place for the night. I’d been weak then; I had let her kiss me. I’d taken that kiss and run with it, conquering her mouth and making her moan against me. She tasted so sweet, and I had wanted more, much more.

But then I pushed her away and told her to find a guy her age, even though my cock ached just from that one kiss. I couldn’t help but imagine how her hair would be spread across her pillow, dark and silky, and how those blue eyes would gaze up at me as I thrust inside of her. I’d wanted her—badly. But my life had been a mess, and she was too young. What could I give her, anyway?

I had nothing then and I have nothing now. She was young and innocent and so damn beautiful that I never should have touched her. The Army owned me then, and I refused to be one of the guys reading a ’Dear John’ letter in the afternoon and hiding tears in my pillow at night.

Everything about Chloe said permanent. And the Army dead-ended too many relationships, and created a life I refused to force her into. On top of everything else, Chloe wasn’t the type for casual sex—I didn’t want her to be.

And there would have been nothing casual about it on my end. I knew if I took her once, I’d never be able to stop. If I tasted her, I wouldn’t be able to do the right thing. If she were mine, I’d never be able to walk away. And I couldn’t have a wife. I needed to walk away. So I did.

At my rejection, Chloe looked like she hated my guts. I can’t say that I blamed her. I’m sure that to her, it looked like I simply didn’t want her. She couldn’t see the truth floating in my head, a truth too painful to explain. I ignored the feeling of guilt that ate at my gut for quite a long time. I’d rather she hated me than pined after me, or threw away a chance at happiness waiting for a wreck like me to come back from overseas. She deserved a hell of a lot better than me. That’s the chance I had to give her.

As I stuff the card into my back pocket I swallow hard and do my best to appear unaffected. “Chloe’s a realtor now?” My voice sounds totally normal. Right? Like I don’t really care what she did with her life, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Ever since her mom died, yeah. Remember her mom had cancer? She didn’t get to go to college, but she got her realtor’s license and has done really well since.” Sara’s smile shows how proud she is of her friend. “She also knows how to get you a good deal. Seriously. She got me this house way below asking price. She’s a shark when it comes to closing deals.”

Yes, she was. I can still taste her lips, hear her soft sigh, feel the tug of her hands where she’d buried her fingers in my hair. She’d melted in my arms, her seduction so complete it was a miracle I’d survived her the first time around.

Maybe I should find another realtor, a sixty year old with a lined face, gray hair, and ten grandkids; A realtor that didn’t smell like honey and vanilla.

“I don’t know,” I say, more debating with myself. Could I be around her and keep my hands to myself? I’m not ready for a relationship any more now than I’d been five years ago. I didn’t want to hurt her, and I didn’t want to have to lie to her.

I waffle, on the fence, undecided, until Josh opens his damn mouth.

“I’ll take her card. She’s that curvy brunette from the New Year’s party, right? I will definitely call her.” A shit-eating grin spreads across his face.