Protect and Serve: Soldiers, SEALs and Cops: Contemporary Heroes from NY Times and USA Today and other bestselling authors

by J. M. Madden

  DEAN KNEW he had to move; he needed to dispose of the condom and they needed to get situated on the bed a little better. Rallying his strength, he pushed up on quivering arms. Rachel stared up at him, a fuzzy, warm, and maybe even loving expression on her face. Her hands tightened on his shoulders as if she was reluctant to release him. Leaning down he kissed her plump lips, unwilling to break the connection they had. “Are you okay? I know I kind of lost control there at the end.”

  She blinked at him, brows pulling together. “You can lose control like that anytime. My neck is completely fine. You didn’t hurt me at all.”

  Dean grinned, replete, as he began to pull out of her. Even that felt incredible. He sighed as he pushed himself up from her, then he had to pause to etch the way she looked in his memory. Her hair was rumpled but it told him exactly how much he’d pleasured her. Her caramel colored eyes were slumberous and the smile on her lips told him she was as replete as he was. But her spanking hot body drew his gaze.

  Rachel drew her thighs together and laid them to the side, creating an elegant curve to her lean frame, one hard-nippled breast pointed toward the ceiling. There were certain things guys just didn’t do, especially right after sex. Dropping to the floor in front of her and telling her that he’d just had the best orgasm ever, hands down, would not impress her with his manliness… but that’s exactly what he wanted to do.

  Instead, he turned for the bathroom to dispose of the condom.

  When he returned a few minutes later her eyes had drifted shut. Crawling onto the mattress behind her, he pulled her into the curve of his body, one arm going under her head and the other across her hips.

  “Mm,” she sighed.

  Dean took a deep breath, emotion damn near choking him. “You are incredible, Rachel. I’m sorry you crashed but I’m so thankful I’ve met you. My heart is fuller than it’s ever been. Now that I have you, I don’t think I can ever let you go.”

  Her breath stalled in her chest for a moment, then eased out of her. Her body relaxed against his. “That is my secret wish,” she whispered, and he felt tears drip onto his arm. His own eyes blurring, he pulled her tighter against his heart, vowing to be more than she’d ever hoped for.

  The End...

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  NY Times and USA Today Bestselling author J.M. Madden writes compelling romances between 'combat modified' military men and the women who love them. J.M. Madden loves any and all good love stories, most particularly her own. She has two beautiful children and a husband who always keeps her on her toes.

  J.M. was a Deputy Sheriff in Ohio for nine years, until hubby moved the clan to Kentucky. When not chasing the family around, she's at the computer, reading and writing, perfecting her craft. She occasionally takes breaks to feed her animal horde and is trying to control her office-supply addiction, but both tasks are uphill battles. Happily, she is writing full-time and always has several projects in the works. She also dearly loves to hear from readers! So, drop her a line. She'll respond.

  TRUE NAVY BLUE

  A NOVELLA

  By

  Sharon Hamilton

  Prequel to TRUE NAVY BLUE,

  Book 1 of the True Blue SEALs Series

  ONE

  The red lights flashed, pulsing dangerous images across her white skin as she lay unconscious. Was she dead? He hoped not. Paramedics were pouring over her with care, asking hushed questions, obviously looking for some kind of response. And then, thank God, he heard her whisper something back and cry.

  Where am I?

  They were rougher with him. Zak Chambers was used to people around him making up their minds before they got to know him. Santa Rosa used to be a small town, back when his father was sowing his wild oats. Half the cops in town were kids of the same cops who used to arrest his dad for pranks he was legendary for doing—things like throwing pumpkins into the Redwood Motel pool at Halloween, making the headlines in the local newspaper. His father still had the article hanging on his garage wall.

  And what was so wrong with pouring red Jell-O into the fountain at Santa Rosa High School? They were his high school colors and they’d just creamed Santa Rosa’s football team 47 to 6.

  Why am I thinking about all this stuff? Where the heck am I? What’s happened?

  This time, however, was no prank. His father’s Camaro, a twisted and partially melted hulk in front of him, looked even more ghastly because of the red flashing lights, this was no prank. This wasn’t about Jell-O or pumpkins or anything that could be construed as a high school caper. This was a first-class grown up tragedy, getting worse by the minute. He didn’t have a clue what he was doing here or how he got here.

  “Can you sit up, Chambers?” the gruff uniformed man with a badge and white plastic gloves asked him.

  Where are the pretty nurses? His dad always got lucky with the nurses.

  He tried to right himself, but the blow to his head had him confused. And he’d had a glass of wine, but just one…

  “Need your permission to take a breath sample, son.”

  Fuck me. The guy looked younger than Zak did.

  “No. Not going to happen,” Zak mumbled.

  “Oh, it’s gonna happen. Either here or down at the station, but you better cooperate or you get an automatic suspension.” The guy squinted. He had pimples. He looked like one of the boys he’d hassled in school.

  “Do I know you?” Zak asked. The word “suspension” was rattling around in his head like a bad idea. He tried to focus on it, but nothing came.

  “Oh yea, you do. You used to buy our booze with your fake I.D. when I was a freshman.”

  It was beginning to come back to him now. Little flashes of color. Painful things. Things he didn’t want to remember.

  “Except one time, you kept the money. You freakin’ robbed us, man. Ain’t life a bitch, Zak? Look at us now, dancing here on the pavement with your wrecked souped up Camaro your dad probably spent his year’s pension on, and me here with my badge and gun and all. Oh yea, life is a real bitch sometimes.”

  Zak remembered him. Had an upper crust name like Dawson, or Drew or…

  “I remember you, Dirtbag.” It was what Zak always called him, not because he was a real dirtbag, because he worshiped Zak for the ladies he got to hang with. But it was given him because he was unlucky enough to be named Dirk by his parents. And Zak didn’t want to be anybody’s idol. He wasn’t that fake. He just didn’t deserve it. In those days, Zak was still a promising football player courting a couple of full ride college scholarships. He’d walked away from it all.

  But what the hell am I doing here?

  The kid administered the breathalizer and Zak saw the instrument yanked from the kid’s hands.

  “Still scoring points with the authorities, I see.” An older man with a nasty gravelly voice and a nastier-looking face peered over the top of his head and blinked down at him, upside down. It made Zak dizzy. “And you’re drunk,” he said looking at the device. Instead of showing it to Zak he placed it in a plastic bag and shoved it in his large jacket pocket. “Works for me.”

  “Sir.” Dirtbag stood up. “Should I test—”

  “Yeah. He’s drunk,” the older officer said. “He needs to be taken in until we can figure it out.”

  It occurred to Zak he knew the man but couldn’t remember his name.

  When they stood him up, that’s when Zak saw the other vehicle, a vegetable truck loaded with melons. Half of them were escaping over the freeway, bouncing like a girl’s oversized tits with an agenda of their own. Cars were swerving and Zak expected to hear another crash any minute.

  The older deputy barked some instructio
ns. Two Highway Patrolmen took off with their lights flashing, while someone lit flares and started to direct traffic slowly in one narrow lane taking up part of the shoulder.

  Ginger had not really been his date, but she was going to be his fuckbunny for the night, sure as shit. He’d made the mistake of letting her long lip lock go a little too long, distracting him enough to miss the overloaded melon truck swerving into his lane. The impact was on her side. As he heard it, he noticed the seatbelt firmly pressing into her chest, and like a dog, he had a second or two of turn-on before he realized they’d been hit.

  Seatbelts were a good thing. In this instance, it probably saved Ginger’s life.

  “He hit me,” Zak tried to protest as he was lead, handcuffed, into the back of the patrol car. His shouts were falling on deaf ears as they closed the cruiser’s door after shoving him into the rear seat. He saw the ambulance leave in a blaze of red and blue flashing lights ahead of him. He felt bad about not saying goodbye to Ginger before they took her away. He hoped she’d be okay.

  The dark-skinned truck driver had a child clinging to his side. Zak noticed he wasn’t being handcuffed and carted away like Zak was.

  No, this wasn’t going to wind up being a very good day.

  THE WORST THING about getting taken down to the station was that his mother had to come down and pick him up. They’d not fingerprinted him or taken pictures, just put him in a cell with about twenty others, mostly drunk drivers, which made for a very uncomfortable sleep on a metal bench with a full-on fluorescent light buzzing overhead. But he didn’t have time to tell her. She looked at him like road kill.

  “I wasn’t drinkin’ Ma.” He insisted. It was almost the truth.

  “Zak, you’re just one good time after another,” she said, dragging on her electric cigarette.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Sleeping. Right now that’s a good thing.”

  He’d known that was the answer before he’d asked. He’d seen his dad down at the Irish Pub, rubbing shoulders with the computer nerds and yuppies who worked for Medtronic and Agilent. His dad was still better looking than he had a right to be, and though twice their age, could occasionally chat himself into someone’s bed. Zak was glad he’d made it home. Now there was a real alcoholic, Zak thought.

  “You know anything about Ginger?” he asked her.

  “That the girl you were with last night?”

  Zak nodded.

  “News says she’ll be released today. You’re the one that needed the hospitalization.”

  He was relieved. “So that’s where we’re going?” he asked.

  “They should have brought you to the Emergency Room. Dobson didn’t do you any favors. He’d have probably let you bleed out, Zak.”

  Dobson. Holy fuck, Amy Dobson’s father, the chief. He let her take a drag on her eCig.

  “Can’t believe it’s your first day back and already you’re in trouble. Surprised they didn’t arrest you.”

  “They still could,” he answered.

  Now he began to remember. It was his day back only to attend his enlistment party a few of his friends were giving him. He was to report to Indoc in three days.

  Thank God they didn’t arrest me. This was way too close. Time to grow up and be smart if he wanted to really do this. His SEAL career would be over before it started.

  Then he thought about his Dad’s Camaro and was grateful he’d spent the night in jail. He had no idea what the old man was going to do when he woke up. Zak had completely blown his $65,000 ride. That cherry red beauty he kind of borrowed.

  “I’ll pay you guys back for whatever the insurance—”

  She gave him a long horse-face look like he had a purple horn protruding from his forehead.

  “I promise. I will, Mom.”

  “In your dreams lover boy.” She sighed. “I never had to give this advice to your sister, so I might as well waste it on you. I hope you keep some rich little thing happy, Zak. If you can manage to unzip it for just one lady, you’d have a nice life making someone happy. I don’t see it in you to be any kind of provider.”

  “I’m in the Navy now. Maybe I’ll get killed and leave you the insurance policy, Ma.”

  She slapped him harder than he thought she was capable of.

  “Word of advice. Stay away from the Amy Dobsons of the world, Zak. They’ll make your life miserable, just like they always did.”

  Oh yes, now it was coming back to him. The fog was lifting. That summer when he was dodging classes and staying good and wet inside Amy Dobson’s treasure chest. He’d fucked her so many times that year he thought perhaps his pecker would fall off. The girl was insatiable, used to multiple partners and always pushing the envelope faster than he could keep up. In the end, she tired of him and left him handcuffed naked to one of the oak trees outside the Admin building at Santa Rosa Junior College.

  And then she called her dad, then Lieutenant Allister Dobson of the Santa Rosa PD, who got out his bolt cutters. He hesitated a moment, staring down at Zak’s penis, swearing under his breath, halfway making Zak worry his pecker would be clipped. Dobson released him with a grunt. Zak couldn’t help it if he was hung. Apparently that fact wasn’t lost on her father, either.

  He got off with a warning and he had to promise he’d leave town by the end of the summer. He was flunking out anyway. The scholarship was toast and his world was looking pretty small.

  “Son, you either go away to college, or you go into the armed forces, or you hang out in Vegas with drag queens. Makes no difference to me. But Amy is off limits in a most permanent way.”

  No, Dobson, who had now made Chief, wouldn’t do him any more favors. And now he didn’t even get a chance to tell the Chief he was just passing through on his way to becoming one of America’s finest. Probably wouldn’t make any difference anyway.

  They arrived at the Emergency clinic close to ten that morning. Zak’s mother already had one message from his dad asking where the Camaro was.

  It was going to be a very long day.

  TWO

  Amy Dobson got a call from her friend Margrit at the Santa Rosa Police Department informing her that Zak had been held overnight. And he wasn’t alone when he crashed his father’s Camaro. He was with a girl.

  Amy knew full well how much Zak’s father loved that vehicle. But that’s not what piqued her interest. She wanted to know about the passenger. Had Zak brought someone up with him to Santa Rosa? She’d followed his journey to Santa Cruz spying on him through Facebook. But this had come to an abrupt end when he joined the military. It was like Zak just dropped off the face of the earth with no posts on social media. Perhaps he’d blocked her.

  She’d told herself whatever became of Zak was of no consequence to her. But it was an indisputable fact, when she was underneath some hulk of a guy who was trying his hardest to rock her world and cause the next earthquake, Zak’s was the face she saw as she tried to get off. Back when they were dating heavily, all Zak had to do was look at her and her panties would get wet. He had more sex in his index finger than most the guys she knew would ever amass during their lifetime.

  “Who is she, Margrit?” Amy knew the clerk wouldn’t tell her, but she needed to ask anyway. She’d helped to get Margrit the job at her father’s station.

  “I’d have to go check—let me—”

  “No. I’m good. Was she okay?” Amy wondered if the passenger was Zak’s new girlfriend.

  “Took her to Memorial. No serious injuries, and he didn’t go to the hospital, if you want to know.”

  “You said that, Margrit. Said he was held over.”

  “And released to his mother this morning,” Margrit said helpfully.

  “Thanks.”

  Amy played with the screen on the phone, scrolling down through pictures. She and Zak at the ocean. She and Zak with selfies in bed. She and Zak completely shit-faced kissing in that photo booth at the fair the summer she turned eighteen, the legal age. Except that hadn’t mattered to either one
of them, since they’d been screwing since she was sixteen.

  Even back then he was the only one who rang her chimes. He was the only one who didn’t fall all over himself to get in her pants. She loved that he tried to exercise restraint, and in the end, he would always cave. That’s the way he was. He was hers for as long as she wanted him, despite what he told himself, and despite whatever promises he’d made to some mystery woman who was in his car last night. Curiosity snaked its way up her spine as she wondered if he still felt the same way about her.

  Rich Wilson, a new addition to her Dad’s force, was coming over to take her to the Police Community Day at the park. Her dad would be there, of course, and she allowed Rich to curry favor with him by bringing his daughter to the party. She didn’t like local cops as dates because they were more concerned about what her Dad was thinking than what Amy wanted, but today she would put up with Rich as a means to an end.

  She fluffed her hair, adding some spray and fingering through it to add volume. Staring at herself in the mirror, she added a little extra eyeshadow and lip gloss over her red lip crayon. It was her reward for putting up with Rich. It made her feel a little naughty, wicked. Maybe Rich would get lucky tonight. What she really wanted was something else, but she refused to let herself dwell on it too much.

  “You look awesome, Amy,” Rich said on the front stoop of her father’s house. He was attractive in his clean-cut way. He wore a dark polo shirt that hugged his nice torso. He wasn’t huge, just well-built and took pride in how he looked. Eyeing him as she passed, she stepped out the door and let her heels clickety-clack down the concrete pathway, wondering why she couldn’t fall for the really good guys. Oh yes, it could be a fun night, rocking his world, blowing his mind with some things she’d learned, but her appetite was tempered by the smell and feel of hot fresh sex with Zak. She couldn’t help it if she was addicted to him. The taste of his kiss and the feel of his hands on her was still something she carried with her every day. It was like breathing.