by KL Donn
Table of Contents:
Blurb
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
About the Author
More books from KL
Special note from KL Donn
One Dance for Case
Copyright 2016 Krystal Fahl (KL Donn)
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication or any part of this series may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your respect of the author’s rights is appreciated.
This book is a work of fiction. The names of characters, places, brands and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and owners of various products and locations referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
Warning: This book is intended for readers 18 years or older due to bad language, and explicit sex scenes.
Blurb:
Broken beyond repair…
Sergeant Casey John Risley: amputee, war Veteran, recovering alcoholic.
Jealousy consumes him. Bitterness leaves him pushing everyone he loves away.
Casey watched as his best friend found the other half of his soul in a strong young woman and until that moment he hadn’t realized how much he craved that same completion.
Having demons constantly lurking in the back of his mind, he doesn’t think he’ll get the salvation the right woman’s arms can give him. He’s so desperate for it, he nearly blows his chance with the only woman to draw him in.
Thrown out like trash…
Evelyn Paige Moore: dancer, shy introvert, high school dropout.
Abandoned at an early age by a mother who couldn’t care less about her, Evelyn finds an escape in ballet. With no formal training, and a love for the art, she knows what she wants to be. Circumstances prove she has to settle instead for the pole. Finding her long lost sister and her son, she thinks she’s finally found a semblance of happiness, only she still feels empty.
When a tough soldier shows a deep interest in her she fights the immediate attraction she feels, only he has nothing to lose, and everything to gain by claiming her.
Two broken pieces…
A misunderstanding nearly tears them apart before they truly get to have their own happily ever after. If Ev let’s go of the pain of abandonment, will Case open up to her? Or will they be stuck in the past forever?
PLEASE READ OWNED BY DOMINIC PRIOR TO THIS BOOK!
***Warning***
If you don't know by now that I write insta-love well this is your warning. There's love, there's heartbreak, there's a little bit of graphic violence told in a flashback. This is a safe read, no cheating. LOTS OF INSTA-LOVE!
Acknowledgements
This is usually extremely long, and I always forget someone. So I’ll keep this short, sweet and to the point.
Thank you to everyone who has bought, borrowed, shared, recommended anyone of my books. For putting my name out there to even one person. It makes a HUGE difference and I hope my fans/friends/readers/supporters know just how much I appreciate you all. Writing is my dream and it wouldn’t happen without you!
Kaci, you were my rock while writing this book. I can never thank you enough! For everything you do behind the scenes, you have my love and gratitude for life woman!
Sansa, your teasers are beautiful and so are you!
Leah, I love every stupid funny meme/gif you send and always at the perfect time too!
Mary DM, keep them hashtags coming!
Sonya, thank you for the most perfect cover!
Mary BM, more unicorns please!
My Fighter’s, thank you for such fantastic support! You’ll never know how much you ALL mean to me!
Bloggers, thank you for every single share or mention! Your work doesn’t go unnoticed!
Special thanks to my best pimpers, I see all those tags, they usually get lost before I can thank you but your work is so appreciated!!!
Credits:
Cover Model – David Juteau
Photographer – Paul Henry Serres
Cover Design – SK Designs
Edited by – KA Matthews
Formatted by – Jaye Cox
Dedication:
My Alpha,
My heart,
My love,
My best friend,
My husband,
Steven…
Thank you for the tremendous support you have given me. I know when I first started writing you were skeptical, you didn’t have the same faith in me then as you do now, and I love you for wanting to protect me (Kind of glad you backed off though) I love you more for demanding I write when you knew I was on a deadline (For taking the kids for that one day when you knew I was nearly done – HUGE help)
Thank you for believing in me when I didn’t always believe in myself.
I love you.
Forever and a day until beyond the stars, YOU are my happily ever after.
10 years ago
Sergeant Casey John Risley heard the sounds of his fellow soldiers swearing, praying… apologizing?
Why are they apologizing?
For some reason, that was what he was most worried about. Not the fact he could feel his life bleeding out of him or that Dom kept threatening to kick his ass.
This is war guys; we know what we’re in for, he told them. At least, he thought he did.
Hey, why are the lights dimming? What’s going on?
Then he realized they were outside in the desert.
The lights weren’t dimming. He was dying.
Dom’s so gonna kick my ass.
“You hang the fuck on, Casey!” Dom yelled in his face.
Whoop, whoop, whoop.
Sliding in and out of consciousness, he registered the sound of the Halo’s rotors just as it landed. His vision was full of smoke and swirling sand. Still confused about what had happened, he screamed as Dom tossed him over his shoulder.
“You’re gonna be fine, Case. Just hang on,” Dom told him as he was strapped down to the flat board. He thought it must be pretty bad if they weren’t even doing a field assessment.
Just as the idea hit him, he went light-headed and felt like he was being lifted from his body.
“Dom?” he croaked, his voice dry and scratchy.
Seeing his friend’s face staring down at him, he looked pissed as hell. Dom was saying something too, but for the life of him, he couldn’t make it out.
/> As his eyes closed, Casey realized he had one regret. His parents were right.
The Army killed him.
“He’s coding!”
Who’s that?
“Nurse, get the crash cart!”
“What the fuck is going on?”
Oh, he recognized Dom’s angry voice. Why can I hear these voices when it feels like I’m floating?
Searing pain raced through his chest as if his lungs were on fire. His back bowed, and his eyes rolled to the back of his head, but he still couldn’t move.
What is happening to me? He wondered just as blackness took him under.
What is that noise?
There was a buzzing sound rattling in his ear. Like a swarm of bees about to attack and it was annoying as fuck. When his body started to vibrate, pain slowly made its way up his body. His heart was racing out of control, feeling like it was about to explode from his chest. He forced his eyes open, hoping he could talk to someone, but it wasn’t working. Confusion settled in. Where was he? What was happening?
The last thing he remembered was ushering civilians out of a war zone.
Shit.
“He’s coming to. Get the doctor.” Doctor? “You’re fine, Case, just relax.”
Why does Dom sound so emotional? The hard-headed bastard has no emotions.
When he lifted his arms, they felt like they were flailing. Like he had no muscles.
What the fuck is going on? Panic started to bubble up when he realized he had a tube down his throat.
Reaching for it, he felt hands on his arms holding him down. “Just hang on a minute, Casey. The doctor will be here soon.”
Stop fucking placating me, Dom! He wanted to scream.
The longer he had to wait, the more anxious he became. His body was thrashing about, yet he felt sort of disconnected from it all.
As movement became easier with each passing minute, Casey really began to fight Dom, pushing him back. Attempting to slide his legs off the bed was the moment he realized something had happened. Something every soldier knew was a possibility yet prayed never happened to them.
My leg is gone.
“Casey, are you listening?” The physician asked for the hundredth time.
He was listening all right. He was just having a hard time believing this was his new reality.
Rehab?
Prosthetic leg?
Honorable discharge…
If he were honest with himself, it was the third thing on that list that bothered him the most. He’d never done anything with his life before he joined the Rangers. He was a grade A dick all through school. Couldn’t hold a steady anything to save his life. Grades sucked. Football was his only escape from the constant nagging and discipline at home.
Now, here he was twenty-five years old and reduced to nothing because of one wrong fucking step. He was having a hard time believing the way his life was shaking out.
Crippled. Handicapped.
Just fucking great.
Anger was burning a hole in his gut. Depression was setting in. Denial wracked his brain. So many things were overwhelming his mind, and this doctor wanted him to talk about it? Not fucking likely. Who the fuck would want to get in his fucked up head anyway.
“I fucking got it, Doc,” he growled, turning to look out the window of his room. Couldn’t even fucking walk away. He had to sit there like a chump.
Fuck this.
Three years later.
Sitting in a dive bar with a bottle of Jack for company was beginning to get old. Casey was sick of the same old bullshit. The pitying looks from those around him because he still couldn’t walk far enough to reach another bar. Everyone saw him as a drunk with a limp, not even knowing that he was less than a real man. Just another burnt out soldier suffering from PTSD. If they only fucking knew.
He had smelled her before he felt her. Tangy, bitter, hard. Fucking skank was his only thought.
When she sat down beside him, her voice immediately grated on his nerves. “How you doing, sweetheart?” Like nails on a chalkboard.
“Fine,” he clipped out.
“Any company tonight?”
“Nope.”
“Want some?” she purred…Maybe? Sounded like a dying cat to him.
Looking at her, she was kind of pretty. Greasy blonde hair with a bad dye job. She could stand to gain a few pounds, too. Her cheeks narrowed in, so it looked like she had a fish face. Her overly bright green eyes let him know she might be high. It was hard to tell in the low lighting of the bar they were in.
“Depends,” he grumbled, taking another swallow of his drink.
“On what?” She tried and failed to purr in his ear.
“What you charge…”
She didn’t even act insulted as she rubbed her hands along his arm and chest. “Whatever you got, baby.”
Deciding some relief would be good, Casey got up and walked to the back of the bar where there was a broom closet, knowing she’d follow.
Opening the door, he waited for her to walk in. As soon as the door shut, he told her, “Knees.” Not wanting to hear her nasal voice unless it was necessary.
Her fingers were already on his jeans as she knelt down, unbuckling his belt and sliding the buttons from their holes. She pulled his dick out of his pants faster than he’d ever been able to.
Humming with pleasure, she rubbed his cock along her cheek like he was a toy to be played with. Gripping her hair, he pulled her back and growled, “Open your fucking mouth.” She smiled and did what he said.
As soon as her mouth opened, Case plunged his half-hard cock all the way down the back of her throat. With a tight grip in her hair, he had all the control.
“Swallow,” he groaned, needing to feel some sort of tightness around his cock.
As soon as she did, he lost it. Her throat contracted around his dick and had him ready to explode. Not necessarily wanting to, but he needed the release.
Pounding in and out of her mouth like the used hooker she was, the gagging noises she made had his dick getting harder and his balls drawing up. He yanked her hair more forcefully so her head tilted back, and his dick slid down her throat just that little bit more. Spit was flowing from her lips every time he pulled back, making a wet sound as it landed on her fake-ass tits.
When she tried to pull back from him, he’d slam into her mouth demanding, “Fucking swallow again.” When she did, he let go. Cum shot from his dick like a rocket in long jets down her throat.
As he began to pull out, she sucked on him trying not to lose his dick from her mouth. Licking her lips once he removed himself, she looked up at him seductively, asking, “My turn?”
His bark of laughter probably wasn’t what she wanted to hear judging from the stormy look on her face. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled a twenty out and tossed it to her saying, “You want something for yourself? Next time try not acting like a slut,” as he walked out, leaving her with his cum dripping down her chin.
Her screaming was heard through the closed door, but he just didn’t give a fuck anymore. Nothing mattered. He was tired of trying to be something he wasn’t. He could barely look at himself in the mirror without being disgusted by what he saw. His eyes were lifeless, dead.
Case couldn’t remember the last time he gave a shit about anything or anyone. The only people that had ever mattered to him had abandoned him long ago.
His parents disowned him when he enlisted in the Rangers. Finding out their son was injured and might possibly lose his life, they couldn’t be bothered.
The only person that ever gave a shit about him was Dom. Enemies to best friends to never talking. That was what it had come to with them.
Their entire childhood was spent hating each other. Ironically, they both enlisted at the same time, and during boot camp, they’d bonded. Became inseparable from then on.
He missed the cranky fucker like crazy now.
Dom had taken him home aft
er a year of rehab at the VA hospital. He’d made Casey get up every day, work out, and get strong again.
When Casey tried to reconnect with his parents, they’d said some pretty harsh things to him which caused a spiral into hell. After that, he stopped caring about anything, including his friendship with Dom.
And now here he was in a dive bar, with no friends, getting blow jobs from cheap hookers in broom closets to let the edge off.
He was fucked.
His life was spiraling out of control, and he felt helpless to do anything except embrace it.
One year later
“Sergeant Casey John Risley,” he grumbled into his beer bottle taking another swig. “How the fuck did you become such a fuck-up?”
It was rhetorical, of course. He was sitting alone in his dingy, little run-down apartment drinking himself into an early grave. Over the last three years, he’d fucked his way through half of Maryland without taking his pants off once. Fear of rejection due to his useless leg kept him from connecting with anyone other than his good friends Jimmy Bean and Captain Morgan.
He’d drunk himself through all his savings now and was fast losing his will to get out of bed anymore. What was the point when he had no one and was going nowhere fast?
“Nothing and no one.” Chug. “Useless and alone.” Chug. “Maybe it’s finally my fucking time!” Chug.
If he drank himself into an early grave, would anyone even notice? Miss him?
Once upon a time, Dominic Slade might have. But he fucked that up six ways from Sunday.
“Sua Sponte!” Chug.
Three years later
Pound, pound, pound.
Jolting upright, it took Case a few minutes to get his bearing. Figure out what had startled him awake.
Pound, pound, pound.
Looking at his bedside clock, he cursed. “Who the fuck is here at six a.m.?”
Pound, pound, pound.