Military Romance Collection

by E Cleveland

  I stuff my binos in my pack that’s hanging from the branch beside me and lean back against the trunk of the tree.

  Calm washes over me as I let my heavy eyelids droop down and settle in for the night. I love the familiarity of sleeping like this. When I was a sniper, I hated being bugged out like this. Clinging to tree limbs, or laying on sizzling hot roofs for hours or even days at a time. My muscles would be exhausted from lying in prone position, tensed up, ready to fire. Birds would shit on me, the heat would bake my skin and I had to endure it all as I waited for the perfect moment. For the perfect shot.

  Then, when I came back to America, I would always struggle to sleep in my own bed. It felt so much larger than the cots in the barracks. It felt so much more exposed than the blinds I would shoot from. As if a queen-sized mattress was a vast, open field I was standing in, with a target on my back.

  It took some time to learn that if I piled pillows around my body at night and imagined seeing the world through the scope of my rifle, watching targets pass over the crosshairs, I could drift to sleep peacefully. Old habits are hard to break, I guess.

  “No! Don’t. Please stop!”

  My eyelids snap open as I hear the girl screaming below. I don’t need to retrieve my binoculars, the terror in her voice is enough to make me grab my bag and scramble down the tree.

  I grab a thick branch, silently maneuvering through the woods toward her cries.

  “Please, don’t do this,” she cries. “Stop! Mr. White! Cecil! Don’t,” her voice hitches and she begins to bawl.

  My fingers tighten around the wood until my skin feels like it’ll burst open. I close in and see the girl frantically trying to push that old fucker off of her. He’s got her shoved up against a tree and his pudgy hand is stuffed up her torn shirt. There’s no fucking chance in hell this is happening. I’m not going to let some human shit stain rape this girl.

  I circle in from the shadows, narrowing my eyes as I focus on him, taking a huge breath, I lunge inside the boundary of their camp.

  6

  Abbie

  “Please, stop,” I nearly choke on my words as tears streak down my face. He doesn’t listen, his eyes are dancing wildly as he roughly paws at my breasts. I don’t know what happened. One second, I was scurrying back from peeing in the woods and the next my head thumped against this tree and his hands were all over me.

  “You’re such a pretty little thing, aren’t ya. I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me. You’re a tease, you know that? Walking around here wiggling your ass at me and batting your eyelashes. I know what you want,” his boozy breath billows over my face and I gag.

  “No, you’re wrong. I don’t want this!” I squirm to the side, desperate to break free but he’s too strong. Too big. I can feel his erection pressed into me as he pins me in place.

  I try to claw his face, but he grabs both my hands and holds them over my head with one of his and starts unbuckling his belt with his free hand.

  “Aww, don’t be like that. I’m gonna take good care of ya,” he pants as he struggles to open his jeans.

  “Cecil, please don’t do this. Just let me go and we can go our separate ways. Please. Please, I don’t want this to be my first time,” I beg.

  “I knew it!” His eyes light up and I cringe with how much more excited he just got. “Don’t you worry, if you just stop acting like you don’t want it, I’ll try to go slow on ya,” he finally manages to pull out his dick and starts working on my pants.

  I thrash my feet, kicking him in the shin and scream, “Help! Help me. Please, can anyone hear me?” I know it’s useless. I know we’re miles away from anything resembling civilization.

  “Get the fuck off her!” A violent roar rips through the air and suddenly Cecil drops like a sack of potatoes to the ground. I’m stunned, I stare down at him bleeding from his head. Is he… dead?

  I look up at the man snarling down at him, holding a big stick in his hand. The thick end drips with Cecil’s blood. My mouth forms an O as a silent scream strangles in my throat.

  It’s him.

  His brown hair is longer now, and he has scruff covering his jaw, but there’s no mistaking those piercing blue eyes.

  It’s our target. The killer. It’s Cole fucking McAllister.

  “Let’s go,” he grabs me by the wrist and wrenches me toward him roughly.

  “Did you kill him? I’m not going anywhere with you! I need to get out of here. Please, just let me go,” I dig my heels into the dirt and try to make myself into a human anchor.

  “He’s not dead. I knocked him out. I don’t have time to discuss this with you, we’re both in danger if we hang around here. Let’s go!” He barks his command and I cringe.

  I still try to pull back from his grasp. I’m grateful he stopped Cecil, but being saved by a known murderer isn’t exactly a happy ending.

  Cole comes toward me, hunching down, and flips me over his shoulder. His hand is still holding my arm while his other arm is holding me secure over his shoulder.

  The world is upside down as I dangle over his back, feebly kicking my feet and pounding my one free hand against him.

  “Let me go! Please, just let me go. I’ll leave the woods and I promise I’ll never come back. Just let me go,” I try to yell, but as he thumps through the woods, every time he jumps over a log I bump against him and struggle to breathe.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  First I’m almost raped by my boss and now the killer we were supposed to be hunting is kidnapping me. I can barely breathe as terror grips my chest. Tears and snot flow from my face and I try to scream. I won’t give up. I keep squirming, wrenching, twisting and kicking, but I’m outmuscled. I’ve never felt so weak.

  Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. I’m fucked. I’m worse than fucked.

  I’m dead.

  7

  Cole

  “Put me down! Someone help me!” She squirms over my shoulder as she begs to be let free. No matter how hard she twists or flails, she can’t get away. I easily navigate the dark woods, wary of the underbrush and careful not to let any tree branches I push past snap back to whip against her.

  I’ve walked through these tall evergreens so many times that my body has formed a muscle memory. It’s almost become a reflex to know when to hop or duck. The night makes it more difficult to navigate, but after countless operations carried out in darkness in the military, my body and my eyes have gotten used to it.

  I don’t know what my plan is. I’m just trying to put as much distance between her and that rapist as possible. The helplessness I saw in her eyes as he tried to strip her, the desperation I heard in her voice as he tried to force his cock on her, it awakened a sleeping beast inside me. One I thought I’d left behind. That fucker is lucky I struck him with a stick instead of my axe. I don’t think I would’ve restrained myself from biting my blade into his skull if I had it. He’d be just another terrible man the world would never miss.

  I step under some low hanging branches, twisting easily so that she isn’t struck by them. Her feeble attempts to break free from my grasp are a minor inconvenience, barely registering in my senses. The only way she’s going to reach the ground is if I put her there. After years in the military doing exercises where I had to carry men of my own weight and size over my shoulder like this, she’s like a feather.

  “Let me go!”

  A loud feather.

  She punches me between the shoulder blades weakly.

  A pesky feather.

  “Please,” she sobs, sniffling loudly.

  A scared feather.

  I stop in my tracks and realize how terrified she must be. First some asshole tries to rape her and then I whisk her away into the forest. I know she saw my face, and if she’s here to track me down, it’s a face I’m sure she’s spent hours studying. I don’t know if she has seen photos of the crime scene. I don’t know what kind of psychological profile she’s been given. She probably thinks I’m going to do a lo
t worse to her than he was going to.

  Sighing deeply, I gently set her on her feet and grab her arms as she attempts to dash away like a frightened doe.

  “Listen to me,” I hold her tight and she meets my eyes with pure terror, “I’m not the bad guy here, okay? I’m trying to save you. You think that guy was gonna give you a big kiss and call it a night? You wanna be back there with him?”

  “No,” she sobs, her body is shaking as big tears stream over her cheeks. “I don’t want to ever see him again,” she manages to form barely coherent words as her body convulses with fear and tears pour out of her. “I just want to get out of here.”

  My heart squeezes as she brings herself to meet my eyes. It’s hard not to feel like a monster when you see yourself reflected that way. Her eyebrows reach skyward as she blinks her eyes. I can see now that they’re green. They’re so bright, it startles me. They’re the hopeful green of a spring bud exploding into the first leaf of the season. That green that breathes life back into your slumbering soul after the Arctic wasteland outside your door almost made you give up hope. The green that lets you know better days are ahead as the ice and snow melts away and taking the oppressive winter gloom along with it.

  She looks so terrified, I instinctively want to wrap my arms around her and tell her she’ll be okay, but I know that would do nothing to calm her down. In fact, it would make everything much, much worse.

  “Listen, there’s no way you can get back to the town without me taking you there. I’ve been watching you guys all day walking around in circles, it was pathetic.”

  “You... you were following us?” She swallows hard and looks up at me. Her eyes just barely flicker over my face, moving faster than a hummingbird’s wing before she looks away.

  “Yep, wasn’t too hard with all the thrashing and loud talking. If you two ever had to hunt to live you’d both have starved a long time ago,” I roll my eyes.

  She trembles violently as I hold her and I know from the warm summer night that it has nothing to do with being cold. Her shoulders shake as the tears she can’t contain anymore fall from her face.

  “Hey, listen to me, I won’t hurt you. I’m a good guy, okay? You can trust me,” I try to look into her eyes, but she won’t raise her head. I can see her chin quivering as even more tears spill over her face.

  Fuck, I hate when women cry. There’s something about it that makes you feel like you’ve failed as a man. Just watching their soft features streaked with tears makes the biggest, toughest guys feel helpless.

  “I won’t go with you,” she whispers, but her voice is crystal clear. “You’re not a good guy, you’re a murderer,” her voice steadies and she meets my eyes finally. “You killed an innocent young man in cold blood! He had his whole life ahead of him and you shot him. That’s not something a good guy does,” I can hear her trying to quell the fear overtaking her as her voice cracks.

  Innocent?

  The word burns across my mind like the lapping orange flames of wildfire. My body tenses up and my grip on her shoulders tightens as I see the image from the video in my mind. I see him fucking her, humping her like a dog. Rage boils up from my belly, blistering up to the back of my throat.

  “You’re right, I fucking shot him! And let me tell you something,” I lower my face only inches from hers and can feel my lips pull back into a snarl, “he deserved much worse than that! If I had more time to plan it out, I would’ve been more fucking creative with that asshole, you understand?” my voice roars and her eyes grow wide.

  In the dark, I can see her leg move, but it takes me too long to register what she’s doing. Not until her foot hits my nuts and the first sickening wave of pain drops my hands from her shoulders. I hunch over, wincing and fall to my knees as the dreaded second wave of pain builds up over me, like I’m a surfer riding a wall of water as tall as a building, hoping somehow the wave won’t break and crash over me. But it does. It always does.

  Every man has taken a shot to the balls at some point in his life, whether it was when they were a clumsy boy awkwardly falling onto his bike seat, or as a teen missing a football pass. We’re all familiar with the debilitating agony. It doesn’t matter how many times it’s happened, nothing can prepare you for the intense, stabbing fire underlined by the dull, throbbing ache. It’s been a long damned time since I’ve taken a direct shot like that.

  The girl is off and running through the darkness, stupidly she’s heading toward my cabin, not towards town. I knew she couldn’t get out of here without me. As the beads of sweat build on my brow, I have more than half a mind to let her run off until she runs into a bear or dies of starvation.

  As the awful sensation begins to quell, I know I won’t let that happen. She’s in survival mode, I can’t blame her for trying to protect herself, no matter how misguided her instincts may be.

  Finally the agony dissipates in my gut and, sucking a deep breath through my nose, I get my feet back under me. I can’t let her die out here. She doesn’t deserve that.

  Taking off in the direction that she ran, I follow her once again, through the forest.

  8

  Abbie

  I tear through the trees blindly, trying to put as much distance between myself and Cole the killer as I can. I stumble through branches, reaching like the long, bony fingers of the witch trying to throw Gretel into the oven. Twigs smack against me and I hold my hands up in front of my face to stop them from lashing my skin. Gracelessly, I stomp through the brush in the dark.

  The beats of my heart are in a race with my feet, and my heart is winning. I can feel my pulse thud in my neck as panic wells up inside me, making it hard to breathe. It’s like I’m drowning from the inside as the fear squeezes my lungs and I struggle for air.

  Is he behind me? I can’t tell if he’s following me. I can only hear blood rushing in my ears and the sound of my own frantic feet crunching over the sticks and pine needles.

  Where am I going? Is this even the right direction? I’m lost in the woods with a murderer and a rapist. This is like something out of a horror movie. How could I ever have been so stupid? Why did I think I was cut out for any of this? Like a girl who is two years deep in a political science degree has any business pretending to be a private investigator’s assistant out in the vast Canadian north.

  I stop running and swallow hard as I desperately try to breathe quieter. It’s damned near impossible when my body is convinced that every ragged breath could be my last. Tilting my head like a puppy learning a new command, I listen intently for sounds of him following me. Each silhouetted tree feels like him looming over me. Every creepy shadow is a potential killer in my mind as I try to adjust my eyes to the dark and hone in my senses.

  What was that?

  I close my eyes, hoping my ears will work harder and listen better. I can hear footsteps. I pray for them to be a deer. Hell, I’d take a bear at this point. It’s not though.

  I know it’s him.

  Judging from the sound, he’s not very far behind. It’s only a matter of time until he finds me.

  I begin to scurry back through the woods. This must be how a hunter’s prey feels. Except they at least have reflexes and senses born into them to instinctively flee. I pull oxygen deep into my burning lungs and lunge forward, pushing past more whipping tree branches and the air swirls around me as my body falls. For a moment, I have no idea which way is up as I feel weightless in the darkness.

  Crunch!

  “Ahhh!” I shriek. My ankle folded under me. I curl up on top of it, trying to be quiet as a halo of pain radiates around my leg. Tears that I wish I was strong enough to hold back slide down my face as I struggle to stand back up.

  “Fuck!” I drop back to the ground in a clump as white heat sears through my ankle.

  Now what? I can hear his footsteps get closer and my body begins to tremble. I’m shaking like I used to when I was a child and I stayed out playing in the snowbanks with my friends until my mother had to physically drag me back inside. />
  “Your lips are blue!” She’d exclaim. “What were you thinking?”

  My breaths are quick and shallow like I’m hyperventilating as I whimper and try not to move.

  The footsteps get louder.

  Closer.

  Then they stop.

  I keep my head tucked down. I can’t look up. I can’t face him.

  “Jesus,” he mutters. “What are you doing? Are you trying to hide?”

  I don’t answer. I know he can see me, but there’s some small part of my brain that’s telling me if I don’t move or make any noise maybe I’ll become invisible. I know it’s stupid but I’m going to cling on to hope where I can find it.

  “Listen, after that shit you just pulled I’m just about done here,” his voice booms making me shudder. “If you don’t want my help then you can wait here until sunrise and try to navigate your own way back to town, ‘cause I’m done with your shit!”

  I don’t respond. I try to imagine getting out of here even if I wasn’t hurt. Apparently my imagination has limits because I can’t picture it.

  Cole sighs deeply, “Fine. Have it your way, I’m going home.” I can hear his feet crunch as he turns away.

  Would someone who wants to kill me just leave me like this? Wouldn’t he pounce on this opportunity? Everything I know about Cole McAllister is summed up in his crime. His cold-blooded murder of the twenty-three-year-old son of Senator Turner. With nothing stolen and no known connection between the men, it seemed to be a senseless crime. And yet he was intentionally targeted.

  Tonight, when he saved me, I didn’t see a monster in his deep blue eyes. I saw concern.