Devastate (Havoc Series Stand Alone Book 5)

  Devastate

  Havoc Series Stand Alone

  By: Xavier Neal

  © Xavier Neal 2015

  Published by Entertwine Publishing

  Cover by Entertwine Publishing

  Cover Model: Frances B

  Cover Photographer: Paul Henry Serres

  License Note

  Thank you for downloading this e-book. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  All character, places, and descriptions come from the imagination of the author. All are fictional and any resemblance to real life persons or places is purely coincidental

  Day 8 in Georgia

  I didn't realize this kiss would be the sweetest goodbye. I never thought I'd actually have to say goodbye. To her. To this town. To anything. Part of me is clinging onto the hope that she'll change her mind. Part of me still thinks this is a bad dream I'll wake up from.

  Mary Beth pulls back away from me, brown eyes just as cold as they ever are. I'm an idiot forever thinking they'd warm up for me. That they'd ever really light up for something other than my last name.

  “Really?” She shakes her head wiping my kiss from her lips. Disgusted she sneers, “Just when I thought you couldn't get any more pathetic.”

  My mouth doesn't attempt a response. I'm not sure there is one.

  “God Jody, get it through your thick misshaped head. There is no us. There never really was.”

  Desperately I plea, “I told you Mary Beth. I'd forgive you for--”

  “Forgive me?” She chokes out a laugh. “Forgive me? I don't need your damn forgiveness. I'm not sorry for what happened. I'm not sorry for anything. I got everything I wanted out of you.”

  “There you are!” My brother's voice pops into the conversation as he rounds the corner. “Been looking all over for you Mary Beth!” He gives her a sweet smile and then looks at me. “She told you the good news right?”

  “Of course I did baby!” the false tone in her voice is nauseating. Flipping her recently died blonde hair over her shoulder, she moves closer to him. “How could I not tell your big brother we're getting married?”

  The words choke the last hope for her in my life out of me. Married? How can she...how can he...this wouldn't have happened if he knew the truth. If he knew, if he had any idea, he wouldn't have asked. At least, I don't believe he would. My younger brother isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's smarter than that. Man, I hope he's smarter than that.

  “She tell you how I asked her down by Cluck Creek? Where we had our first kiss.” He beams down at her at the same time he drops his lips briefly to her cheek.

  It's the same place we had our first kiss too. There's a sharp ache in my chest. How many first kisses has she had in that one spot?

  “I didn't get to all the details,” she whispers out. “Besides, it's best if he hears every last one of 'em from you...”

  The devious, destructive way that sentence comes out has me leaning my back against the brick building. Shame, embarrassment, and disappointment, a heavy combination I can barely survive the weight of.

  “Of course.” He swings an arm around my girl. No. His girl. “And he should since he's going to be the best man.”

  Best man? No. Fucking. Way.

  Jazz Wright, my boss, tips my cowboy hat up revealing her green eyes behind her black, box frame glasses. Talk about beautiful. They're so bright it's striking. Not just to the dick either. They're the kind of eyes that soak up everything about a situation, a person, a moment in one blink. Intimidating. Exotic. I inhale deeply and keep mine pinned in hers as my lips curl into a grin.

  “No reaction,” she hums in a judgmental tone. That's what she always does. Judges. It's her job. “Both Grim and Glove attack when unexpectedly touched like that. Your brains are trained to be in combat mode at all times yet you didn't flinch. What if I was an enemy coming to kill you?”

  “In the parking lot of a motel?” My response causes her to fold her arms across her chest. Boss mode obviously. I enjoy all shades of this woman. However, my least favorite is bitch boss mode, which she has been in for the last week or so. It's not completely her fault. We were kicked out of our elite military unit that doesn't technically exist on paper, HORN, for her safety ultimately. I'm sure the stress of not being in the direct line of fire of the job she lives and breathes, in combination with the fact someone actively wants her dead is the source of most of her attitude. Probably doesn't help she's a city girl stuck out in the middle of nowhere. And it's all about to get so much worse.

  “The enemy can strike anywhere, anytime Lordy. You know this. You are trained on this,” her lecture continues. “I'm disappointed your reaction is not up to the exceptional level we expect.”

  Folding my hands together on top of my chest I merely continue to stare, waiting for her to run herself empty like she tends to when she's upset. In a way it's sexy how her entire body strains. Her smooth neck elongates exposing a small freckle. Her thin lips tighten. Her head tilts. Everything about it creates a crisp, captivating image of how adamant she probably is when it comes to letting go of an orgasm. So damn difficult, but most likely worth every distribution of defiance she gives along the way. She's probably a screamer. Shit...Most professional thoughts for me to have? No. Most gentlemanly? Of course not. Most likely the reason I haven't completely lost my sanity? Absolutely.

  Finally, coming to the end of her speech, she gripes, “Why are you just staring at me?”

  “I'm waiting politely for my turn to speak, ma'am.”

  She huffs and folds her arms right underneath her taut, perfect boobs. I do my best not to let my eyes examine them in the brown fitted v-neck shirt she's wearing. Hard doesn't even begin to describe how difficult it is not to. They're small and perky, yet round and ripe. Like peaches I wanna suck the juices from. I wonder if she tastes as sweet as my favorite fruit. I don't doubt she's just as sticky. Picturing the woman in charge of your team naked this often is anything but healthy. But. Healthy isn't really my style. Never has been.

  “So speak.” She commands like I'm a pup still in training.

  “I didn't attack because I was aware it was you. Most people have a distinct pattern when they walk. Most people, also, don't realize they do. Grim, when not in stealth HORN mode, has heavy feet. Sounds like he's stomping everywhere he goes. His weight is heavy. Dominant. Determined to be heard. Like a giant at the top of his beanstalk. Don't come near him. Glove? Slides one of his feet every third step or so. Shifts feet but typically his left. It feels playful or lazy, both accurate descriptions depending on the day.”

  Listening to my description of my teammates who aren't with us, but in the luxury of their everyday lives, causes me to clench my hands tighter together. I know neither of them have easy lives, but it's easier than this. It has to be.

  “And mine?”

  “Your heels echo no matter how quietly you think you're moving--”

  “I'm not wearing heels.”

  “And I wasn't done,” my comment shuts her mouth. Not a surprise. She oscillates back and forth between Miss Independent and Miss Submission. When we first met and she recruited us, it was clear she had rules. Protocols. Limitations for us. Standards even the best of the best couldn't possibly surpass. It was strange meeting a woman like that. Most I'd met up with at that point could barely spell standards, forget having them. Not Jazz. She had impossible expectations that you were required to meet. To prove that she was righ
t. That she is always right. Then the damnedest thing started happening. At times when it was just us, a brief moment in a hallway, a long elevator ride down, too close in a car, it seemed as if the need to be in charge withered away until the thing left was a woman who just wanted to be taken care of. Loved. Touched. All the things I want to do for her. Even if I know I can't.

  She gestures for her me to continue.

  “You hit the front part of your toes hard, but to a very rhythmic strut. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap.”

  “When...when'd you learn to listen to footsteps?”

  “Spend enough time in a prison cell and you pick up on a few things. Fuck Director Shepard for that too. Three weeks chasing a ghost lead because he thought there was a chance that I was the leak.”

  “You don't think I was pissed? How the hell do you think I felt being accused of the same thing?”

  “I know.” I slide my body upward. “Besides your walk, you have a distinct smell.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The other reason I knew it was you. Your body chemistry combined with the type of soap you use, creates a very unique smell, that if you are aware of it, you can identify at about a four foot range.”

  Her hands fly to her hips. She leans towards me over the side. “Is it a bad smell?”

  “Love it as much as I love peaches.” I lean forward in return. “Ma'am.”

  Her face twitches, threatening a smirk. “I hate when you call me that.”

  “I know.” My teeth rest on my bottom lip briefly. “That's why I do it.”

  “You're as bad as Glove with his Jazzabelle crap.”

  “Mine's at least respectful.”

  “Uh-huh. Come on cowboy. Let's hit the road,” her insistence is followed with her dropping her hands and watching me scoot to slide my way out of the back of the truck.

  Slamming it shut, I pull the keys out of my pocket, defiance coursing through my system. Before getting in I lean on the edge of the bed. “Are you sure we have to go back? There are hundreds of places we could hide unseen in Georgia.”

  “Lordy--”

  “We stayed in Atlanta for a week. No one knew.”

  “The Director knew,” she quickly informs me.

  So our little secret of taking a vacation before fulfilling our hiding orders isn't a secret after all. Of course it isn't. This Jazz is the one that answers to him like the pet she is. Second in command to the Director of our branch. Fuck. I never choose women who are right for me.

  “Does he know we've shared a bed for the last 8 nights?” Her body stiffens once more. A soft glaze of something that I hope is sexual running through her eyes. The way the green is burning hotter makes my dick nudge against my jeans. “Or did that detail not make it in your report?”

  Jazz does her best to regain her footing. “There was no need to include the fact you and I shared a bed. It was purely platonic.”

  “Would you include it if it wasn't platonic?” The question is off my lips before I have time to stop it. Eh. What the hell does it matter at this point? I'm already stuck somewhere I don't wanna fucking be. It's punishment enough being sent back to the one war zone in the world I barely survived the first time around. Add celibacy to that with the temptation of the sexiest fucking woman I've ever met in my life and you have the definition of my worst nightmare.

  Unsure if the look on her face is intrigue or annoyance, I'm thankful when she rolls her eyes. “Get in the damn truck, Jacket.”

  “Yes ma'am.” I lightly chuckle.

  The two of us head out of the cheap motel parking lot with the radio lightly playing the latest in country hits. I'm not the craziest about the new top hits, but it beats having to suffer through a pop jam session like I do with Glove. Michael “Glove” Love, one of my best friends, teammates, and my roommate back in Texas, has a slight pop music obsession. The number of times I've woken up to Beyoncé songs is frightening.

  Glancing over at Jazz who has folders spread out in her lap, I question, “What are you workin' on?”

  “Going through Tyger's and The Face's files,” she answers flipping up sheets, scribbles being made. “Trying to figure out what I missed.”

  While Tyger is a traitor on our team, The Face on the other hand, is one of the most wanted criminals in the goddamn country. He deals in human trafficking that ultimately funds terrorist actions on our own soil. Finding out one of the very people who is supposed to be helping take him down, is helping him, is more than just a blow to our pride and stature.

  “Why do you assume you missed something?”

  “Because I did. This could've been predicted. Should've been predicted.”

  “You can't predict everything.”

  “I can.” Her eyes lift to mine. “It's my job. I study behaviors. I predict them. I anticipate a million moves in a billion directions. This entire incident should've been more obvious. It could've been prevented or at least...we could've been prepared for it. I failed. I do not like failure. Evaluations need to be remade. Recalibrated.”

  “Not everything can be calculated Jazz.”

  “I disagree.”

  “It cannot. Some things aren't equations waiting to be solved. Some things just happen. No rhyme. No reason. Nothing more than fate.”

  She gives me a sarcastic look. “Like what?”

  “Love?” The word returns her face to the paperwork. “Love can't be predicted.”

  “I wouldn't know.”

  Uncomfortable myself with the direction I took the conversation, because frankly, I've only been in love once and that was with someone who never loved me, I ask, “What's in my file?”

  She smirks to herself. “What's not in your file?”

  I shift in my seat. I hate that my entire life is color coded and alphabetized to some system to better predict what I will and won't do in the field or in highly dangerous situations. How well I'll perform under pressure. How well I'll hold the secrets of this country, of this world, we're entrusted with. I hate how all the things I'm running from in my past, all the nightmares I keep buried in the corners of my mind, are typed and organized on sheets of paper for the world's strongest, so beautiful it should be prohibited, woman to analyze.

  “I felt up my first girlfriend at 13 on a tractor.”

  Confused, she lifts her face back up. “What?”

  “That's not in my file.” I smirk and tip my cowboy hat. “Or is it? By that look on your face, I'm guessing it's not.”

  She giggles and shakes her head. “No. It's not. However, being caught skinny dipping in the lake at 15 is.”

  “Mrs. Kennedy was pissed when she found what her less than innocent daughter had been doing as a freshman.” I chuckle. “Ever been?”

  “Less than innocent?”

  “Skinny dipping.” The words cause a reaction that makes me grip the wheel tighter. Jazz's toned thighs, that look amazing in her jeans, which were a rarity prior to this trip, push themselves together clearly trying to hold something in.

  “Um...no.”

  “Ya know, I don't know much about you,” I continue. “In fact, none of us do. You know all the nooks and crannies about all of us and we barely know more than your name, your obsession with Victorian Era romance novels, and rack size.”

  “My rack size huh? Glove's two-cents?”

  “He's got an eye like no other for tits.” My smirk causes her to smile in return shaking her head in disapproval. Most people can't say tits to their commanding officer. I can. I can also see them rising and falling in a heavier fashion as if the word created another heated longing. Sex with Jazz is not an option. Not a good option. Not an option without severe repercussions. That doesn't mean I have to stop fantasizing about it.

  “He's seen enough pairs in his life time to be that sort of an expert.”

  “Have I?”

  “I don't know. Have you?”

  “That's not in my file?” Another sarcastic stare comes from her, so I switch gears.

  “Can I read yours?
”

  “No.”

  “Can you tell me something that's not in it?”

  After a brief pause she replies, “I like caterpillars.”

  “That's...something,” I mutter, turning the radio down. “Why?”

  “I feel like they mimic human nature.”

  “By crawling through the grass?”

  “By striving to be something more. To fight to live. To devour hope, into making it to the day you become something greater than you are. The struggle to stop being what you are and transform into something free. Something that can travel further than you could've conceived. It's beautiful.” I smile and she turns away back to her paperwork. In a whisper she confesses, “I've never told anyone that.”

  My hand slides down the wheel to my lap, anxious to stretch it over to hers.

  “Now.” Jazz clears her throat. “You tell everyone you haven't spoken to your family since you left, but that's not the truth. Why lie?”

  Pulling off the main highway to a private road, I grumble, “I didn't lie.”

  “You send out a letter, with no return address, every four months, six at the most, to your parents’ address.”

  “Wrong.” I correct her as the scenery changes, the lush green trees curving in, covering the path like a tunnel. “I send out an unmarked letter to my grandparents. One property. One mailing address. Technically, I haven't spoken with them. They don't get to reply and my voice has never said anything to them.”

  “Smartass,” she snips. “Then why send anything at all? What's the point?”

  “They deserve to know I'm still alive, even if my parents don't.”

  “You were very close with them Lordy. I wanna know why you left.” She shuts her folder as we approach the over-sized plantation home.

  “You've read my file. You wanna tell me it's not in there?”

  “It says when you joined. Not why. Grim and Glove's actions were easily predicted given each of their circumstances, but you...” her voices fades. “Nothing from your raising or heritage suggests military at all. It appears as if you just rolled out of bed one morning and decided to become a Marine, which of course isn't the actual case. So what was the reason?”