Hold on Tight Read online

  Hold On Tight is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Loveswept eBook Original

  Copyright © 2014 by Serena Bell

  Excerpt from Have Mercy by Shelley Ann Clark copyright © 2014 by Shelley Hughes-Mills

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States of America by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Have Mercy by Shelley Ann Clark. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-553-39033-9

  Cover photograph: R. Jerome Ferraro/Getty Images

  www.readloveswept.com

  v3.1

  BY SERENA BELL

  Yours to Keep

  After Midnight (novella)

  To the men and women who have fought for my freedom

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Other Books by This Author

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Editor’s Corner

  Excerpt from Have Mercy

  Chapter 1

  Eight years ago

  He didn’t expect her to say yes. He asked on a whim, throwing the words out into the warm night as an experiment. “Let’s go in.”

  They stood with their bare feet in the sand at the edge of the lake. The surface was a strip of glass—cool and mysterious, reflecting a row of spiky trees the moonlight had thrown between sky and water.

  Pale light shone in her eyes. Her bottom lip was glossy and begged to be nipped. Her hair was something he wanted to get lost in, the way he wanted to get lost in her. He was out of time, and it made him brave. In a week, he’d be fighting in Afghanistan, and this—whatever it was—would be a memory.

  This wasn’t supposed to be happening. He wasn’t the kind of guy who could meet a girl and feel things for her. He was the type who should’ve spent his leave drinking beer with his buds and longing to get the hell back to the war. Whereas this guy he’d become, this new version of himself, couldn’t spend enough moments with his face pressed against Mira’s hair, breathing peace.

  She was eighteen; he was twenty. He’d picked her up in a Seattle bowling alley, where she’d come with friends, the first night of his leave. He’d been raring to burn off training testosterone. They’d made it as far as his car before she’d confessed how young she was and admitted she’d never been picked up by anyone in her life. He’d been planning to take her to a hotel room, but she was only a month past her birthday and obviously not that kind of girl, so they took a drive instead, the night air rushing by their open windows, the narrow roads hemmed in by trees. He found himself telling her everything in his head. Stories. Favorite books, childhood vacations, old friends, anxiety dreams … as if the pent-up thing in him had never been lust at all, but words, months’ worth of thoughts he’d kept locked up tight.

  At the end of that first night, she’d leaned over and kissed him, and he lost his mind in the softness of her lips.

  Before he’d flown home, his fire team leader had gathered them together. “We deploy in a month. Don’t get distracted. And for fuck’s sake, whatever you do, don’t get married.”

  Jake leaned over and nudged Mike, his buddy, his teammate, and said, “No fucking chance.” Because if there was one thing Jake knew, it was that he was never getting married. Never having a family.

  When he first got home, he’d stopped in to see his folks. They were as miserable as he remembered, drunk when he arrived, snarling and snapping at each other. There were faded bruises on his mother’s arms and circles under her eyes. It had always been that way: his father on disability since Jake’s childhood, drifting through life since he’d fallen off a roof he was demossing; his mother using cheap wine and online shopping to drown the misery of a bad marital choice made worse by circumstance.

  Jake had known at age twelve that he had to get out as soon as possible. And then at fourteen, the first plane had hit the first tower and he’d known where he was going to. He would take the fight to those assholes, wherever they were; he would rain destruction down on them like they’d rained it down on New York City. On his country.

  He’d scoffed at the idea that he could be distracted. The month of post-training leave couldn’t go fast enough; deployment couldn’t come soon enough; he couldn’t wait to put a bullet through the first motherfucker’s head.

  Except then there was Mira. Three weeks so far, nights strung together like shiny beads in his memory. Nights she told her parents she was with her friends, nights she stole from her life as a good girl. Movies, sitting side by side, the heat of her arm sinking into his skin and making it hard for him to sit still, a slow burn twisting in his gut. Nights at Dick’s, splitting french fries and chocolate milkshakes and passing iPods across the speckled table to share songs.

  In the car afterward, Mira setting the pace, her kisses bolder every night, their mouths sliding over each other’s, slick and hungry, bodies tangled and sweaty, fighting the gearshift and the emergency brake, her kneeling over him, trying to press as close as possible.

  Her hands gained confidence as they moved across his heated skin, as they unfastened the button and zipper of his jeans, as they slipped beneath the waistband of his briefs.

  She’d never said she was a virgin, but he guessed she was because she’d seemed surprised when he’d flicked his thumbs over her nipples. When he’d tongued them. When he’d slid his hand down the front of her pants and worked a finger through the tangle of her curls to tap her clit. The first time, she’d come against his hand with a soft, broken cry.

  That, like everything else, wasn’t supposed to have happened. Nor was the tiny ping in his chest, a seed bursting through its tough shell to germinate, at the sound of her voice.

  And now there were seven days left.

  Not much time for what he wanted from her, which was all of her, under him, around him, over and over.

  But it couldn’t be more than that—not more than a week of sex. Because he was never getting married. Because she’d told him that first night that she’d deliberately chosen to get herself picked up by a stranger as an act of rebellion. Her father had just informed her that he wouldn’t pay for her to attend art school, but would only give her money for “a real college.” She’d been so pissed at her dad that night, she would have slept with a sixty-five-year-old hardened ex-con to get a rise out of him.

  “My dad’s a total control freak,” she’d told him on their third date. She’d grown up on Bainb
ridge Island, college-bound before she’d popped out of the womb. Her parents were the same brand as his father, ex-hippies, but unlike his father, all whitewashed and clean living. She’d said, “My father would kill me. I never meant this to be anything other than a one-night thing.”

  “You and me both,” he told her, but they didn’t push it any further than that.

  There was only now. The sand under their feet, the gathering mist over the water, her mouth curving into a smile. There was no future.

  This is all there is. Now.

  He willed her to feel it, too.

  He listened so hard to hear her answer that he almost missed it, because she didn’t give it in words. She unbuttoned the top button of her blouse instead. Long fingers fumbling with the pearl-white disk. No revelation at first, only that undoing. Then another button, and the shirt fell open, revealing her breasts mounded high in pink lace cups.

  An ache bloomed at the base of his spine, the root of his dick, in his balls. His mouth ached, too. Before Mira, he hadn’t understood that sex could make you crazy. That it could take hold in your teeth and knees and chest. That you could want something so badly you’d beg for it.

  He’d kept the begging inside because he hadn’t wanted to frighten her.

  She undid another button and a sound came out of him he’d never heard before, something grating in his throat.

  She smiled. “You like that?”

  “Hell, yeah,” he said.

  Another button, and another, and the shirt hung down at her sides. He cupped her breasts in his hands. Now the ache was in his throat and his jaw and God, fucking everywhere.

  With other girls, he’d kissed them because it was the thing to do, the time to do it. With Mira, he kissed her because he couldn’t not. And he kept kissing her because it hurt to stop, played with her nipples and grabbed her ass and rocked her up against him because he wanted to have all, fucking all, of her; there wasn’t enough of her, he couldn’t get enough of her. That was how it was with Mira.

  The way she got in his arms. Like something fierce, writhing and live. Like he could barely hold her. And that lit his craving worse. He wanted to trap her, wanted to rub his heat and need off on her, but she wouldn’t be contained.

  She wriggled out of his arms and darted a short distance away.

  “Come back.”

  She shook her head and dropped her shirt to the sand behind her. She undid her bra and arched her back a little so her breasts swelled and her nipples tipped up. Something roared in him, but he stayed where he was because the visual was so fine he couldn’t stop looking. Saliva rushed into his mouth, blood poured into his dick. And then her hands found the button of her denim shorts and slid them and her underpants down her long, white legs to the sand. The whole, perfect fantasy revealed in the moonlight.

  He lunged, but she ran into the water, laughing at him. She gasped at the cold. “Get in here and warm me up.”

  He got out of his own clothes so fast he tripped over his jeans and got an arm tangled in his T-shirt. The cool water slid across his heated limbs. His body tightened and shrank, but his desire stayed sharp beneath the surface of his skin, like an undercurrent. He kicked and swam out, then back, stretching his legs and luxuriating. She treaded water and watched.

  “C’mere,” she said.

  In the water, she was cool and slippery, heat hidden in the places where he buried his fingers and his face. They stood in water up to their shoulders, and her body warmed his until she pressed his erection between his belly and hers.

  “Do you want to?” A gesture so vague she could have been asking if he wanted to go to the grocery store, but even in the dim light he could see the flush rise in her cheeks.

  He wanted to. So much he couldn’t answer, couldn’t choke out yes, fuck yes, oh my God please yes.

  “I have two blankets in my bag,” she said.

  “I don’t have condoms.”

  “I do.”

  She’d planned for it and—he wanted to believe—longed for it. Jesus. He kissed her hard and lifted her off her feet and tried to press up into her despite the mad impossibility of those logistics.

  She laughed at him. “Hang on. Hang on.”

  He swept her into his arms and carried her up the beach. He squatted, balancing her across his thighs, ignoring the burn, grabbing the blankets out of the tote bag she’d brought and laying them out as best he could on the sand. He set her down on one and she spread the edges out, then reached for him and pulled him down so abruptly he lost his balance and fell beside her.

  He crawled over her and dropped his mouth to hers. Her body was a dizzying contrast of warm and cool, her tongue a wild, aggressive thing. He couldn’t catch his breath. She made senseless sounds, moving against his fingers, shifting to press her breasts up so he could duck his head and lick circles around her tight nipples. Her next noise was a definite moan. It swirled in his belly and made him so hard it hurt.

  “I want you,” she whispered in his ear.

  His brain had shut down, and whatever part of him was in charge could only think: In. He moved over her and positioned himself, swollen and leaking pre-cum. He felt her wet heat give against his tip, felt her all over his head, and he almost came right then and there, almost blew his wad and ruined the whole fucking night.

  “Condom,” she said.

  “Shit.” He withdrew.

  She tugged her bag over and found one, tore it open and reached for him. He had to use all his self-control to hang on. He made a choked sound, and she hummed her approval as he got between her legs again and she lined him up against her wetness. He thrust forward. An inch, and he wouldn’t have thought it possible but he wanted her even more, her fierce heat squeezing him, and he pressed farther, farther, until he noticed she’d gone still beneath him.

  He was so crazed with lust that it took him a moment to catch on. She’d turned her face away, too.

  “Mira,” he whispered.

  “Ow,” she whispered back.

  “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry,” he said, and drew back, which elicited another squeaked noise of—he now recognized—pain. “I’ll go slower.” He dropped a hand between her legs and began to slick his thumb lightly back and forth over her clit.

  “That feels good,” she said, but as soon as he tried to move again, she made another noise of distress.

  He kissed her, hard, and her mouth opened to him, got wetter against his, but her body got more rigid. She drew back. Some nasty animal part of him wanted to grab her and refuse to let go, but he was stern with his desperation and it subsided. His erection was doing the same. Shrinking away from her misery. In a few seconds, he’d slip out of her. The thought filled him with a kind of despair. This is all there is, the now. A few minutes ago, it had seemed like infinite space, unlimited promise. Now it was the end.

  He withdrew and rolled away.

  “I’m sorry.” She had tucked her face under her arm and her shoulders shook. Crying. He felt it, a hollow pain in his chest.

  “Don’t be. We’ll try again.” He tried to soothe her with a hand on her hair, but she didn’t soften under his touch.

  “There’s no time. We don’t have enough time.”

  “We have a week,” he said, but he felt desperation lock around his ribs.

  “I’m an idiot,” she said.

  “This wasn’t your fault. It was your first time, right?”

  She nodded.

  “It’ll be better next time. I’ll make it better.”

  Because he wanted to leave her with something that mattered. Something she would always have. In case she met assholes in college who took advantage, who didn’t know what they were doing, who didn’t see how amazing she was, how she deserved the best he could give her. Not like this, not halfway and awkward, but the way he would do it next time, as much a revelation as the first time she’d cried out and arched in his arms.

  But she was shaking her head. “I’m not an idiot because of that. I’m an idiot becaus
e I didn’t see this coming.”

  “What?”

  “How I would feel—”

  His chest got tight. Tighter.

  “That I would fall—”

  “Don’t say it,” he said.

  She turned away. Her shoulders slumped. He ached to reach out and pull her in. To be a different guy with a different life, to say, We have all the time in the world.

  “I was trying to prove something. To my father. To myself. But this—Do you think—” Whatever she was trying to say, it was costing her something. “Do you think there’s any chance I could see you? Next time you’re home? That we could—I don’t know—try to be together?”

  Don’t get distracted. He could see his fire team leader, Sergeant Trebwylyn, in his mind’s eye. Buzzed hair, big as a Hummer, perpetually pissed off, warning them that he’d known way too many guys who’d come back from leave married. Dads-to-be. Entangled, distracted, bullet magnets.

  He’d given them one job, Don’t get distracted, and Jake had managed to screw it up. He hadn’t even set foot on Afghan soil and he was already a fuckup (like your father, said that particular voice in his head). And what she was asking him for led him straight to what he’d vowed he’d never do. I will never be like my parents. The only way he knew for sure to avoid that was to never become part of a family. He’d already let himself get pulled way too far down this path. There was only one answer he could give her.

  When he looked into her dark brown eyes, a stark contrast with her blond hair and fair skin, he wanted to kiss her. But if he kissed her, he’d want more of her, and if he took what he wanted, he’d be in deeper. They’d both be in deeper.

  She heard what he hadn’t said into the silence.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  But I didn’t even answer yet. He wanted to take back his nonanswer, wanted to beg her for another chance.

  The words were there, pressure in his chest, like that first night when he’d found himself telling her so much, for no reason other than that she was Mira, that she listened, that she heard. A pressure stronger than lust, the need to tell her how he felt. He wanted her to know everything. He wanted her to be the only person he ever told anything to.