Keep Me Safe: A Military Romance, page 1
Table of Contents
Before You Begin...
Chapter 01 - Mallory
Chapter 02 - Barrett
Chapter 03 - Mallory
Chapter 04 - Barrett
Chapter 05 - Mallory
Chapter 06 - Barrett
Chapter 07 - Mallory
Chapter 08 - Barrett
Chapter 09 - Mallory
Chapter 10 - Barrett
Chapter 11 - Mallory
Chapter 12 - Barrett
Chapter 13 - Mallory
Chapter 14 - Barrett
Chapter 15 - Mallory
Chapter 16 - Barrett
Chapter 17 - Mallory
Chapter 18 - Barrett
Chapter 19 - Mallory
Chapter 20 - Barrett
Chapter 21 - Mallory
Chapter 22 - Barrett
Chapter 23 - Mallory
Chapter 24 - Barrett
Chapter 25 - Mallory
Other Books by Lucy Snow
Contents
Before You Begin...
Chapter 01 - Mallory
Chapter 02 - Barrett
Chapter 03 - Mallory
Chapter 04 - Barrett
Chapter 05 - Mallory
Chapter 06 - Barrett
Chapter 07 - Mallory
Chapter 08 - Barrett
Chapter 09 - Mallory
Chapter 10 - Barrett
Chapter 11 - Mallory
Chapter 12 - Barrett
Chapter 13 - Mallory
Chapter 14 - Barrett
Chapter 15 - Mallory
Chapter 16 - Barrett
Chapter 17 - Mallory
Chapter 18 - Barrett
Chapter 19 - Mallory
Chapter 20 - Barrett
Chapter 21 - Mallory
Chapter 22 - Barrett
Chapter 23 - Mallory
Chapter 24 - Barrett
Chapter 25 - Mallory
Other Books by Lucy Snow
Hi! I’m Lucy Snow, and I wrote the book you’re about to read. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you read the rest of my books!
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CHAPTER 01 - MALLORY
Kelly’s words still rang in my ears, and they somehow managed to be louder than the music of Club Vapor coming at me from all sides. I shook my head, and looked down at my purse to see if I had remembered to pack ear plugs the last time I had used it.
Ordinarily that would look a little rude in a nightclub rather than a concert, but since Kelly and her guy were off doing their own thing, I was flying solo for a little while. After digging around in the tiny confines of the purse, I found the two ear plugs.
I fumbled around with them a second before getting them out and was putting the second one in when I realized there was no way I was going to talk to anyone at a club if I was wearing earplugs — who would start a conversation with someone who so clearly didn’t want to be there?
Not for the first time since Kelly and her man had left for the lounge area, I pulled out my phone and hesitated, my thumb hovering over the Lyft app’s icon. I could be on the way home, somewhere I didn’t feel the need to wear this ridiculous dress and these painful heels, inside of five minutes, and twenty minutes later I could be in my pajamas watching a movie.
No, no, no, Mal, not this again. I was here, I was dressed up, and even though Ted had turned out to be a bust, the night wasn’t over yet. I shoved the earplugs back into my purse, deciding that I wasn’t going to be that girl, not tonight.
I turned back to the table, and looked at my drink, currently my only companion. I took a long sip, tilting the glass forward enough that the ice cubes in the bottom slid forward and tapped me on the lips, causing a little arc of cold to race from my mouth throughout my body.
I put the glass down, but the shiver of cold didn’t go away right away like I expected. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, and I breathed in deep, not knowing what to expect, but suddenly feeling like a deer caught in someone’s headlights on a lonely road on a dark night.
I turned around slowly, gripping my purse a little tighter.
And then I saw him.
I never believed in cliches about time slowing down and the volume of background noise turning to zero when someone ran into the unstoppable forces in their lives, but at that moment I swore to all that I believed in that it was happening to me.
He was stunning. And he was walking toward me. Toward me, but with a purpose. A purpose that commanded the room and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why everyone else in Club Vapor didn’t stop whatever they were doing, whoever they were with and watch this gorgeous man walk toward me.
Because it suddenly was the most important thing in the world, and for some reason, only he and I knew that.
Stunning was not an adequate word I could use to describe him, not in the least, but at the moment, my brain had suddenly decided that working was something it was not going to be any good at for the next few moments.
I must have looked like I was about to faint, because whoever he was, he upped his pace and before I knew it, this mountain of a man stood before me.
Neither of us spoke a word as we took the other in. Almost before I knew it, I reached up and pulled a stray lock of hair behind my ear as my eyes wandered up from his shiny dark shoes, up his powerful legs and around the impeccable Italian dark suit he wore, to those coal black eyes that watched me like a fox.
His jaw could cut glass, and the dark stubble that covered the bottom half of his face completed the look, reaching up at the sides to his closely cropped black hair. I gulped. This was a man who had seen some things.
Time slowly sped up, going back to normal, which suddenly felt like a rush. The rest of the crowd at Club Vapor paid no attention to what had just happened, but the man in front of me, in my eyes, commanded the attention of the room.
“You looked,” he started, a low, and gravely voice that reminded me of classic movie stars, “like you were waiting for something.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. “I was,” I squeaked out, after what felt like an eternity.
He stepped closer, getting into my space in a way that I was more than comfortable with, and despite the two sentences we’d spoken to each other, we had already done a novel’s worth of communicating in the last 30 seconds. “I just had to find out what that was.”
“Huh?”
“What you were waiting for. I had to know.”
“I don’-“ I started to say, then caught myself. “I’ve been waiting for you. Where have you been?” I didn’t add ‘all my life’ because that would have been just a little too on the nose.
The man of my dreams smiled, and I sighed. I could get used to this.
I was already used to this.
“I had a late flight,” he said. “But I made it.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Me too.” He looked over at the bar. “I’m going to get a drink. Can I get you something?”
I turned and let him by me, forgetting my own drink still waiting for me on the table. “I’ll have what you’re having.”
I figured he’d come back with our drinks, but as he passed by me, I felt a giant hand take mine and then he was pulling me toward the bar. When we stopped, he turned back to me. The man leaned in. “I wasn’t about to let you get away,” he whispered in my ear, sending more shivers down my body.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered back.
Somehow the man managed to get the attention of the nearest bartender faster than anyone I had ever seen, and within 2 minutes he had handed me a new drink. I took a sip, feeling the rush of ginger beer, and I smiled at him. We hadn’t spoken since we had gotten to the bar, and for the first time since I could remember with a guy I had just met, that wasn’t weird or awkward in the slightest.
“You came to a club alone?” He took a sip. “That’s a little out of the ordinary, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t come here alone,” I said in my defense. “I came with my friend and the guy she’s seeing.”
“So you were the third wheel, then,” he said, giving me a smirk.
“No!” I felt my hackles rise, and I knew I was turning pink. “I mean, yeah, but that wasn’t the original plan. He brought someone for me to meet.”
The hunk folded his huge arms under his chest and cocked his head to the side. “And how did that go?”
I wrinkled my nose and took another sip. “Can we change the subject? I don’t want to talk about it.”
The man nodded, his dark eyes flashing at me, looking deep into me, in a way that laid me open, bare to him. It was erotic, having him devour me like this with his eyes in public, where everyone could see us. He didn’t say anything, and it took me a second to realize that since I wanted to change the subject, he was going to let me drive the conversation, at least for a little while.
I found that incredibly refreshing - I was too used to meeting guys who just wanted to talk and talk and talk, mostly about themselves.
“Are you from Meridian?” As soon as the words came out I
He seemed to take it in stride, though. “I’m from here, yeah, but it’s been a long time since I’ve lived here.”
“Where do you live now?”
He fixed back on me. “I move around a lot these days. Not too much time in any one place.”
“That’s vague and mysterious,” I said, unable to meet his steady gaze as I spoke. The words just came out, I had no idea what made me say that and I could feel my cheeks burning up.
“I get that a lot.”
Now it was my turn to cock my head to the side, like I was trying to draw him out and say more.
He must have noticed, because he continued, starting to speak before he cut himself off. He looked around, his gaze settling on the dance floor off to our left, before coming back to me. I felt my knees turn into jelly as his deep eyes locked with mine. “Dance with me,” he said, his voice rumbling like the bass of the club.
I felt his hand encircle mine again, a warm and rough feeling that made me ache for his touch all over my body. “We just got our drinks, though,” I said, raising my other hand to show off my almost-full glass.
He leaned in, till I could feel his hot breath blowing my hair back a bit just over my ear. “Fuck the drinks,” he whispered, and before I knew what was going on, he had taken my drink, set both of them down on a nearby table, and whisked me off in the direction of the dance floor.
It was as if the masses of people pressing themselves against each other parted ways to let us through. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how he did it, but we soon found ourselves in the thick of it.
I was still trying to get my bearings when he pulled me in close to him, running his rough hand down my arm till our free hands found each other, and I threw myself into our dancing with an abandon that didn’t make sense to me, and that I couldn’t fully explain.
Whoever this guy was, he danced like he was born to do so, moving around with a fluidity and grace that no one would ever expect from such a giant man.
And feeling him press those muscles against me felt electric, and made me wish we weren’t in public and that we could get rid of all these pesky articles of clothing that were clearly getting in our way.
A voice called out in the back of my head as we moved to the pulsing music, a voice that told me this wasn’t like me, that I wasn’t the kind of girl who would find herself on the dance floor up against a man she’d just met, whom she’d exchanged barely a few sentences with…
But this guy was different, and not just because he was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen.
I mean, that was a big part of it, not gonna lie, but…it was more than that. It was the way he carried himself, the way the entire club seemed to acknowledge his presence, to move aside for him and let him through. It was a kind of personal magnetism that I had never experienced in another person, and it turned me on in a way that I couldn’t expect.
The voice in the back of my head still spoke from the void, though, and I couldn’t ignore It. Regardless of how fascinating I found this man that I didn’t know, this wasn’t like me - I still wasn’t that kind of girl.
Or, maybe…I just wasn’t letting myself be that kind of girl.
He pulled me in close and I couldn’t ignore reality any longer. We locked eyes and he moved his face in even closer to mine, and I drew a deep breath in, knowing he was going to kiss me, and all thoughts left my mind. I closed my eyes and moved my head closer.
And then…he didn’t kiss me.
Well, not on the lips, at least. Just as our lips were going to touch, he veered off and I felt his soft lips against my neck, tracing kisses down the left side till he began teasing my shoulder.
It was as if he knew just what it took to turn me into a horny and excited mess. I breathed out sharply and moaned long and low as I opened my eyes, needing all my strength to keep from collapsing in his arms.
I had a hunch, though, given his muscles and how he stood like a statue yet moved like a dancer, that were I to collapse against him, he would be well suited to keeping me off the ground. I almost wanted to test that theory out.
But I didn’t, not this time - I managed to keep myself afloat in this sea of other people undulating around us like waves. It felt like all the lights were on us, and I leaned in as this sexy man switched sides and kissed me down the neck and to the shoulders all over again.
I could smell him — he smelled like a heavenly mix of sandalwood and vanilla. I couldn’t keep my hands off him, and I rubbed my fingers over the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms over his tailored suit.
Finally he pulled away from my shoulder, setting the strap of my dress back in place from where he’d moved it, and we locked eyes again. Neither of us had spoken words that could be described as English for longer than I could remember, and our brief time at the bar all of a sudden felt like a distant memory.
We kept dancing, our eyes never breaking contact, inching closer and closer together until our faces were parked just in front of each other. I felt like time was slowing down even more, and I didn’t know what to do, where to go, how to act. All I could do was be there in that one moment and hope that it would last a little bit longer.
And then, finally, he kissed me for the first time.
Whatever ideas I had about time slowing down changed completely in that moment, because this was the real thing. This was what they talked about in romance novels, this was what they tried to put into movies by panning the camera around and round as the two lovers kissed.
It was everything like that all rolled up into one and it was nothing like any of those things, all at the same time.
It was so much better than any kiss I had ever experienced, and when it ended, and he pulled back, I finally opened my eyes to see his dark eyes back on me, a smile growing on his face, and I said the only thing that came to mind.
It didn’t really come to mind so much as just come out of my mouth: “Whoa,” I whispered.
I could hear him chuckle even if I couldn’t hear anything else.
