Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
When Bex stumbles onto a conspiracy deep within her father's department, Cipher quickly gets her under his protection—and in his bed where she always belonged. Anyone who comes for what’s his is going to learn exactly why they call him Cipher
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PROLOGUE
CIPHER
Ahead of my club president’s wedding, I had mapped every inch of the Rutledge property. I’d also done a deep dive into each guest before Stryker put a ring on his old lady’s finger. None of it demanded much conscious effort, because assessing a crowd had become as natural as breathing sometime during my first deployment.
Rebecca Raines was the only part of the evening I couldn’t reduce to useful information, because the reaction she caused in me was completely fucking unwelcome.
I’d known exactly who she was before the bride introduced us. Bex was nineteen, Jacqueline’s best friend, and Sheriff Raines’s only daughter, giving me three separate reasons to keep my hands away from her. And her father understood precisely how dangerous I could be.
Those facts should have settled the matter for a man who trusted logic. Instead, one look at her in that pale-blue maid-of-honor dress had sent enough blood into my cock to make the rest of the ceremony an exercise in controlled suffering.
The soft fabric ended above white cowgirl boots and followed a slender yet undeniably feminine body, curved in every place my hands wanted to close around. Loose honey-blond hair brushed her shoulders, catching gold beneath the strings of lights, while her hazel-green eyes seemed to shift between warm amusement and wicked curiosity depending on whether she thought she had caught me watching. Her full pink mouth made restraint even less pleasant, especially when my mind insisted on picturing those lips swollen beneath mine while I found out what sounds she made when a man stopped treating her like the sheriff’s sweet little girl.
I had spent years extracting useful intelligence from visual details, but nothing about knowing the exact shape of Bex’s ass in that dress was helping anybody survive the night.
I kept my place beside the makeshift bar, a bourbon sitting untouched between my fingers while I tracked her through the reception without moving my head enough to make it obvious. Every man who looked at her stayed in my awareness longer than he should have, and each one who made her smile produced an irrational pressure beneath my ribs that had no tactical value whatsoever. I’d convinced myself no one noticed, although Stryker glanced my way twice, looking like he was waiting for me to finish making a bad decision.
And Bex was just as aware of me, which explained why she had spent the past twenty minutes finding increasingly weak reasons to return to the bar. Her first visit had been for sparkling water, the second for a napkin she could have taken from any table, and the third because she claimed the bartender had hidden the lime wedges from her.
Each time, she stood close enough for the citrus-and-vanilla scent of her skin to reach me, gave me a warm smile, and waited as though she expected me to flirt. But I answered only what she asked and watched her walk away while my cock stayed hard enough to punish me for the decision.
A burst of laughter pulled several guests’ attention across the lawn, but mine was fixed on Bex when she stopped beside me again. She tilted her face toward mine with determination bright in her eyes and the impish curve of her lips telling me she knew exactly how closely I’d been tracking her. “You know, watching every man who asks me to dance is a lot more work than dancing with me yourself.”
“I’m not watching every man.” The lie was defensible because I was also watching the entrances, perimeter, and half the club, but the slight lift of her brows said she wasn’t interested in technicalities. My gaze dropped to the pulse at the base of her throat before moving back to her eyes, and the soft pink beginning to spread over her skin made me want to put my mouth there until the color deepened beneath my scruff. “Some of them aren’t worth monitoring.”
Her smile widened as she held out one slender hand. “Then dance with me and save yourself the trouble.”
I stared at her fingers for a second too long, imagining them tangled in my hair while I held her against a wall and dragged my mouth down her body. My restraint had already been reduced to mere avoidance, which irritated me nearly as much as the erection pressing against my zipper.