Lock and Load
A Totally Bound Publication
Lock and Load
ISBN #
9781781848456
©Copyright Desiree Holt 2013
Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright November 2013
Edited by Stacey Birkel
Totally Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2013 by Totally Bound Publishing,
Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN
Warning:
This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a
heat rating
of
Totally Melting
and a
Sexometer
of
2.
This story contains 81 pages, additionally there is also a
free excerpt
at the end of the book containing 11 pages.
Attack Force
LOCK AND LOAD
Desiree Holt
Book two in the Attack Force series
Two people who want a relationship built on trust yet neither believe in it…until he shows her how to accept his domination and she learns the true meaning of submission.
Beau Williams, the perfect sniper, has achieved success by closing himself down emotionally. He desperately wants to find a permanent sub who enjoys spanking and caning as much as he enjoys administering them, but he doesn’t know if he can open himself up to another person ever again.
Megan Welles is still struggling with her need to be a submissive. She wants a man who will give her that without destroying the strength she needs for her job as a sports reporter. And she’s tired of hooking up in bondage clubs but never connecting emotionally with anyone.
When she meets Beau and takes him home for the night, something clicks between them, but how will they deal with the struggle to open up their emotions to each other?
Dedication
To everyone who helped me with this and to the snipers who finish off our enemies with deadly accuracy. And most especially to the people at S.A. Crossing who have taken me in and educated me to the D/s life so I could write about it accurately.
Author’s Note
The author acknowledges that some of the information in this book is based on incidents as reported in
Inside Delta Force
by Eric L. Haney and
Lone Survivor
by Marcus Luttrell.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Walmart: Walmart Stores, Inc.
AH-helicopter (Apache): Boeing Management Company Corporation
iPad: Apple Inc. Corporation
Keurig: Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
Chapter One
When Beau Williams became part of Delta Force Charlie, one of the first things his teammates told him was Afghanistan was no picnic. They’d warned him that it was considered one of the most forbidding battlegrounds in the history of war and it didn’t take him long to agree with that assessment. Fiercely cold in the winter, hot as an oven in the summer, there were few roads, water was scarce and only the hardiest of the hardy could survive the brutal environment.
But the men of Delta Team Charlie, led by Slade Donovan, were just such men, trained in every skill imaginable to fight in the war on terror. They were part of a unit in the legendary Delta Force—or First Special Forces Operational Detachment—which operated as part of JSOC—Joint Special Operations Command—in the on-going conflict with radical extremists around the world. Slade and his men were currently in the middle of yet another hair-raising mission in the Hindu Kush mountain range that ran from Central Afghanistan to Pakistan.
An unforgiving mountain system, the Hindu Kush was nearly a thousand miles long and two hundred miles wide, running northeast to southwest, mainly through Afghanistan, and dividing the Amu Darya River Valley and the Indus River Valley. It stretched from the Pamir Plateau, near Gilgit, to Iran and had over two dozen summits of more than twenty-three thousand feet in height. Below the snowy peaks, the mountains of Hindu Kush appeared bare, stony and poor in vegetation. For centuries it had been referred to as the graveyard of foreign armies.
This wasn’t the first time Delta Team Charlie had been here in this soulless place on a mission and they were pretty damn sure it wouldn’t be their last. They’d plotted and planned as carefully as they could, absorbing all the intel they’d received, but as many times as they’d been here, they knew planning could only take them so far.
Finding cover was difficult as always, but their recon man had found them a perfect place to sequester themselves. Good thing, since they’d been waiting two days and two nights. The only good thing about the endless wait, alternately roasting and freezing, was the wind that had plagued them constantly for most of that time had finally died down. Beau, the team’s sniper, hated the wind. An errant wind played hell with the accuracy of a sniper rifle, screwing with the trajectory. He’d been doing this, serving as a sniper, for ten years and had learned how to compensate for nature, how to correct for correct for almost anything up gale force winds. But he liked it better when the air was still and his spotter could give him exact trajectory and coordinates. He’d still rather not have to worry about it. And up here in the Hindu Kush, the winds were very unpredictable.
Stretched out full length beside him was Trey McIntyre, the man who had been his spotter from the time he joined the team. By now the two of them were so much in sync, they could almost communicate telepathically. Trey was motionless, staring through his field glasses at the small settlement below. It was little more than a collection of tents, with camels and donkeys staked out under a canvas ceiling. Their target was a tribal leader who had proven connections with a radical Muslim group and who made money stealing guns from the American military and selling them to other tribes.
The intel had reached them that the leader would be visiting this outpost and would be more exposed than at any other time. This would be the most optimum time to take him out before he could do any more damage. With their commander they’d plotted the mission very carefully, trying to cover every angle.
They’d been here all this time waiting for their target to show himself. The intel had informed them they had a three-day window, but that time would run out pretty soon. The Apache gunship that had dropped them off wouldn’t hang around beyond the target date. Too dangerous. Even now they all hoped the pilot had managed to find a place out of sight, maybe in one of the many desolate canyons.
Their four-man team had been dropped into place more than a mile away from where they now waited, the place where the helo would pick them up when their mission was completed. Getting more than one team in there—even a full team of their own—would be impractical. The more people you dropped into a hot spot, the greater the chance of discovery. Lean and mean, as Slade always said.
Beau was happy they had found this little notch to conceal themselves. Slade and their recon expert, Marc Blanchard, were stationed behind them, scoping out the area. Covering their backs.
Most people looking at Beau Williams when he was not in mission mode would have dismissed him as a ‘surfer dude,’ and often did. But he was one of the most highly trained snipers in Delta Force, totally focused on every mission and with a growing kill book. Now, lying on the rocky ground, his ears were tuned to every sound, his hands lovingly cradling his extremely effective .50 caliber Heckler & Koch SG1. The lightweight, highly efficient semi-automatic sniper rifle had deadly accuracy and a large magazine capacity. Its silent bolt-closing device made it ideal when absolute silence was required, as it was with nearly all of their missions.
They had been in this spot for two days, subsisting on energy bars and bottled water and using those sparingly. It wasn’t as if they could run into the local Walmart to replenish their supplies. They had taken turns standing watch, napping lightly, something they’d been well trained to do, watching for signals of the arrival of their target. But the monotony of the activity below them hadn’t changed. The men in the camp rose early, gathered in the central area of the yard for prayers, prepared their breakfast over a central campfire and ate as if they had nothing else to do. Which, Beau thought, seemed to be pretty much what their activity was for the rest of the day. At sundown they prayed again, ate dinner and retired to their tents.
As the hours crawled by, Beau felt his training automatically take over, keeping him alert and ready. Every two hours they changed watch shifts, although for Beau even Afghanistan and their mission couldn’t drive away thoughts of the leggy blonde he’d met in Texas who had pushed all his buttons. A few months ago the four team members had decided they wanted to take their down time together for a change. Slade had generously invited them all to the ranch he owned in Texas, a ranch run by a very capable foreman while Slade fought for his country.
Hanging out on the ranch and drinking beer together hadn’t been the only thing on their to-do list, however. They had a specific bond, which made their friendship even tighter. All four men were avowed Doms and Slade had a membership at The Edge. He had been only too glad to bring the others on the team to the club as his guests while they were at the ranch. They’d all had another agenda, besides good, hot D/s sex. Each man was in his middle to late thirties, close to the end of the time where they’d be effective in the field. Whatever came next for them, they were all getting tired of casual relationships and hook-ups. But finding the right woman who wanted to be a sub, one who meshed with their hard-bitten personalities and could handle the time they would be apart, wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
Even then, if they found someone in San Antonio, what did it mean for those on the team who lived elsewhere?
“Don’t sweat until you have to,” Slade had told them when the subject came up. “Right now home base is in the Middle East. Who knows what y’all will decide to do after we get out. Maybe you ugly bastards will meet someone and decide to settle down close to me.” He’d chuckled. “I guess I could learn to tolerate it.”
Easier said than done
, Beau mused now. Slade, the lucky asshole, had hooked up with a woman he’d met five years earlier at a club in Chicago. By an accident of coincidence they’d both been visiting there at the time. They’d been shocked when they’d reconnected at The Edge and found they both lived in San Antonio. From the moment they’d reconnected, the heat coming from their bodies had practically been visible. On the last visit to San Antonio, Slade and Kari had gotten engaged and the ceremony was planned for their upcoming leave. Which, if things went well, would be after the successful completion of this mission.