Own (Command Force Alpha #1)

Dedication

To BC and SA

Finally, we begin.

Acknowledgments

We offer many, many thanks to our usual suspects, who help us along every behind-the-scenes aspect of bringing a book to life. Love and adoration to our friends and family, including Keven, Juliette and Ilsa Lofty; Aaron, Christopher and Zachary DeLong; Dennis and Kathy Stone; Charles, Deborah, Regina, and Brian; Sarah Frantz; and The Group That Shall Not Be Named. We also want to express gratitude and respect to Fedora Chen, Dana Gautier, Nathalie Gray for our gorgeous cover, our agents Kevan Lyon and Pamela van Hylckama Vlieg, the incredible Samhain team that has gone above and beyond to support this series, and the amazing, beautiful soul that is Sasha Knight. We could not do this without all of you.

Chapter One

“Gosh, I don’t know. I don’t normally gamble for this much.”

Katsu Stafford leaned on her black pool stick, making sure the gold chasing pointed at her mark. It was a hideously garish stick, its only advantage being how perfectly straight it was. “If I lose,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll have to ask my dad to pay my rent. Again.”

The man named Brady tried to stuff down a smile and failed. His nostrils twitched. He was a decent player. It wasn’t his fault that Katsu had been working him hard since she walked in.

“A pretty thing like you, I bet your daddy doesn’t mind helping you out at all,” he replied casually. “Besides, you only lost the last game by one ball. You’ve got great odds.”

Katsu fluttered her lashes, letting her gaze drop as if considering the deal. She hadn’t meant to hustle today. Her interview with the Department of Commerce had gone pretty well, but she still grappled with nerves and a post-college ticking clock that chanted
get a real job
.

She’d dropped by her favorite local bar to let off steam, bringing her own pool cue as an afterthought. The tables at Drifters were crap, with knackered felt and shims keeping the feet level, but they were always busy. She hadn’t even changed out of her white blouse. Combined with her slate-gray pencil skirt, patterned tights and embroidered ballet flats, Brady was probably getting a heavy little-girl vibe off her.

“I came in third in my league,” she offered.

“See?” He grinned. He was handsome, with balanced features and salt-and-pepper creeping out from his temples. But he was kind of a dick. He’d all but begged for a fleecing from the moment he’d sidled up to her at the bar and asked if a pretty thing like her could really handle a good stick. He wasn’t smooth, and the line had little to do with her custom-made cue.

Now he held out the cash he’d peeled off a medium-sized roll. “Five hundred. Haven’t you ever wanted to live large, Kat?”

She hated people who shortened her name as they pleased. “Katsu” was part of her heritage, the name her mother had chosen when she had only her newlywed husband in an unfamiliar country. Kat liked knowing a person for a while before letting them get so familiar.

She gave Brady a tiny, slightly nervous smile in return. “Five hundred. I sure hope I don’t regret it.”

“I’ll even let you break.”

“That’s really nice of you.” She bit her bottom lip, all fake nerves, while a genuine surge of adrenaline sucked up her spine and made her fingertips tingle. It wasn’t the scared kind of nerves she’d fought during her interview for a full-time translator position. This was all about the rush. The kick. It was the main reason she’d brought her
I’m-a-wannabe
overly garish cue to the bar. She’d almost convinced herself she was only going for drinks. But really…

Really, she was filling her world.

Otherwise she’d have to think about how her dad was out of the country on another one of his uber-secret-squirrel missions. She wasn’t even supposed to know the name of his unit. After all, there were senators on the defense committee and big shots in the Department of Defense who’d never heard of Command Force Alpha.

She waited while Brady racked the balls with too much fuss, and didn’t say a word when he left a quarter inch of space around the apex ball. If she took her time and played him just right, she could probably take him for another two fifty.

She pulled up on her stroke so that the break was decent, but nothing more. Balls careened off the cushions, except for the four, which sank smoothly into a corner pocket.

“Solids to you!” Brady’s good humor sounded faintly strained. “Lucky shot.”

Katsu demurred, ducking her chin. “I just hope I can do it again.”

She sank two solids in a row before a calculated miss—enough that the red rose on Brady’s round cheeks and the back of his neck flushed. When he moved forward to take his shot, he was as stiff as a robot. Then he shook his head, laughing a little. “I was getting nervous over here, pretty.”

Katsu leaned against her barstool at the side of the room. A neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign shone on her beer bottle. She’d let it sit too long. Now it was slightly warm and extra fizzy, but she sipped anyway. “I’ve still got a chance.”

“Of course you do.” A condescending wrinkle edged between his brows.

He had a decent stroke and made most of the shots he aimed for, but he had no sense of keeping the cue ball in play. He didn’t know how to line himself up for the next shot, and the one after that—as strategic as chess. He managed to sink a couple stripes before he’d run himself out of table and had to turn it over to Katsu.

She slipped off her stool. Her skirt rode up her thighs. Let him have a glimpse of heather-gray-wrapped legs. It was probably the nicest thing he’d carry home with him.

Katsu was bored. She wanted to go home and watch Kerry Washington be awesome on TV, not spend another five minutes with this guy. Pool hustling was the most exciting thing in Katsu’s life, and she liked it that way, but it would be nice for her marks to put up a bit of a challenge on occasion.

“You should take the seven.” He pointed to the solid brown ball. Only, it was buried behind his green stripe. The average player would misjudge and send his fourteen spinning toward a side pocket. Advantage Brady.

No way.

She lifted her brows, painting her face with her best innocent expression. “Yeah? You think so?” Maybe she should take him around the world after all. He had another five hundred she could nip, and drop a pretty little chunk in her Roth IRA. Safe lives needed safety nets. “What’ll you give me if I make it?”

There was no reason to look when the batwing doors to the main bar slipped open. With three other tables in the back room, it wasn’t a big deal. Besides, Katsu was trained on Brady and judging exactly how much she could milk him for. It was a fine, careful game, requiring just as much skill as cues, balls and felt.

That’s how it should’ve gone, anyway, but the hairs across her forearms lifted on a wave of goose bumps. The pressure in the room shifted. Her air was…drawn away.

She turned. Her heart jumped with lust and hate and fear.

Evan Sommers was the last man on earth who should have been standing in a dingy, neon-and-fluorescent-lit bar like Drifters. He was the son of a politician who’d gone to school at Annapolis to pose for his Daddy Dearest’s campaign photo ops. Only later had Evan discovered that the Marine Corps fit him like a second skin.

And she had given him her virginity.

She jerked back toward the table, feeling as if every tendon was cut. With one hand on the bumper, she sucked breaths as fast as she could, but nothing helped. Her head floated around the lampshade hanging above the pool table. A field of dingy green swam in and out of her vision.

“You okay, pretty?” Brady asked. He came close enough to put a supportive arm around her waist—and didn’t miss the opportunity to graze his thumb across the side of her breast.

She nodded and swallowed a knot the size of the eight ball.

Evan was really, truly standing before her. They’d done their best to avoid each other since breaking up the summer after she graduated from high school. That meant he brought bad news. Something had to be wrong, wrong,
batshit fucked up
for him to show up in her territory.

Unless…maybe she was mistaken. Maybe he sought her out for good reasons. Maybe four years of ducking each other, even while he worked for her father, was too much. He’d realized how very much he missed her and here he was, ready to beg for forgiveness on bended knee for the utterly shitty way he’d ended their fling.

He’d finally say sorry for walking out on her the second her father had secured a place for him in Special Ops training. Duty called. That meant signing on with Command Force Alpha and both of them leaving her in the dust.

She was officially lightheaded if she actually thought he was there to apologize. He wasn’t the kind.

She made herself smile. “No, I’m fine,” she said, speaking to Brady, but keeping her eyes on Evan as if he were a snake about to sink venomous teeth into her life. “I skipped lunch. I think maybe it caught up with me. Dizzy, you know?”

“A tiny thing like you shouldn’t be drinking on an empty stomach.”

“You’re so sweet,” she replied automatically as she turned toward him and the pool table. Keep the mark happy. Keep the game rolling. “I’m fine though. We can play.”

His gaze slipped toward the little stack of cash held down by a square of chalk. “If you’re sure…”

“Totally sure.” She drew two fingers over her breastbone in an X. “I promise to go eat as soon as I win. In fact, maybe I’ll let you buy me a burger.”

He laughed, throwing his head back. Katsu still felt Evan’s gaze burning into her shoulders like fucking lasers. Like missiles. Like super-high-tech weapons that only CFA had access to.

She was losing her ever-loving mind. Positioning her cue, she aligned her shot and leaned in. Drawing in an intentional breath, she exhaled on a smooth, true stroke. The two ball rolled into a corner pocket, leaving the cue neatly lined up to pot her seven. She flashed a smile at Brady. “That was a nice one, wasn’t it?”

He nodded slowly, eyes narrowing a fraction. “Real nice.”

“I hope I can follow it up.” She kept her smile in place with an added dose of tease. That meant she pointed her pencil skirt ass at Evan. That was exactly what he deserved from her, to see her backside. Did he have a damn clue that she didn’t want to talk to him?

Ever.

Of course she followed up her planned shot, then sinking three in a row, efficiently cleaned the table. She put no extra effort into enticing Brady into betting on a trick shot. Instead she called the eight ball and lost sight of it as it dropped into the right-side pocket. Her hands had remained steady under a direct application of concentration, and that was the best she could manage. Her heartbeat zoomed in her ears with a distracting
thump-thump-thump
. The skin between her shoulder blades prickled under her blouse, and under Evan’s unrelenting gaze.

Now she didn’t have anything else to concentrate on. Only a question.

Why are you here, Evan?

Brady’s expression melted from self-assurance to stunned surprise. His mouth hung open. He flicked his gaze from Katsu to the cash she tucked into her purse. She stepped close to him, near enough that she was inside his Axe body-spray aura, and rested a hand on his upper arm. “Thanks for the game, Brady. It’s been fun. I’ll give you a chance to win back your money in a week or so. If you want to double down.”

His mouth folded shut, with eyes now narrowed to barely civil slits. “You’re good.”

She patted his cheek. “You’re not awful, but you’re not as good as me.”

She spun and sauntered away from Brady. She’d needed the last shot of adrenaline and energy because her worst nightmare hadn’t moved. He still stood by the door to the poolroom, with both arms folded over his chest.

Evan was as handsome as ever, as handsome as a girl could imagine. His hair was golden brown, curling at the tips of his ears and falling neatly across his broad forehead. His nose was a shade too bold to be called patrician, but he needed it to balance dramatically beautiful eyes and still appear so fully masculine.

He always had been good-looking. Time and wear and the solidity of a grown man’s muscles only added to his appeal. Had things worked out differently between them—but again, that was a subject too painful to dwell on. They were a mistake to be buried in wet ground, somewhere deep in the woods where she’d never see it or think about it again.