Delta: Revenge
By
Cristin Harber
Copyright ©2016 Cristin Harber
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.
A Tortured Hero with a Heart of Gold
Growing up on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Javier Almeida has only his older sister to protect him. When she’s sold to a human-trafficker, he vows to hunt down those responsible.
Years later, Titan Group’s Delta team finds him, tattooed and brawling, a vigilante protector with information they want. They take him in and train him, working him harder than a man should be driven, until he’s a soldier harboring an obsession. Ready for revenge, Javier ghosts his way across the globe, tracking the men who took his sister and working elite private security jobs.
Meets Sweet and Sassy
Jilted at the altar, Sophia Cole turns the reception into a one-woman party. She’s intent on devouring all the cake and champagne, so she can bask in the calories she’s been avoiding. In the midst of the revelry, he walks in, the one man she can never ignore.
Javier is her older brother’s black ops teammate—an automatic Do Not Go There. But if there’s one thing better than fondant and a buzz to ease the wounds of a cheating fiancé, it might be a one-night stand with a South American military man.
Game Changer
Javier didn’t expect to see Sophia again. He never thought he would even want to see her again. He shouldn’t have touched her, but his mind won’t stay away from her.
Now, Sophia Cole is thousands of miles away from the safety of her parents’ lavish estate and working alongside him in hell. She’s a staffer at an Embassy, and he’s there to keep them alive. There are bombs and bullets and blood-hungry enemies.
And then she’s taken. Gone. Just like his sister. But so much worse.
Excerpt:
She had met Javier in passing a couple times and knew that he had a bit of a wild reputation. But that was not the guy in front of her, sitting on the edge of the bed, hanging his head and holding the phone as if he’d just received bad news.
“Are you okay?” She wiped the corner of her mouth, sure there were icing smudges. He looked broken and alone, and she wondered how long he’d been there, lost in thought as night drifted by.
But he laughed, transforming whatever hung over him with a flash of his gorgeous smile. “Wow. Yeah. I’m okay. How are you?”
“I hate that question.”
“Why?”
“Does anyone ever answer it truthfully?”
His dark eyes tightened with the hint of acknowledgement, but it was the cut jawline and olive skin that made her take notice. “Answer truthfully. What do you have to lose?”
The accent and the low pitch of his voice urged her to trust him as though he were genuinely interested in whether she was okay, even if he didn’t know her from Adam. Her head tilted toward the dresser where she’d placed her post-reception creature-comfort plan. “I’m gorging on enough cake for four people and ready to cut off my dress and drink a bottle of champagne by myself.”
He laughed and tilted his head toward his champagne bottle on the nightstand. “Feel you on the bubbly.”
She smiled, taking a step closer. “So, you’re about okay as I am.”
His smile wavered but came back. “You’re day is worse than mine.”
Her eyes bounced to his opened bottle. “Good bubbly?”
He nodded. “Not bad.”
“Good. Think I’ll join you.” Sophia grabbed the scissors and the bottle, sawing at the foil. She could go into a war zone and covertly try to change the world, yet she had no flipping idea how to open a bottle of champagne. Her mother would have died. Surely that had been taught in a cotillion class or something. Or maybe not.
“Hey, hey, stop.” Javier stood from his perch on the bed. “You’re going to slit your wrist or lose a finger.” In a few strides, he took the bottle and blade, shaking his head. “Have you ever seen someone open champagne with scissors?”
Well, no. “That’s not why I brought them with me.”
He pulled off the foil and popped the cork, giving her a look before handing her back the bottle. “Drink the whole thing, and you’ll have a hell of a hangover.”
She shrugged. “I’m operating without a plan. We’ll see how the night goes.”
“No plan, no problem?” That accent was intoxicating, far more so than the pricey alcohol. “Doesn’t work like that.” His thick arms crossed over his broad chest. His eyes were the deep color of coffee, and his hair was long enough she could have threaded her fingers into it, but not a strand was out of place. And the dress pants and a button-down shirt? Wow, the whole look fit in a way that made her delusional. “Are… you okay?”
“Um.” Shit. She was staring at the massive man, silently studying what proved God might’ve been a woman because to make a man that chiseled and perfect? Oh boy. Sophia was still staring. “Cake?”
He laughed quietly. “No, thanks.”
“You don’t eat cake?”
He gave a non-answer with a sight turn of his head.
“Then you should go.” She nodded, taking the scissors back from his hand. “I don’t trust people who won’t eat cake.”
“I eat cake, Sophia. I just… you obviously came up here to have some quiet, so I’ll go and let you have that.”
“You were up here first.”
His curious eyes narrowed. “But it’s your house.”
“Is it?” Sophia twirled, taking in a room she might not have been in before. All these rooms resembled the glossy photographs in Southern Living. They were beautiful but, in her opinion, lacked personalization. “Guess it is.” She stopped her slow spin and tugged at the dress that was still making her miserable. “You know what?”
An amused eyebrow rose. “Hm?”
Even his questioning noises oozed sensuality. It made her mind wander. If a simple question sounded like that, what would happen if he said it closer, quietly? Against her ear? Between her legs—wait, what? She snapped her head back, aware of the sexy, slippery slope she could go down and how her nipples seemed to have perked and jumped to attention already. She licked her lip, forgot anything about him being close or between anywhere, and focused back on their conversation.
“There’s—” Her voice cracked. “A very small contingent of people who’ve genuinely asked me if I’m okay. Colin probably being the most direct and most interested.”
Javier stood silently. His dark eyelashes fluttered. Maybe he was deciding how best to escape. Who cared if she’d just bared her soul to essentially a stranger? It was true that people’s reactions to her crisis said a lot about them—which she already knew—but she realized it was also telling how quickly she’d become interested in another man. Not that she was interested in Javier, just that it was possible to hear an accent and stare at the living definition of sex appeal and forget about one’s ex-fiancé. So. Very. Possible.
“Colin’s a good guy,” Javier offered.
“The best,” she agreed, her heart pattering a beat faster as he stepped, enacting his escape plan. Her chest panged for a nanosecond before she ignored the absurd reaction to his abandonment. But Javier’s next step came closer to Sophia, as though he waffled, not stalking directly toward to freedom.
As though maybe he felt what she felt: a seriously questionable, very uncertain desire to inch together. She felt an unexplainable spark that might’ve been more interesting than champagne and cake, the kind that could make heat bloom in her chest when it hadn’t flickered in a very long time.
“Oh boy.” But that couldn’t have been loud enough for him to hear, and she suddenly didn’t want him to leave. He’d quieted the buzz that she hadn’t realized had been ringing in her ears. Everything was quiet. Except her heart, which pounded in her lace-covered chest more than it had in years.
“So, are you?” he asked, scratching her with a tone that hit in all the right spots.
“Am I? What? Um…?” Her mind spun fast, trying to remember anything that might be conversationally appropriate.
His quiet laugh made her smile. “Are you okay, Sophia?”
Sophia. Her name rolling off his tongue made shivers roll down her spine. She liked her name, but the way he said it made one word come alive. “I am right now.”
Their eyes locked. There were sparks; it wasn’t just her. The idea was absurd. This had to be some psychological coping mechanism, but every nerve in her body had awakened and tingled for her to touch him.
So… simple. Just a touch. Her palms on his cheeks. The pads of her fingers sweeping down his neck if she leaned in, and their lips—
“Good.” Javier nodded, breaking their connection.
Her cheeks heated, and where electricity had shot down her spine, now it was a one-sided sexual awareness. She’d had quite the day. Sophia pushed her shoulders back and tossed the scissors onto the bed, and Javier handed her the bottle of champagne.
She took it and the cake then sat on the edge of the elaborately covered queen-sized bed. Setting the plate down, she took a sip straight from the bottle, and the bubbles tickled her tongue and her nose, making her squeak out a laugh. “I’m gangster, right?”
“Total.”
His chuckle and smile made her take another sip again because she couldn’t quite look at him without broadcasting how attractive he was. Javier reached onto the bed, where he had abandoned his suit jacket.
She couldn’t help it; she offered again. “No cake? You’re sure?”
He returned the stare, eyes raking over her in a not-so-benign manner. It did amazing things for her insides. Wow. If she was going to marry someone, she should at least have felt a tenth of the excitement that Javier caused with a single smoldering look.
“Yeah. I’ll take a bite.” His large strides ate the space between them, giving her a show of just how powerful his thighs were. Before she could fathom cutting a piece off for him, he joined her on the edge of the bed, confidently picked up her fork, and took a man-sized bite.
Holy mother of snack shares—he used her fork. Who did that? Gah. That was a far cry from, basically, their first in-depth conversation.
He nodded his appreciation. “Good stuff.”
Javier speared another piece, and before she knew how to process his movements, the cake was pressed to her lips, and she ate the decidedly smaller bite. Which was just as good as the first tastes, but he had fed it to her, so it was infinitely better.
Nerves and nutso thoughts rambled in her head, and fortunately, she managed to mumble her thanks. Her insides were scattered, her mind numb. Had hottie Javier just fed her cake? Why yes, he had. Along with his accent replaying in her head, she could pretty much check off every fantasy she’d ever had. And he was still next to her. Still.
Holy shit, she needed that bubbly. Pronto.
They both reached for their matching bottles. Apparently, Javier needed his bubbly too. That made her smile, which made him smile. What a smile. What an amazingly dangerous smile…
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