"...if you count to five when something hurts really bad, the hurt can only get you for five seconds, and then you have to let it fly away. Just like a bird."

Macayla

"He's rude, abrupt, and doesn't know how to smile."

My new landlord, ex-Special Forces Vic Gate, is intense, and even that's too domesticated a way to describe him. Extreme raw power seems more appropriate. Or maybe godlike, except there isn't anything forgiving or merciful in him. Then again, he gave me and my little boy Jackson a week to vacate his cabin instead of seven minutes.

But the dangerously quiet, six-foot-four muscled wall does something to me. And it's way more than a sweet fluttering in my belly. This is an eagle-diving, bee-stinging, fire-breathing-dragon fluttering that causes all kinds of chaos inside me.

He's everything I need to stay clear of. And it shouldn't be hard, considering he wants nothing to do with us.
Until his protectiveness emerges, and I soon discover there is much more to the cold, gruff Vic Gate.

But falling for a highly trained killer with nightmares crammed into his dark, lethal eyes comes with consequences.
The question is whether I can survive them.

Vic Gate

"You won't survive me, rainbird."

Cold. Hard. Unbending.
Nothing unhinges me.
That is, until her.
The little rainbird perched inside my cabin with her ocean eyes that are scarred into me.
Now I want more.
The problem is whether I'll destroy her in the process.

103K standalone.

Come meet the Underground Horsemen.