Heat - Book 2 of the Bad Boy Vibes series

Chapter 1

Chapter1

Victory had never tasted so shallow.

It had taken them the better part of the past two weeks to get the fight on the road. It had been canceled and then postponed through a number of objections from the dean of the military college. But it was now scheduled to start at just about that point when the sun, already peaking on the horizon, would commence its westward descent.

Anna Simmons lifted a concerned glance skyward, anxious about the fight to come. For the past week now, she had been every shade of worry, and her unhelpful mothering served only to ruffle up some already tense feathers. She had woken up this morning eyeing balefully at the overcast skies, knowing instinctively that it was a bad omen. But then the skies had rapidly cleared as it was inexplicably wont to do in this intermittent season between winter and summer.

But to Anna's way of thinking, the sudden turn in the weather contrasted terribly against the turn of the week—bright sunshine against the dingy, emotional turmoil. Although all that brightness spelled a disaster of its own, a spell of drought, which at least was in keeping with what Anna Simmons felt inside, dried up with apprehension.

Reaching back to absently hand Pat Cash, her best friend, the spare helmet, she threw a look over her shoulder to eye up Rafe Brown as he lounged by the door, seeing them off. His hair was dark and freshly cut, still glistening wet from the shower. But it was his golden-brown gaze that captured her forest-green attention. Usually duplicate orbs of melted chocolate, they appeared tense and geared-up for the coming fight, their intensity taking on tawny highlights, reflecting the fiery sun back at her. The usual pain within their depths no longer contained to their darkened center, inevitably darkening his soul in its anguish. He no longer concealed his pain but wore it proudly on his taut features and in the almost fiery glow of pure amber of his pupils.

Rafe no longer shied away from his aching soul. He no longer looked at pain as a sign of weakness. He embraced it, honed it, and turned it into his weapon of strength.

Rafe looked ready.

But Anna still worried.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us? We can ditch the Harley and opt for the Jeep," Anna offered imploringly.

She knew it had been her idea to have the fight at all, but now she found she couldn't stomach it. Not only would Rafe be intimately close with Eric Dayton during their bouts about the ring, but it would surely put Rafe at a disadvantage, what with the present over-bright conditions around them. Conditions that would surely remind him of less favorable times. Despite the contradictory start to their day, the heat had set in, and the promise was in the air to turn the muggy beginnings to resemble something closer to what he had been used to in Syria. Syria, where all things bad involving Eric had happened to Rafe.

If the tables were turned, Anna couldn't imagine how she could stomach being that close to Peter Preston, even if it were only to give him the thrashing he so deserved, and to be constantly reminded of the exploitation she'd suffered at his hands at that same time. It would only start the old emotional aches back up, invariably weakening her once more.

They were both victims—Rafe and Anna. Both abused. Both drugged and raped. The burn for vengeance was there within them both. But was the way forward really through the means of taking a step back? Could they not simply leave their past behind and start anew? Would their past even allow them that choice?

Having their enemies merge and descend upon them was too coincidental not to have the sadistic little hands of fate raking all over it. Lady Destiny had a lot to answer for. But this fight would be out of her hands. Rafe had this. He had to.