Page 85 of Desperate Actions

We served together overseas, running ops so deep in the dark they might as well have never existed.

MARSOC trained us to be the best. To move like shadows. To execute with precision.

But war doesn’t care how skilled you are. Sometimes, it just decides it’s your time.

It should’ve been mine that night.

It wasn’t. Because of him.

That’s why he’s here now. Not because I need another body in my security team. Not because I can’t find someone else just as skilled.

He’s here because when a man saves your life, when he pulls you from the black and takes your weight on his own back, you don’t forget it.

And you don’t leave him behind.

It’s a dangerous thing, letting my mind drift back to those days. The past has sharp edges, memories that cut deep if I let them. But the second I inhale, catching the lingering scent of Aella on my skin, on my clothes, something in me settles.

She’s my anchor. My safe harbor in a world that’s always been edged in violence.

I pull open her door and help her down, my hands spanning her waist like I can shield her from the world just by touching her.

She’s so damn tiny.

Short. Petite. Deliciously curvy.

Soft in ways that strip me of my self-control, that make me weak when I should be nothing but steel.

And fuck me, I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that she thinks she’s anything less than perfect.

That she believes for even a second that she’s too much of something, not enough of something else. That some fucked-up standard, dictated by people who wouldn’t know real beauty if it bled in their hands, has made her question herself.

I blame society for it. The Hollywood machine. Glossy magazine covers, the airbrushed lies, the bullshit expectations that get shoved down every woman’s throat.

The good news?

There are people fighting back. Real voices, real bodies, real beauty breaking through the noise.

The bad news?

It’s not enough. It’ll never be enough to erase what’s already embedded in her mind.

But I’ll be damned if I ever let her believe she’s anything less than the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen.

Because every inch of her—every dimple, dip, and curve, every bit of her impossible softness, everything that makes her Aella—is mine, and I adore it. And I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure she sees herself the way I see her.

“Boss, welcome back,” Santos greets me.

“Thank you. Santos, allow me to introduce my wife. This is Mrs. Ramirez,” I say, my hand firm on Aella’s lower back.

I won’t give him or anyone permission to use her first name. Fuck that.

She leans into me, giving a small wave.

Damn.

So cute.

“Um, hi.”

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