Model
Bodyguard
By: Lissa
Kasey
Narrated by Brian
Hutchison
Series: Haven
Investigations, Book 2
Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 01-04-18
Language: English
Publisher: Dreamspinner
Press LLC
4.5 out of 5 stars 4.6 (15 ratings)
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Things are going well for
androgynous model Ollie Petroskovic, ex-Marine Kade Alme, and their business,
Haven Investigations, until rock star Jacob Elias shows up in need of their
services… and trouble follows.
Jacob is a playboy with a
serious penchant for kink, slaves, and sex toys. He’s also Ollie’s ex—and all
that implies. With the media exploiting his personal life, a stalker sending
blood-soaked “gifts,” a bumbling security team, and a family he can’t trust as
far as he could throw them, Jacob is in desperate need of a bodyguard for his
latest tour, and Kade can’t refuse.
While Kade deals with new
doubts about his partnership with Ollie and struggles with reminders of his war
injuries, Jacob’s stalker escalates from blackmail and threats to murder. As
Kade and Ollie work to keep Jacob safe and find the culprit behind the attack,
a web of family secrets, lies, and abuse slowly emerges, leading up to a final
confrontation that they might not walk away from—and that will have lasting
repercussions for Kade and his relationship with Ollie.
Cat gives
this one 5 Meows...
In Book two Kade takes on
Ollies ex-boyfriend as bodyguard though he really wants nothing to do with him. Ollie
still struggles with Nathan’s death and the issues form the first book. Now
with Jacob back in his life Ollie must decide if he wants him back or to
continue with Kade and Kade worries about what will happen.
This is a great sequel to
the first book. However, you need to read in order.
I was surprised that there
was a different narrator. I liked the first one’s version of Ollie and
understood that this was mostly in Kade’s view and Brian Hutchison is a very good narrator.
I liked the pacing and was one the edge of my seat throughout the book.
I liked the pacing and was one the edge of my seat throughout the book.
Excerpt…
Chapter One
THE WORST memories weren’t
really from the bomb. I barely remember that day. Just the time in the
transport, joking with the guys, keeping an eye on the road, then fire and
darkness. I never really saw the others die. One of the things I remembered was
waking briefly in pain and confusion, hearing screams, and wondering why I
didn’t hurt more. The heat beat down on me as I breathed in ash and gore, and I
thought for sure I was gonna die. No chance for Nathan to tell me he told me
so. I’d been itching for death for years, right?
Only now I didn’t want it.
I imagined lying in the burning sun, surrounded by desert and pieces of my dead
comrades, thinking anything other than how much I wanted to live and how stupid
I was to have been there to begin with. But I was only awake a few minutes or
so. The rat-tat-tat of gunfire echoed in the distance as I plummeted back into
darkness.
The next time I awoke was
in a field hospital. Even that was a brief mash of pain and too-bright lights.
People shouted in several languages, none of which I recognized. I had a moment
of terror fill my gut at the thought I might have been taken prisoner.
Something wrenched my hip
hard, sending white-hot pain through my entire right side. Then the darkness
took me back. The days after passed much the same: in and out of consciousness.
I learned I was safe and that most of my team had died in the blast. I heard
talk of losing a leg, maybe even half my arm, but wasn’t coherent enough to
really understand what they were saying. That I’d woken more than a week and a
half later stateside and whole was a surprise.
My dad standing over me
with an expression of grim determination on his face was almost worse than the
memory of lying in the blazing sun amidst the gore of my fallen brethren. The
fact that I was strapped to the bed and the surrounding walls were painted a
pale gray told me all I needed to know about the situation. This was the stuff
of nightmares—a mental hospital.
It wasn’t my first trip.
No, they’d put me there the first time at age eleven. I barely recalled that
trip. The first of many that would arise until I escaped into the military six
years later. But I was nowhere near well enough this time to escape like I had
the last time. Nor did I have anywhere to go. Hell, I wasn’t sure if all my
limbs were still where they were supposed to be or if when I took off the
bandages I’d find only stumps.
Sometimes I still had
nightmares about those weeks before Will came to free me. Not about the bomb,
or even the faces of the hundreds of soldiers I’d met in my life—though the
guys showed up sometimes after a particularly psychedelic drug combo had been
forced on me. Oh the conversations the crazy could have with the dead….
The worst had been the
memories of Nathan. I sometimes feared my heavily drugged brain had been
conversing with his ghost, and not just a hallucination.
Will had snuck me out just
before I’d completely lost my mind. Broken probably a half-dozen laws to find
me a safe place to heal and legitimate people to prove I wasn’t nuts. My head
was okay. Mostly. Better now that I had a home and something to live for.
Someone to live for.
I opened my eyes, blinked
up at the ceiling, and felt Ollie’s breath warm and tickling across the bare
flesh of my shoulder where he’d buried his face. What had woken me? I listened
for a minute, searching the room and the house for what had startled me awake.
But as always, in the dead of night, the giant mansion we both called home was
eerily silent.
I turned my head and
smiled at Ollie. His pale brown, dark blond hair spilling just long enough to
hide his eyes and trail over his ears. His skin ran in flawless golden lines I
now knew intimately, covered at the hip only by one thin blanket. The heat was
on so I didn’t worry he’d get cold.
He had come home from his
first overseas modeling job—four days away—and despite his obvious exhaustion,
had jumped me. His libido was supercharged whenever we were together, but
nonexistent when anyone else approached. His kink was me. And I loved it.
He had to make sure I was
real if we spent any time apart, so he’d touch me tentatively at first. Then
would come the kiss, heated and devouring. And finally he’d drop into my lap
and grind himself against me until we were both begging for more. Tonight had
been no exception. Four days had made him clingy and needy. I was more than
willing to try to keep up.
A glance back at the clock
and I groaned at the fact that it was just after 3:00 a.m. After the marathon
of sex we’d had, I should have been worn out too, not waking up to stare into
the darkness at my moonlit lover, waiting for daylight to return. Not that
staring at Ollie wasn’t worth the sleepiness I’d be rewarded with later in the
day. I shifted in bed a little, hip cramping up. It would hurt later from being
overworked. Even after months of rehab, daily stretching, exercise, and yoga
with Ollie, that hip and leg were shot. I didn’t stop working it, but it didn’t
stop hurting either.
“Kade.” Ollie made a small
noise of protest in his sleep. I pulled him back against me, rubbing the scruff
of my face lightly against his cheek, but knew he wouldn’t wake. Four days of
traveling, cameras shoved in his face, dodging paparazzi, and then several
hours of sex should have him out until at least noon tomorrow. Well today, I
supposed. Since Tomas opened the office at nine and my first work meeting
wasn’t until eleven, there was no reason to get up yet.
I had an 8:00 a.m.
appointment to get some ink. Was on the third round of a tat that was replacing
some of my old stuff and hiding the scars on my right arm. Most of the color
was already in from two other long sessions. This one was a touch up and last
bit of detail. The tat covered the entire right arm. I was glad to be done. Or
at least hoping to be finished for a few weeks. Tattooing over old work took
longer. The colors were more vibrant this time, things I’d never have done when
I served. But it was only one part of a larger plan. I had a lot of ink and a
lot of damage to cover up. And the old stuff… it just didn’t fit anymore. Since
they’d patched me back together in a field hospital, almost all of it was a
mess anyway. A handful of skin grafts and thick white scars reminded me every
day of the implosion of my life. The USMC with an eagle wrapped around my left
bicep would stay—as it was oddly untouched—but color needed to be added. Life
needed to be added.
A little over a year and a
half ago, I’d been injured in a roadside bomb. Most of my teammates had been
killed in the same explosion that ended my career as a Marine. The medics had
to sew me back together. I’d been lucky to not lose the leg, but only barely.
That bomb had blown up my world. I’d walked in a fog of fading memories and
pain until finding my way into Ollie’s life. And finally getting a chance with
him was like falling down the fucking rabbit hole: white rabbit, smoking
caterpillar, creepy talking cats and all. Ollie was my Alice, my savior, and
co-conspirator. Most days I felt like the Mad Hatter, following him around with
an incoherent mash of madness lingering just beyond our existence. But I
couldn’t recall ever being so happy.
I sighed and tucked my
face into Ollie’s hair, sucking in the scent of him. He smelled like sex,
sweat, and the orange-lavender body wash he used. Best of all he smelled like
home. I closed my eyes and willed myself to go back to sleep. The house was
quiet, the alarm was on—I’d set it the second Ollie walked in the door. Ollie
was in my arms, and my Sig in the bedside drawer. We were safe.
An angry buzzing made me
jerk awake. I must have dozed off fast, because it was now five in the morning.
I glanced at my phone beside the bed and it was still, but Ollie’s bounced
around the nightstand on his side of the bed. He didn’t budge. I reached over
him, swallowing back a groan as my whole right side protested the movement, and
snapped up the phone. It still buzzed angrily in my hand, screen glowing with
brightness that had me blinking away tears. Then shock.
Jacob Elias, the screen
said.
Lissa Kasey is more than
just romance. She specializes in-depth characters, detailed world-building, and
twisting plots to keep you clinging to your book reader. All stories have a
side of romance, emotionally messed up protagonists and feature LGBTGA spectrum
characters facing real-world problems no matter how fictional the story.
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