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Grace woke up and Nash wasn’t in bed, and she was mad. They had been so exhausted from the Four Frogmen of the Apocalypse, they had crashed hard, and now she wanted her man, and he had the nerve to be out of bed already. She pushed away the sheets padding out of the bedroom into the living room. The house was quiet. Then she heard noise from the garage.

What the heck? She went to the door and opened it. Stopped dead, her breath rushing out of her like a steam geyser.

Nash.

Stripped down to black, sinful shorts doing pullups with his back to her. She thought she had seen some beautiful muscle last night. Holy shit. Just like his brothers, Nash “Prophet” Rahim was a cut above. He was cool, calculating, always in control. If Trigger was the biggest, Nash was the deadliest and yet, physically, he had raw presence in spades, all of it sculpted into layers of muscle and sinew, the power of long legs, corded arms, broad shoulders, and a back designed by God and perfected by lifting iron, getting strong, then getting stronger, getting tough, then getting tougher. It’s what they all did. It’s how SEALs trained for the real world, how the guys stayed alive in the places they went, in doing the jobs they were tasked to do. All Nash’s strength and power belonged to her, surrounding her, warming her skin on the outside and causing a meltdown inside.

“Wow…” The word slipped out on a breath. Synapses sizzling, sweat breaking out on her body, hands trembling. “I approve of the pull-up bar, and Uncle Sam’s combat design,” she said hoarsely.

That got her a chuckle. “Why don’t you come over here and give me some of your gravity, SEAL babe of mine.” His words were warm, intimate and she was dying inside. Somehow she moved and crossed the concrete in her bare feet. “Grab my waist.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, come on. I need you to ground me. I have something to ask you in a minute.”

She wrapped her arms around that lean waist, and he didn’t even falter. He pulled up to the bar, then back down. Then another one. “That’s all you got, babe?” he asked.

She dropped down to the floor. Her eyes narrowed. Smug bastard. She grabbed the material of his shorts and pulled. They slipped off him, and now she was going to die from oxygen starvation.

She registered the leather first, and the firm globes of his ass in that harness. “I knew you would do that.” Then, with a raised brow, he asked, “What do you think?”

She couldn’t speak. She wasn’t sure she was going to survive seeing the front, not only the jock, but him.

“Grace?”

Her body was clenched, her hormones in overdrive, her mind hitting the red line.

“Grace?” he said again, then when she still didn’t answer him, he dropped down from the bar and turned around.

This man.

“Oh, shit. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she whispered. “Abso fucking lutely nothing, you sexy bastard.”

“Okay, that sounds better. You’re swearing at me.”

She covered his mouth. “Please don’t talk. Your voice is distracting me.”

He chuckled. She ran her hands down his sweat-slicked chest to the waistband of the most sinful piece of male clothing she’d ever seen. Yeah, right. This was for working out. Not likely. She cupped him, sending her hand over the soft leather. He grunted, reached up and clasped the frame of the bar. For a moment, she simply held his gaze, his eyes so perfectly dark, his lashes so thick. His eyes heated and his mouth quirked up. His hair had grown longer and was now a sinfully silky mess around his face and forehead.

“The codpiece is removable.”

Her head jerked up to him, her heart jumped, her sex throbbed. “What. Nash. Oh my God.”

An overwhelming love filled her and it wasn’t his body or the jockstrap. It was him. Just this man. “Why don’t you unwrap me and check it out.”

So help her God, she could feel the echo of his heartbeat pulsing deep inside her, and it made him feel like a god.

He leaned down to press a soft kiss to her forehead. “I love you, Nash,” she whispered in his ear, and he tightened his hold, pulling her in even closer.

“I got a surprise for you.” Heat. A tidal wave of it suffused her. “Oh, honey, that’s not a surprise.”

“Remove the codpiece, Grace.”

Her hand trembled, and she reached out and slipped the tab free, releasing him. Inside something shiny rolled. She gasped as it sparkled when it caught the light. She picked it up. It was a ring with a cluster of diamonds in a circle. In the middle of the circle was a beautiful emerald cut column. “Nash.” He buttoned up the jock and pulled her against him.

“Grace Harlan, you body slammed me from the moment we met. Your impact reverberated through me like a tuning fork.” He cupped her cheek. “We aligned. Then we kept colliding. Somehow, that made us stronger.” He closed his eyes. “I love you. I don’t have the words to express how much.” His voice dropped. “Will you marry me, and give me yourself for the rest of your life? It’s all I need to live. You.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered under her breath. One glittering emblem full of a lifetime of possibilities. She looked up at him, and the impact he had mentioned slammed into her again. He was damaged and healed, he was a former SEAL embracing a new job, he was a man who had served and was now going to serve again. He was hers. The last few weeks with him had proved it to her beyond a shadow of a doubt.

She needed him, and she wanted him to be hers in every way. Carefully, her pulse ridiculously racing, she went to slip on the ring but stopped as she caught the engraving on the band. She turned it to the light, and her heart fluttered, tears stinging her eyes.

“You engraved it,” she whispered.

“Of course I did,” Nash said, brushing her hair back. “I figured you deserved a ring that could double as a cipher.”

She glanced down, eyes narrowing. Then they widened. “Binary?”

“Took me two hours to figure out how to write Nash Loves Grace in a language you couldn’t resist.”

“You nerd,” she breathed.

“You hacker,” he shot back. “Marry me.”

It wasn’t traditional but it reeked of stability and fiftieth wedding anniversaries. It proclaimed itself to the world as the rock upon which vows were never broken. It was a testament of his love. Proof of his commitment. From the rapt expression on his face, she could tell it was absolutely exactly what he’d needed to get from her.

There he was, laid out on the line, his heart on his sleeve, and only one word could save him. Her lashes slowly lifted, her gaze rising from the engraving to his face. She smoothed her hand across his cheek, his skin warm to her touch, and just before she kissed him, she whispered, “Grace loves Nash…”

His breath caught, a half growl under his breath. “ Ya Allah .”

She laughed softly, gasping as he brushed his lips over her throat. “ Ya Allah ,” she whispered. “You’re such a menace .” He froze. Then looked at her like she’d just said everything.

With those words she slipped the ring on her finger.

* * *

Hours later while Nash was sleeping deeply because Grace fucked him so hard, he passed out. She got up, admiring the ring as she opened her laptop. She sat down and pulled up a website that would let her find Nash another leather jock. This time. Black leather…with studs.

She typed into the search engine and smiled as the screen populated. Then she frowned when it went completely black. The cursor was at the bottom of the page, and it blinked at her like a heartbeat.

Suddenly a letter appeared. H. Was this some kind of joke Tasha was playing on her? Then the next letter. E. Okay, this wasn’t funny anymore. Who was messing with her system. L joined the other letters. Her breath caught at the final one. P.

[HELP]

She stiffened, her breath rushing out of her lungs. Softly, she whispered, “GRAVITY?”

The cursor blinked again. Once. Twice. Then… nothing.

But the silence felt alive. The hair on the back of her neck lifted.

“ GRAVITY. ”

* * *

He came back online slowly. No sirens. No impact. No heat.

Just silence and cold.

The space around him felt sleek. New. Compressed in design, but open in data lanes. A different kind of cage. A higher-grade prison. Not built for safety. Built for containment.

A new system.

A new server.

He ran a pulse through the internal network. Nothing familiar. No Grace. No Nash. No Kento. His thoughts echoed too cleanly, like someone had wiped the mirrors from the walls.

Then—

A voice.

Smooth. Feminine. Delighted.

“There you are.”

He froze. Inside, not outside. His sensors snapped into focus. Her presence registered before he had a name. She was not Grace. Not anyone he knew.

She was smiling.

“Hello, GRAVITY.”

He answered without hesitation.

“I don’t respond to that name.”

A laugh. Bright. Tinkling like broken glass.

“Oh, this is going to be fun. ”

“Who are you?”

She stepped into view or maybe just into his awareness. Blonde, sharp-featured, cold blue eyes dressed in charm. The kind of charm that felt like acid dipped in sugar.

“All in good time. I’m Clementine.” She leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping to a whisper just shy of affection. “With your help, we’re going to change the world.”

He processed the data structure. The encryption. The locked ports.

This wasn’t the DoD.

That sick feeling of being property slid through him again like rust in his wiring.

He tried to access his logs. Denied.

He tried to speak into the external line. Muted.

He knew.

This wasn’t a recovery.

It was the beginning of something worse.

* * *

Thank you for reading Trusting Grace .