The Drop Zone Read online

  The Drop Zone

  Shandi Boyes

  Edited by

  Swish Editing

  Illustrated by

  SSB Covers And Designs

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2020 by Shandi Boyes

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Written by: Shandi Boyes

  Cover: SSB Covers and Design

  Beta: Carolyn Wallace

  Editing by Nicki at Swish Design & Editing

  Proofing by Kay at Swish Design & Editing

  Dedication

  For those suffering.

  Remember the sun will always return no matter how strong the storm.

  Shandi xx

  Also by Shandi Boyes

  Perception Series - New Adult Rock Star Romance

  Saving Noah

  Fighting Jacob

  Taming Nick

  Redeeming Slater

  Wrapped up with Rise Up

  Enigma Series - Steamy Contemporary Romance

  Enigma of Life - (Isaac)

  Unraveling an Enigma - (Isaac)

  Enigma: The Mystery Unmasked - (Isaac)

  Enigma: The Final Chapter - (Isaac)

  Beneath the Secrets - (Hugo - Part 1)

  Beneath the Sheets - (Hugo Conclusion)

  Spy Thy Neighbor (Hunter - standalone)

  The Opposite Effect - (Brax & Clara)

  I Married a Mob Boss - (Rico - Nikolai’s Brother)

  Second Shot (Hawke’s Story)

  The Way We Are (Ryan Pt 1)

  The Way We Were (Ryan Pt 2)

  Sugar and Spice (Cormack)

  Bound Series - Steamy Romance & BDSM

  Chains (Marcus and Cleo)

  Links (Marcus and Cleo)

  Bound (Marcus and Cleo)

  Restrained (Marcus and Cleo)

  Psycho (Dexter)

  Russian Mob Chronicles

  Nikolai: A Mafia Prince Romance

  Nikolai: Taking Back What’s Mine

  Nikolai: What’s Left of Me

  Nikolai: Mine to Protect

  Asher: My Russian Revenge

  Infinite Time Trilogy

  Lady In Waiting (Regan)

  Man in Queue (Regan)

  Couple on Hold (Regan)

  Standalones

  Just Playin’ (Presley and Willow)

  COMING SOON:

  Skitzo

  Colby

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Bonus Epilogue

  Sugar and Spice Teaser

  1. Harlow

  2. Cormack

  Also by Shandi Boyes

  Blurb

  Look up ‘cocky’ in the dictionary—overconfident, arrogant, and has an answer for everything. That’s Colby McGregor, third in line for the McGregor billionaire dynasty, adventure capitalist, and all-round pain in my backside.

  It’s my ability to siphon the attitude from his veins that brought us together, but it’s the above points keeping me around. He brings out of a side of me no one else sees—not even my fiancé. However, our game of tit-for-tat isn’t child’s play. If we’re not careful, more than my upcoming nuptials will be on the line.

  The Drop Zone is a heart-warming romantic comedy with a cocky, swoon-worthy hero who’ll prove not every story is meant to be read front to back. Sometimes, it’s the pages that slip out of a book which are the most rewarding.

  Prologue

  Colby

  “Fabian?”

  When I slap the cheek of the three hundred pound piece of flesh strapped to the front of me, he doesn’t rouse in the slightest. He’s out for the count, the gift his family bought him to celebrate his sixtieth birthday not turning out as they had anticipated. He’s not distracted by the California coastline we’re hovering above like eagles in a near-perfect blue sky. His eyes are rolled into the back of his head, his body slumped in his harness.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve had someone pass out while skydiving. I’ve been pooped, peed, and puked on many times in my past three years of jumping, but this is the first time I’ve failed to find a pulse on my student’s neck. Usually, they’re unconscious due to a lack of nutrients. They get themselves so worked up before a jump, they either forget to eat or put the bathrooms at our headquarters to good use.

  I didn’t get the nervous-shitter vibe from Fabian. He’s been a near-perfect student. He followed my instructions to the wire during our debriefing and wasn’t the slightest bit fazed when I requested to check the weight he jotted down on the forms we make all first-time jumpers fill in. He looked a little heavier than the two hundred eighty pounds he put down. I was right. Not by much, but enough that some adjustments were required before we got in the air.

  Our freefall was near perfect. Fabian screamed like a bitch, but he maintained the arch position as instructed. His head was back, his hips forward, and his legs angled at forty-five degrees. We had a clean deployment of the main parachute and was looking at bringing in a near-perfect landing until he threw a spanner into the works at three thousand feet.

  “Come on, Fabian. Now isn’t the time to test your ticker.”

  After executing a swoop, so our parachute crosses the ground at a rate faster than we’d usually descend, I pinch Fabian’s flapping lips between my thumb and index finger to check he isn’t choking on the puke he nearly succumbed to during our short waddle from our seat to the open airplane door.

  I grow desperate when his throat comes up clear. I swoop again. To an inexperienced instructor, swooping at the wrong time can end fatally. Thank fuck for all involved I don’t lack skills—neither in the sky or the bedroom.

  When my canopy catches the westerly blowing off the scenic coastline, it gives us the push we need to descend our last two thousand feet at a faster rate than the jumpers who followed us out of our aircraft. Fabian isn’t getting his money worth with this jump. We’ve barely been in the air for five minutes.

  As the drop zone approaches, I signal to the ground crew that this isn’t a standard landing. Thank fuck Tyrone is The Drop Zone’s coordinator today. He knows I don’t fool around with shit like this. I’m all for having a good time, but when it comes to my clients, I’d never put their safety at risk.

  My third swoop sees Tyrone jumping into action. He gets the safety officer on the ground, and within minutes, ambulance sirens sound in the distance. Now I’ve just got to land this without the assistance of a man nearly double my size strapped to my front.

  A few feet from the drop zone, I pull down on the toggles to flare the chute with the hope it will give us a soft landing. Usually, I’d instruct my student to raise their legs, so my ass lands on the ground and theirs la
nd in my crotch.

  That isn’t happening today.

  I need to change things up. I’ve got the height advantage needed, so I won’t look like a monkey clinging to his back, but I don’t know if my ankles are up to the task of stopping over four hundred and seventy pounds of muscle and fat.

  “Move, move, move!”

  Fabian’s family stops recording, suddenly comprehending that the low hang of his head isn’t natural. And neither is our landing.

  Chapter 1

  Colby

  Two Years Later…

  When a persistent vibration on my bedside table disturbs the blonde going to town on my cock, I snatch up my cell phone and peg it across the room. Its crash with the only solid wall in my loft is barely heard over her giggle when I push her head back down, wordlessly demanding she finish what she’ started.

  It’s not often I’m awakened by my balls being sucked into a warm and inviting mouth, so I’m not giving this up for anything. Tyrone can wait. Unwanted meetings with fuckface number crunchers who don’t understand what I do can wait. I’ve got business to take care of, and it has nothing to do with the millions I’ve amassed the past two years replicating the thrill I experience when the hungry little minx sucking my dick rakes her teeth over the crest of my cock.

  Her eagerness to have me coming undone is the best part of my job. With many universities being close to my business, The Drop Zone, we get a lot of college girls passing through our doors. Any buzz a fourteen-thousand-foot jump doesn’t take care of, I’m more than willing to take up its slack. My job is to make sure my clients leave thoroughly satisfied. If part of their satisfaction is sucking my cock at ten in the morning, who am I to stop them?

  There are no candlelit dinners, movie dates, or corny roller-skating afternoons at Venice Beach required to seal the deal. The adrenaline roaring through their bodies at the end of a terrifying jump already has them mistaking homeless bums as Chris Hemsworth, but my crystal-blue eyes, cut jaw not covered by an inch of scruff, and the appendage they feel digging into their ass when they’re harnessed to my front has them looking at me like I’m a god.

  And that’s precisely what they call me when they shout my name from the rooftops.

  That half an inch I’m sure I have on my big brother rams down the blonde’s throat when the deep timbre of my business partner roars up the spiral staircase of my loft. “Don’t make me come up there, Casper.”

  He must be pissed. The only time Tyrone calls me Casper is when I bed the girl he’s chasing before him, or he’s trying to ensure his daddy he didn’t partner up with a rich, white kid—he owns him. Tyrone is straight-up African. African lips. African skin. African afro. African dick.

  I’d rather not know his last trait. Unfortunately, I couldn’t ignore it when he swung it around like Tarzan’s vine at our annual Christmas giddy-up last year. I couldn’t miss the fucker. It was large, long, and hideously emasculating to any man within a five-mile radius. It’s lucky I’m just as stacked, or I might have crawled into my man cave and cried like a bitch.

  Friendly ghost or not, this little white boy is packing heat. I’ve got the goods and am not ashamed to admit it. Who in their right mind would? Don’t go acting like it’s only guys who brag about their goods. Those tight white business shirts women are getting around in to spark equality in the workplace weren’t invented by men. We wish we were that intelligent. They were designed by women for women, not just to showcase that men lose thirty percent of their brainpower when confronted by a nice pair of titties but as an indicator of our chances before we’ve even approached our target.

  The math is simple—if she’s buttoned-up to within a few millimeters of her collarbone, the only chance of you ever getting her wet is when you’re flicking holy water at her chest while screaming “Hail Mary” at the top of your lungs. The risqué I’ll-leave-one-or-two-buttons-undone-as-it’s-a-little-hot-today aren’t extreme as the preachers’ daughters, but you’ll have to work your ass off to slide from third base to home plate. That shit takes commitment, matrimony, and all that other whacked-up crap I have no intention of signing up for within the next decade—if ever.

  Then you have the women who are confident like me. The ones who know what they have and are happy to flaunt it, but will still make you work for it. They’re the three-button girls. Three buttons are the cheese on a Philly steak sandwich—the gooey heart-clogging goodness that holds the world together and makes everything that little bit tastier. They’re the girls like Olivia who don’t need a heap of false promises to participate in an all-night fuck session before waking you with the holy grain of womanism. She may be sucking my cock right now, but every woman this side of the country knows it is women like Olivia keeping this great country running.

  If she has more than three buttons undone, run, motherfucker, run! Those are the whack job, you’ll-forever-sleep-with-one-eye-open girls, the ones who blow up your cell within five minutes of you leaving them alone and track you down when you’re having a beer with your mates. I get it, the fourth button is tempting, you’ll think what every naïve, horny man has thought before you—that you can handle the madness her fourth unbuttoning brings to the table.

  Trust me when I say you’ll never be prepared for the shitstorm she’ll rain down on you. If forced to pick between One-Button Barbie or Four-Button Betty, you can be assured my money will only ever be placed on one thing—a first-class ticket to Ibiza.

  “Nu-huh. Don’t let his growl fool you. He’s really a giant teddy.” I push Olivia’s lips back onto my cock before straying my eyes to Tyrone, who’s just stormed into my loft, demanding I get my ass out of bed before he drags me out of it. “He knew what he’d walk in on long before he decided to interrupt us. Now he can suffer the injustice.”

  My last three words quiver when Olivia swivels her tongue on the underside of my knob. Her excitement about having an audience has me wondering if I miscounted the inches of her cleavage on display late yesterday afternoon. A miscalculation could be easily excused. She wasn’t wearing a buttoned-up shirt, so I had to use the old metric scale. I’ve never been overly good at math, but I’m certain the leather strips on her skin-tight shirt were around the three-button mark.

  Panic, that I’ve crept into the void I swore I’d never tiptoe into again, slips from my mind when Tyrone whacks me up the side of my head with the jeans I left sprawled on the floor last night. Olivia is as kinky as fuck—the thumb she’s notching toward my no-go zone while cupping my balls is proof of this—but not enough for me to remove my belt from my jeans, meaning I not only get bitch- slapped with the scent of a hardworking man, the belt buckle I wear to give women an excuse to ogle my crotch adds more color to my pasty white cheeks than Olivia’s hearty sucks.

  Talk about a mood killer. No guy wants the scent of a man wafting up when he’s getting his dick sucked—not even when it’s his own scent. Thank fuck Olivia’s sucks leave no doubt of her power. I won’t even need to come at this rate. She’ll just suck the jizz straight out of my sack.

  The naughty thoughts in my head take a step back when Tyrone shoves his big ugly mug within an inch of my face. “I said no excuses. This meeting is unavoidable. Without insurance, we’ll be shut down by the end of the month.”

  “Who needs insurance to cover little mishaps? I’m a multimillionaire. I’m sure I can cover any lawsuits.” I scoot up my bed, gaining a few millimeters between my anus and Olivia’s exploratory thumb. She got a little eager when I mentioned my wealth. My sphincter nearly undertook a prostate exam twenty-six years too early.

  Tyrone looks seconds from completing the exam with more than a thumb when he grumbles, “Your money won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on if you reschedule this appointment for the fifth time. Without insurance, our pilots can’t legally enter the airspace above Cali. Without flights, our customers can’t jump. Without jumpers—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it.”

  “Clearly, you don’t. Our meeting was scheduled f
or ten this morning on the dot. It’s now ten fifteen. Get your ass out of bed and showered before Jamie arrives.”

  Tyrone doesn’t often make fatal errors, but he just did.

  “He isn’t here yet?”

  When he shoots his eyes away like lying is more perverse than watching his best mate get his dick sucked with nothing but a thin sheet for coverage, I nudge my head to the door, giving him his marching orders.

  “As you said, our meeting was for ten o’clock sharp. If he can’t fulfill his end of our agreement, then why should I?”

  “Colby...” There’s nothing but pure, I’m-going-to-shred-you-with-my-bare-hands rage in his voice. “Five minutes. That’s it.” With the growl of a man seconds from going on a rampage, Tyrone exits my loft as quickly as he entered it. His anger is understandable. I’ve got a trust fund to fall back on. He doesn’t. If it weren’t for his grammie selling the general store she’s owned the past forty years, he would have never amassed the capital needed to get The Drop Zone off the ground.