Rogue Hearts Read online

  Rogue Hearts

  Stacey Agdern

  Kelly Maher

  Suleikha Snyder

  Emma Barry

  Amy Jo Cousins

  Tamsen Parker

  About This Book

  From high office to the heartland, six brand-new romances about #resistance for readers who haven't given up hope for a Happily Ever After...

  Contents

  Suleikha Snyder

  In Her Service

  About This Book

  In Her Service

  Thank You!

  Also By Suleikha

  About the Author

  Emma Barry

  Run

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Also By Emma

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Stacey Agdern

  The Rogue Files

  About This Book

  Background Files

  One: Monday

  Two: Tuesday

  Three: Harrison

  Four: Harrison

  Five: Bloomfield

  Six: Newark

  Thank you!

  Also by Stacey Agdern

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Kelly Maher

  Coming Up Rosa

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also By Kelly

  About the Author

  Amy Jo Cousins

  The Sheriff & Mr. Devine

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Thank you!

  Want More Books by Amy Jo?

  About the Author

  Tamsen Parker

  Good Men

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Thank you!

  Other Books by Tamsen

  About the Author

  In Her Service

  Suleikha Snyder

  About This Book

  Passionate about democracy and tirelessly committed to political change, United States Vice President Letitia Hughes has one thing that's hers and only hers. It's not a private shame. It's, if anything, a private joy. Her relationship with much younger Secret Service agent Shahzad Khan has sustained her for years. But when everything about the precious, priceless, bond between them is poised to shift, what does it mean for the years to come?

  In Her Service

  The day it all changes

  The day lasts a month. Interminable meetings. Endless hours spent in circles, going nowhere. When Letty lets herself into the residence, she feels like she's aged a decade. She'll look in the mirror and see her hair turned white, as if she came down the mountain with ten commandments instead of ten thousand pages of unsupported legislation and double that amount of congressional deadlock. Her throat is hoarse from shouting. There are nail crescents cut into her palms from her constant fist clenching. She is so. Damn. Weary.

  Of course he knows. And when he's finished clearing her rooms, he crosses to her with bottled water, cool but not cold, just how she likes it. He presses it into her hands, gently reminding her, “Drink.”

  Agent Shahzad Ali Khan is still as young as the day he was assigned to her detail. His light brown skin unlined, black hair and neat beard devoid of silver.

  Easy, Letty girl, warns her mama’s voice—the voice in her head that's been guiding her since before the election. But she ignores it. Pushes aside the memory of her mother's constant need to offer advice. It came from a good place, all that nagging. From generations of mamas and aunties forced to shoulder alone all of the responsibility for their families, their communities, and their faith. Her charge is different. Her weariness is different. And she’s chosen the load she carries daily. Taken it on willingly. Just as she’s taken him on willingly. She is Letitia Marie Hughes, first black woman Vice President of the United States, and she has just this one thing—one person—for herself.

  The water eases her thirst, but it's his hand against her cheek that quenches it.

  Here in her private quarters, it's just the two of them. Potentially scandalous. Potentially career-ending. That's what would've been said a decade ago. But then the standards for what's tolerable in the upper echelons of the government were forever altered. There is so much work yet to be done in fixing those tectonic shifts. Letitia is widowed. Discreet. She's closeted with any number of aides and staffers at any given time, after all. That she spends more time with one Secret Service agent than the others causes barely a ripple.

  Except under her skin. There...there, Shahzad Khan is a tidal wave.

  He helps her with her coat. Slips her sensible shoes from her feet. Strokes patient palms up her stocking-clad calves to her thighs, bare beneath the conservative skirt of her Democrat-blue dress. It's not a seduction. It's a comfort. Maybe a tease. He laughs as he unsnaps one garter and then the other. She leans forward, resting one hand on his shoulder and tangling the other in his hair to steady herself as he rolls her stockings down and off.

  “What's so funny?”

  “You. This. Thigh-highs under your suits. Like there's a whole other you hiding beneath the layers. Superwoman.”

  He thinks she can leap tall buildings. That she's a woman of steel. “I know 93 percent of us did the work in 2016, but it’s not a black woman’s responsibility to save everyone,” she reminded him once. “Don’t put that burden on us.” “I know. But you save me every single day,” he told her. Lord, sometimes the naked adoration she sees in his eyes is humbling. Most days it's terrifying. In this moment, it's a balm to her soul. So is the kiss he presses just above the waistband of her silk underwear. And the kiss he bestows lower. His mouth is so sweet, so soft.

  The first time he called her “Madam Vice President,” she knew. She knew he would be like this. On his knees before her. But she had to be persuaded. Wooed. It took him a year to get from outside her door to over the threshold. Countless bottles of water. Countless sweeps. Concerned looks from across the room. Reassuring smiles. So much trust offered, so much trust taken.

  It took another year for her to kiss him. Hours after the State of the Union. After too many shots with POTUS, the Honorable Senator Corey from New York, and the Honorable Senator Warner from Massachusetts during a private drinking game to the Republican response. She'd mostly sobered up in the limo ride home. Mostly. But her detail—especially Shahzad—had kept a close eye just the same. It had been a thank-you kiss. That was all. Nothing her aunties or the pastor at her home church would’ve labeled “fast.” A quick brush of her lips against his stubbled cheek, because his firm grip was on her elbow and there was whiskey in her veins. She still remembers the sharp intake of his breath. The sound of her own heartbeat thundering in her ears. It wasn’t wrong that flickered through her mind then. Or even right. Just what took you so long, Letty?

  She’s been in service to her country for more than half her life. First as a lawyer and community organizer. Then two terms as congresswoman. Speaker of the House in her third term. She’s fought for education, for equality, for prison reform. But when POTUS called on her to be her running mate, she almost turned it down. “Two women on the ticket? After what happened in 2016? Are you high?” But what happened in 2016 was precisely why they won in a landslide. Precisely why she’s here at One Observatory Circle, in a suite of rooms previously occupied only by white men and their wives, with an Indian-American Muslim man ready to lay down his life and his love for her. What’s taken her so goddamn long?

  “What do you need from me tonight?” The words are a low rumble, sending vibrations straight to her core. He hasn’t moved. Won’t until she tells him to. He’s happy to bow his head at her cunt like it’s his temple and worship like she’s a goddess.

  “Everything,” she says without hesitation. “I need everything.”

  His thumbs hook in the elastic at her hips and tug at her panties. She makes short work of her dress and her bra. They move from the sitting room to the bedroom, leaving pieces of his suit in their wake. Jacket, tie, pants. There’s no awkwardness as he undoes his shoulder holster, puts his piece on the side table and then doffs his shirt. This is who he is. This is who they are. This moment at the end of the latest in a long succession of even longer days is not stolen. It’s earned.

  She is the most powerful woman he’s ever known. The most beautiful, too. He never thought he would get to touch her, much less serve her. It would be easy to say he fell in love with her while she was campaigning. Or even when they won and she stood there on that stage awash in triumph, confetti, and balloons. But Shahzad is not the kind of man who would knowingly compromise himself. He would've never accepted assignment to her detail, fearing his judgment clouded. No, he fell for her on a Tuesday when they were formally introduced. She shook his hand a
nd shook his heart. And that he is vulnerable to her, for her, now...it only makes his judgment clearer. He will die before he lets anyone hurt Vice President Letitia Hughes. But insha'Allah he will also live to heal her.

  He joins her on the bed, mattress sinking slightly beneath his knees, and pulls her back flush against his chest. Lean on me, he urges with this one simple gesture. Let me carry the weight. Her shoulders are stiff under his lips and his hands, the muscles taut with tension. But she shivers when he kisses her nape and slowly, eventually, her body melts under his ministrations.

  It's taken months, but he's learned how to please her, how to ease her. She craves touch. She deserves kindness. Warm embraces and bubble baths and massages. He offered to brush her hair once, which just earned him one of her gorgeously incredulous stares and a husky laugh. “I like your ambition, Agent, but you have not leveled up enough to handle a black woman’s hair.” She wears it cropped short now, the tight curls close to her skull. It suits her. Calls attention to her eyes and the smooth column of her throat. “Nothing for my enemies to grab in a fight,” she joked when the press made a huge deal out of the change.

  Of course, it doesn’t stop those enemies from grasping at her just the same. She dons armor each day to do battle with a House and Senate divided, with diplomats and defense contractors. Beneath that armor, her dark brown skin is soft. Easily bruised. He called her Superwoman, but he knows she is not unbreakable. And he adores her because of everything she is—entirely and endlessly.

  The White House’s first Iftar dinner in years was a joyous celebration of unity and faith and new beginnings. His mother, among the Muslim staffers’ family members invited to the feast, took one look at Madam Vice President and knew he was smitten. “Beta, what are you doing?” “Following my heart, Ammi.” “But…she is so old for you.” “Wasn’t Khadijah older than Muhammad?” He’d stumped her with that one. A small victory courtesy of all the Quran study he’d resented as a child. She’d glowered at him in that way that only desi mothers could but then sighed and patted his cheek. “Be careful. That is all I ask.”

  He is careful. With Letty’s wants, with her hopes, with her dreams, with her life. There is no higher honor for him than upholding those things.

  She turns just enough to meet him in a kiss. She's long since chewed off her lipstick, leaving her full mouth just faintly pink. He tastes her exhaustion and her need in turns. Bitter and sharp. He turns her the rest of the way, pulling her into his lap and hitching one thigh over his hip. It’s a cliché, but she’s like silk and steel, velvet and iron. And he’ll never get enough of that dichotomy. Of finding the tender spot behind her ear and stroking the heat of her cunt and snapping to order when she tells him what to do.

  Everything. She wants everything. He'll give her all he has.

  It can't be healthy, he thinks sometimes, to be so devoted to someone. But agents are required to undergo regular psychiatric evaluation and he's raised no red flags so far. It turns out that the desire to protect someone comes in handy when that's also your job description. But it isn't his job to hold her like this. It isn't his job to cradle her face in his palms and kiss her again and again. It isn't his job to dick into her inch by inch until he bottoms out and she hisses his name. “Shahzad.”

  It's his calling.

  She dated off and on while she served in Congress. Nothing serious, but it inevitably landed her in the D.C. gossip sheets. And when she went out with a CNN analyst for a few months, the news made it all the way to Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood. Jack broke it off. He claimed he couldn't handle the scrutiny—despite all of his years as a hotshot talking head on TV. That he didn’t have to recuse himself from election coverage because of his personal life when she and POTUS announced their run…well, that was just a coincidence, right?

  It's a little funny that a former military man fifteen years her junior is better equipped for the pressures of dating a politician. Not that what she and Shahzad have is as easy and uncomplicated as “dating.” He can't take her to dinner. Going to the movies means he sits three rows behind her with another agent. Instead, their entire relationship is conducted behind closed doors. A secret that feels dirty when it’s the furthest thing from.

  He keeps a change of clothes in her closet. A toothbrush and shaving kit in her bathroom. But he's back at his post before breakfast. They never read the morning news together. Never linger in bed on Sundays before a lazy brunch. They don’t argue over the TV remote, or their favorite sports teams—not that the latter merits debate. Obviously, LeBron and the Cavs will always, always, be better than Steph Curry and Golden State.

  “You should marry me.” The words spill from her lips before she can think better of it.

  He goes still. The weight of his head suddenly heavy on her breast. And then he looks up at her, chin propped on her sternum. “What?”

  “You heard me.” She hears herself. Equal parts defensive and vulnerable.

  It's a lousy offer. She gets that. What 33-year-old man would want to quit his steady government job to be the Vice President's trophy husband?

  “Letty...” He sits up slowly, sheets bunching at his waist. “Think about what you're saying.”

  She does. She has. Marriage is not something she takes lightly. But she fully understands that he may not be on the same page. “It's stupid, I know—”

  “No! It's wonderful! It’s…amazing.” His cheeks go pink. He drags his hand through his hair. It's fucking adorable. And she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t relieved by the reaction. Michael proposed when they were both 24. Dumbass 2Ls at Georgetown who didn’t know any better. She is not a pro at this sort of thing. But Shahzad’s model-perfect face is serious. He’s not done. His teeth worry his lower lip and he shakes his head.

  “I'm me...and you're you. What will people say? Especially with the ‘24 run?”

  Fuck. 2024. POTUS’ approval ratings are through the roof. She’s already announced her intention to run as an incumbent. A second term is practically a given. Unless Letty rocks the boat by marrying a member of her protection detail. A significantly younger, virile, Muslim, member of her protection detail. She can hear it now. Those shitbags from Fox News asking if she’ll convert. If she'll wear a burqa.

  Watch yourself, Letty girl. Mama loved Michael. Loved that big Methodist church wedding in Richmond. She didn’t live to see grandchildren. Michael didn’t live to father any. Letitia’s in perimenopause now, so continuing the family line is a moot point. But this is the first time…the first time in ten years that she has even considered marrying again. And she doesn’t give a good goddamn if they have the Chief Justice perform the ceremony or an imam. She just wants to hold this man’s hand in public. She wants to walk with him in the sunlight. She wants to shout him from the rooftops instead of keeping silent.

  “What are people going to say?” she counters, sliding up to lean against the headboard. “Seven years ago, they elected a man who was married three times. No one did the math on him and Wife No. 3. No one questioned her past—and they shouldn’t have.” She doesn’t really care about anyone’s career in adult entertainment. If Shahzad told her he moonlighted as a stripper while he was in the Army, she wouldn’t blink. “So what if you’re a Millennial? It can only help our outreach with that demographic. So what if you’re Muslim? Indian? That can only help us internationally. You are not a liability to me or to POTUS.”