Renegade Passion by Lisa Renée Jones

 
    Prologue
     
     
    It was near midnight on a hot Vegas summer night as Kelvin ‘Kel’ Smith rode his Ninja 650 motorcycle down the street where Sonia lived. He could almost smell her rose-scented honey-colored hair, could almost taste the richness of her kisses. Seeing her again was what had kept him going on a three-month-long mission from absolute hell. She didn’t know he was home any more than she knew he’d spent these months in a jungle as infested with snakes as it had been with terrorists. He wasn’t supposed to be home, but when a helicopter had shown up and handed him new orders twenty-four hours before, he wasn’t about to argue. He was home, or he would be when he had Sonia in his arms again.  
    He’d barely stopped the bike in her driveway before he was off and heading for the door, a ring burning a hole in his jeans pocket. Her birthday was in two days and it was going to kill him to wait to give it to her until then.  
    He’d taken one step onto the porch when the door flew open.
    “Kel!”  
    The next thing he knew he had the sexiest, sweetest woman in all of Vegas in his arms and she was wearing nothing but one of his army green t-shirts. “How can you be here? You weren’t suppose to be home for months.”
      “Change of orders,” he said, slanting his mouth over hers with a hunger he didn’t even begin to sate. “I’ve missed the hell out of you.” He lifted her and carried her into the house, kicking the door shut and not stopping until he was in the bedroom.
    He went down on the bed, framing her body with his, kissing her, needing her.  
    “Your hair is longer,” she said, stroking her fingers through his chin-length dark brown hair.” She gave him a playful smile. “It’s sexy.”
    “In that case, I’ll do my best to keep it this way.” He leaned in to kiss her again.
    She stopped him with a plea. “Tell me you aren’t leaving again anytime soon.”
    “I’m being moved to a special unit at Area 51,” he said. “I won’t know what that means until next week.” He stroked her hair from her face. “How are your nightmares, baby? I’ve been worried sick about you.”
    She laughed without humor. “You’ve been worried about me. You don’t know worry until the person you love is off on a mission trying to save lives and willing to give up their own to do it. I’m proud of you, Kel, but it’s hard when you’re gone.”
    “I know, baby. Maybe this new base assignment will mean more time at home. You didn’t answer me about the nightmares. Are you still having them?”  
    “Not for over a month,” she said, her fingers caressing under his shirt, heating his skin. “I think...maybe they’ve ended. I don’t know but I don’t want to talk right now. I just want you.” She wrapped her arms around him and pressed those soft, womanly curves against him, and he quickly forgot all about her nightmares, and his for that matter.  
    In fact, he was pretty sure he’d died and gone to heaven, and she was the angel standing between him and hell.

Three years later
     
    Chapter One
     
    Kel materialized through an open window from inside a strand of wind,   and stood in the center of a small Vegas warehouse not far from the strip. While the location wasn’t his final destination, and traveling inside the wind was a common skill that the GTECH Super Soldiers created in an Area 51 experiment possessed, it wasn’t exactly something the public needed to know about. The last thing Kel and his team, the Renegades, needed was a bunch of Van Helsing wanna-be hunters calling them monsters, and trying to kill them all off. Especially when the Renegades were all that stood between man and the Zodius, the GTECH rebels, who really were worthy of the title ‘monsters’.  
     
    Damion Browne, one of his fellow Renegades, appeared by his side.  
     
    “Took you long enough, Mr. America,” Kel jibed, using the nickname they’d all given Damion, because he was all about