I am so excited to bring you this video that an amazing reader, Carly Stuurman, created to show how much she loves The Protectors series and is looking forward to the next book, Forsaken (expected release date August 2016). Carly, thank you so much - this video just blows my mind!

Abandoned. Abused. Betrayed.
Ex-cop Maverick “Mav” James needs only three things. His Harley, an open road and his work in an underground organization that delivers justice when the law can’t.

Family? They left him long before he left them.

Friends? A liability.

A place to call home? Doesn’t exist.

Mav’s motto is simple: Get done and get out. Work, sex, doesn’t matter. No emotional connections. Simple.

Until he meets him.
 
Alone. Hiding. Broken.
At fifteen years old, Eli Galvez had nothing. No family, no friends and only his body as a means to make enough money to survive. But a chance meeting changed all that and eight years later, he’s well on his way to having the life he could once only dream of. He’s been accepted into medical school and he’s finally returned home to Seattle to be closer to the men and women who don’t share his blood, but are the only family he’s ever really known.

Only things aren’t what they seem and the secrets Eli has been hiding are about to come to the surface with dangerous consequences.
 
One final chance at a real future.
Guys like Eli just aren’t Mav’s type, period. Yet he can’t deny his intense attraction to the younger man who only looks at him with fear in his eyes. Until the day there’s something else in those eyes too. Something that draws Mav in and refuses to let go. Something that makes him want to forget his rules. But Mav’s learned the hard way what happens when you get too close to something. And while he vows to protect Eli after a violent attack leaves the younger man shaken, protection is all he’ll offer.

Because anything else would just cost too much.

Ex Special Forces soldier Michael “Hawke” Hawkins has spent every day of the last ten years waiting for the moment he would get to watch the life fade from the eyes of the men who brutally murdered his wife, but when he finally gets the break he’s been waiting for, the trail leads him to someone he wasn’t expecting.

After nearly two years of running, 24-year-old Tate Travers has become an expert at hiding…until the day a dangerous stranger shows up looking for vengeance and threatens to destroy the fragile life Tate has managed to build for himself and his five-year-old son. Except the life Tate has been struggling to hold on to started unraveling long before Hawke showed up looking for the same men Tate has been running from…his own father and older brother.

Retribution – it’s all Hawke has wanted since the day he held his wife’s hand as she took her last breath. And he won’t give that up for anything or anyone…not even the tormented young man trying to give his little boy a better life. Because Tate is the only one who can lead Hawke to the men he’s been searching for. And if it means forcing the young man to confront the past that nearly destroyed him, then so be it.

Only the last thing Hawke expects to feel is something besides the hatred that has driven him. And he definitely never expected to feel it for a man.

But when it comes down to choosing between the unwanted feelings Tate stirs in him and the revenge he’s finally close enough to taste, will Hawke be able to give up the one thing that has kept him going for a second chance at a future he gave up on ever having?

So big news! I've decided to release Retribution (The Protectors, Book 3) early. At this point, I am planning for it to go live around Friday, June 17th. To celebrate, here's another excerpt for you.

This is from Hawke's perspective...

Tate was out of the car the second it rolled to a stop. I got out and went around the truck to watch him pulling his bag from the backseat. He began rifling through it for a moment and then pulled the car keys for his rental out of one of the inner pockets. I’d parked his rental car next to the garage so I had no trouble seeing him as he went to the car, opened the trunk and tossed his bag in. My chest felt like it was going to explode as he walked around it to the driver’s side and I realized he was actually going to leave without speaking to me. It took everything in me not to move forward and stop him. To demand he say something…anything that said these last three days had meant something to him…that they’d changed him the way they’d changed me.

But I couldn’t ask that of him. Because even though being with Tate had changed me, it hadn’t changed what I needed to do. It hadn’t changed the fact that I couldn’t let go of the one thing that I would need to in order to be with him the way I wanted.

Tate reached the door, but didn’t open it. He just stood there staring at the handle like he didn’t know what it was for. He finally looked up at me and even from where I stood, I could see the agony in his eyes. I moved a few steps forward without even thinking about it, but stopped myself when I was still several feet away.

Because if I touched him…

“She wouldn’t have wanted this for you,” Tate said so softly, I barely heard him.

But I did hear him. And I knew who she was. I couldn’t help the flash of anger that went through me. “You have no idea what she would have wanted. You didn’t know her.”
Tate shook his head and dropped his eyes again. “Don’t you get it, Hawke?”

 “Get what?” I asked.

“I know her because I am her.” The strange statement made no sense to me, but I held my tongue as Tate turned to face me.

“I love you,” he finally said and I felt my heart drop out of my chest. “I love you like she loved you. With everything I am. And that’s how I know she wouldn’t have wanted this life for you.”

My mouth felt dry at the same time that heat flashed through my entire body. Tate loved me? I was so overcome that I almost didn’t notice Tate shaking his head as he reached for the handle. I was on him in two strides and I slammed the door shut before he could open it all the way.

“No,” I snapped angrily. “You don’t get to say that to me and then just walk away!”

I pushed away from Tate and took several steps back as I tried to get control of my emotions. A maelstrom of them were going through my all at once. Joy, dread, denial, fear.

Bone wrenching fear.

Because I absolutely and completely believed Tate. And because it changed nothing. Except that I was going to end up hurting him again.