Chasing Ziva - Ebook

Disembarking from her family’s private jet after a harrowing visit to Australia, Ziva Navarro is aware that she’s on the cusp of an emotional breakdown. The sight of her friend in hospital has whipped up her own trauma and is bringing memories that have been unreachable for almost a decade to the surface. 

Thankfully, Ziva’s step-brother has just the antidote for her suffering… 

A chase through the forested area at the back of the Black Shamrocks MC’s Philadelphia compound. 

A fixer by nature, Steele “Zen” Abaddon will hunt his secret lover when she least expects it. 

Because their truth is as simple as it is taboo… 

Ziva can run, but she can’t hide. 

• BDSM elements (consensual non-consent and domination)
• Primal kink
• Force kink
• Mental health struggles
• Mentions of violence against women
• Death of a parent (off-page event, mentioned by character)

ZIVA

Aged: Twenty-one

Eyes closed. Breath held. I press my face into the plush cushion of the seat back rest and concentrate on the sound of the jet as it brings Serena and I back into Philadelphia. My knees ache and my arms scream for relief from maintaining the fetal position for the past sixteen hours, but I’m proud of myself for managing to venture outside of the Black Shamrocks MC compound without a serious meltdown. 

Even if the birthday celebrations ended with the birthday girl in hospital... 

Serena lightly strokes my back as the landing gear is engaged. 

Her touch is shaky. 

A testament to our mirroring upset over Anna’s condition. 

“You did so well,” she comments when we begin our descent toward solid ground. “I’d call it a definite success...” I glance over my shoulder when Serena trails off. She grins at me. Wrinkling my nose, I end up with a lungful of her elegant perfume and a pang of familiarity heating my chest. There’s a playful light in her eyes while she drawls, “The minor breakdown at the hospital, notwithstanding.” 

My hatred of all medical establishments is well-documented. In my opinion, it’s a perfectly understandable aversion since I spent three years as an inpatient, bouncing between hospital wards and mental health units. Cultivating a healthy scepticism of the professionals who failed to heal my broken ten-year-old mind is the least of my problems, even if it’s the most visible symptom of the malaise that hampers every second of my existence.

“It was pretty spectacular,” I murmur as visions of my hair pulling, teeth gnashing outburst when I first laid eyes on Lilianna Mayberry’s pale, broken form surge into my mind’s eye. The memory leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, one that I work hard to deflect with my next quip, “I even made Venom venture a few feet away from Anna.” 

“An achievement worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.” 

Despite the heaviness that lingers, we laugh together at her teasing. While Serena’s amusement sounds like tinkling bells, mine is strangled. It comes out as a combination of a goose honking and a hyena choking that quickly turns into a suppressed squeal as we touch down. After coasting back to the small private terminal, the engines die before I’m ready. The hush that follows feels too quiet, too final. Like the world’s waiting for me to make a move I’m not sure I’m capable of completing. 

Serena is business-like, gathering her things in a rush. She’s in her second year of a psychology degree, and that means she has a life she’s eager to return to, full of plans and friends and all the things I refuse to think about, let alone pursue. 

I’m slower to pack. 

Lingering. 

Methodical. 

One by one, I slip my things into my shoulder bag, starting with the e-reader I brought with me. The scarf I left on the jet when I realized that Australia is coming out of summer, not heading into winter, is wound around my neck. I close the laptop I set up on the small table when the vague idea of working on the novel I’m writing in secret momentarily hit. Once those items are stowed, I tidy up the row of seats where I spent the entire flight curled into a ball. 

It’s a sad indictment of my ongoing weakness. 

Another failure of internal strength. 

My stomach sinks as the knowledge that it will take me months of counselling to get over the sweet sojourn to Australia for Anna’s eighteenth birthday settles over me. Every time I make a step outside of the Shamrocks’ compound, there is a price to pay. 

A mental break. 

Flames of loathing. 

They turn my insides into lava. 

I need to hide, lest I peel off my skin to unveil the memories that remain stubbornly out of my brain’s reach. A thousand shattered fragments. Ill-fitting. Out of order. It takes me weeks of strict, solitary routine to rearrange the pieces of my spirit into the semblance of a functioning human. 

“I’ll be home in three weeks,” Serena tells me. Her hand raises and reaches for me. I stiffen. She slowly lowers her arm back to her side. A wistful sheen makes her eyes gleam in the fluorescent light before my best friend swallows her feelings to smile widely at me. “Don’t get up to any mischief.” 

I salute her. “Aye aye, captain.” 

Blonde hair flowing behind her, Serena disembarks with a leggy, hip-swinging stride that catches both pilots’ attention. The seductive glance she angles over her shoulder at them is full of invitation that the two men grasp enthusiastically. They bark out orders to deal with our heavier luggage and ready the jet for the club’s use before following her. 

I’m not as eager. 

My steps are slow. 

Deliberate. 

Achingly measured.

I stand at the top of the steps, staring out over the tarmac like it might crack open beneath me, when I spot him.

Zen.

Leaning against his Harley, arms crossed, he appears like a sentinel carved from smoke and iron. Dark blond hair tied back at the base of his neck. A jaw that could crack granite. Tattoos emerging from the pushed-up sleeves of his leather jacket like code words he dares the world to try and decipher.

And those eyes—blue and piercing and unsettling in all the right ways—lock onto mine like he already knows everything I’m trying to ignore.

Like he knows I’m breaking.

Like he sees I’ve already started to shatter…