“I’m so, so thankful to get to experience everything with you—the good, the bad, the ugly.”

“Likewise, my love.” He kissed her again and had her squirming under him, looking for more, in a matter of seconds.

“Where are my kids?”

Kissing her neck, he said, “Outside on the playground with Scotty.”

“How do you feel about a quickie?”

He pressed his hard cock against her core. “I feel very, very good about it.”

They moved fast to move clothes out of the way while kissing and laughing like two fools. “If the rest of the world could see us now,” Sam said.

“Thank God they can’t,” he said, sinking into her in one deep thrust that took her breath away.

She gasped from the impact and the pleasure.

“Too much?” he asked.

She held him close. “Just enough.”

Though they’d billed it as a quickie, he took his own sweet time, drawing out the pleasure for as long as he possibly could.

She was mindless with it, lost in a sea of sensation and fired up in a way that she could only achieve with him.

As he pressed his fingers to her clit, he made her come so hard, she saw stars. He surged into her, losing himself in her as she took everything he had to give.

It was perfection, Sam thought, her eyes as heavy as if she hadn’t just slept for twelve hours.

Nick kissed her cheek and then her lips as he continued to throb inside her. “You okay in there?”

Her eyes refused to open. “Very okay.”

Sam’s phone rang, forcing her to resurface.

Nick reached for it on her bedside table and handed it to her. “It’s Freddie.”

“Hey, what’s up?”

“I just saw on the news that Nick’s mother has been indicted.”

Ahhh, this was a tough one. I’m not sure where these story ideas come from but know that they mess with my emotions as much as they do with yours! The opioid epidemic has touched so many families and altered so many lives. From my small group of beta readers, I heard several stories of loss or struggle within their families. My daughter lost a close friend to an accidental fentanyl overdose in 2016. Kevin was just twenty-two. This book is dedicated to him.

Many of my early readers have asked if Angela will show up in the Wild Widows Series, and the answer to that is yes, she will. Her story will also continue to play out adjacent to Sam and Nick’s.

Join the State of Shock Reader Group to discuss this book with spoilers allowed at facebook.com/groups/stateofshock. If you haven’t yet joined the series group, you can find that at facebook.com/groups/fatalseries.

A HUGE thank you to my friend, Capt. Russ Hayes, (retired), Newport, RI, Police Department, who went the extra mile to help me make this story authentic from a law enforcement standpoint by gathering important information from the front lines of the opioid battle. I so appreciate him and his amazing contributions to every one of the Fatal and First Family books over the last thirteen years.