Destiny Mine (Tormentor Mine #3)(93)
What he is.
It’s no big deal, I tell myself, trying to calm my frayed nerves. I’m used to dangerous men. I was raised among them. This man is not that different. I’ll sleep with him, get whatever information I can, and then he’ll be out of my life.
Yes, that’s it. The sooner I can get it done, the sooner all of this will be over.
Closing the closet door, I paste a practiced smile on my face and turn back to face him, finally ready to resume the role of confident seductress.
Except he’s already next to me, having crossed the room without making a sound.
My pulse jumps again, my newfound composure fleeing. He’s close enough that I can see the gray striations in his pale blue eyes, close enough that he can touch me.
And a second later, he does touch me.
Lifting his hand, he runs the back of his knuckles over my jaw.
I stare up at him, confused by my body’s instant response. My skin warms and my nipples tighten, my breath coming faster. It doesn’t make sense for this hard, ruthless stranger to turn me on. His boss is more handsome, more striking, yet it’s Kent my body’s reacting to. All he’s touched thus far is my face. It should be nothing, yet it’s intimate somehow.
Intimate and disturbing.
I swallow again. “Mr. Kent—Lucas—are you sure I can’t offer you something to drink? Maybe some coffee or—” My words end in a breathless gasp as he reaches for the tie of my robe and tugs on it, as casually as one would unwrap a package.
“No.” He watches as the robe falls open, revealing my naked body underneath. “No coffee.”
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Excerpt from The Krinar Captive
Author’s Note: The Krinar Captive is a full-length, standalone romance that takes place approximately five years before The Krinar Chronicles trilogy.
Emily Ross never expected to survive her deadly fall in the Costa Rican jungle, and she certainly never thought she’d wake up in a strangely futuristic dwelling, held captive by the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. A man who seems to be more than human…
Zaron is on Earth to facilitate the Krinar invasion—and to forget the terrible tragedy that ripped apart his life. Yet when he finds the broken body of a human girl, everything changes. For the first time in years, he feels something more than rage and grief, and Emily is the reason for that. Letting her go would compromise his mission, but keeping her could destroy him all over again.
I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Please, please, please, I don’t want to die.
The words kept repeating in her mind, a hopeless prayer that would never be heard. Her fingers slipped another inch on the rough wooden board, her nails breaking as she tried to maintain her grip.
Emily Ross was hanging by her fingernails—literally—off a broken old bridge. Hundreds of feet below, water rushed over the rocks, the mountain stream full from recent rains.
Those rains were partially responsible for her current predicament. If the wood on the bridge had been dry, she might not have slipped, twisting her foot in the process. And she certainly wouldn’t have fallen onto the rail that had broken under her weight.
It was only a last-minute desperate grab that had prevented Emily from plummeting to her death below. As she was falling, her right hand had caught a small protrusion on the side of the bridge, leaving her dangling in the air hundreds of feet above the hard rocks.
I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Please, please, please, I don’t want to die.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. This was her vacation, her regain-sanity time. How could she die now? She hadn’t even begun living yet.
Images of the last two years slid through Emily’s brain, like the PowerPoint presentations she’d spent so many hours making. Every late night, every weekend spent in the office—it had all been for nothing. She’d lost her job during the layoffs, and now she was about to lose her life.
No, no!
Emily’s legs flailed, her nails digging deeper into the wood. Her other arm reached up, stretching toward the bridge. This wouldn’t happen to her. She wouldn’t let it. She had worked too hard to let a stupid jungle bridge defeat her.
Blood ran down her arm as the rough wood tore the skin off her fingers, but she ignored the pain. Her only hope of survival lay in trying to grab onto the side of the bridge with her other hand, so she could pull herself up. There was no one around to rescue her, no one to save her if she didn’t save herself.
The possibility that she might die alone in the rainforest had not occurred to Emily when she’d embarked on this trip. She was used to hiking, used to camping. And even after the hell of the past two years, she was still in good shape, strong and fit from running and playing sports all through high school and college. Costa Rica was considered a safe destination, with a low crime rate and tourist-friendly population. It was inexpensive too—an important factor for her rapidly dwindling savings account.
She’d booked this trip before. Before the market had fallen again, before another round of layoffs that had cost thousands of Wall Street workers their jobs. Before Emily went to work on Monday, bleary-eyed from working all weekend, only to leave the office the same day with all her possessions in a small cardboard box.