by Jami Gray
I caught his face in my hands, and he paused. I leaned up and kissed him. It didn’t take much—a soft nip to his lower lip—before it turned heated and carnal. I got lost in his taste, the rising need setting my body on fire.
When he lifted his head, red rode his cheekbones, and his eyes were dark with hunger and humor. “Not the answer you wanted?”
“Not exactly.” Now that I had his attention, I couldn’t find the right words, and my nerves came back with reinforcements.
His humor faded, replaced by a heart-stopping gentleness as he framed my face, holding me still. “You told me before that if it wasn’t for all this shit, you’d be willing to see where you and I would go.” He studied my face with a disconcerting intensity. “Did you mean what you said?”
There was no mistaking what he was referring to. There’d been no holding those three words back when we came together. Maybe it was too soon, but so much had happened in such a short time.
Start as you mean to go. My newly embraced mantra whispered through me, bolstering my faltering courage. Swallowing hard, I nodded, my voice frozen. His place in my heart had been carved out during those hellish months at Hawes’s hands, and when I began picking up the pieces, Bishop had proven he was much more than my wishful imaginings of a shadowy protector. His ability to see my flaws as strengths, his faith in my determination, his humor, his willingness to share his doubts—all of that created something much more than the undeniable attraction between us. I wasn’t ready to walk away from it. I prayed he felt the same.
He dropped his forehead to mine, and I curled my arms around his neck, holding on for dear life. He brushed his nose against mine in a heart-melting touch. From mere inches away, he whispered, “Trust me?”
“Yes,” I said just as softly.
He smiled as something precious filled his eyes, easing the wary lines of his face, and left my heart all warm and squishy. “Good, because I love you, too, Megan.”
~THE END~
Thank you for reading Fractured by Deceit.
The PSY-IV Teams will be back in Spring 2020 with Rabbit and Jinx’s adventure.
If you’re looking for another great read, read on for the first installment in Jami’s Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance series, SHADOW’S EDGE and her Romantic Suspense series set against a post-apocalyptic stage, LYING IN RUINS.
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Shadow’s Edge
Book 1 of The Kyn Kronicles
As judge, jury and executioner, Raine faces her past nightmares with Gavin, but will her condemn her or save her?
With a quick twist of her wrist, Raine slipped the blade between Quinn’s ribs. His heart gave one last desperate beat, then fell silent. He slid slowly down her body to his knees, ending up in a strange, lover-like tableau.
Wrenching her blade out with a soft grunt, she held him in a gentle grasp, carefully lowering his lifeless body to the cracked concrete floor of the deserted warehouse. She closed his now dull brown eyes, knowing they would join the handful of others haunting her dreams.
As she knelt to wipe her blade clean on his shirt, her hands shook slightly. Shaking hands were good. It was a sign she hadn’t yet slipped off the crumbling edge into the same deep hole holding the monsters she hunted. A small comfort, but a comfort all the same.
She was careful to keep her knees away from the creeping trickle of blood inching outward. Standing, she caught her breath in a near-silent hiss of pain. A reminder of a stupid mistake on her part. She knew better. Every time she thought she’d seen it all, something came along and bit her in the ass. Or, in this case, distracted her enough to get past her guard. The four-inch gash along her ribs was a small price to pay for her inattention. The illusion Quinn had used was good, damn good. Almost good enough to save his life.
She slipped her knife back in its wrist sheath, careful not to touch the iron blade. Not wanting to leave a blood trail, she stripped off her coat and long sleeve shirt, leaving her pale skin covered in a simple black tee. She tore the sleeves from the shirt creating a primitive binding for her ribs. Resettling her trench coat, she moved out into the night-shrouded streets of downtown Portland.
Although her mixed heritage helped her heal faster than a normal human, she needed to get home and clean out the wound. Thanks to the spell Quinn had so thoughtfully wrought on his own weapon, it would probably need mending. Damn, how she detested needles and the feel of them piercing her skin. It always brought back the sick helplessness of being a living pincushion for a demented scientist and his distorted visions of grandeur.
Destructive memories rose causing her steps to falter. Wresting her personal demons back into their cell, she blew out her breath in a deep sigh, her long strides making quick work of the winding streets in the deserted neighborhood. In seconds, she disappeared into the shadows, leaving behind the hazy-yellow streetlights shining feebly through the misty fog.
A few blocks later, just as a soft rain began to fall, she opened the door to her dark-green SUV and climbed in. The Northwest was a great place to live, so long as you didn’t mind being wet and growing mold.
She did a fast scan of the deserted parking lot before turning the key in the ignition. It would just complete her night to finish this assignment by getting car jacked by some tanked-up group of mortal teenagers or a pack of hormonal shifters. One look at her five-foot-five frame—okay five-foot-seven with her thick-soled boots—and they’d think easy mark. A mistake people rarely made twice. Even Quinn knew better.
A glance at the dashboard clock showed it was past three in the morning. She grabbed the cell phone from the glove compartment and hit a programmed number. It rang once before being picked up.
She didn’t wait for a greeting. “This is McCord, the job’s done.”
Silence answered. Not surprised, she hit disconnect and tossed the phone into the center console. Flicking the stereo on, she let the throbbing bass and heavy guitars pound through the speakers as she turned out of the lot and headed home.
Spending the money on the protection spell for her leather trench coat was definitely a good investment. Without it, Quinn’s attack would’ve left her bleeding out before too long. In her line of work, protection spells were as important as a finely sharpened blade. Costly, but well worth it.
Her well-funded bank account bore testimony to the generosity of her employer, Taliesin Security. However, even as the top security company in the U.S., they were now down one employee. Quinn wouldn’t be reporting in anytime soon. Truth was, she liked Quinn. Liked him enough, she had tried to bring him in alive. Unfortunately, he hadn’t felt accommodating.
Maybe it was the thought of facing her boss, Ryan Mulcahy, which made Quinn attack tonight. From personal experience, she got it. Dealing with Mulcahy created a tendency toward violence.
The man was a master artesian when it came to manipulation and control. It always left her wondering if those two characteristics had been listed as requirements on his job application. “Wanted: one powerful, arrogant, type-A, control freak to head up the Fey population in the Northwest.”
She snorted. It wouldn’t surprise her.
The SUV hit a pothole, making her wince and dragging her thoughts back to Quinn. His name had been linked to the disappearance and bloody murders of two college students. While the deaths would have caused a small ripple in the human world, if one of the few government agencies who knew about the Kyn linked Quinn’s name to the crime before Taliesin Security—well, the ripple would have turned into a tsunami. Quinn’s actions created a potentially cataclysmic threat to the magical community, so Mulcahy sent Raine, one of his specially trained Securi
ty Officers, to bring Quinn in.
Who knew why he killed those girls, but Raine had a few hunches. One of Quinn’s weaknesses was an addiction to power. Wanting what he couldn’t have, hating those who had it, and doing whatever necessary to obtain it. Whatever it was, it caused him to break the unbreakable rule—never take out the innocents, especially if they’re human—it was bad for business. Taliesin followed a very literal termination policy for those who broke this particular rule, one that included a permanent demotion to a lovely, airless box six feet under.
Hell, no matter how you looked at it, Quinn’s decision had been just plain stupid.
Keep reading SHADOW’S EDGE and get your copy here.
Lying in Ruins
A Fate’s Vultures Novel
On a mission to retrieve a kidnapped child, a woman skilled secrecy must join forces with a nomadic vigilante bent on revenge to hunt a common enemy through the desiccated remains of civilization.
She picked the wrong damn day to visit. From her positions in the doorway, Charity took in the blood-spattered room as she leant against the doorjamb of the shop service as Pebble Creek’s delivery and message center.
Next to her, leaning against the other side and modeling the latest in crimson-stained field medic bandages, was her old mentor turned friend, Boden. ‘As soon as the last Raider was down, I headed back and found this.’ His expression was as grim as his voice.
This encompassed the carnage gathering flies and filling the confines of the room with the stench of hard death. A scent the spring air couldn’t cut even as it found its way in through the doorway and shattered window. Light danced among the carnage as sunlight hit pieces of old glass, igniting tiny bloodstained fireflies. It was a too familiar scene.
Years before her birth, the winds of change swept over the world, laying waste with gleeful abandon, ripping apart the wonders of civilized man and reminding those who survived how overrated being civilized truly was. Man-made super viruses danced through the heavy urban populations and vital crops leaving decimation in its wake. Wasn’t long before logic fell to its knees under the unbreakable grip of fear while cities raged and burned.
Even Mother Nature got into the mix, drowning coastlines and recreating the landscape and borders with the tools at her disposal. Each event cascaded into a brutal lesson for humanity’s children, a lesson they refused to heed until they had no choice. Then, it was too late to do anything but survive. And survival became a brutal, vicious game with very few rules.
Part of her wanted to turn on her heel and walk away. She had enough things to worry about right now, and adding this cluster to her to-do list wasn’t ideal. Instinct whispered and instead of leaving, she stepped inside.
There wasn’t much to the room besides a long counter with a good size opening dead center. It stretched across the width of the room, splitting it in half. She counted three, maybe four, bodies. It was hard to tell if the leg sticking out from behind the counter was still attached to a body. However, identifying the body on her side of the counter was easy. It was Crane, the man she was here to see. Looked like her meeting was canceled. ‘Had to have happened during the raiding party attack.’
‘Yeah.’ Boden’s one-word answer landed like a two-ton stone.
She shifted a bit and winced as the movement pulled at the shallow bullet graze in her torn shoulder, a remnant from the brief, but furious, earlier firefight. ‘I’m not a big believer in coincidence.’
That earned her a grunt from Boden. ‘Funny, neither am I.’ He dug a thick finger under the bloodstained strip of cloth covering his weathered chest and scratched. ‘Especially when they come in pairs. First, Raiders don’t generally come this far up the pass, especially during early spring. Too much hassle, which is why Crane picked this spot.’
This spot being Pebble Creek, a virtual stronghold situated in a narrow natural valley between two ridges in the southern area of what used to be Idaho. A place that should be too far not to tempt the desert dwelling Raiders into crossing the ravaged bones of what once made up Nevada, Utah and Idaho. After the Collapse, what humanity remained, hunkered down in a few key urban areas or huddled in strategic rural communities like Pebble Creek, run by men like Crane. ‘Second?’
‘Second, Crane was outnumbered, which tells me they were targeting him, not any of the supplies or shipments.’
Her attention went to the neat stack of boxes lining the back wall. A recent delivery? ‘Which would make the attack at the front gate a smoke screen?’
‘Probably.’
She sighed. An hour ago she rode into Pebble Creek, hoping to claim some of Crane’s time and maybe get a solid lead on the trail of breadcrumbs she was sent to follow. Instead, she was waylaid by Boden, after one of the guards on watch informed him of her arrival. Since Crane was in the middle of something, she passed the time playing catch up with Boden. They were headed to the café to grab some coffee when the Raiders hit, and everything went to hell. Just her luck the damn scavengers decided to descend en masse in some crazed version of a suicide attack. Suspicions nibbled on the ragged edges of her mind, but she still asked, ‘Why Crane?’
‘You want a list?’ Boden drawled.
Right, there were tons of reason to want Crane dead, which made narrowing it down night to impossible. You could accuse Crane of many things—arrogance and being a dick were the first two that came to mind—but he wasn’t stupid. The man who held a territory free and clear while surrounded by the two biggest powers on what was left of this side of the Mississippi was the further thing from stupid. Unlucky as shit since he was dead, but not stupid.
Time to try and figure out what the hell happened and screwed her plans to hell.
Keep reading LYING IN RUINS by nabbing your copy now!
Also by Jami Gray
THE KYN KRONICLES
Shadow’s Edge
Shadow’s Soul
Shadow’s Moon
Shadow’s Curse
Shadow’s Dream
PSY-IV TEAMS
Hunted by the Past
Touched by Fate
Marked by Obsession
Fractured by Deceit
FATE’S VULTURES
Lying in Ruins
Beg for Mercy
Caught in the Aftermath
Fear the Reaper
What Readers Say…
About PSY-IV Team:
“This story is an emotional roller coaster, from betrayal, anger, fear, love…” —InD’tale Magazine
About the Kyn Kronicles:
“…a fantastic paranormal action novel is quite possibly the best book I’ve read this year. I could not put it down, and had to exercise serious self-control to keep from staying up all night to finish it.” —The Romance Reviews
About Fate’s Vultures:
“…if you like your characters with a bit more bite, with secrets, with hidden agendas, and all those sorts of things, and your worlds are a far more deadlier place, then this is for you.” —Archaeolibrarian
Acknowledgments
As always, my undying thanks go out to my Knight in Slightly Muddy Armor and my enduring Prankster Duo. How you all put up with me while in writer mode, I’ll never figure out, but will love you to the moon and back forever.
To my writing partners in crime - DeAnna, Dave and Camille - without whom I’d never get into so much creative trouble.
To my beta readers - JoAnn, Monica, and Nana - you guys keep me in line when everyone else is still trying to figure out where that line is.
To my readers - you are the reason I keep doing this. Thank you!
Love you all!
About the Author
Jami Gray is the coffee addicted, music junkie, Queen Nerd of her personal Geek Squad, Alpha Mom of the Fur Minxes, and award winning author of the Urban Fantasy series, The Kyn Kronicles, the Paranormal Romantic Suspense series, PSY-IV Teams, and her latest Romantic Suspense series, Fate’s Vultures. She writes to soothe the voices in her head.
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sp; All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or events, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2019 by Jami Gray
All rights reserved.
Fractured by Deceit - A PSY-IV Team Novel - Book 4
Revised Publication: Aug 2019
Celtic Moon Press
ISBN: 978-1-948884-31-0 (ebook)
ISBN-13: 978-1-948884-30-3 (paperback)
Cover Art: Robin Ludwig Design, Inc.