by Janet Miller
Warning: Contains a heroine intent on kicking ass and taking names, a high-tech dystopia, cybernetic body modifications, and emotionally-charged, sensual romance.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Unacceptable Risk:
Lucien Vicker knew what her father had been up to. Lucien Vicker knew about her.
She had to go.
Layers of plans and strategies unfolded in her mind for where she would go next and what she would do. For how she would take her leave. Edison would be angry at her for abandoning her recovery so soon; she knew that he’d wanted another day or two at the very least to make sure everything was functioning correctly. But the most significant damage had been repaired or contained, and she was strong enough, she was sure. If she wasn’t, then she was just going to have to hope Edison would forgive her.
Another deep pang stilled her as she realized that, even if she had more time, she couldn’t afford to allow him to harbor her any longer.
She couldn’t come back to him. She couldn’t put him in that kind of risk.
Blinking back the moisture threatening to blur her vision, Plix pushed herself to make her preparations, calling on the callous efficiency that had gotten her through so many sticky situations in the past. Plugging in the auxiliary data jack, she downloaded everything—all the data Edison had managed to recover—watching as it disappeared from his system, erasing it line by line. Then, without remorse, she ran her most aggressive algorithm to scrub all traces of her presence from his mainframe. All of it.
Well, almost all.
She left exactly one file. Masked and encrypted and hidden deep within the parts of his system that only she would think to look in, she knew it would take even Edison a while to find and decode it. But still, she left one piece of herself for him to find.
In case she didn’t come back.
When she didn’t come back.
Plix was just finishing when she heard the sound she’d been waiting for this entire time, footsteps coming down the hall with that familiar echo and that long, loping gait. She swallowed hard and clenched her eyes shut, steeling herself for the goodbyes that had been growing more and more difficult for years now. This one would be the most difficult of all.
With a silent prayer, Plix wiped the display and slipped the cable from her neck, turning quickly and forcing as neutral of an expression as she could muster. As she did, the door behind her swung open, knuckles rapping gently against plastic in a small warning.
The sight of Edison’s face, broadly expectant, smiling and open, was nearly enough to crack her resolve and shatter all her plans.
It only took a moment for everything to shift, though.
“Hey, sleepyhead, I—” The words had barely left Edison’s mouth before his expression was falling, his features betraying how quickly he understood exactly what was happening.
Plix could only hope he didn’t grasp the full extent of it. If he did, he would never let her go.
“What—?” The hurt in his eyes was paralyzing, the sudden defensiveness in his posture striking so stark a contrast to the lazy smile he’d entered with.
She always hurt him.
Every single time.
There wasn’t any point to pretending. “I’m sorry,” she started.
“No.” Edison shook his head fiercely, his arms crossing as he straightened up to his full height. “You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry at all. If you were, you wouldn’t—”
“I have to.” Plix couldn’t meet his eyes anymore. She couldn’t even hold her unaltered hand in front of her, it was shaking so badly.
“You don’t. You don’t have to,” he said, pleading. “Whatever it is you think you need to do, it can wait.”
As she fought back the tears that wanted to overflow, she tried to shake her head, tried to move, tried to leave. But she couldn’t. And then there were hands on her shoulders, one rising up to touch her cheek, seeking roughly to tip her head back. When she held firm, her eyes trained intently on the floor, he gave up and simply wrapped his arms around her, pressing her face against his chest.
He smelled so good.
“Please, Plix. Please. Just a few more days.”
She’d already stayed too long. “No,” she said. The sound was muffled by his shirt, every breath and every word pulling more of his scent toward her lungs.
He pushed her back, and in her surprise, she let her eyes meet his. “Then let me go with you. Let me watch out for you. If you have to do this, we can do it together.”
She closed her eyes and her fists. “No.”
“Please—”
“No.” Sucking in a deep breath, she summoned all her strength to open her eyes and meet his gaze. “You know I have to…that I can’t…”
When he lifted his hands to cup the sides of her face, she wasn’t prepared for how powerfully that unexpected tenderness would affect her. Usually, he screamed. Sometimes he broke things.
He never touched her. Not quite like this.
Maybe he knew after all.
“Plix, I can’t…I can’t keep doing this.”
She felt her expression fall, the truth of what she was saying making the words echo with the pain she wanted so desperately to hide. “You won’t have to.”
For a long moment, their eyes held, and she was left with no doubt as to whether he grasped her meaning.
“Please.” Plix didn’t know how their faces had gotten so close, his breath warm on her face as he whispered, “For me.”
Her eyes fell closed again, the lashes brushing his cheek, and as she parted her lips to speak, she could feel the warmth of his skin.
For the first time in all these years, she felt his mouth.
His kiss.
It was chaste. Simple. Just pressure and lips, and it was everything she had ever wanted but never dared to ask for.
It was everything she couldn’t have.
Plix gave herself just a few seconds to memorize the feeling of his lips, full and soft against hers as she let her mouth open, a brief caress, damp and perfect. And then she pulled away, her palm coming up to stroke the rough plane of his cheek as she said quietly, smiling brokenly, “Of course it’s for you.”
With an ache building inside her chest, she uncurled his hands from around her face, kissing the knuckles of each just once before placing them against his heart. His glassy eyes remained on hers the entire time, his lips still parted.
Edison didn’t say anything, though. Not when she stepped back or when she placed her hand on the door. Not even when she rasped out a choked, “Goodbye.”
It wasn’t until she was almost gone, the thick plastic of the door already swinging closed, that he finally spoke. His words were muffled. Quiet.
Still, it hurt her more than she could have imagined to think that the last words he’d ever say to her would be, “For now.”
Beloved Stranger
Janet Miller
Marrying his match was easy. The hard part will be keeping her.
A Gaian Story
Roan Duman is six months from the end of his sentence at Ares Five mining colony, and he doesn’t plan to go home to Gaia empty handed. He’s going with a wife. The only way he can get one? Purchase her from an illegal marriage meet.
Ironically, he ends up in the one thing that landed him here in the first place. A fight over a woman. The one he wins—sight unseen—turns out to be as stunning as she is innocent.
Or so she seems.
Six years ago, Sonja escaped from Ares Five, forced to leave her sisters at the mercy of the slavers who sold them into the marriage meets. Now she’s back to rescue them, even if the only way to get access is to marry one of the prisoners.
She plans to get in and out with her sisters and be well away before Roan figures it out. She hadn’t counted on the annoying fact that her husband’s talent for scheming exceeds her own. Or that his sense of honor is the key that unlocks her heart—and the one thing she can’t leave behind.
eBooks are no
t transferable.
They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Beloved Stranger
Copyright © 2012 by Janet Miller
ISBN: 978-1-61921-041-7
Edited by Jennifer Miller
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: August 2012
www.samhainpublishing.com