Light Me Up

by McKenna, Shannon

  Her fizz of excitement died away. The cold lump of fear was back in place.

  She was so sick of feeling this way. She wanted to yell at the driver to circle the block, just on the off chance of catching one last glimpse of Noah Gallagher. To feel something different than that cold, heavy ache in her core. Just for a second or two.

  But she could not have this. Not even a stolen taste of it. She could not let lust trash her good judgment. She had to stay murderously sharp. Constantly on the defensive. Without rest.

  Sexual frustration wouldn’t kill her.

  But there were other things out there that definitely could.

  Keep reading for a peek of My Next Breath, the second installment in The Obsidian Files!

  My Next Breath

  Never count the cost...

  Zade Ryan. Rebel supersoldier. Nearly superhuman. On a desperate quest to rescue his missing brother Luke by any means possible. To do it, he must seduce the elusive Simone Brightman, inventor of the ingenious and deadly tech used to capture Luke and hold him prisoner, location unknown. Zade will do whatever it takes to get close to Simone. Her mysterious beauty and highly sexual allure have him at a disadvantage, but time is running out...

  Simone is fighting battles of her own, on her own. Until Zade—six foot four of sinewy muscle and lethal combat skills—rescues her from street thugs and leaves her breathless. His smoldering black eyes and overpowering sensuality—and his seductive invitation to spend one wild, unforgettable night with him—prove too tempting to resist.

  Their passionate encounter unleashes scorching desire that neither can control—leaving them vulnerable to their enemies who watch from the shadows and wait. And when they are lured into a trap by a monstrous killer hellbent on their destruction, they must fight with every weapon they have to save Luke, and each other.

  Because one night together could never be enough—and they might not live to have another...

  Get My Next Breath here!

  https://shannonmckenna.com/books/my-next-breath/#order

  Chapter 1

  That voice. Hers.

  Zade isolated that sound from all the others competing to be heard: traffic, gusting wind, cold rain driving down on the black asphalt, dripping off the vinyl awning he lurked beneath.

  Fading out. Fuck.

  Zade listened hard for that free-floating sound thread, thin as a strand of spider-silk waving around out there in the humming urban buzz of Seattle.

  Yeah. There she was. Coming out of the Mercer Center with some people. Adults and kids. Umbrellas whooshed open. Cars pulled up. A few taxis stopped. He heard her, talking, laughing, saying goodnight. A subtle thrill racked him as that low, husky female voice stroked delicately down his nerve endings.

  Simone Brightman. He liked her voice.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked the display. cold out here wtf

  He tapped back a response. wait

  Lightweights. His hired goons had been waiting hours in the rain. Boo-fucking-hoo. He was damp and chilled, too, but he wasn’t bitching about it. Nor should he.

  It was what he deserved for prowling around in the dark like a fucking criminal.

  Whatever it took. He’d kill for information about his lost brother Luke. And what he was about to do fell way short of killing. Nobody was going to get hurt tonight. At least not physically.

  Simone Brightman had to know something. And that was as far as he’d gotten. Months had crawled by without a single opportunity for a chance meeting with her. He’d plotted and schemed, increasingly frustrated. But no dice.

  Mostly she stayed stubbornly locked in her house. No errands, shopping, gas stations, malls, post office, restaurants, movies. No workdays at her biomed lab, which used to be the sum-total of her life. This once-a-week math tutoring thing she did with kids was the only reason she’d gone out at all since she and Noah Gallagher broke their engagement.

  She must be depressed. Fine. He could work with that. All she needed to make her misery complete was some mouth-breathing scum menacing her on a dark street.

  Add terror to the mix. And himself, never on the side of the angels.

  He followed a brief conversation she had with some kids on their way out of the Center. He could barely hear what they were saying, but they seemed to really like her.

  “Get home safe. See you next week.” There was laughter in her voice.

  Finally it was just her, making her solitary way toward her car, not knowing that it had been disabled. About three blocks away now. Her rubber-soled lace-up leather boots squeaked.

  Lately, for some unknown reason, she no longer bothered with her ultra-professional ice maiden look.

  At first, he thought he’d miss that super-controlled vibe. It had been stimulating to watch that round, taut ass twitching purposefully along in tight pencil skirts as she went about her business, heels clicking.

  Also gone: her sleek designer suits and smoothly styled hair. She’d been so tightly buttoned up it was actually kinda kinky-porno-hot. He got off on it.

  Now when she got dressed, it was in battered jeans or pilled leggings, sloppy sweatshirts, full-length skirts. Black, horn-rimmed glasses so butt-ugly they passed for aggressively cool. Her curly blond hair—surprise, surprise, not smooth at all—was out of control, unless she bothered to pin it up or put it in a messy ponytail.

  Her new look was as different from the old as it was possible to get. And it jazzed him just exactly as much. Go figure.

  And he looked at her a lot. Getting surveillance vid-cams installed in her place had been a hell of a thing. Her home security was top of the line. He’d finally succeeded in maneuvering a few micro-drones through her front door, two while the housekeeper came in to clean, one while Simone was having groceries delivered. Completely silent, nearly impossible to see. One was perched on the kitchen light fixture. One was on a bedroom curtain rod. The last sat on one of the wall-mounted speakers in her living room.

  She was always in her studio or bedroom. Always working. She slept very little, and ate so seldom it had actually started to worry him. The fuck? An adult human being couldn’t live on yogurt, a slice of toast, and the occasional fucking fruit chunk. It was a miracle that she functioned at all.

  Damn, now he’d lost the sound thread again. He reached for it—listening harder … yes. Rubber boot soles on the wet pavement. He’d know that little squeaky-squeak song anywhere. He’d memorized its exact rhythm and pitch.

  Less than a block away now. He was already getting a whiff of her. Warm, female smells. He seriously dug that honeysuckle shampoo. Couldn’t wait to sniff it at close range.

  He stepped out of the shadow of the awning, and raised his hand to signal the men waiting down the street. One of them lifted his hand in response. They were ready. She was an easy target, parking an almost new Audi on a badly lit street like this.

  His heart raced as his augmented sensory processor kicked into high gear, as if revving for combat. Which was overkill. He didn’t need an ASP jolt for this. The Obsidian researchers had wired him and rewired him during the Midlands experiments on their quest to produce the ultimate, relentless war machine. The data that speed-scrolled over his field of vision whenever he was stressed was a constant reminder of how they’d changed him. Permanently.

  But he ignored it. He’d stolen himself back. He and all the rest of the Midlanders. He was more than what Obsidian had tried to make of him. Fuck them all.

  Tonight—for her—he needed to be funny, smart, and unthreatening, for starters. And good in bed, if he got lucky. Past experience suggested that he would. It was bad form to get cocky about it, but whatever. A guy could hope.

  In fact, he quivered with hope. Watching Simone for two whole months had kept him perpetually half-hard. It wasn’t like she was doing anything sexy. On the contrary. She mostly just sat there on the bed, cros
s-legged in a thick snarl of wires and cables, surrounded by screens, dressed in leggings and a sweatshirt. Braless. Eyes narrowed with ferocious concentration as she typed so fast and hard the detached wireless keyboard bounced against the mattress.

  He loved how the mad typing made her nipples jiggle.

  He could watch that for hours without losing interest. Simone Brightman’s life was slit-your-wrists boring, yet watching her somehow kept him continually buzzed.

  He was in a groove with surveillance monitoring. Forget sleep. Not happening, even thought he’d sworn never to inflict sentinel sleep on himself again after their escape from Obsidian’s research facility at Midlands. He hated the way sentinel sleep made him feel. Constant vigilance turned even the strongest into a numb, circuit-fried robot, no matter how skillful he might be at alternating his brain hemispheres, resting one while using the other and blah-blah-di-fucking-blah.

  He was good at it, yeah. And so? He was good at a metric fuckton of unspeakable things. That didn’t mean he would ever do them again. He’d won his freedom back. Obsidian could go suck its own dick.

  But he’d do sentinel sleep for Simone. He’d do any number of desperate, unspeakable things for a chance to find out what happened to his brother.Besides, watching Brightman prance around in her underwear was no chore. She was so damn pretty it just turned his head around. Why sleep when he could look at that?

  She was almost upon him. His ASP processor sent a fire-hose of data scrolling wildly up both sides of his field of vision. His senses sharpened to a level beyond painful. He hadn’t expected this. Bullshit timing.

  Her footsteps echoed in his ears, boom-scrape-squeak. Her soft breathing, the quick and steady drum of her heart. He smelled the warm mix of her hand lotion, her wool coat, the leather of her boots, heard the swish of her long skirt, the brush of wool tights between her thighs. He smelled the coffee she’d had not long ago and a hint of the vanilla flavored creamer she’d lightened it with. Whiffs of the perfume she used to wear back in her corporate days wafted out of her purse like little ghosts.

  He also smelled the festering mouth-breathers who waited across the street.

  His heart thudded loudly. In a few seconds, he’d see Simone in the flesh. The mysterious ex-fianceé of Noah Gallagher, Zade’s friend and fellow Midlander rebel.

  A woman who might or might not hold the key to the last possible clue that could lead him to his brother.

  Or to his brother’s bones.

  That thought stabbed through him like a thin blade of ice just as Simone Brightman rounded the corner and hit his line of vision.

  Showtime.

  Keep reading for a peek of In My Skin, the third installment in The Obsidian Files!

  In My Skin

  Come back to me…

  Luke remembers a few things. Just not his last name. Or anyone he ever knew. He knows that he’s a supersoldier, genetically enhanced and loaded up with brain implants. He recently escaped from a year-long hell of captivity, and to protect his family and friends from his tormentors, he blocked most of his memories. Now he needs them back, fast…or he and those he loves will die agonizing deaths.

  Luke’s dangerous plan to reconnect with his past—and stay alive in the present—has drawn his enemies’ attention to the tough and sexy Dani LaSalle. He’s duty bound to protect the luscious beauty from the evil pursuing them, but he can’t control the scorching desire she awakens in him.

  Dani’s strict routine has been trashed by Luke’s explosive arrival. This rock-hard slab of valiant, smoldering manhood appears out of nowhere, saves her life, spirits her away to his mountain lair, and bewilders her with tales of sadistic researchers and enhanced assassins. Is this gorgeous, problematic sex god just plain crazy—or is she? But hey. Luke can do things with his mind that are just as wild as what he can do with that body. She can’t say no.

  And there’s no time to wonder. As their passion flares, Obsidian moves in. Luke and Dani must place their lives and their hearts on the line just to survive…

  Get In My Skin here!

  https://shannonmckenna.com/books/in-my-skin/

  Chapter 1

  Damn. The car Luke was following jolted off the freeway and onto the exit ramp. Sooner than he was expecting.

  Luke put on a burst of speed. He searched the darkness for the retreating taillights. They had vanished into the night. Didn’t matter. His brain implant had connected with its onboard system several miles back.

  Once he was in, that car was his bitch.

  But Luke had hesitated to assume total control right away. Hadn’t wanted the courier at the wheel to panic and contact his handlers. No sense pissing off vicious, powerful enemies in advance.

  Bad call. Now he had to improvise. And the guy was speeding through the residential neighborhood, drifting and correcting like he was drunk or high.

  Shit. Luke had big plans for Braxton’s courier that didn’t involve witnesses with smartphones, car accidents or traffic cops.

  He followed close behind. His ASP, the augmented sensory processor implanted in his brain by Obsidian, was monitoring the fleeing car’s data on a transparent screen that overlaid half of his field of vision. He could follow that car in his sleep.

  Though he never actually slept. At least not how normal people did.

  A sense of urgency thrummed in him. Time check, dude. Reality exists on a twenty-four-hour grid, seven days a week. Months vary. Watch out for February. He scrolled back in his memory.

  It was exactly thirty-seven days, sixteen hours, and forty-three minutes since his escape. His ASP pegged the breakout from Braxton’s cage as his personal zero hour. Reborn, after three hundred and fifty-nine days, eight hours and forty-two minutes locked in an underground, soundproof glass box, outside of time. Every second free of that hellhole was a fresh start.

  But as who? As what?

  Freedom didn’t seem much different from captivity. He still felt like shit. Isolated, numb. Maybe that was the effect of his self-imposed brain block. He’d put up a protective wall in his head that Braxton couldn’t get through with torture or drugs.

  It worked. It held. But who the hell was he protecting with it?

  He couldn’t…fucking…remember.

  Random things sometimes floated out of the fog. His first name, not his last. No address. No hard data on any family or friends. Nothing from his childhood. Sometimes, he got flashes of faces. Younger people, mostly. Male and female. Their worried eyes. He wondered if they really existed.

  A family, an identity, a life. It was all like a mirage. Memories on the far side of his brain block shifted and moved. Elusive shadows behind frosted glass. They vanished when he tried to hang onto them.

  Ironic, that he could recall every detail of the experiments Obsidian had conducted on him. Their torture was burned onto his mind.

  But the memories he actually wanted were out of his reach.

  Just as well. If there were people in his former life worth protecting, anyone at all that he cared about, he’d prevented Braxton and Obsidian from destroying them. He’d done the right thing. It just had a hellacious price tag, that was all.

  Focus. You have a plan. Follow it.

  He was a block away, closing in fast when he saw the courier’s car suddenly stop. When he caught up, the driver was gone and the car door hung open. Headlights on, motor running, the car straddled the sidewalk, crushing a low hedge in front of a small house. 2425 Camden Lane.

  Luke parked his black Porsche SUV and did a swift, targeted data-dive, which revealed that the house was rented to a woman named Daniela LaSalle. A nurse at the local hospital.

  He checked to make sure no one was looking, and used his implant to remotely shift the courier’s abandoned car into drive, sending it jouncing and rattling over the bushes and sidewalk and back onto the street again. He maneuvered it to the curb some distance dow
n the block and killed the engine.

  Blood drops stained the sidewalk. Hot blood, steaming and starkly visible to the thermal sensor in his eye implants. A trail of drops led around to the back of the house.

  He heard a TV going. Lights on in living room and kitchen. LaSalle was home.

  Fuck. This operation should have been smooth and secret. He had everything ready; knockout drugs, restraints, a scalpel, anesthetic, disinfectant, broad-spectrum injectable antibiotics. He didn’t want to hurt the guy, but that computer chip embedded in his pectoral muscle had to be extracted tonight, one way or another. It contained the drop-off info for a shipment of Manticore gear. And Luke needed it.

  Manticore Tech was Braxton’s new enterprise, his latest supersoldier research lab. More advanced than the work he’d done thirteen years ago, back when Luke was an unlucky street kid, captured to be Obsidian’s lab rat.

  Braxton had learned from his mistakes. He’d refined and honed his craft. He’d surpassed himself. Or so he claimed, bragging into the mic of Luke’s soundproof cell.

  Braxton’s new supersoldiers were walking, breathing supercomputers. Invincible freaks of bioengineering. By all reports, Manticore Tech had gone above and beyond Obsidian’s sadistic research in the bad old days.

  Because hell, things could always get worse. That was a fact Luke could cling to in an uncertain world.

  The chip was crucial. That shipment contained a device Braxton had called his “wakey-wand.” Cute fucking name for a dangerous brain probe, one that dissolved memory blocks.

  That was his plan. Just hoping like hell that Braxton’s wakey-wand would stimulate his own shredded brain. Enough to bring back memories of his vanished life.

  Most likely it would just kill him. He was fine with that.