Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2
Page 34
If Kellen can’t get his hands on another dose, he’s finished. The problem is, the only thief who’s ever broken in to Slipstream Labs is his ex-girlfriend, and she’s allergic to bounty hunters. As he does his best to play both sides, he struggles with his growing desire to be more than a prisoner to Tal and Vanya. Without trust, they won’t survive long. The clock is ticking as they race to uncover a conspiracy that spans the Ylendrian Empire.
Warning: This book contains an anti-hero with no qualms about redecorating your spaceship, a heroine capable of killing you with her hair stick, and another hero who would like nothing more than to shag them both without the inconvenience of a conscience.
Enjoy the following excerpt for The Slipstream Con:
Kellen Frey woke to the worst headache of his life and the warmth and security that came of knowing that he had been royally screwed by the universe. Both of those things seemed trivial when compared to the unwelcome press of confinement, the thrum of a strange ship around him and the pair of bounty hunters waiting at his bedside.
“If I make a comparison to vultures, which of you is going to hit me first?”
Tal smiled rather grimly. “Since you just blasted the shit out of Van’s notebook, I’m going to guess her.”
“I did what?” He started to push himself up, unwilling to have them both looming over him, and hissed in pain, dropping back onto the bunk with a head-jarring thump. The fingers on his left hand felt like he’d jammed them against an engine core, blistered and painful. He stared blankly for a long second, then looked up accusingly. “I was joking about hitting me. But honestly, this is worse.”
“Oh, that was all you, Frey.” Vanya gestured towards a dead pile of plastic on the floor. “Your hand and my computer. You want to tell us what the hell’s going on?”
“I seem to remember saying that I don’t know.” He tossed a hand over his eyes to block out some of the light. “I didn’t have any revelations while I was unconscious.”
Tal took a step closer, leaning over until his face was inches away from Frey’s. “Don’t be a smart-ass.” Tal enunciated each word with what seemed to be barely contained anger, and Kellen did his best not flinch. “You touched Vanya’s computer and it fucking melted. You can tell us what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into or I’m going to be really tempted to space you, bounty or no bounty.”
The one reply he had to that wasn’t going to make Tal any happier, and it didn’t seem wise to antagonize the man any further at the moment. Kellen settled for using his right arm to lever himself into a sitting position, left hand cradled against his chest, stubbornly silent.
Suddenly there were two of them hanging over him, forcing Kellen to squint against the haloing effect of the overhead lights. Vanya rested fingertips on Tal’s shoulder before gently pulling him back. “Get me a med kit, love. I should look at his hand and do a quick scan. I’m not sure he didn’t have a seizure.”
Tal scowled, reluctance in every line of his body as he stepped away from the bed. “Okay, but he’s still going to answer some questions.”
“Good cop, bad cop.” Kellen laughed, the sound catching painfully in the back of his throat. “And you accused me of being clichéd.”
“Nobody ever believes me as the good cop,” Tal said over his shoulder. “It started to hurt my feelings, so Vanya said we could switch.” He popped the kit open and set it on the ground, ostensibly out of Kellen’s reach. After handing her the scanner, he shoved his hands into his pockets, standing behind her like a sentry. “You’re not getting out of this.”
Kellen watched Vanya unfold his hand, swallowing over nausea as he caught sight of his blistered fingertips. It hurt like hell, but worse than the pain was the sick feeling of fear over having his hand damaged and all that that implied. No work, and worse, no art. It was more than he could deal with at the moment, so he turned his attention to Tal instead. “If you’d like, I could give you some tips on maintaining a pleasant demeanor. We could do some role-playing. Help you develop a more winsome attitude.”
“You do seem to have perfected those talents, what with that trail of besotted victims across at least ten known systems.” Tal rolled his eyes. “It never ceases to amaze me how few of them can seem to manage to hate you. Do you know how annoying it is to interview an infuriated art dealer? There’s screaming, and arm waving, and yet they still seem to work into the conversation how wonderfully charming you are.”
Vanya smothered a giggle, then struggled to straighten her face when her husband gave her a betrayed look. “It’s true.”
“Thank you, Vanya,” Kellen said with equanimity. “If only your husband would learn from your deportment, he wouldn’t need lessons from me.” He bit down on his lip for a second as she worked a burn cream over his fingertips.
“I’ll take your assessment of my manners under advisement,” Tal replied. “In the meantime, I’ve had a lot of success with intimidation and my winning smile.” A flash of the aforementioned smile distracted Kellen, and he quirked his mouth in response. “Now, why did you just hand yourself over to us?”
“Your pretty, pretty eyes.” He yanked his bandaged hand back to his chest and sighed as Vanya began waving a scanner at him with a frown. Tal looked even less pleased.
“Really? Because I think it had more to do with you wanting off that station pretty damn bad and using us to that end. And I think I speak for us both when I say we don’t appreciate being used.”
Kellen started to shrug, and then thought better of it when even that movement made his head throb. “You wanted your bounty. I wanted off Station 43. It seemed like a win-win situation. I’m not sure why you’re complaining.”
“We’re not complaining. We’re suspicious. There’s a difference.” Vanya put a finger under his chin, tipping his head to the side. “We don’t like surprises.”
“Birthdays must be so much fun for you both.”
The Kellen Frey philosophy of life forbade gambling on the unknown, not when success rested on evaluation of all the risks, and then a carefully weighed decision about the chances of achieving the identified goal. The fact that he’d spent almost as long studying Tal and Vanya as they’d spent studying him had made this decision as safe a bet as it could be, but even that knowledge wasn’t doing much to dispel the crushing anxiety at being a prisoner.
“Look, I’m…I’m sick, okay? I’m off my game, and Cassie asked me to deliver something, so I figured it’d be a nice, simple drop and dash. Except you turned up, and there went my ship, and the people I was delivering to decided they didn’t like the goods, so I needed to get out of there, fast. It’s not like I’m looking forward to prison, but I was looking forward to death even less, so here we are.” Mustering up a grin, he flashed it at Tal, as Vanya was busy holding his head still with the palm of her hand. “I figured I’d just escape before you could turn me in, and we’d all be happy. You can keep chasing me, and I can keep doing things that make you grudgingly admire my inimitable skills.” Vanya pushed his head to the side, and he frowned at her. “As I said, it’s win-win.”
“You may be sick, but you’re definitely not suffering any lingering brain trauma,” Vanya reported. “And stop teasing my husband about his little crush on your career.”
“I hardly see how it’s my fault that I inspire romance and lust in your husband.” He quite enjoyed the way Tal’s face pinked up to the very tips of his ears, mouth open in indignation before Kellen cut him off. “Besides, it’s just the thrill of the chase. Now that I’m actually here, I’m sure the infatuation will fade.”
“I’m not infatuated with you!”
Vanya’s tight grip on his chin made Kellen yelp. “Enough. So we’ve established why you’re here. What we haven’t got an answer to is how you managed to melt my notebook.” Her hand went from his face to his clenched fingers, prying them open. “And something else odd. The scanner says that these burns are from the inside. How in all that’s holy did you manage that?”
“
Are you sure?” He stared at his hand as if he could see through the bandages. What exactly had Cassie given him? “Maybe I’m just that hot.”
Overlord
The Fringe: Book Two
Anitra Lynn McLeod
His planet is his prison…and only she can set him free.
The Fringe, Book 2
After a year, Michael “Overlord” Parker finally knows who’s been pilfering his black market goods. Astonishingly, the elusive Bandit of Taiga isn’t a man. It’s a woman, an infuriating spitfire who’s half in love with Michael’s overly romanticized reputation.
Remarkably Average Mary exudes an intoxicating scent that Michael can’t quite puzzle out, even with his unique ability. As long as she remains bound and blindfolded, he has the advantage—and the bonus of tormenting the bane of his existence.
Mary’s deceptively innocent face has never failed her. Yet somehow she’s at the mercy of a man she knows only as “Commander”. His demands are simple. Surrender her methods of banditry, or surrender her body. As his essence invades her intuitive ability—and her remaining senses—she becomes increasingly frantic to escape before she yields all that and more to her compelling captor.
Their sensual sparring ignites, and Michael finds himself wanting to erase Overlord’s myth from her fantasies in favor of the real man. But first he has to foil the slippery little devil’s escape attempts. And find out who’s been using her to unknowingly help the empire wipe him off the face of his own planet.
Warning: This futuristic medieval contains a planet-owning alpha hero, a feisty heroine who can swear in over thirty languages, a side-kick with a crackleseed addiction, witty repartee, epic space battles, sensual karate, and tight black leather pants.
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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.
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Overlord
Copyright © 2011 by Anitra Lynn McLeod
ISBN: 978-1-60928-350-6
Edited by Linda Ingmanson
Cover by Kanaxa
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: May 2011
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
About the Author
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Also Available from Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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