Headlong
Page 26
She considered the question for moment. “Not bad. He’s high energy, and he’s got them dancing, but there’s room for the sound to grow when the headliner comes on. The crowd will be primed for the peak set. It’s good work. Disciplined. He’s got brains.”
He nodded. “My conclusion exactly. He’s playing his cards well.”
“You’re giving him his first break?”
“Yeah. I like to giving space to new talent,” he said. “Let them struggle and sweat now. It’s their turn. I’ve already paid my dues.”
“That’s good of you,” she said.
“Good business. An investment in the future.”
“Of course. Excuse me for implying that you have a heart.”
He rolled his eyes with a noncommittal grunt and declined to answer that.
Fiona ran her finger up the gleaming length of a fountain pen that adorned his desk. “Pretty,” she said. “Very fancy. Solid gold, I assume.”
“Of course.”
“Ever written anything with this? A love note, a contract?”
“No.”
“Just for show, then.” Her eyes landed on a bronze statue in the corner, lit with its own dedicated beam of carefully angled light. Some tormented looking nude. “That, too, I expect. Looks expensive.”
“It was,” he agreed.
“So you’re into art appreciation? Classy. Goes with your image.”
A perplexed line appeared between his dark brows. “Which is what?”
“Inscrutable bad boy genius. Pop stars and Hollywood A-list actresses love to fling themselves against you and smash themselves to pieces.”
“I’m an artist, businessman and producer,” he growled. “The rumors are bullshit.”
“Hmm. Remember all of Jeremiah’s sermons? His favorite theme? Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. Then I read in GQ about your fleet of luxury cars—”
“It’s not a fleet. You actually believe that gossipy shit?”
Hmmm, she’d scored one. Gotten under his skin. “Where there’s smoke…”
“There’s always smoke,” he said. “All those people do is blow smoke. Stop sniping at me and make your point, Fi.”
She would if she could, but she was still working up to it. Next to the fountain pen there was a perfect, palm-sized pink rock with veins of green, tumbled to a smooth matte sheen. She hefted it. It felt good in her hand. “What’s this? Kryptonite?”
“Just a river rock. It’s from Garrett Creek, right below the upper falls.”
She froze for a moment, then set the rock down carefully. “Why do you keep that?”
He lifted his shoulders. “To remember where I came from.”
“Really? You need a reminder?”
“Not really. But it serves a dual purpose. I could cave in somebody’s head with it if I needed to.”
“Ah. Now you’re talking my language.” She looked around at every detail of the luxurious room. “Fancy art. Gold pens, fancy lighting, sleek black leather…what does this man cave represent? You’re too young for a mid-life crisis. Not thirty-three yet, right?”
“In a few months. Mid-life crises are for people who spend their whole lives not getting what they want. Then they wake up to it, and they panic. Not me. I take exactly what I want, whenever I want it. There’s no delay of gratification. No panic buildup.”
“Wow,” she murmured, impressed. “Sweet.”
A lazy smile curved his lips. “If you say so.”
“But you’re rebelling,” she told him. “Jeremiah hated, oh, let’s count the line items. Ostentatious wealth, loud music, alcohol, drugs, dancing, sexy outfits, frivolous use of vital resources such as energy. Tattoos. Even that designer jacket. What is that, Armani? You would have caught a thundering load of scorn from him. I can already hear the rant about the decline of modern manhood into decadent irrelevance.”
“It’s Armani. Good eye. Glad you like it. Good thing he’s dead. We don’t have to listen.”
“Damn right,” she said.
There was a brief, charged silence before he spoke again. “How about you?”
Fiona looked at him blankly. “What about me?”
“Do you get what you want, Fi? Do you even know what you want?”
She bristled. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
He took so long to reply, she started to fidget. “I haven’t seen you since you were a teenager,” he said finally. “Then, out of nowhere, you show up wearing a cock-teasing costume that makes you nervous as a cat in a bathtub. You’re all up in my face. Something is bugging you. Which doesn’t surprise me. Anyone who survived GodsAcre is fucked up by definition. But you’re not here for your health, Fi. You’re not here for fun. What do you want from me?”
So much for the smooth-lead-in. Fiona clutched the edge of the desk, trying to remember her carefully scripted speech. Gone from her head, poof.
“This is going to sound crazy,” she said.
“I’m fine with crazy,” Anton said. “Lived around it all my life. Out with it.”
“OK.” She cleared her throat. “It’s about Redd Kimball.”
Anton’s eyes narrowed. “What about him? The bastard is dead. And I’m glad.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” she said. “He didn’t die in the GodsAcre fire. He’s still out there. And now he’s trying to kill me.”
Available for preorder now!
The saga of the Trask Brothers continues in Heedless, The Hellbound Brotherhood Book Four. Coming soon!
* * *
Turn the page for a peek…
HEEDLESS
THE HELLBOUND BROTHERHOOD
BOOK FOUR
Whatever it takes to protect her…
* * *
Security expert Nate Murphy came to Shaw’s Crossing to kick ass. He has his hands full helping the Trask brothers with their murderous enemies, but he’s knocked off his feet by the elusive Elisa, the mysterious woman who works in Demi’s restaurant. She’s way out of his league, and he can tell she’s holding something back…something big. Nate’s an ex-soldier and ex-bouncer whose specialty is breaking heads…but the fear in Elisa’s eyes makes him want to crush whoever put it there. If only she would tell him the truth…
* * *
Secrets and lies…
* * *
Elisa Rinaldi is hiding from a killer. Her ex-fiancé Gil is a dangerous sociopath, but she can’t prove it. Hiding in the small town of Shaw’s Crossing had seemed like a good idea at the time, but getting attached to the people there was not, much less to Nate Murphy, the hard-eyed, hard-bodied security expert. Then violence engulfs her new friends, and the press is everywhere. If facial recog flags her, Gil will find her and kill her. She has to leave Shaw’s Crossing—after a parting gift to herself. One night with Nate. Then she’d do the right thing…even if it breaks her.
Nate can hardly believe his luck when Elisa leads him up to her little apartment. The night that follows leaves him gasping for breath. Then she vanishes—but Nate can’t rest until he finds her and claims her for his own.
Elisa will risk everything to get her life back and be with the man she loves. But her mortal enemy is playing a game of cat and mouse
* * *
And now the stakes are both their lives…
* * *
Available soon!
DID YOU MISS Demi and Eric’s earlier story, in Hellion, The Hellbound Brotherhood Book One? Check out the scorching tale of how Eric and Demi’s romance began…
Available now!
HELLION
THE HELLBOUND BROTHERHOOD
BOOK ONE
Find out why New York Times bestseller Maya Banks hails McKenna’s books as “A nonstop thrill ride…”
* * *
He’s a ticking bomb…
Eric Trask is counting the days before he blasts out of Shaw’s Crossing forever. He and his brothers were raised at GodsAcre, a mysterious doomsday cult deep in the mountains, and are the only survivors of the de
adly fire that destroyed it. The townspeople see them as time bombs just waiting to blow, but Eric’s going to prove those bastards wrong. He’s an ex-Marine, fresh off a tour in Afghanistan, working three jobs and barely sleeping. Utterly unprepared for Demi Vaughan’s dazzling green eyes, lush pink lips and sexy curves. She’s the town princess…he’s a dangerous outcast. It was a sure recipe for disaster.
But the closer he gets to Demi, the more impossible it is to resist…
* * *
Forbidden fruit is the sweetest…
* * *
Demi Vaughan has big plans for life post-college, and Eric Trask, notorious bad boy with a complicated past, is not part of them. So when he saunters into the sandwich shop where she works she tells herself he’s just tall, ripped, smoldering eye candy, nothing more. Eric was damaged. Marked by violence and tragedy. He’d be the ultimate bad boyfriend, and right now she was too busy even to shop for a good one. But his hot eyes and hard body, his sensual smile and that rough, sexy voice of his shook her resolve. After all, she was leaving this place forever. A little taste of heaven…what could it hurt?
But Shaw’s Crossing has deeper, darker secrets than Eric or Demi could guess. The evil that destroyed GodsAcre is lying in wait...and it will stop at nothing to keep Eric and Demi apart…
Available now!
If you are enjoying The Hellbound Brotherhood, you should check out Right Through Me, Book One of The Obsidian Files! Turn the page for a tantalizing peek…
RIGHT THROUGH ME
THE OBSIDIAN FILES
Stranger, speak softly...
* * *
Biotech tycoon Noah Gallagher has a deadly secret: his clandestine training as a super-soldier gives him abilities that go far beyond human. Yet he's very much a man. When Caro Bishop shows up at his Seattle headquarters with a dangerous secret agenda, his ordered life is thrown into chaos. Caro is a woman like no other—and her luminously sensual beauty cloaks a mystery he must solve.
* * *
Caro's lying low, evading a false charge of murder. She means to clear her name, and she'll do whatever it takes to survive—but seducing a man like Noah is more than she bargained for. His amber eyes have the strangest glow when he looks at her—she could swear he sees the secrets of her heart. The desire smoldering in Noah's eyes awakens her own secret hunger, but Caro has to resist his magnetic pull. Anyone close to her becomes a target. The only right thing to do is run, far and fast, but Caro can't outrun Noah's ferocious intensity—or deny the searing passion that explodes between them.
* * *
Nothing else matters—until a vicious enemy bent on the ultimate revenge puts his murderous plan into play. Noah and Caro must battle for their lives...and their love...
Right Through Me - Chapter 1
Someone just cut the lights. What the hell?
Noah Gallagher put down his pen and looked around, startled, as drums began to thump from the hidden sound system of the penthouse conference room. Some exotic instrument joined in, throbbing and wailing.
The door to the conference room opened to a shimmery jingling sound, then a flash of fluttering purple. Everyone at the table was staring and murmuring.
Oh, Christ. Not possible. Noah rose to his feet, but the belly dancer was already halfway through the door, her hands weaving in a hypnotic pattern. Wide, light-catching green eyes laughed at him brazenly as she shimmied straight toward him, leading with one pulsing hip.
Her eyes caught him . . . and held him.
The world narrowed down. Whatever he was going to say or do stopped. Words were gone. Air was gone. Air didn’t matter. Nothing moved while she moved.
She had commandeered all movement. With that smile. Those eyes.
He was sitting again, with no memory of deciding to do so. His mind had gone blank. The woman was like a walking, breathing stun code, personally keyed to him. He’d always wondered how it would feel to be one of the unlucky chosen few at Midlands who’d gotten stun and kill codes embedded in their minds. His own brain implants had been bad enough. Stun and kill codes were worse.
But this dancer wasn’t a goddamn stun code. She was just a random woman, shaking her stuff. When her act was done, he’d pull it together. Exert the fucking authority he was entitled to as the CEO of Angel Enterprises.
He had exactly until the music stopped to get control of himself.
Simple enough to figure out who’d dreamed up this unwanted birthday present. His younger sister Hannah lurked by the door. The wide-angle enhancement of his sight made it possible to see the gleam in Hannah’s eyes without looking away from the belly dancer for a single second.
Not that he could have looked away.
He saw his fiancée Simone’s face with his peripheral vision. She’d chosen to sit at his side for this important meeting. It was painfully obvious from her tight, expectant smile that she was waiting for him to turn to her, to smile and laugh and make light of this stupid situation. Not just for her. For everyone in the room.
He couldn’t do it.
Try. Do an analog dive. Grab a hook. Concentrate.
A spotlight from somewhere gilded the dancer’s body, highlighting every perfect detail. Silver anklets that jingled over her small, bare feet. Golden toenails. Shapely legs flashed between purple veils that floated from a low-slung, glittering belt. The belt and top were swagged with shining chains and dangling beadwork. Still more chains, draped from an ornate headdress, dangled over her forehead and under her chin, creating a constant soft shimmer of sound.
High, full breasts quivered, lovingly presented in the spangle-studded velvet bra. She arched back, floating a purple veil edged with spangles high in the air above herself and swishing her thick fall of of glossy black hair around. Had to be fake hair, falling to well below her ass. It brushed the curve of her hips. Fanned out as she twirled.
Everything he’d monitored in his peripheral vision was gone now. He no longer saw Hannah, or Simone, or anything else. His inner vision was too busy with the vivid fantasy of that woman straddling him. Imagining her bold, sensual smile as she swayed over him, teased him. Running her fingers through her hair, lifting it, tossing it. Coiling it around her waist like a slave rope.
He wanted to rip away all the filmy veils and all the goddamn beads and chains. See her bare-assed. Bare-breasted. Yeah.
The deep curve of her waist was perfectly shaped for his fingers to grip. The curves and hollows of her belly and her hips looked so soft. Touchable.
His hands shook with the urge to reach, stroke. Seize.
The rush of erotic images ramped up his advanced visual processor into screaming overdrive. Even with eyes shielded from eighty percent of the ambient light, even using a double layer of custom-designed shield specs, his AVP combat program was off and running, scrolling a thick column of data analysis past his inner eye.
And even that couldn’t distract him from her show. Not for one instant.
His heightened senses reached out, so greedy for more that he found himself actually taking off the back-up shield specs. He’d have popped out the contacts, too, but his AVP was already going nuts at the lower protection level. Combine that with adrenaline, and a huge blast of sexual arousal—fuck.
The light level in this room could zap him into a stress flashback if he didn’t protect his eyes. Not only that. The dark shield strength contact lenses hid the animal flash of amber luminosity caused by his visual implants. Outsiders couldn’t be allowed to see that. The room was packed with outsiders. He wanted them gone.
Especially Simone. Which made him a total asshole. He tried hard, really hard, to feel guilty. Not so much as a twinge. His conscious mind had been almost totally hijacked by the dancer.
He wanted to throw everyone else out and lock the door. Study that woman with his naked eyes, dancing under the spotlight. But only for him. He wanted to gulp in the whole data flow. It was being filtered out in real time and lost to him forever, and it drove him . . . fucking . . . nuts.
Heart racing, temperature spiking. Sweating profusely. No way to hide it. It was an AVP stress dump. A massive dose of fight-and-conquer energy, channeling straight into his dick, which strained desperately against his pants.
He struggled to grab onto the analog hooks that he’d established. His hooks were emergency mental shortcuts, activating an instant, deep withdrawal into the ice caves of his subconscious mind when the AVP got out of control. Best way he could devise to calm his stress reactions and stay on top of himself.
Not a hook to be had. Couldn’t find them, couldn’t feel them. Couldn’t use his highly developed power of visualization at all, after years of grueling practice. All gone.
He was fully occupied imagining that woman naked and writhing beneath him.
His intense reaction to this spectacle made no sense. He’d seen belly dancing before and been unmoved. He did not have complicated fantasies or fetishes. He didn’t even get the fun factor. He wasn’t known for his sense of humor. In fact, he had no imagination at all, unless you counted biotech engineering designs, or plotting ways to grow his business, or scheming to keep his chosen family alive, secret, and safe.