Taken by Force

by Anna Argent

  by

  Also by Anna Argent

  The Taken

  Taken by Storm

  Taken by Surprise

  Taken by Force

  Taken by Force

  The Taken, Book Three

  By: Anna Argent

  Published by Silver Script Media, LLC

  Copyright © 2016 by Silver Script Media, LLC

  ISBN: 978-1-945292-05-7

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author at anna@annaargent.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art: phatpuppyart.com

  Photographer: Teresa Yeh

  Editing: Julie Finley, Modern Elektra Editing

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  About the Author

  Books by Anna Argent

  Chapter One

  “Can you cover for me?”

  Ava Dayton dumped the spent coffee grounds into the trash as she glanced at her friend and fellow waitress. “What’s up?”

  Stacy’s long dark hair was a sloppy mess, barely held up in a drooping bun. Fatigue shadowed her brown eyes and dulled her skin. Even her clothes looked tired. “The twins are both sick and constantly fussy. Carl has been playing Superdad, but he has to get up in four hours for his shift. There are only two full tables left, I’ve refilled all the salt and pepper shakers and the condiments, and—”

  Ava lifted her hand. “It’s fine. Really. I’ve got this. Go home to your family.”

  Stacy sagged in relief. “Thank you.”

  The poor woman was burning the candle at both ends: waitressing, being a mom to twin toddlers, and getting a business degree online in her spare time—what little of it there was.

  Ava grinned. “Just admit it. You want to slip away so you can have wild monkey sex with your hot husband rather than wait tables.”

  That got a flicker of a smile to touch Stacy’s mouth. “That’s it. You’ve found out my deep, dark secret. Now I’ll have to kill you before you can report me to the boss.”

  “Alas, I am defeated,” Ava said as she spun her tired friend around by the shoulders and untied the green polyester apron that was their cross to bear. While the Billy Hill Grill was the best steakhouse for fifty miles in any direction, what it had in good meat, it lacked in good taste.

  The place hadn’t been redecorated since it had opened in the seventies. The wallpaper was yellowed with age and cigarette smoke until it was all a delightful shade of neglect and nicotine. The wooden beams—which were dusted once a decade whether or not they needed it—were a bit on the fuzzy side, and home to more than one variety of spider.

  But the mounted stuffed heads of longhorn steer and deer… Ava still didn’t know how anyone could eat with one of those grim reminders looming over their table, watching them with dead eyes—especially Ed, the one with his tongue hanging out, like he was a fresh kill.

  Still, people flocked here from all the nearby counties, crawling out of their country homes for some good meat, outdated decorating, and mediocre service. Ava’s theory was that it made them feel right at home.

  “Maybe I should stay,” Stacy said. “I hate to leave you to clean up and close by yourself.”

  “Just go,” Ava said. “Rudy will help. And if I can’t handle the last half hour of a Monday night shift, then I have no right to wear this apron.”

  Stacy smiled. “Honey, you’re so cute you even make green poly look good. The hottie at table thirteen has been looking at you like he wants to eat you up and sop up what’s left with a biscuit.”

  Ava rolled her eyes. Stacy thought that every cowboy who walked through those doors was a hottie, and not once had any of them made Ava do so much as look twice. The men here were all… flat. Colorless. They left her completely cold. It was enough to make a red-blooded girl think there was something wrong with her when she couldn’t find even one interesting man in the lot.

  “I’m sure I’ll find a way to reject Mr. Hottie’s advances without hurting his tender feelings. Now go. Carl needs his beauty sleep.”

  Stacy nodded. “Mr. Hottie wants sweet tea with two lemons.” With that, she was gone.

  Ava made the tea and carried it out to table thirteen.

  The man sitting there was big—built on the same grand scale as skyscrapers, mile-long bridges and hydroelectric dams. There was a stillness about him, a kind of immovability that made her wonder if he was even breathing. He had dark skin, and wore a red plaid flannel shirt unbuttoned just enough that she could see the tendons in his thick neck. Beneath his sleeves, he wore a pair of heavy leather bands. Whether some kind of wrist braces, a fashion statement, or kinky bondage gear, she couldn’t be sure. The dark hair on his head was cut short, leaving a scar visible on his scalp where no hair grew at all. The raised, smooth flesh in a scrolling shape looked suspiciously like a brand.

  Maybe he was into some really kinky stuff.

  As she approached, he lifted his head and looked right at her.

  Ava came to a dead stop in the middle of the aging restaurant. Sweet tea sloshed over the rim of the glass, leaving a sticky mess on her tray. She could see from the corner of her eye that she’d drawn the attention of the only other customers present—an elderly couple sitting at table eight—but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. She was lucky she could still breathe with that man staring at her.

  He was more than merely hot. He was scalding, blazing like the surface of the sun, compelling in a way that made her incapable of diverting her shocked gaze. She couldn’t even bring herself to blink.

  His eyes were the color of polished bronze, glowing with an inner light that made them shine. His face was all chiseled angles and deep shadows that pulled her in and refused to let go.

  Her gaze followed his mile-wide shoulders all the way down his thick arms to the tip of his blunt, utterly manly fingers. Just the idea of being touched by something so magnificent made the hair on her arms lift in eagerness.

  And his lips… Heaven, help her. T
hey were full, starkly defined and so yummy her mouth watered.

  Her fingertips tingled with the need to trace those lines and feel the heat of his flesh against her own.

  Oh my.

  Ava forced herself to pull in a breath. Only then did she realize it had been a while since her last one. Her feet refused to budge. It was like the bottom half of her was disconnected from the rest—too busy squirming to bother listening to her commands.

  Heat swirled beneath her skin, coalescing at her breasts. Her nipples tightened so hard that even the stout polyester apron couldn’t hide them from sight.

  His gaze swept over her. Twice. When he made his way back to her eyes again, the slightest hint of a smile curled one side of his luscious mouth.

  Mr. Hottie, indeed. The man was going to make her spontaneously combust.

  This is what all the girls talked about, giggling late into the night—this feeling of falling and flying all at the same time. For the first time in her life, Ava understood what all the fuss was about.

  It was just her bad luck that her hormones finally started working after twenty-five years of numbness. With a complete and total stranger. One who was likely just passing through town. And when she had more important matters to deal with than her own inconvenient desire.

  “Ava, honey?” asked Mrs. Langsford at table eight. “Are you okay? Is that man bothering you?”

  Bothering her? Definitely. But in the most delicious way.

  Ava gathered her wits enough to offer a distracted, “No. I’m fine, thanks.”

  She was still a good ten feet from the stranger, but she could hear his quiet voice easily. “Is that my tea?”

  Like the rest of him, his voice was dark and sexy, with more than a hint of roughness lingering around the edges.

  A shiver slid through her, and her nipples tightened even more until they ached.

  She couldn’t stand here all night. She had to find some way to convince her legs to cooperate.

  He crooked his finger, beckoning her closer.

  As if her legs were under his command, she instantly remembered how to walk again, and crossed the rest of the distance to his table. Her hand shook as she picked up the glass. The slippery surface was no match for her weak grip, and before she got his drink placed safely in front of him, it started to slide out of her hand.

  Mr. Hottie’s reflexes saved the day, and by the time he was done moving, his hands were covering hers, trapping them against the icy glass.

  He guided his drink in for a landing, but once it was safely in place, he didn’t let go of her. Instead, he held on, cupping her hand in his much bigger ones.

  Warmth. Strength. Restrained power.

  She felt all of that in his grasp, and once again she was struck stupid.

  A normal girl would have pulled away or offered some kind of amusing quip about her clumsiness. A normal girl would have smiled and thanked him for saving the day. A normal girl would have done something besides stand there, staring and shaking and wishing she could find enough air to speak.

  Sadly, Ava had never been normal.

  His bronze gaze dipped to her chest and back again. “Thank you, Ava.”

  How did he know her name? She hadn’t told him.

  Then she remembered her nametag. Duh. She really was made brain dead by this man and her unbelievable attraction to him.

  “Uh. Sure. I mean, I’m sorry. I’m usually pretty good at setting down glasses. At least a fifty-percent success rate.”

  His grin stretched out to cover both sides of his mouth.

  Full, smooth lips drew her gaze, and for the first time in her life, at the ripe old age of twenty-five, she fantasized about what it would be like to kiss a man.

  His thumb swept across the back of her hand. A shivering, squirming frisson of excitement winged up her arm and settled in her chest. She could feel her heart beat faster in response, and her breath started to do that disappearing act again.

  Before it could—before he could steal whatever sliver of sense she had left in her head—she tugged her hand from his.

  The skin he’d been touching went instantly cold and she missed the warm, safe cave his grip had offered.

  Safe? Yeah, right.

  She didn’t know this man. He was about as safe as a wild dog that may or may not have rabies—and a gun. One wrong move from her and she’d find out just how dangerous he was—the hard way.

  Ava fixed her gaze on a point just past his left ear and fumbled for her order pad. “What would you like?”

  He paused long enough that she was forced to look at him again.

  Big mistake.

  Smoldering hunger darkened his eyes. His gaze roamed over her body like he owned the thing. With any other man that would have irritated her, but with Mr. Hottie, it made her burn. Melt. Tremble.

  “Since you’re not on the menu, I’ll have steak. The biggest you’ve got. Rare. Baked potato with everything times two, and some kind of vegetable. Your choice.”

  Her pen shook as she wrote, but there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it. “The salad is a little long in the tooth, but the grilled squash is excellent.”

  “Throw some butter on it, and we have a deal.”

  She’d just finished writing it down so Rudy the cook could decipher her scrawl when her freaky sense of impending doom went off.

  She had no idea where the sixth sense had come from or if it was normal for people like her to have it, but she knew better than to simply ignore it. Big or little, her little gift for knowing something bad was coming was never wrong.

  The restaurant door swung open.

  Ava stifled a groan.

  More patrons this close to closing would make her late getting out of here, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that. With Stacy gone, cleanup would take as long as it took.

  The first two men she recognized as regulars. They were farm hands who worked nearby and came in often. They were a little rough, but mostly housebroken. The last man—the one in the camo baseball hat—she also recognized, and the instant she did, she switched her grip on her pen so she could use it as a stabbing weapon.

  Now she knew why her sense of impending doom was freaking out. Chances were she’d be in jail before the night was over.

  Rage pumped through her system, building with every beat of her heart. In the space of two breaths, she was shaking with it.

  The trio of men took a booth in the corner, talking about the latest race they’d seen on TV. They acted like nothing had happened, like Emily hadn’t come home bruised and bloody last week after her date with Beau.

  Mr. Hottie’s demeanor changed instantly. “Do you know him?”

  She didn’t have to ask him who. Her death stare was fixed on the culprit, unwavering. “His name is Beau. He hurt my sister.”

  He frowned. “Sister?”

  The odd question pulled her out of her efforts to kill Beau with her glare from across the room. “Excuse me. I’ll get your order right in.”

  She walked toward the kitchen, wondering just how sharp the knives were, and whether or not she could get away with murder in front of so many witnesses.

  Chapter Two

  Radek had thought the sexy waitress was the one, but the woman he was searching for didn’t have a sister. She didn’t have any family at all. Her mother had brought her here when she was a child and died shortly after.

  Still, even if Ava wasn’t the woman he sought, there was something compelling about her—something that made his instincts sit up and stretch with interest.

  He watched her ass wiggle enticingly as she rushed to the kitchen. Every step she took held him in a bizarre kind of hypnosis. He couldn’t have pulled his eyes away from her if the leader of the Raide army himself walked through the door.

  Radek’s blood heated with arousal. He gripped his iced tea to help cool him off, but as soon as steam started rising from the glass, he knew he had to stop. He couldn’t draw any unwanted attention to himself here.
Blending in as human was the only way he was going to get close enough to his target to figure out if she was the woman he was tasked to find.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated on dark, grim things. The war. His prison cell. The poison coursing through his bloodstream.

  After a few seconds, his libido crawled back into its cage and released his mind for more important tasks than figuring out what Ava looked like under that ghastly green apron.

  She had to be Loriahan. A human woman would never intrigue him the way she had.

  Would she?

  Maybe he’d been on this world too long, or maybe it was a side effect of his recent lack of company. The two men he’d been working with had been sent home, leaving Radek alone on a planet not his own. He wasn’t pansy assed enough to admit he was lonely, but he definitely felt their loss.

  Ava came back out from the kitchen with a meat cleaver in one fist, and a dark flush of rage painting her beautiful face. He could almost imagine she’d look just like that in the throes of orgasm, only it wouldn’t be anger causing the red tint to her skin, but instead the heat his touch would ignite in her.

  The sweet dimples in her cheeks he’d glimpsed earlier were gone now, but he still remembered the way they’d made his heart melt a little and brought out his protective side.

  He could sweep her away from here and keep her all to himself. Protect her. Cuddle her. Fuck her.

  Not going to happen. Get a grip.

  After a few deep breaths, he was able to focus again, though his hold on reality was tenuous at best.

  Ava was smaller than she should have been, but many of the Taken were. The gravitational pull of this world was less than his own, and the thick bone and muscle mass it took to move about in heavier gravity had left its mark on him, just as the lesser pull of this planet had left its mark on the people here. Their frames were thinner, more fragile. Practically delicate. Even the men here looked like mere boys on his home world, and Ava was smaller than them.

  Even so, the way her chin was down as she marched across the restaurant—the way she gripped the weapon in her clenched fist—told him she wasn’t concerned with size. She wanted to inflict pain. Possibly worse.