Satin Pleasures (24 page)

With a jingle of keys, she passed the niche he’d carved for himself in the shrubs. A punch of adrenaline surged through him, made him lightheaded with anticipation. He shook the buzz from his head and crashed out of the bushes with more noise than he intended.

Her head snapped left. She shot a glance over her shoulder. Her eyes widened. She lunged for the safety of her door.

He chased after her, grabbed her by the throat. A squeeze of her windpipe cut off her scream. He didn’t want to damage her too much. He just needed to get her alone.

To atone.
To give him another chance.

With her soft body pressed against him, he groaned with pleasure. It had been so long! For a moment he forgot his purpose, lost in the new scent of her, in the innocent softness of her curves against him. Her breasts were full beneath his forearm. The sweet curve of her bottom cradled his stiff penis. With another groan, his grip relaxed.

She screamed. Struggling, she broke loose of his hold.

Shit! Reaching out, he snagged her long ponytail and yanked her back hard. With his other hand, he strangled her next scream into a whimper. “Do that again,” he grated, “I’ll use my knife.” The honed blade was secure in his pocket but she didn’t know that.

“I have money,” she croaked.
“Three hundred.
Tips.
In my pocket.
Please! Don’t—”

“
Shh . Don’t fight me.
Shhh ,” he crooned into her hair. He tugged a chloroform-laced rag from his pants pocket and fitted it over her nose and mouth. “Just give me another chance, Angel, and everything will be fine.”

This time she’d make the right choice because, God only knew, he’d truly go insane if he had to kill her all over again.

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Excerpt

While You Were Dead By C.J. Snyder

Prologue Twelve years ago

Kat
Jannsen didn’t cry the day they buried Maxwell Crayton .

Plenty of others did. Mourners gathered four and five deep around the long, flag-draped coffin. Even more had packed the church, but Kat skipped the God part.

She stayed back by a tree, feeling out of place, uninvited, unwelcome and wondering about the flag.
Military?
What other secrets had he kept?

Kat couldn’t say why she’d come.
Except she’d loved him, as she’d never loved another human being in her life.
So much hope about to be buried in that coffin.
So many dreams.
So much despair left behind.

His actual death shouldn’t have made a difference. He’d been missing for two months before he died. He’d tossed her away like a used Sunday paper three months before that.

Now Kat shivered in the cold, sleeting rain. She gave her head a vicious shake, warding off the tears that threatened for the first time in days. She straightened her shoulders.
You will not cry.
She had no right to attend the family’s service, but she represented someone who did.

Her gaze darted over the ring of mourners. They were folding the flag. In just moments she’d know. They’d give the flag to Miriam, the sister who’d raised him. Miriam.
Kat’s baby’s one chance at a sane life.
Anguish wrenched her heart. Sorrow for Max, sorrow for this baby she already loved too much to keep. Kat fought her tears so she could see the woman who held her future—her child’s very life—in her hands.

The soldier stopped in front of an older woman and Kat frowned. Miriam was forty-three, fifteen years older than Max. This woman looked a decade older than that.
Too old?
No. She couldn’t be too old. Women had babies in their forties all the time. Bereavement might make her look older.

An even older man supported Miriam, his arm strong and sturdy around her shoulders. Five others surrounded them, forming a protective half-circle around the couple. Two nephews, Max’d said.
Nephews with wives, or at least girlfriends?
Grown nephews? The woman turned her head in response to something her husband said and Kat caught her breath, nearly undone by the naked pain on the face that so closely resembled Max’s own. The resemblance was nearly as close as that between her own mother and herself.

So this was Miriam.
So much grief.
She must have loved her brother very much. But Kat hadn’t expected her to be so old. She’d pictured a warm, loving younger couple. For just a moment, she sagged back against the tree.

It’s never easy, Kat.
Max’s words, and before that her mother’s.
Words to live by.
Why would she expect this to be any different?

You don’t have a choice. Unless you damn your sweet baby before it even draws a breath.

All true. No choices, no options, except to entrust her innocent child into the hands of fate. No. Better to trust Miriam.

More movement at the graveside.
Mourners began to greet Miriam and her husband.
Time to go.
Kat wouldn’t intrude today.
But soon.
There wasn’t much time.

Chapter One Five Years Later

Max
Crayton eased his car over to the side of the road and shut off the engine. His hands were shaking. His heart pounded hard in his chest and loud in his ears.
Too loud.
Too hard.
He focused on the Dairy Queen, on the trees waving gently in the sweet spring breeze.
Home.
After too many long years, it was over. He was finally free to pick up his life nearly where he’d left it.

You can’t have Kat back.

Regret stung, so sharp and strong he winced. He should go—just start the engine, drive to his sister’s house and get it over with. That’s what he was here to do. But he wasn’t ready. Arrival at Miriam’s heralded a new start.
The first day of the rest of your life.
His fist connected with the steering wheel. It just wasn’t that damn easy.

Because arrival at Miriam’s also firmly closed the door on his past.
That’s why he was here, sitting above Bluff River Falls, Wyoming, watching life go on in the valley below. He’d survived the long years because the past was waiting for him. The ultimate reason for what he’d done.
His life.
Intact.
Complete with Kat. Finishing the simple drive to Miriam’s would end that fantasy forever.

He closed his eyes, fighting the inevitable moment when the door—that door to her —would latch so resolutely behind him. “Kat,” he whispered. “Ah, baby, I’d do it so differently....”

Would he?

Faster than a single heartbeat.

Could he?

No.

He’d taken the only path he could. Kat was the most valuable thing he’d lost, but not the only thing.

You knew it going in.

“Not when I agreed,” he argued.

Yeah, well, that ship sailed.

Frowning now, he restarted his car. Miriam would help. His sister always had a knack for making him feel better. She’d mothered him when his elderly parents died. Miriam’s husband, Doug, died during his “absence” and he wondered how his sister was coping. Most importantly, how would she react to her “dead” baby brother?

He wound through streets as familiar as his childhood, pulling to a stop once again, this time in front of her modest, yellow tri-level. For a long minute he sat, staring at the house, surprised by the pink Big Wheel parked defiantly in front of the porch.
A neighbor’s kid, probably, as Miriam’s two boys were grown and gone now.
Thirty seconds later, he sidestepped the trike, and stood in front of the door. He lifted his hand to knock, and let it fall back to his side.

What would he say?
“Hi, sis.
Surprise! I’m not dead after all.” Would she understand that he still couldn’t discuss his manufactured death? Would she accept him back into her life? Forgive him?

He lifted his hand again, but the door suddenly flew open, revealing an enchanting pixie of three or four. Perfect little teeth flashed as she grinned at him. “
Hiya , Max.” He bit back a frown. She knew him? Long, blond braids swung as she turned her head. “
Mommie , Max is home from Heaven.”

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Excerpt

SILVERSTORM

(Chronicles of the Taken – Book 2)

By Michele Callahan

Chapter One

Friday, 6:47 A.M.

Glowing silver embers fell from the sky over Chicago and all of her suburbs. The glittery flakes spread over the city faster than dawn could shoot its rays of new morning light. Night hung on by her fingernails, the sun trapped behind the horizon for a precious few minutes. The early risers, those who initially believed themselves blessed to witness a miracle, gasped in awe and cried at the unearthly beauty floating down over them like a billion falling stars.

Then the screaming began as everything and everyone, nine million people, burned to ash in a matter of minutes.

Four Days Earlier…

Silence hovered over the water and a few moments of peace settled over Tim like a cool blanket on a hot July day. He grinned and finished tying the spinner on his line. The softly lapping water, smell of wet vegetation, and honking geese gliding around the edges of
Hendrick
Lake were as far from the desert sand and gunfire as he could get. Monday morning meant most people were back at work, leaving the lake and the best fishing spots empty…just the way he liked it.

Bandit curled up in her bed on the floor of the nine-foot aluminum boat, content to sleep for a few more hours. The tiny Pekingese mix was used to his routine.
Fish.
Work.
Fly. She did it all. When he’d flown home to bury his parents, she’d been a four-month old puppy he could fit inside his combat boot. The puppy had been his mother’s whim and a completely
spoiled lapdog. The tiny pooch had lived a life of luxury traveling in his mother’s purse everywhere she went. He’d considered giving the pup away after the funeral, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. That was nine months ago. The little girl wasn’t much bigger now, a whopping ten pounds soaking wet, but she kept him company, she was smart, she liked to fish, and she was the only family he had left.

“Let’s see what we can catch today, girl.” Tim cast his line out over his favorite fishing spot and let the spinner sink a few inches before slowly reeling it back in. The rhythm and monotony chased away the last of his lingering nightmares.
Sand.
Bitter cold.
Death.

Bandit growled low in her throat and got to her feet, rumbling like a tiny electric toy stuck in the “On” position. The hair on her body started to rise, forming a round fluffy brown and white snowball with huge brown eyes. Bandit looked like a cartoon character. Tim would’ve laughed, but the hair on his arms and head crackled with static electricity as well and rose to attention like a thousand tiny soldiers. The water puckered as if it were being hit by raindrops, but there were no clouds. No rain. No thunderstorms on the horizon waiting to zap him and his boat into oblivion with a stray bolt of lightning.

Tim reeled in his line and stashed the fishing pole in its spot along the side of his seat. Bandit stood at rigid attention on her pillow and continued to growl, a steady little rumble of warning that set his teeth on edge. They were too exposed on the water, too out in the open. He clenched his jaw to keep the stream of expletives from rolling off his tongue. Whatever this was, it wasn’t normal. His silence came as automatic as breathing. He didn’t start the small trolling motor. He took out an oar and paddled smoothly for the tree line behind his house. Two minutes, perhaps
three,
and he’d be undercover.

The electrical buzz building in the air continued to grow stronger until he could hear the slight hum around him. His skin prickled and the water on the side of the boat rose around him, forming hundreds of fluid stalagmites rising, bursting, and sinking back into the water faster than he could track them.

Earthquake?
E.M.P?
What the hell?

The electric charge shocked him with static build-up every time he moved. Time to get off the water before whatever was happening cooked him in place or worse.

He glided into the reeds only a few feet from shore and tried to figure out how he could get off the boat without touching the supercharged water. Any second now he expected stunned
or dead fish to start popping to the surface. Maybe the Fish and Game boys were doing this for a count or culling of the lake. He couldn’t imagine why they would, but damn it, they should’ve posted a warning!

Bandit yelped and sunk to her belly, whimpering and shivering. A thunderous boom filled the air and a burst of silver light to his right blinded him. Instinct drove him to the bottom of his boat for cover and his mind raced with possibilities.