Take What You Want (16 page)

Unacceptable Risk

She may learn to live for love…if vengeance doesn’t kill her first.

Unacceptable Risk

© 2011 Jeanette Grey

Plix spends her lonely, gritty life trying to solve the mysteries her father left behind. Armed with a variety of cybernetic enhancements and a talent for getting into places she shouldn’t be, she searches for clues to his murder—and who’s responsible for poisoning her city.

Waking up on a street corner with her brain wiring fried to a crisp, she figures she must have gotten close this time. There’s only one man she trusts to pull her back from the brink: a tuner who can retrieve the evidence hidden deep in the recesses of her mind. A man she dares not let too close to her heart.

When Edison downloads a secret SynDate schematic from Plix’s burnt-out circuitry, he knows with dreadful finality that nothing—not even the fiery kiss he’s been holding back for years—will stop her from pursuing her quest past the point of insanity.

All he can do, as he helps her plan her final mission, is ease her pain, watch her back…and hope one of them doesn’t pay with their lives.

Warning: Contains a heroine intent on kicking ass and taking names, a high-tech dystopia, cybernetic body modifications, and emotionally-charged, sensual romance.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Unacceptable Risk:

Lucien Vicker knew what her father had been up to. Lucien Vicker knew about
her
.

She had to go.

Layers of plans and strategies unfolded in her mind for where she would go next and what she would do. For
how
she would take her leave. Edison would be angry at her for abandoning her recovery so soon; she knew that he’d wanted another day or two at the very least to make sure everything was functioning correctly. But the most significant damage had been repaired or contained, and she was strong enough, she was sure. If she wasn’t, then she was just going to have to hope Edison would forgive her.

Another deep pang stilled her as she realized that, even if she had more time, she couldn’t afford to allow him to harbor her any longer.

She couldn’t come back to him. She couldn’t put him in that kind of risk.

Blinking back the moisture threatening to blur her vision, Plix pushed herself to make her preparations, calling on the callous efficiency that had gotten her through so many sticky situations in the past. Plugging in the auxiliary data jack, she downloaded everything—all the data Edison had managed to recover—watching as it disappeared from his system, erasing it line by line. Then, without remorse, she ran her most aggressive algorithm to scrub all traces of her presence from his mainframe. All of it.

Well, almost all.

She left exactly one file. Masked and encrypted and hidden deep within the parts of his system that only she would think to look in, she knew it would take even Edison a while to find and decode it. But still, she left one piece of herself for him to find.

In case she didn’t come back.

When
she didn’t come back.

Plix was just finishing when she heard the sound she’d been waiting for this entire time, footsteps coming down the hall with that familiar echo and that long, loping gait. She swallowed hard and clenched her eyes shut, steeling herself for the goodbyes that had been growing more and more difficult for years now. This one would be the most difficult of all.

With a silent prayer, Plix wiped the display and slipped the cable from her neck, turning quickly and forcing as neutral of an expression as she could muster. As she did, the door behind her swung open, knuckles rapping gently against plastic in a small warning.

The sight of Edison’s face, broadly expectant, smiling and open, was nearly enough to crack her resolve and shatter all her plans.

It only took a moment for everything to shift, though.

“Hey, sleepyhead, I—” The words had barely left Edison’s mouth before his expression was falling, his features betraying how quickly he understood exactly what was happening.

Plix could only hope he didn’t grasp the full extent of it. If he did, he would never let her go.

“What—?” The hurt in his eyes was paralyzing, the sudden defensiveness in his posture striking so stark a contrast to the lazy smile he’d entered with.

She always hurt him.

Every single time.

There wasn’t any point to pretending. “I’m sorry,” she started.

“No.” Edison shook his head fiercely, his arms crossing as he straightened up to his full height. “You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry at all. If you were, you wouldn’t—”

“I have to.” Plix couldn’t meet his eyes anymore. She couldn’t even hold her unaltered hand in front of her, it was shaking so badly.

“You don’t. You don’t have to,” he said, pleading. “Whatever it is you think you need to do, it can wait.”

As she fought back the tears that wanted to overflow, she tried to shake her head, tried to move, tried to leave. But she couldn’t. And then there were hands on her shoulders, one rising up to touch her cheek, seeking roughly to tip her head back. When she held firm, her eyes trained intently on the floor, he gave up and simply wrapped his arms around her, pressing her face against his chest.

He smelled so good.

“Please, Plix. Please. Just a few more days.”

She’d already stayed too long. “No,” she said. The sound was muffled by his shirt, every breath and every word pulling more of his scent toward her lungs.

He pushed her back, and in her surprise, she let her eyes meet his. “Then let me go with you. Let me watch out for you. If you have to do this, we can do it together.”

She closed her eyes and her fists. “No.”

“Please—”

“No.” Sucking in a deep breath, she summoned all her strength to open her eyes and meet his gaze. “You know I have to…that I can’t…”

When he lifted his hands to cup the sides of her face, she wasn’t prepared for how powerfully that unexpected tenderness would affect her. Usually, he screamed. Sometimes he broke things.

He never touched her. Not quite like this.

Maybe he knew after all.

“Plix, I can’t…I can’t keep doing this.”

She felt her expression fall, the truth of what she was saying making the words echo with the pain she wanted so desperately to hide. “You won’t have to.”

For a long moment, their eyes held, and she was left with no doubt as to whether he grasped her meaning.

“Please.” Plix didn’t know how their faces had gotten so close, his breath warm on her face as he whispered, “For me.”

Her eyes fell closed again, the lashes brushing his cheek, and as she parted her lips to speak, she could feel the warmth of his skin.

For the first time in all these years, she felt his mouth.

His kiss.

It was chaste. Simple. Just pressure and lips, and it was everything she had ever wanted but never dared to ask for.

It was everything she couldn’t have.

Plix gave herself just a few seconds to memorize the feeling of his lips, full and soft against hers as she let her mouth open, a brief caress, damp and perfect. And then she pulled away, her palm coming up to stroke the rough plane of his cheek as she said quietly, smiling brokenly, “Of course it’s for you.”

With an ache building inside her chest, she uncurled his hands from around her face, kissing the knuckles of each just once before placing them against his heart. His glassy eyes remained on hers the entire time, his lips still parted.

Edison didn’t say anything, though. Not when she stepped back or when she placed her hand on the door. Not even when she rasped out a choked, “Goodbye.”

It wasn’t until she was almost gone, the thick plastic of the door already swinging closed, that he finally spoke. His words were muffled. Quiet.

Still, it hurt her more than she could have imagined to think that the last words he’d ever say to her would be, “For now.”

A good bad boy is hard to find…

Getting Hotter

© 2012 Elle Kennedy

An
Out of Uniform
Story

Seth Masterson has been lusting over Miranda Breslin since the moment he saw her on a Vegas stage. Now that he’s been asked to watch out for her as she opens a dance studio in San Diego, he’s all over it, figuring it’s his chance to get her in his bed. Except the stubborn single mom seems determined to deny their crazy-sizzling sexual chemistry. In typical SEAL fashion, Seth makes it his personal mission to prove her wrong.

Miranda got over her attraction to bad boys about the time one of them knocked her up at the age of eighteen. Seth’s mocking gray eyes and military-buff bod, though, are pure and utter temptation. And when a flooded apartment forces her and her twins to move in with him, she can no longer resist the urge to set off some serious fireworks between the sheets.

But give him her heart? No, thank you. Any involvement with Seth will be strictly physical—and temporary. So when Seth decides
permanent
is what he wants, Miranda must steel her defenses before she does something incredibly foolish…like fall in love.

Warning: This book contains a bad boy SEAL who knows what he wants and will go to any lengths to get it. Expect some graphic language, hot sex, seduction, hot sex, dirty talk, hot sex, a little man-on-man action, hot sex. Oh, and hot sex.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Getting Hotter:

He walked over to the simple wooden dresser under his window and grabbed a pair of black track pants from the bottom drawer, along with thick wool socks. “The pants will be baggy, but there’s a drawstring so at least they won’t fall off.” He paused. “You want some boxers too?”

Her cheeks took on a pinkish hue. “No, it’s okay. Just the pants will do.”

His groin tightened as he wondered whether she planned on going commando. From there, the most mouthwatering image flashed in his mind, one involving Miranda’s bare sex, his track pants, and a whole lotta friction.

“What’s wrong?”

He met her concerned eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“You got this look on your face, like you were in pain. Are you all right?”

A choked laugh slipped out. “I’m fine.”

“What’s so funny?” Suspicion colored her tone.

“You’re completely oblivious to the effect you have on me, aren’t you?”

She let out a startled breath. “What?”

Releasing a breath of his own, he eliminated the distance between them, lifting one arm over Miranda’s shoulder so he could close the bedroom door. Her eyes widened at his nearness, and her cheeks turned redder.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Giving us some privacy.”

Her slender throat dipped as she swallowed. “
We
don’t need privacy.
I
wouldn’t mind some, though, so I can change out of these damp clothes.”

“That can wait a few minutes.” He locked his gaze with hers. “You asked if I was in pain. Well, I am.”

She blinked in surprise. “But you just said—”

Before she could finish, he grabbed her hand and placed it directly over the bulge in his sweatpants.

Miranda gasped, her mouth falling open. “What are you…oh my God. Jesus, Seth!”

And yet for all the lady’s protests, she didn’t make a single move to yank her hand away.

Seth’s pulse kicked up a notch, his cock growing even harder beneath Miranda’s palm. She didn’t stroke him. Didn’t cup or caress or move her fingers in the slightest. She just kept her hand over the erection straining against his sweats, her lips parted, her pupils dilated.

“Feel that?” he murmured.

Her gaze slowly met his. She looked almost mesmerized as she nodded.

“That’s what I’ve been walking around with since the moment you moved to town, baby.”

“Seth…” Reluctance crept into her voice. “Stop. Just…stop.”

And then her palm moved. A fraction of an inch. A torturous glide over the hard ridge of his cock.

He groaned softly. “Do that again.”

Her fingers froze. Her expression conveyed shock, as if she truly hadn’t realized what she was doing.

“This is insane,” she mumbled, and then, to his extreme disappointment, she withdrew her hand.

But the sexual awareness zipping back and forth between them refused to dissipate. It thickened the air and made his skin burn with anticipation. Christ, he wanted this woman so badly he couldn’t think straight anymore. Every time he saw her he turned into a sex-crazed caveman whose sole purpose in life was to claim his female.

His gaze focused on her mouth, that sexy mouth he’d been fantasizing about for so long.

“One taste.” The words slipped out before he could stop them, his voice full of gravel.

“W-what?” she stammered.

“Let me have one taste. One kiss.” He brought his hand to her mouth and swept his thumb over her plump bottom lip. The breath she hissed out warmed his fingers. “Please, Miranda.”