I
never really knew what misery was until the day I was kidnapped and sold for
being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Two months later, I'm at a brothel
in Rio when I meet Daniel Hays.
He says he's here to save me, but can I trust
him?
All I know of him is his sarcastic retorts and his tendency to solve every
dispute with his gun.
He's also the only safe thing in my world, and I know
it's wrong to fall in love with him, but I can't seem to help myself.
He says he’ll protect me until his last
breath but I don’t know if I should believe him or even if I can.
Daniel
For
the last eighteen months,
I’ve had one goal that has dictated every action I’ve
taken.
I’ve left the Army, turned paid hit man, and have befriended criminals
all across the globe to find my kidnapped sister.
In every brothel I raid or every human trafficking truck I stop, I hope the next face I find is my sister’s.
In every brothel I raid or every human trafficking truck I stop, I hope the next face I find is my sister’s.
In a hidden brothel in Rio,
I find Regan Porter, bruised by not broken and still sane
I find Regan Porter, bruised by not broken and still sane
despite her weeks in captivity.
I should leave her behind
or send her home because the last thing either of us needs right now is to get
involved.
But with every passing minute, I find I can’t let her go.
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Please
note:
this contains some scenes that sensitive readers may find upsetting or triggering.
TEASER
She’s a biter. That’s the warning given when I
point to the blonde with the glazed green eyes in Senhor Gomes’ book of whores.
He shakes his head and says that he has access to dozens of others that are
better and all willing to engage in whatever perverse activity I want. He brags
that there isn’t a sick sex act I can think of that Gomes can’t fulfill. I like
home cooking, I tell him. A Texan in Rio sees a lot of beautiful Brazilian
women, but sometimes you want a little star-spangled banner in the rotation.
He nods as
if this makes sense to him, but I think it’s the money that I’m flashing that
he understands. We walk up to the second floor and down a narrow hall toward
the back, a windowless part of this brick and metal building. I can’t call it a
home or even a brothel. It’s a dingy place where men with deep perversions but
shallow wallets can get their rocks off.
I don’t
want to have sex here, I’ve explained to Gomes. I have a thing against
hellholes and having sex in them. I wave around a lot of cash, and Gomes nodded
and asks no more questions.
We’re a
strange parade—Gomes, me, and some house mom trailing behind. He stops at the
second to last door and removes a key.
I’ve seen
pictures of Regan Porter before, and not in Gomes’ look book, but nothing
prepares me for her full-fledged, magazine-quality beauty. She hasn’t been
eating well; her delicate bones are beginning to look sharp in places—at her
shoulders, ribs, and hips. But there’s no denying her breathtaking looks. Her
blonde hair is damp and small strands stick to her perfect skull. Her oval
face, with its pink cheekbones and lush lips and eyebrows that look like wings,
stands out like a piece of fine china at a flea market. Though she’s thin,
there’s a delicious curviness in the slope of her side as it dips into the
waist and flares back out to form a cuppable roundness at the hip. And those
endlessly long legs.
Shit. I
close my eyes and swallow. No decent man would be standing here thinking about
those legs wrapped around his waist. But then again, I’m not decent. I’m no
longer army sniper, Special Forces Daniel Hays who may have once been lauded as
a hero for killing insurgents in Afghanistan. Now I’m Daniel Hays, mercenary
who kills people for money and spends all his spare time in brothels and flesh
dens like this one. Decency is a word I don’t even know the meaning to anymore.
It’s been
too long since I’ve had a woman. That’s my only excuse. That and I’m becoming
the monster that I’m hunting. I focus on the bruises on her knees that are
scraped red and raw from time on the floor and the manacle around her ankle.
Any feelings of arousal are jettisoned by the obvious signs of abuse.
Glancing
sharply at Gomes, I wonder how he’s come to possess a beauty like Regan Porter.
Gomes is a small-time flesh peddler, stuck up here in the slums, with a house
full of females—half of which are missing their teeth or are too old or too
broken.
He usually
gets what the market calls second-hand goods, the girls that no other house
wants. But Regan Porter is gorgeous, and while she looks a little rundown,
she’s still model beautiful with big pink lips and wide green eyes.
“Nice
tits,” I smirk for Gomes’ sake and her shudder of disgust only feeds into my
growing belief that I’m as dirty as the flesh trader beside me. The dark edges
of the world that I now inhabit are seeping into my skin like an oil slick
covering an ocean. I shouldn’t want to touch her. And if I have to fuck her in
front of Gomes to get her out of here—I don’t even let myself finish that
thought.
There’s
still life in her eyes. If she’s biting and spitting out acerbic insults,
there’s spirit left in her, and I don’t want to be the one to snuff out that
last flame. Her eyes convey her hate, and if she had a knife, I’d be sliced
from my throat to my belly. I stare back, not because she’s fucking beautiful,
but because she’s still standing. I’m not sure I would’ve been as strong. I
don’t know if she sees my admiration or whether she can only interpret varying
degrees of lust and degradation, but she sees something. An invisible string
spools out between us and her eyes widen when it hits her like an electrical
shock.
For months I’ve swum in a pool of blood and death and ugly
deeds, and to hold onto my sanity and maybe my soul, I’ve told myself that
saving these doves balances the scale.
For every life I take, if I save one then it’s all a wash in the end.
Don’t think it’s tallied that way at St. Peter’s Gate, but that’s the lie I
tell myself so I can sleep at night and look at myself in the mirror the next
day. Regan Porter will either be part of my attempt at salvation or the bloody
stone that etches out the words He Failed
on my headstone.
Last
Hit Book One Hitman Series: Currently ON
SALE for ONLY $0.99
Blurb
Nikolai:
I have been a contract killer since I was
a boy. For years I savored the fear caused by my name, the trembling at the
sight of my tattoos. The stars on my knees, the marks on my fingers, the dagger
in my neck, all bespoke of danger. If you saw my eyes, it was the last vision
you’d have. I have ever been the hunter, never the prey. With her, I am the
mark and I am ready to lie down and let her capture me. Opening my small
scarred heart to her brings out my enemies. I will carry out one last hit, but
if they hurt her, I will bring the world down around their ears.
Daisy:
I’ve been sheltered from the outside
world all my life. Homeschooled and farm-raised, I’m so naive that my best
friend calls me Pollyanna. I like to believe the best in people. Nikolai is part
of this new life, and he’s terrifying to me. Not because his eyes are cold or
my friend warns me away from him, but because he’s the only man that has ever
seen the real me beneath the awkwardness. With him, my heart is at risk..and
also, my life.
Mini Excerpt:
I watch her through my bathroom window.
I've placed one of my four rented chairs in here for that express purpose. I
tell myself it is not creepy, as the American girls would say, because I watch
everyone. But really I watch only her.
I cannot see everything. I've never seen
her nude. I've never seen inside her shower. Smartly there is no window there.
But I can see her bedroom and her living room and beyond that, with my scope,
her kitchen. I know her schedule. When she gets up in the morning, when she
returns to her apartment. If she were a mark, I could've killed her a dozen
times over by now and been in the wind.
She throws her bag onto her bed and then
lies down next to it. It takes many muscles to smile, more to frown but only a few
to pull the trigger. I peer down the scope and place my crosshairs over her
forehead. Puff, dead.
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Author Jen
Frederick lives with her husband, child, and one rambunctious dog.
She's been reading stories all her life but
never imagined writing one of her own.
Jen loves to hear from readers so drop
her a line at
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Author Jessica Claire
Jill Myles has been an incurable romantic
since childhood. She reads all the 'naughty parts' of books first, looks for a
dirty joke in just about everything, and thinks to this day that the Little
House on the Prairie books should have been steamier.
After devouring hundreds of paperback
romances, mythology books, and archaeological tomes, she decided to write a few
books of her own - stories with a wild adventure, sharp banter, and lots of
super-sexy situations. She prefers her heroes alpha and half-dressed, her
heroines witty, and she loves nothing more than watching them overcome
adversity to fall into bed together.
>> GIVEAWAY <<
(1) $200 Gift Card to any
retailer of Winners choosing
(5) Signed Sets of the Hitman
Series
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