Shiloh Walker's Blog, page 75

Small Town…Birthday Bash

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Saturday Snippet… and we’re doing this in a weird way, because it’s my birthday and I wanna.

If you comment, you get entered for an ARC of The Unwanted.  These two are kinda sorta connected.

This is from The Innocent, another FBI short that I just finished.  It’s a small town, but no town you’d ever want to live in.

The very last person he’d expected to see in Hell was Jay Roberts.

As she turned around and gave him a slow smile, he was hard-pressed to do anything but stare for almost a minute.  Her hair, a pale, almost white blonde, was colored in streaks of blue and pink here and there.  It might have looked silly on some, but it just suited her.

Half-way down her neck, he could see where her tattoos started and just like the first time when he’d see her—only in a picture, of course—he wanted to peel her clothes away and learned each and every one of those tattoos, each and every curve.  Killer curves, deadly attitude.

And the attitude he’d sensed in their online communication, and picked up on even more in their phone and skype sessions was every bit as sharp as he’d suspected.

A slow smile curved her lips and he wanted to cross the floor, grab her and cover her mouth with his.  Taste her, like he’d wanted for almost a year.

He’d waited that long to finally meet her.

And now he’d life was in shambles and Lloyd Pritchard was threatening to put his hands on her.

Lloyd was an idiot.

But then again, he always had been.

He just might an idiot without arms or legs if he touched Jay.

His heart, so bitter and broken over the past few months, gave a slow, ragged beat in his chest.  Part of him wanted to go to his knees in front of her and wrap his arms around her waist, press his face to her belly.  She would listen.  She would talk him through this and he wouldn’t hear any of the false sympathy, the false hopes—there was no hope.  He was a cop. He knew what was going on.

The other part of him just wanted to tell her to get her ass back in the car and go back to her nice, safe little job in Dallas.

He had no place for her in his world now.

Although he had to admit, she didn’t exactly fit into the safe little picture he’d had in mind.  She’d sent him a few pictures, and although the blonde hair was right, it was done through with stripes of pink and blue.  Her face was the same, heart-shaped with the most fuckable mouth ever and he wanted to grab her up against him, lose himself in her.

But the look in her eyes, somehow both wary and challenging, had him keeping his distance.

She was trouble in a pair of combat boots.  He’d figured that out even as he’d caught his first glimpse of her through the plate glass window.  He hadn’t recognized her from outside.

The soft, throaty voice, a little too rough, a little too raspy, stroked against his senses like a caress and he wanted to kick everybody out of the gas station and ask her why she was here.

Instead, he forced his mind away from the skin-skimming clothes and shifted his attention to Lloyd and his pack of ass-kissing hyenas.

She’d been about five seconds away from a whole world of trouble and he suspected she knew it.  The new sheriff wouldn’t get off his ass to scratch it and city police force consisted of exactly two full time cops and one part time.  None of them were worth the price of two postage stamps.

The best thing Linc could do was get her out of here.  It seemed like the rest of the world had forsaken this town.  Maybe God had, too.

~*~

Want to win a PDF ARC of THE UNWANTED?  Just comment away…  I’ll draw some winners to receive an ARC.  It’s due out July 30.  Nothing is required to enter, but if you win, reviews posted to Amazon or BN would be lovely.  Winners will be posted to the site next week, you must check back to see if you win, etc, etc, etc. Disclaimer is here, if you enter, that means you’ve read it and agree.

Lauren Dane

Shelli Stevens

Leah Braemel

Jody Wallace

Caris Roane

Eliza Gayle

Lissa Matthews

Mandy M. Roth

McKenna Jeffries

Taige Crenshaw

Delilah Devlin

HelenKay Dimon

TJ Michaels

Happy Fourth

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Have a safe and happy fourth.

This, That & The Other

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A doubler giveaway! I found this on my bookshelf…it’s signed by Nalini so I think I must have bought it for a giveaway and forgot. Oops!

Want it? Leave a comment below. It’s the first in the series, so if you haven’t read them, you’re fine to start here. And you should. Start here, I mean. Read these books. They are awesome. Read the disclaimer… winner name will be posted to the blog, sometime next week and you have to check back to see if you’ve won.  I do not email the winner. Entering means you’ve read and agree to the disclaimer.  Do not post this to sweepstakes sites, either.

Thank you.

Other stuff!  Look it… Kindle posted me to their blog!

A bunch of my Berkley books look to be marked down over at Amazon. Wrecked is $7.49, The Protected is up for preorder at $8.89, The Reunited is $8.89, etc.  It’s not a lot…some of them are only 50 cents cheaper, others are a dollar or so cheaper.  But hey, every bit helps, right? The link takes you to my Amazon page. Doesn’t look like the other sites have the same price at this time.

And, last but not least, Broken Blade is up for pre-order.  There’s a snippet over at my J.C Daniels site. Other links will be posted as they go live.

Don’t forget to comment if you want the Nalini book!

 

Lost in Love…snippet

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Just a note…both of these books are already in ebook, separately… the titles are A Forever Kind of Love and Playing for Keeps. If you want them in print, they are together in Lost in Love…

Snippet from A FOREVER KIND OF LOVE

“I’ve got to get away from here for a while, Chase,” she said after a minute. “You remember how you said you couldn’t breathe? Back when you left here after graduation? I get that, because lately? I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t focus. Every time I think I’m doing a little better, somebody comes up and pats me on the back… ‘There, there, poor, poor Zoe. You’ve been through so much, but it will get better. You’re young, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you…’”

A bitter smile twisted her lips. “Yeah. My whole life—a life I’d planned on spending with Roger and now, I don’t know what to do with it.”

For the longest time, Chase was silent. Then, slowly, he said, “So you’re just leaving. That’s going to make it better? Fix things?”

“No. It’s not going to make it better, but it will give me some time to heal…on my own. Let me get my head on straight, and maybe decide what I want to do. What I need to do.”

He reached out and caught her arm, coming to a stop.

Because he had a grip on her arm, when he stopped, so did she. Ignoring the way his touch made her heart race, she stared past him and tried to smile, tried to focus on anything but the way she was feeling inside.

Broken…desperate…so full of need for him. Again.

“So you leave. You just leave?” he said.

Don’t look at him, she thought. Don’t look at him. As long as you don’t look at him, you’ll be okay.

Two seconds later, she found herself staring into his dark, dark eyes, her heart racing, her mouth dry.

“I don’t just leave,” she said hoarsely. “But it’s what I need to do.”

His hand came up, stroked down her jaw. “Let me come with you. You don’t need to be alone right now.”

His head came closer, closer…

Abruptly, she realized he just might kiss her but then she jerked away.

Not very far, because he still held her arm. As if he’d realized where they were, he looked up and around, and swore. Then he was pulling her into a store. It took almost a full minute to realizewhat store—his store. By that time, they were in the back of it, tucked inside his private office.

“Don’t leave, Zoe,” Chase said, quietly, staring at her.

Time fell away and she felt like she was lost, staring into his eyes. And she hated it. Closing her hands into a fist, she rubbed her wedding ring with her thumb. Her wedding ring…the ring Roger had put on her finger after Chase had walked away from her.

She’d been eighteen, and so in love with him…when he’d walked away, it had almost killed her.

Don’t leave me, Chase…the echo of her voice danced in her mind.

Clenching her jaw, she blocked that voice out of her mind, locked those memories away. She didn’t have to go back there, especially not right now. She forced herself to take a slow, deep breath, forced herself not to look away from his eyes, forced herself not to turn away—run away.

Part of her wanted to do just that.

An equal part of her wanted to go to him, wrap her arms around his neck and just let him hold her. She knew he would.

Chase wasn’t going to disappear again. Whatever it was that had made him leave all those years ago, it was no longer an issue. He was home to stay and he seemed happy here.

Leaning on him, though, that wasn’t the answer.

“Zoe?”

“I have to go,” she said softly, meeting his eyes. That dark, dark blue stared into hers, unblinking, unwavering.

“Why?”

Sighing, she tucked the information from Mitzi into her purse, then tossed her purse onto his desk. Then she rubbed her temple. A familiar, nagging headache brewed behind her eyes and she wanted, desperately, to curl up somewhere dark and quiet and sleep. For a week.

She definitely didn’t want to be having this discussion with Chase.

“Has it occurred to you that it’s fabulously ironic, you asking me that question?” she asked absently.

She glanced at him, watched the dull rush of blood rise up his cheeks.

Part of her felt bad about that, but another part of her, that small, petty part she wasn’t proud of, it felt like dancing. Good…feel guilty. You know how much it hurt when I realized you weren’t coming back?

And deep, deep inside, part of her wanted to hide away from all of that knowledge, but it was bad, bad, and very bad that it mattered at all. If she had ever been able to put him away, if she had ever been able to not think of him, maybe she could get over him.

“Fifteen years ago, I asked you not to leave me,” she murmured, staring off into the distance, remembering that day. She could remember it so vividly. In vivid, crystalline clarity—

The way the summer sun beat down on her shoulders as she walked outside when she heard him pull up.

The way he’d smiled at her—a sad, strained kind of smile.

His words.

I’m leaving, Zo.

And she remembered how she’d begged him. Begged him not to leave, begged him to take her with him.

Read more

Order now…

Amazon | Book Depository | Indiebound | BAMM | BN

Now You See Me

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Saw this with Bratlet.  It was pretty damn good.  Great twist at the end. I though there was another one…this was better.

Now You See Me

See it?

Author’s Choice! Lost in Love…

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This is from Playing for Keeps…that is out in ebook now…or you can get it in print next week, along with A Forever Kind of Love.

Rain pelted down all around, soaking his hair, soaking through his clothes, puddling under his feet as he came to a stop at the back of Dana’s house.

She was soaked through, too, but she did things for that wet T-shirt that were just plain torture. Her nipples thrust against the white cotton, hard and erect, and the wet material clung to the slopes of her breasts, her trim torso and flat belly, clinging to her hips and making it all too clear that she wasn’t wearing anything under the T-shirt. It stopped at her thighs and left the long, golden length of her legs bare.

Water droplets clung to her legs as she sauntered his way, smiling at him through the rain. “Hey, Jake…”

“Sorry. Wanted to make sure you were okay.” Forcing the words past his tight throat, he met her pale golden gaze and shook his head, backing away. “The…ah…the storm. It’s knocked out all the power…”

Mason, the guy she’d been dating off and on since the past summer, slipped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Over her shoulder, Mason smiled at him, apparently not the least bit concerned about Dana’s all-but-bare breasts, or the fact that Jake was all but drooling over them.

Dana leaned back against Mason and pressed a kiss to his jaw. “Hmmmm…I’m just fine, Jake.” She slipped away from Mason and came towards him with a smile on her face. She stopped just a few feet away, and tipped her head back to the sky. She wobbled on her legs and ending up falling against Mason with a giggle. “I love thunderstorms.”

He knew that. She’d always loved thunderstorms, even when they’d been children and other kids would run inside to hide. Dana’s parents would have to drag her in out of the rain and watched her like crazy to make sure she didn’t slip back outside.

Smoothing a hand up her side, Mason steadied Dana on her feet before grinning in Jake’s direction. “We were playing truth and dare.” There was a smirk in Mason’s eyes, a look that made it more than clear that he knew what Jake was thinking, even if Dana was blind to it.

Just barely, he managed to keep from sneering at Mason as he replied, “I stopped playing games a long time ago.”

Dana giggled and wiggled free from Mason’s arms again. “You should play more, Jake.” She stumbled against him, braced her hands on his chest. Lifting her face to him, she smiled and pressed her lips to his. “Wanna play with us?”

Us? Reaching up, he closed his fingers over her upper arms, eased a few inches between them. Hell, he’d play with her any day of the week if she’d stopped seeing him as her friend, her old boyfriend from high school. “You look like you’ve done enough playing for a while. How much have you had to drink, Dana?”

She pursed her lips and cocked her head. “Two margaritas. One. Two.”

Despite the jealous anger burning inside him, he had to laugh. “You’re such a cheap drunk.” He slanted a look over her shoulder, met Mason’s gaze. “I take it you’re not worried about the electricity being out.”

Mason grinned. “We’re doing just fine.”

Nodding, he let go of Dana’s arms but before he could leave, she threw her arms around his neck. “Awww, don’t go, Jake.”

Then she kissed him.

Hot, full-on and hungry, she kissed him. Her breasts went flat against his chest, her hands tangled in his hair and as rain pelted down around them, she just about turned him into a raving madman. Quick, hungry kisses, soft, strong hands pushed under his shirt and teased the skin of his back. Her soft belly cradled his cock. She moaned into his mouth and then sank her teeth into his lower lip. “Come on, Jake…play with us. Just while the storm lasts…I dare you.”

While the storm lasts…

He reached up and wrapped his fingers around her wrists, tugged them down. “Dana, you’re drunk.”

She poked her lip out in a sexy pout. “Not that drunk…I just want to play.” Her gaze slid down, lingered on his cock, stiff as a poker and so damned hot and hard he hurt with it. “You wanna play, too, Jake. I can tell.”

Tearing his gaze away from her face, he glared at Mason. “You want to give me a hand here?”

Mason shrugged, slid a hand down his chest. Rain continued to pour down on them in a deluge, running in rivulets into their eyes. “She’s not drunk, McCoy. She had two margaritas and the last one was before the storm started. A good half-hour.” His bare feet were quiet on the grass as he came up behind them, cuddling his front against Dana’s all-but-naked back.

The soaking wet T-shirt she wore was no barrier at all. Not a barrier to the eyes, or anything else. She pressed against him and through it, Jake could feel the hot, hard tips of her nipples stabbing into his chest.

“Play with us,” she whispered against his lips. She licked rain from his mouth and slid her hands under his shirt, easing it up. “Play…”

Jake was a patient man. But he had his limits. As Dana met his eyes, he reached the end of his.

Myla Jackson

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http://shilohwalker.com/website

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Lost in love… giveaway/blog tour

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Howdy… my street team helped me set up a blog tour/giveaway for Lost in Love.  There is a prize.

The stops are (I think…)

Viviana
Tracy
Book Monster
Romance in the Highlands
United by Books

There are some more coming up Saturday & next week.  I’ll try to grab those links and post once I’m back.  :)  On a girls weekend with my mom and my daughters.

So I’m doing this…

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I’m going to try to start doing one or two more small cons/conferences a year.  Not sure how it will go, but I’m going to try.  First up…

 

Coastal Magic Convention (Feb 6-9, 2014 in Daytona Beach, FL) is a super casual, weekend party for authors and readers of urban fantasy and paranormal romance fiction. There will be panels, meet & greets, and random tomfoolery. The schedule will be designed to give readers plenty of time to hang out with their favorite authors, and chat about the stories with other fans. A charity book signing will be open to attendees and the public. Please check the event website at http://CoastalMagicConvention.wordpress.com for a list of Featured Authors (over 50 of them!!) and other information.

You can check out the featured authors and more here…

 

Circle in the Sand…

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Hey…they are at the beach, that counts, right?

 

 

Part of my FBI Psychics series…

Even before he turned his head and saw her, he knew.  Some part of him did, at least.  He didn’t even know if he could claim it was any sort of psychic knowledge.   Certain things, people didn’t need true psychic skill to know—just instinct—and this was probably every bit as much as instinct as anything else.  The instinct that trouble was coming his way.

Trouble…five feet, nine inches of trouble and most of it was leg.  Black hair was pulled back in a braid so tight, he wouldn’t have known it was curly.  Except he had spent many, many hours with his hands fisted in those curls.  She hated them…he’d always loved them.  Her eyes, a deep, strange shade of blue-violet, so much darker than his own eyes, were hidden by sunglasses and he could only imagine the derision he’d see there.  And it would be there.  He knew it just by the sight of the slight sneer on her pretty face.

Mica Greer never had much cared for psychics.  Strange, considering she was one.  Or maybe not so strange, he supposed.  Denial wasn’t just a river in Egypt and all that.

Mica’s gift, like his own, had been unstable.  Unlike him, she hadn’t learned to stabilize it through practice alone.  She’d needed a partner, and she’d turned out to make a damn good anchor.  For a while, the two of them had worked together in training.  Her gift had grown, bloomed…as had some crazy thing between them.

Then she’d decided she didn’t want all the ‘crazy shit’ in her life.

She pulled out.  Not just out of the unit, but out of the FBI, altogether.

And from him—

Don’t go there, he thought.  Blowing out a breath, he shifted his attention back to the ocean, trying to reach for some inner peace.  It wasn’t going to come, though, and he knew it.  If she was here, on top of the insane coming at him, then it was for a reason.

I can always pretend she’s here because after all this time, she realizes she’s still in love with me.  He laughed deprecatingly.  Yeah, like that was going to happen.  Fifteen years…fifteen fucking years.  How had those years slipped away from him like that?

She came to a stop next to him, standing almost shoulder to shoulder with him.  He waited for her to say something, but it didn’t happen.  Of course, he’d also waited for her to come back to him…that hadn’t happened, either.  After a while, he’d stopped waiting.  But he’d never stopped wishing.  Never stopping wanting, either.  He’d moved on, but he hadn’t forgotten.

The waves crashed against the sand just a few inches from his feet and he stooped down, raked his fingers through the wet, watched as it filled back up in eddies and swirls before another wave came.  Mica remained silent at his back.

He could feel her turmoil, if he let himself.  Even without lowering his shields.  All he had to do was concentrate…and there.

There it was.  She didn’t want to be here, she worried about whether or not his gift had gotten stronger, whether or not he could pick anything up from her and damn it—why did he…

He smiled a little as her thoughts tumbled to a stop, almost like she’d sensed him.  “You never did learn to stop projecting so loudly,” he said softly.

“You never did learn to mind your own business,” she snapped.

He shrugged.  “I can’t help that I hear people shouting at me from the next room.  You don’t like it…” He slanted a look at her through his lashes.  “Don’t shout.  You can tone your thoughts down.  You learned how.”

Yeah, she’d learned how.  But back then, he hadn’t been quite as good at picking up random thoughts, or even direct thoughts.  Not that Colby was going to point that out to her.

Mica curled her lip at him.  He hated that he still found that so fucking appealing, hated that he wanted to reach up and tumble her down into the sand next to him and strip her naked.  So what if doing the dirty in the sand got grit in sensitive places?  The ocean was right there if they wanted to clean up after.  And his house wasn’t too far away.

It was a strong enough impulse that he could even see himself doing just that and somehow, he doubted she’d resist him if he gave it a try.  Her breathing kicked up as she stared at him.  No.  She wouldn’t resist.  Not at all.

With a heated curse, he tore his eyes away.

“Whatever you want, Mica, I can’t help you.  Go away.”

“You don’t know what I want.”

He thought of the blood-splattered images, of terror, and death.  The fear, the darkness that hung over him a cloud.  “I know enough,” he said softly.

A shadow fell across him and he braced himself as she crouched down beside him.  She was still a few inches away, but closer…damn it, too close.

“You’re not with the unit anymore.”

“No.” He continued to play with the sand.  Better to do that than reach for her, he decided.  And he was so damn tempted to reach.

“Since when?”

“Almost two years ago.”  Okay, playing with the sand wasn’t going to cut it if she was going to sit there and chit-chat.  He swished his hand through the next wave to get the grit off and rose.

“You aren’t here to chat about old times, what I’ve been up to in the past fifteen years.”  Ever since you walked out on us.  He kept that last bit trapped behind his teeth.  It didn’t matter anymore—they didn’t matter because they didn’t exist.  “I’ve already told you that I can’t help you with whatever the trouble is.”

“You don’t know that,” she bit off.

“Yeah.  I do.  Because I won’t.”  He went to push past her—he had to get away from her.  Had to get away from here.

But Mica wasn’t to going to let it go that easily.  She caught his arm and that touch almost froze him.  Her bare hand on his arm—the shock rippled through him.  Memories raged.  Their memories.  Not just his.  Blood roared in his ears and a fog of need and want and a love she’d walked away from, it was rose inside him…for the briefest moment, it drowned out everything.

It faded too soon and now, it wasn’t memories that blinded him.

It was a bloodless massacre.

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The Innocent

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So I finished this…it’s another FBI short… well, not super short, it’s about category length, but hey.  FYI, it was just finished, typos are probably there.  They’ll get caught in editing/revising.

Dunno what will come of it. Sent it to Samhain but we’ll see what they say.

Jay Roberts never expected to fall in love with a man from Hell.

But she had.

And now he’d up and cut her off.  Out of the blue.

She’d met Lincoln Dawson online and it hadn’t been at one of those hokey, online dating sites.  She didn’t mess with those.

What was she supposed to put down?

Hello… I’m a security specialist who works for a think tank/security group/troubleshooter group known as the Oswald Group and I’m psychometric.  It causes some issues with intimacy because when I touch people, I pick up on what they think and if you compare to a former lover, I’m going to know.  I’m five three, I hate walks in the rain, I kind of enjoy dirty movies, I love dirty books and I’m still a virgin. I’m kinky as hell and I’d love to find a way to get laid, but I don’t see that happening…

Yeah, it led to problems.

It had been pure accident that she met Linc.

She was online, incognito, naturally. Almost any time she went online, it was related to work.  She had been investigating the disappearance of a teenager in Florida and he’d been smacking down somebody who had been preying on a couple of preteen girls.

Granted, the predator had acted like he was a girl.

She had seen through it, just as Lincoln had.

It was a long and convoluted path, but they’d been talking online for almost a year.

He’d asked more than once if they’d ever meet.

She wanted to tell him yes, so badly.

And she’d been really, really close.

Despite the fact that she’d been…well, misleading him from the beginning. Despite the fact that she had been hiding some huge secrets.

She needed to come clean with him because if she didn’t, they had no chance at all.

And she had been this close.

Planned her entire vacation around coming down here, too.

But then, nearly three months ago, he’d stopped talking to her.  Stopped answering emails, cut off contact completely.

Sadly, one of her jobs came up that had pushed her off the grid for nearly three weeks. She’d reached out to him as soon as it was over and he’d finally called her back, only she’d been in a meeting.

I don’t have time for this, Jay.  It’s not working out.  Good-bye.

When her boss Oz offered her another short-term, off-the-grid job, she took it.  Five weeks in, but she submerged with the gut deep feeling that something was wrong.

Lo and behold, something was.

Now she was here.

In Hell.  Literally, and maybe even in the biblical sense of the word.

Jay had done a double-take the first time she’d seen the name of the little town and she’d asked Linc twice if he was joking. But as she’d driven by the little bank and saw the digital display of the temperature—a balmly 96 in June—she had to admit, Hell was aptly name.  She’d spent the past ten years living in Texas.  She was intimately acquainted with hot.

This place, though, took the idea of hot and cooked it up and deep-fried it for good measure.

Before she hunted down her man, though, and asked how they’d gone from dirty little sexts in the middle of the night to the cold shoulder and I don’t have time for this, she needed gas.  She needed a cold drink and maybe five minutes in the bathroom.

The A.C. on her car was…questionable…at best and she’d been slowing baking in her car for the past hour.  It was edging up nine and it was still boiling hot outside.  This place had to be pure torture come August.

The gas station looked like it hadn’t been updated any time this millinium.  The pumps were slower than her great-grandmother had been on seniors day at Kroger back home in Louisville and when she pushed inside the store, the cool blast of air was so welcome, she wanted to cry.

She was damn glad she always traveled with some cash on hand, because there was a sign taped to the do—Plastic is no good here.  Cash only. Yeah, definitely stuck in the last century, because there was no ATM, either.

The guy behind the counter looked like he might be stuck in the nineties, maybe even the sixties because he was staring at her like she was some alien life form. Jay was used to that.  She actually kind of like the odd attention she received over her pink and blue streaked hair, the little gold hoop that pierced her right eyebrow.  The gloves tended to catch a lot of notice, but she’d give almost anything to not need them.  Her physical appearance was weird enough that the gloves just went with everything else, but the gloves were a necessity.

Everything else was just preference.

She’d go crazy without her gloves. She couldn’t function.  Not for long, anyway.  One touch against the wrong anything was enough to put her into a state of shock, something she knew from experience.

Those innocent little touches, the things people took for granted, were the very things that could drive her insane.  A brush of a hand, even if she was shielded, could flood her with all a person’s fears, anxieties and secrets.  If the person was having a bad day, it got even worse.

And if the person was in pain, physical or mental, the effects were so much worse.

Psychometry wasn’t picky when it decided to wreak fhavoc on her life. Her gift tied into emotions and she didn’t have to take off the gloves to know the guy behind the counter was a mess.

His thoughts were…dark.

She approached him with more than a little bit of caution, wishing she’d thought to strap on her weapon, but it was a pain in the ass, even if she had have a conceal carry permit.  Although, hey… she was kinda sorta involved with the sheriff.

Well, she thought she was.

Maybe.

It didn’t matter, though.

This kid was more involved in whatever was twisting up his mind than anything else.

She pulled her money out of her pocket and peeled off three twenties, putting them down on the counter.

The kid just stared, rocking back and forth on the stool, staring at nothing.

“Ah, hey.  Can I get my change?”

His eyes skittered over to hers.

A chill raced up her back.

The lights aren’t exactly on. Nobody is home, she thought.

The door opened behind her and the kid went stiff, his gaze bouncing to the men behind her and she shifted, turning so that she had them in her line of sight and could still see the kid.

Sweat beaded along his lip and abruptly, his body relaxed and a sigh shuddered out of him.

He blinked and looked at her.  “Ma’am, that will be $57.00.”

She gestured to the counter, focused on the men who move to fill the empty space between the counter and the door.

Rednecks, she thought.  And not the hard-working kind she’d come from.  Her daddy had been a redneck and he’d busted his ass from dawn to dusk to make sure she never wanted for anything.

These guys, though, rednecks and not in the nice sense of the word.  Already, the one in the middle was eying her in that way that just made her feel dirty.  Trouble, trouble, trouble…

Some people just gave off a certain vibe.  Most women eventually learn to pick up on that vibe…it was that vibe that had them crossing the road when she saw a certain sort of guy, the one that made her realize she didn’t want to be anywhere alone with him, the guy that set off every internal alarm she had.  He was the guy that stood too close, stared too long, and generally just creeped her out.

There were three of them standing in front of her now, and the one in the middle was the worst.

And the biggest problem of them all was that he had a rough psychic skill.

In her line of work, she’d come to learn that psychic ability wasn’t as uncommon as some might think.  It was estimated that one percent of the population had some sort of psychic ability—it sounded like a low number, but that added up to one in hundred.  With billions of people on that planet, that wasn’t as low as it seemed.

The abilities varied, though and the typical ‘homegrown’ psychic, like this guy, was weak.  Most of them just had better than average instincts.  Some were going to just be sensitive to things—might feel really uncomfortable in a house where a lot of violence had happened, while another might be really good at guessing a winner at the Derby or really good at occasionally picking four or five lottery numbers.  The lucky sort of bastard.

Judging by the way he was watching her, he decided he was going to get lucky again.

And he had no idea what he was dealing with either.

Because like most of those homegrown psychics, he had no idea what he was, and no idea what he was dealing with.

She shifted her attention back to the boy and waited for her change, using the mirror mounted in the corner to watch him.  If she was lucky, she could get out of here without messing with him.

When he whistled in her direction, Jay ignored it.

She was good at ignoring things.

All she had to do was get out of there and everything would be good.

She scooped up her change, careful not to make contact with the kid behind the counter, careful not to let him touch her even with the gloves.  Tucking her cash into her pocket, she turned to go and wasn’t surprised to see all three men blocking her way.

“Excuse me.”

“She looks like a piece of candy.  Look at that pink hair.”  It was the one with the mild psychic ability and the leer in his eyes made her skin crawl.  His gaze raked over her from head to toe and then zoomed in on her chest.  She wore a tank with a fishnet top stretched over it.  It fit close.  Most of her clothing did.  Once upon a time, she’d hid behind baggy clothing, cowered in her room, convinced she was going crazy.  Her dad’s death, the emergence of her ability, it had all hit at once.  Sanity had been a touch and go thing for a while.

She might be a little crazy but hiding hadn’t helped.

So she’d stopped hiding and she’d learned how to deal.  With everything, just about. Including guys like this.

As he continued to stare at her tits, she said again, “Excuse me.”

A wide, unpleasant smile spread across his face.

She steadied herself and bolstered her shields.  She could only keep everything locked out for short periods of time.  More than ten or fifteen minutes and she felt like she was going through some sort of serious bout of sensory deprivation.  That didn’t help her state of mind.

But touching thugs like this? That wasn’t going to help either.

And she was going to have to touch one of them, probably several of them.

The ringleader stepped up and reached out.

She didn’t react as he trailed a finger down her cheek.  “You lost there, sugar?”  She felt nothing but the physical contact, his finger, rough against her skin.  She could almost imagine a slimy aftertrail.  Dirty—he was so dirty and he contaminated everything he touched.

“No.”  She lied through her teeth and did it with a smile as she angled her head away, breaking contact.  Keeping her shields up kept her feeling too much, but she still caught enough—too much—lust and greed and a need to hurt.  She wanted a shower.  “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go.  I’m meeting somebody.”

“Why don’t you tell me where you’re heading?  I can give you a hand.”

“I don’t need—”

The bell over the door rang.

She didn’t look away from the men in front of her.

“Lloyd.  Why don’t you step away from the lady?”

A shiver raced down her spine.  That voice.  Familiar…

The man in front of her curled his lip, a slow, smirking sort of smile.  It was the smile of a man she wouldn’t trust at her back.  She didn’t even trust this man at her front.  “Well, hey there, sheriff…oh, wait. You ain’t the sheriff no more.  You know what?  I think I’ll stay right here.  I’m talking to this pretty little piece of candy here.”

Sheriff—

She tore her eyes away from him and stared at the man she’d come to find.

Sheriff Lincoln Dawson, the man she’d found herself falling head over heels in love with over the past year.

The man who according to this thug wasn’t the sheriff anymore.

Okay, that could wait.

“I think you’ll step away.” Lincoln’s voice came a little closer and she took a deep, steadying breath.

His eyes cut to hers.

And she watched as his gaze passed over her, and then immediately came right back.

Cocking her head, she said softly, “Hello, Lincoln.”