Small Town…Birthday Bash

Kindle

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.