Noah. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ as white as her hair, her almost translucent blue eyes training on him.

      “Do I need to?”

      “Of course not.”

      “Why not?” she asked casually.

      Sands laughed. “Are you kidding? Anyone who would try to cheat you would have to be insane.”

      “And there’s the reason why I never have to count,” she rejoined, picking up the box and tucking it into her purse. She shouldered the leather accessory with ease, as if all it had within it was a comb and lipstick, not nearly a quarter million dollars in cash.

      “We’ll be calling you again,” Sands said cordially.

      “I would imagine so.”

      Sands stood up, wiped his palm on his kerchief, and extended the hand to her. Kestra merely smiled politely and kept both her hands on her purse strap. Handkerchief or not, she wasn’t about to get slimed, and she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to grab her by her hand.

      The thought gave her pause. That was when she realized something wasn’t quite right. The shiver that suddenly walked up her spine, resting with a sharp tingle at the base of her hairline as it was doing right now, had never failed to alert her that something bad was about to happen to her.

      She lowered her thick white lashes until they all but obscured the blue diamond irises of her eyes. She glanced around the room yet again, as she had been doing since stepping into the unknown territory. This time she caught the slightest shadow of movement in the hallway behind Sands’s back.

      She sighed, long and regretfully, flicking open her icy eyes so she could give him a cold glare. “Whatever you are planning,” she hissed chillingly, “let me warn you it’s not a good idea.”

      Then, without waiting for a reply, she swung out with her heavily weighted purse and clocked him upside his head. Kestra popped out of her heels and made a mad dash across the room. Heading for the door would be a mistake, leaving her too open if the person in the hallway was armed, so she dove over the breakfast bar and into the kitchen where she would be out of his or her line of sight. Unfortunately, it put her far from the only apparent exit from the penthouse.

      She reached into her bag for her gun, dropping everything else as she cupped it in her hands and laid her finger over the trigger. All the clues to trouble were now in the forefront of her mind, making her curse herself for missing them at the outset. She glanced toward Sands as she eased into the kitchen entrance. He was out cold and bleeding heavily into the formerly pristine carpet, near her abandoned shoes. The question on her mind was how many others might be hiding in the enormous suite.

      She was screwed, and she knew it. A second later the wall near her head exploded. She yelped as drywall was flung everywhere and in rapid succession as someone shot through it from the opposite side. All she could do was drop down to the floor as the wall shattered above her, raining plaster and water down onto her. As the path of holes being blown into the wall started to descend toward her prone body, she had no choice but to get out of range as quickly as possible. She scrabbled against the Italian tile, her stocking feet sliding without purchase as she pulled forward on her hands. She grabbed the carpet, her fingers of her left hand gaining purchase on the thick fibers of the pile. She barely had both knees on the carpeting before a huge hand grabbed her by her thick blond braid and jerked her hard to her feet.

      She felt the burn of a hot gun muzzle against her temple.

      There was the slap of flesh meeting flesh a second before the gun fired near her ear. Kestra dropped to the floor, but miraculously found herself with her head intact. Her ear was ringing painfully, but her attacker had missed. She looked up quickly and saw why.

      A tall, black-haired man with the build of a roughneck had the gunman by the arm and did exactly what she would have done had she been given the chance. He broke it clean in half. He grabbed the screaming thug by the back of his collar, slamming him face-first into the near wall so hard that Kestra could easily imagine the snap of one or two more bones, even though she would be lucky if she could hear herself sneeze at that point.

      But there was nothing wrong with her eyesight.

      She watched as her assailant was dropped at the other man’s feet without even a hint of care or concern for his life, an attitude of contempt she was very much inclined to share. Then she saw a second male, no doubt the one who had been playing turkey shoot with her through the wall, run around the bend of the back hallway.

      “Look out!” Her warning was apparently unnecessary. So was the bead she drew with her suddenly remembered weapon. The newcomer left his first victim behind him as he stepped into the path of the second. It was as if he couldn’t care less that these men were armed. James accused her of having a death wish sometimes; this man who was in the process of saving her life was that term personified, apparently. He was also incredibly fast. One second a gun was brought up in his face; the next he had hold of the other man’s arm, wrenched it almost completely around, and moved to strike him in the face with a speed that was unreal for someone his size. She knew an expert fighter when she saw one, but this was out of the scope of even her experience. There was no trading of blows, just him eliminating threats with perfunctory ease.

      He turned as the second gunman fell, and her eyes went wide at the imposing sight he made, sturdy legs braced apart, hands half curled into fists, green-gray eyes lit high with the fever of the fight. All of this while dressed in a wardrobe she could only identify as being antiquated. With skintight breeches and a loose, billowing shirt of silk tucked in at his lean waist, he looked like he had stepped off an old pirate ship. Right down to his highly polished boots and the brief ponytail held back by a simple black strip of leather or something like it.

      “Come with me.”

      He held a hand down to her as she stared at him.

      “As if!” she exclaimed, getting quickly to her feet and backing away from him. “Thanks for the help, but I am so out of here.” She raised her weapon, eyeing him so he would take the threat seriously. She barely completed her next step back before he wrapped fingers like steel around her left upper arm, disarming her with embarrassing speed and ease, turning her to him and stepping close enough that they bumped bodies.

      “Come willingly or not, it is your choice, but you are coming.”

      For a single suspended instant, Kestra felt the fit of their tense bodies as they stood close enough to exchange heat. Her heartbeat fluttered as she was overwhelmed with the feeling that she knew him somehow. Somehow, his fit and warmth and even his commandeering attitude were instantly recognizable to her. Recognizable, but not identifiable.

      “I choose not to come,” she snapped at him.

      She moved with lithe, determined speed, breaking his hold on her arm swiftly as she recoiled to strike him. He barely ducked fast enough to miss getting clocked in the nose by her palm. She unleashed herself on him with rapid violence, landing half the strikes she intended to, clearly learning as she went how best to feint and orchestrate his responses. But Kestra fought with her emotions in this instance, probably without even knowing why. Her true advantage was that he refused to strike back at her.

      He had been human.

      But Noah was not human, and he was not very full of patience at the moment, either. Ungrateful thing that she is, he thought with an inner chuckle. Kestra was suddenly faced with nothing but air. Then she felt an arm wrapping around her from behind. He jerked her clean off her feet and up into his body, СКАЧАТЬ