Born of Fire

As for the court system . . . yeah, given his father’s reputation, he didn’t stand a chance. He’d be convicted and executed based on his name alone.

If she turned him over to the Gourish government, he’d be gutted long before Kiara’s father realized his daughter was still alive. And if Zamir had already found out she was alive and sleeping with Nykyrian, then there was no telling what her father would do to him for the part he’d played in their affair.

He’d been the one who signed the contract for Kiara’s protection . . . That made him fully responsible for her welfare.

And if the Ritadarions ever got their hands on him . . . Well their reaction was something best left to horror movies.

“Fine.” He held his hand away from his blaster, hoping to calm her. “Keep the damn bottle. It won’t protect you anyway.”

That apparently was the wrong thing to say.

Before Syn could react, she ran at him catching him in the stomach. His breath left him with a loud oof as he lost his balance and the two of them tumbled to the floor. She tried to hit him with the bottle.

He caught her wrist. “Stop fighting me.” He pried the bottle from her hand.

She didn’t respond verbally. Instead, she raked her fingernails down the side of his neck, burning a path into his skin.

Anger darkened his vision and, for a moment, all he could think about was killing the woman on top of him. He was tired of her drawing blood every time she got within reach.

Rolling over, he pinned her beneath him. She struggled to throw his weight off, but it was useless. He outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds.

He caught her wrists in his hands before she could pull his blaster free, and held them beside her face. “Stop it!”

Shahara froze. Her blood pounded a fearful trail through her body. Tears of frustration welled in her eyes, but she blinked them back. She refused to be undignified further.

Only one other time in her life had someone held her in this manner and she hated it. She hated him.

Bravely, she stared up at his face.

Even this close, she could barely see the difference between his dark irises and the pupils of his eyes. It amazed her that her wrists didn’t hurt from his firm grip, and that his weight didn’t crush her.

“What are you going to do to me?” she asked, dreading the answer.

To her complete shock, he dipped his head down. And before she could think to turn her face away, his lips covered hers.





CHAPTER 3


The gentle pressure of Syn’s lips stunned her. His kiss was so light, it felt like a feather dancing across her lips, sending a chill down her spine.

A crisp, clean scent of leather and man filled her head. He surrounded her with warmth and, for a moment, Shahara lost herself to the strange sensation of his hips lying against hers, his chest pressing intimately against her breasts. To the foreign, aching throb that began in the pit of her stomach and moved lower.

She sighed as a deep-buried need surged. No man had ever kissed her so tenderly. Most men grabbed at her with hands that hurt and pinched. And the last kiss she’d received had been a brutal assault on her lips that had left them bloody and bruised and sore for weeks.

That wasn’t Syn’s kiss. His soft, tender lips belied the cruelty she knew him capable of.

Closing her eyes, she breathed in the warm, manly scent of him as his tongue gently probed her mouth, dancing with hers before his teeth nipped tenderly at her bottom lip.

Syn closed his eyes, savoring the succulent velvet of her mouth as he inhaled the pure scent of female. Never in his life had he tasted anything so wonderful. So addictive.

She was sweet and soft. He released her hands and cupped her cheek. Then he left her lips and trailed a path with his mouth down her cheekbone.

Shahara shivered as his whiskers gently scraped her skin before he nuzzled against the sensitive flesh of her neck. Her throbbing intensified as chills spread all over her.

His warm breath tickled her ear while he whispered something poetic in a language she couldn’t understand.

Unbidden, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, caressing the corded muscles that rippled beneath the smooth silk of his shirt. His rich, warm voice continued to soothe her with its strange, melodic language. Lulling her, hypnotizing her.

She’d never known a man could hold her without causing pain and her newfound knowledge amazed her.

Syn shifted and she felt the hard bulge of him against her thigh.

Panicked shock jolted her.

In that instant, Shahara remembered herself and why she’d come. He wasn’t a tender man and he damned sure wasn’t a kind one.

He was a vicious killer.

Hissing, she gripped his ponytail and pulled him away from her. “Vanna sitiara!” She caught him under the chin with her fingernails.