Blurb:
She has no idea what she’s doing. Loose cannons never hit their targets.
And they take out plenty of collateral damage.
Four years ago Lindsay experienced the unspeakable right before me, and I couldn’t stop them.
But that’s all changed now.
When her father, Senator Bosworth, contacted me to ask — demand — that I protect her, it was a second chance. A shot at redemption.
An opportunity to right an unspeakable wrong.
Controlling Lindsay as she seeks her revenge on the monsters who hurt her won’t be hard.
Containing my own out-of-control feelings for Lindsay and keeping up this ruse of cold-blooded distance will be.
Even harder than admitting to her what really happened that night four years ago.
It turns out I don’t have to, though.
Someone else did it for me.
And I’ll make sure they regret it.
* * *
Excerpt
I wake up to an empty bed.
It’s not mine.
Lindsay’s gone.
I can feel a change in the air. I jump to my feet, instantly alert, blood pumping to arms and legs that are battle-ready. Her bedroom room smells like lavender and beeswax, mingled with the hot scent of sex. I swear her heat still lingers on the sheets. The ceiling fan is still, the room crackling with silence.
I grab my gun belt and --
What the hell?
My weapon is missing.
Gun’s gone.
Lindsay’s gone.
Oh, shit.
She didn’t?
She did.
“Gentian,” I bark as I shove my earpiece in. “Where’s Lilac?” Lilac’s her code name.
“With you,” he responds.
“Negative.”
Dead air.
“Gentian?”
“I don’t know, sir. No one’s seen her. Last we knew, she was locked in her bedroom with you.”
No trace of irony. No hint of teasing. If he had even one whiff of either, he’d have his ass handed to him.
And he knows it.
“She’s gone, Gentian. Find her.”
“Yes, sir.”
The instant flurry of activity in the house matches my organs. They rearrange themselves inside me as I assess the situation, which is pretty fucking simple.
Lindsay stole my gun and ran away.
Doesn’t get much simpler than that.
Last night was the first time in four damn years that I slept. Actual REM sleep. The night those bastards tortured us was the first night of my new life.
A life without sleep.
And last night?
I slept like someone who had finally come home.
“Jesus,” I mutter to myself. “Great job, Drew. She totally snowed you.”
I have to hand it to Lindsay. She fooled me. I believed her act the entire time. She managed to outwit
us all.
Damn smart woman.
Damn dangerous, too.
Excerpt 2
The emotional impact of what she’s done feels like the wind’s been knocked out of me. She did this. She really did this. She opened up to me last night and we connected. We more than connected. We reveled and we healed and we --
“F*CK!” I scream, remembering how much I needed to please her last night, how she healed in my arms. I felt it. I didn’t imagine it.
We cracked open the door to the future. We pried the nails from that closed-off door. One by one, we did it.
And she just dumped an entire cement mixer’s load of concrete on top of it.
Protectiveness pumps through my veins like adrenaline mixed with caffeine and uppers. My pulse is in my cock, my tongue, my throat. She’s out there, alone, thinking she’s smarter than my entire team
of guys who were hired to make sure no one ever hurts her again.
I push aside the question of who she hurts. Let’s not go there.
Not now.
“Jesus, Lindsay, are you out of your mind?” I’m talking to myself again.
Sheer speculation makes my mind fill with worst-case scenarios. The world is dangerous enough.
Add three well-connected psychopaths with a penchant for playing Cat and Mouse, and danger seems like a preschool playground.
Lindsay’s put herself in mortal peril.
----
A Harmless Little Ruse is the second in this political thriller/romantic suspense trilogy by USA Today bestselling author Meli Raine. This series includes:
A Harmless Little Game
A Harmless Little Plan
Buy links:
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/2cga1oy
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Amazon AU: http://amzn.to/2bFqy3B
B&N: http://bit.ly/2bLP57p
iBooks: http://apple.co/2bFecym
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2bFeogT
Goodreads: http://bit.ly/2faA9EL
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Author Bio:
Meli Raine writes romantic suspense with hot bikers, intense undercover DEA agents, bad boys turned good, and Special Ops heroes — and the women who love them.
Meli rode her first motorcycle when she was five years old, but she played in the ocean long before that. She lives in New England with her family.
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Website: http://meliraine.com/
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