From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author E.M. Gayle, comes a dark and sexy enemies-to-lovers second-chance MC romance.
I’m no damsel in distress and he’s not my white knight, but that’s not going to keep him from charging after a killer determined to get his revenge.
I’ve made so many mistakes. Some worth it, most not. Getting involved with him again would be the biggest one of them all.
I knew when I saw him for the first time after a decade that going home was the worst idea possible. But that one moment brought it all back. The heartache. The pain. The longing…
Now my identity has been burned and I have nowhere else to go. I may not be worthy of a second chance, but neither is he. He’s also too dangerous to ignore.
“Stop right there. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I feel threatened.”
He smirked. “You won’t shoot me.”
“Don’t presume to know what I will or won’t do. I will. It’s what I’ve been trained to do.”
“Is that what you are now, Mandy? A killer?”
I sucked in a sharp breath. His familiar use of my former nickname made my stomach jolt. He was the last one who’d called me that, and it had been over a decade since I heard it.
“This isn’t right. Just go. You don’t want to be here anymore than I want you here. That makes for an easy solution.” I don’t know why I expected him to do anything I asked. I raised my voice. “Go!”
A wicked smile crossed his face, and I knew damn well there wasn’t a shred of humor in it. “The days where I take your wants and desires under consideration are long gone—Kelly.”
An ugly feeling rose inside me as he practically spat my undercover alias in my face. But it was the contempt he delivered with a smile that sealed the deal. “This is your last warning. Leave, or I will make you leave in an ambulance.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said, dropping his arms. “You shouldn’t play with guns if you aren’t going to take them seriously.”
I looked down the sight of the gun and squeezed the trigger, my body absorbing the blowback, so I could keep the gun level and in place for another shot if necessary.
Axel grabbed his ear. “Jesus fucking Christ. You crazy bitch.” He pulled his hand back with a spot of blood where the bullet had scratched him. “You almost fucking killed me.”
“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.” My heart beat slow and steady as he freaked out. He had no idea that there wasn’t anyone currently in the CIA who was a better shot. How could he? I’d been recruited for covert operations. Hell, technically, I didn’t need this gun to kill him. There were dozens of ways to get the job done without an official weapon.
“What if I’d fucking moved? A few inches, and that bullet would have landed in my skull. What the fuck is wrong with you?” That was a good question. However, I did relent and lower my weapon. I’d proven my point. I would shoot him if I had to. That’s simply who I was now and he’d better get used to it.
E.M. Gayle is a Top 10 New York Times bestselling author devoted to writing romances for readers who love hot and dirty alpha males. She is best known as the creator of the popular Purgatory Masters and Purgatory Club series, but her latest Outlaw Justice series is hotter than ever!
She lives in a small town across the water from Seattle where you are likely to find her writing books, hunting treasure or watching super hero movies at her favorite nearby theater. She and her real life hero husband (he spends his days in a Blackhawk with a National Guard Medivac unit) love to take pictures, many of which you can see on her Instagram page AuthorEMGayle.
Nineteen-year-old Eris Telari was never supposed to rule Brucia. She’s always been more interested in swordplay than courtly intrigue.
After her brother’s assassination, however, Eris has no choice but to take up the crown and defend her city against an invasion led by an undefeated elven warlord.
With Brucia’s forces decimated, and a siege looming, Eris needs help. Who better to repel the elven invaders than a band of elven mercenaries?
Their leader, Ruith, is as charming as he is deadly, and used to getting what he wants. Six thousand swords strong, his Crows have a reputation for winning against impossible odds. He won’t take a fight he can’t win, and now he has his sights set on Eris…
Is it her kingdom he wants? Or her?
With assassins and traitors still lurking around every corner, and an army nearly twenty thousand strong at her gates, Eris cannot afford to turn away the Crows’ assistance. Even with their help, the battle for Brucia will be hard-won.
And the most dangerous threat may already be inside her walls and vying for a place at her side…
A Court of Crows is the first book in the gripping Talons and Tethers Saga, a new adult fantasy romance series. Expect courtly intrigue, assassination plots, plenty of heart-pounding action sequences, and strong heroines who do their own rescuing.
Katyr chuckled and turned back to his work at the hearth. “I don’t know if I’d call it a feast, but I do what I can. Sir Isaac, would you mind playing the role of taster?” He lifted a spoon in Isaac’s direction, holding a hand underneath it to catch any drips.
Isaac glanced at Eris and left his place by the door.
Rather than hand the spoon to him, Katyr held it and tipped a spoonful of broth into Isaac’s mouth. “Well, what do you think?”
Isaac glanced back at the crowded table and cleared his throat. “It’s fine.”
“It’s… fine?” Kat frowned. “You don’t think there’s too much rosemary?”
“I’m not a chef. I wouldn’t know,” Isaac mumbled in reply, color rising into his face.
“Well, neither am I,” huffed the elven mage. “But you’ve had soup before, right? Everybody’s had soup. They even have it in the Brotherhood, one would assume. Unless you take vows against soup as well as titles and fathering children?”
Isaac frowned. “I don’t think… I mean, I haven’t…”
“It’s a matter of tastes and preference, not experience,” Kat continued, clearly flustered. “Surely, you know whether you like rosemary in soup or not, even if you’ve never had it?”
“I don’t even think I’ve ever had rosemary in soup, Katyr. How should I know?”
Ieduin let out a frustrated growl and rubbed his temples behind them. “You two are really getting on my nerves. You both like rosemary, okay? So just shut up and have your damn soup already.”
Aryn turned away, shielding his face, and shaking with silent laughter.
Ruith frowned. “Did I miss something?”
“No,” said Ieduin, Kat, and Isaac at the same time.
The windshield wipers were busy at work this morning. It’d been raining since late the night before, and now there was just a whole dreary feel to the day. Dark and gloomy, matching my mood. It was perfect.
Swish, swish.
“Are you nervous, miss?”
I wasn’t responding, because this isn’t how things were supposed to be. I wasn’t supposed to wake up in the middle of the night and find the bed empty. And I wasn’t supposed to have to be escorted by one of our guards down to the apartment building’s gym to find my boyfriend , the guy I loved, the guy who was so not a secret from the entire world anymore, pummeling a boxing bag so hard that his knuckles ripped open every night. It was not right that I had to stand on the side, waiting for him to fight through his haze before he noticed I was there, and then watch as blood dripped from his hands to the floor.
But all of that was happening. Because three weeks after there’d been a kidnapping attempt on me, after he had saved me, everything was just, simply, not okay.
To be more frank, everything was shit. And here I was. In the back of an SUV being driven by one of my two personal bodyguards, to a school that I used to daydream about attending, while my boyfriend, that guy I had come to love so much, was heading into his own personal nightmare. Fitz, my guard, clued in on my state and didn’t ask again, but his eyes were on me . He saw. He more than saw, and I knew I’d be getting a call from Kash about two minutes after the first chance Fitz had a moment to text his boss that I was not okay.
Because I wasn’t. Today was the day all my dreams were supposed to come true. Instead, I was a week late going to my graduate program and I wanted to be anywhere except where I was going. And I had no say, because the world found out in a big way I was the daughter of Peter Francis, a tech legend that I’d grown up idolizing until I found out myself, this past summer, that he was also my father.
And then there was my boyfriend, Kash Colello, whose grandfather was one of the richest men in the world, but that came with strings and dangerous alliances with the dark underground of the world. My boyfriend, with his inherited wealth, now that he had come out of the shadows to the world, and whose “coming out” was even bigger than mine because of his connections and his family, was now the ninth wealthiest man in the world.
Life as Peter Francis’s daughter, life as Kash Colello’s girlfriend, was a whole lot different than life had been as Bailey Hayes. There were rules and expectations and lots and lots of people watching you. So no, I was not okay.
Tijan is a New York Times Bestselling author that writes suspenseful and unpredictable novels. Her characters are strong, intense, and gut-wrenchingly real with a little bit of sass on the side. Tijan began writing later in life and once she started, she was hooked. She’s written multi-bestsellers including the Carter Reed Series, the Fallen Crest Series, and the Broken and Screwed Series among others. She is currently writing a new series from north Minnesota where she lives with an English Cocker she adores.
