“You went and fell in love with an ultralight? That’s like a spider falling in love with a butterfly. They’re both arachnids, but the entire universe knows they don’t belong together.”
I needed an out. I needed to be someone who wasn’t trapped in Las Vegas. I went to that club looking for nothing and everything, and there he was. Jaxon’s hands on my hips were just what I was looking for, and for just one night, it was easy to be someone I wasn’t.
Then our signals went haywire. We’ve been looking for the gatekeeper for a long, long time so we can go home, and a new possibility just came up. It was my job to bring them in.
Only it was him. Jaxon Gray. Turns out, he comes from one of the most dangerous crime families in Sin City. But I’m not the only one after him. There are others who want him just as bad, and they’ll kill me to get to him.
Now we’re on the run together. He should be scared. He’s seen me shift, and it’s not sparkly or pretty. But he doesn’t cower when he sees the other side of me—my shadows, my claws, my fangs. With a curious gleam in his eyes, he asks to know more.
This is dangerous. He’s about to manifest. And as soon as he does, his biggest impulse will be to kill me. But it’s too late for my heart, I can’t walk away. So, the million-dollar question is: will what’s happened between us be enough for him to overcome his instincts?
He grabs the front of my dress and backs me up in ten quick steps before I have a second to react. The others yell after him, but Ascelin stops when he plants my back against the glass wall of Nisha’s office.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” he hisses in a low voice, right in my face. “Running off with him? Letting him put his hands on you? What is wrong with you, Serena?”
I shake my head, wondering how he could possibly know.
But then my hand rises to my lips.
He saw the burn.
And the perfect handprint burned through my dress, all the way down to the skin of my lower back.
“Why?” Ascelin barks, loud and aggressive, right in my face.
The others stand back, watching, but none of them intervene. They can see the evidence of what me and Jaxon did, right on my face, just as easily as Ascelin can. They saw it on Jaxon’s lips, as well.
“We don’t always get to choose who we fall for,” I answer quietly as I look away from them all.
“You went and fell for an ultralight?” Ascelin roars as he snaps me back against the glass once more. “That’s like a spider falling in love with a butterfly. They’re both arthropods, but the entire universe knows they don’t belong together.”
Keary Taylor is the USA TODAY bestselling author of over twenty novels. She grew up along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where she started creating imaginary worlds and daring characters who always fell in love. She now splits her time between a tiny island in the Pacific Northwest and Utah, with her husband and their two children. She continues to have an overactive imagination that frequently keeps her up at night.
Starfighter Training Academy. It was just a game. The newest, hottest video game release of the year. Choose a role. Build the perfect hero who joins you on missions to save the Vega star system from the evil Queen Raya and her merciless Dark Fleet.
Play for hours? Check. Obsess over the in-game romance between your avatar and the sexiest alien you’ve ever seen? Check. Win? Beat the heck out of the game? Check and check.
Open your door at 3:00 in the morning to find that smoking hot alien you thought you made up in your head standing there? Um… okay.
Wake up on the other side of the galaxy with that same alien insisting you’re his… and that you haven’t been playing a video game, but completed the training program to become the first Starfighter from Earth?
I rolled over and blinked at my alarm clock. Three freaking thirty in the morning?
I must have been dreaming.
The pounding repeated, louder.
No one came to my door this late. Ever. Hell, no one came to my door at all unless I had a delivery or one of my neighbors needed something. I threw off my covers and slipped my toes into cold slippers.
“Coming!” Was my apartment building on fire? Was it the police? Had the neighbors been screaming at each other again? She really needed to kick that deadbeat boyfriend of hers to the curb.
The pounding intensified, and it was obvious that whoever was on the other side of the door had no problem waking up the entire building.
“I said, I’m coming!” I opened the door and stopped dead in my tracks. A huge man stood in the hallway wearing a helmet of some kind, as if he’d been riding a motorcycle. Which was crazy because it was cold and wet and not motorcycle weather.
He removed the helmet, and I stepped back. My eyes widened in recognition. Black hair, those familiar sparkling green eyes. Perfect olive skin. Full lips. Square jaw. A familiar uniform with a crest on his chest, the one I’d just seen on my gaming screen.
“Jamie.”
I stared, my throat and mouth frozen. Holy shit. That voice. I knewthat voice.
He was as big as I’d imagined. No, bigger. Broader. More intense. That gaze, it bored into me, past my flannel pj’s and to a place that left me speechless. My heart pounded, and I feared I was losing my mind. Hallucinating. This had to be a dream.
“Jamie Miller, you must come with me.”
“Um… what?” I finally said.
“You are the first Starfighter. And you are mine. Queen Raya has mobilized the Dark Fleet, and together we must save Velerion.”
Grace Goodwin is a USA Today and international bestselling author of Sci-Fi and Paranormal romance with nearly one million books sold. Grace’s titles are available worldwide in multiple languages in ebook, print and audio formats. Two best friends, one left-brained, the other right-brained, make up the award-winning writing duo that is Grace Goodwin. They are both mothers, escape room enthusiasts, avid readers and intrepid defenders of their preferred beverages. (There may or may not be an ongoing tea vs. coffee war occurring during their daily communications.) Grace loves to hear from readers.
Marketing executive and mother of two, Jade Kelly can now add cancer survivor to her list of successes. But while her life looks good on paper, four months out of treatment, Jade realizes she hardly knows her college-age children and she and her husband Nick are little more than housemates.
Determined to start over, Jade schedules a family vacation to a lakefront cabin. When her kids bail and Nick stays home to handle a last minute work crisis, Jade heads to Chammont Point alone, determined to dust herself off and figure out what to do with the rest of her life.
While she’s away, the life she thought she had unravels. Secrets, lies, and old wounds drive Jade into new adventures and new relationships. With the help of family and new found friends, Jade learns starting over sometimes means finding a brand new restarting point.
Jade was thinking anything would be a welcomed distraction when the door swung open.
“Knock, knock,” Darby sang as she poked her head in without actually knocking. Nor did she wait for Jade to invite her in before entering. She held out a plastic container from the grocery store and lifted a bottle of wine. “I thought you might need these. I hope you like mint brownies and red wine.”
Jade had always adored both. However, she’d completely altered her diet after her diagnosis. She’d never been a heavy drinker, but as soon as she’d read that alcohol and junk food increased the risks for the type of cancer she’d had, she’d cut those indulgences from her life. She hadn’t had either in over a year. “You didn’t have to do that.”
After easing her offerings onto the table, Darby faced Jade. “Yes, I did. I am really glad your ankle didn’t get hurt worse. That’s definitely worth brownies and a moderately priced bottle of Malbec.” She grinned. “And…” She opened the door again, reached out, and then spun dramatically. “Look at these.” Darby beamed as she held up two gold-painted crutches covered in gems of varying size, shape, and color. “I dug them out of my closet for you to use as long as needed.”
Jade widened her eyes as she stared in shock. Gaudy was an understatement. The display before Jade was atrocious.
“Wow,” Jade said for lack of any other words. “Thanks.”
“I, too, sprained my ankle once.” Darby set the crutches against the coffee table and within Jade’s reach. “You should never do cartwheels on a stage. While wearing vinyl platform boots. And drinking heavily.”
“Yeah,” Jade said, drawing the word out a bit. She didn’t have to think too hard to see the image Darby had created. “That sounds like it would be a bad idea.”
“Speaking of drinking, let’s get to that wine.” Darby turned toward the table where she’d left the bottle.
“Oh, thanks, but I don’t drink,” Jade said.
Darby stopped, frozen in time for a few beats, and then spun around and cupped her ear as if she hadn’t heard. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I don’t drink. I had… It’s bad for my health. I’ll take a glass of water, though.” Jade could almost see the gears in the other woman’s brain spinning as she processed the information. Jade had almost slipped in the bit about her cancer, but sometimes the words still stuck deep in her chest like a fist not ready to release its hold. The ability to share her struggles as freely as she’d heard others with major illnesses do was not something she’d mastered. She suspected she’d get there, but that was a skill she had to work on.
“You don’t drink? How do you get through the day?”
Jade giggled as Darby stared with obvious confusion. “Slowly.”
As a teen, Marci Bolden skipped over young adult books and jumped right into reading women’s fiction and romance novels.
Marci lives in the Midwest with her husband, two kiddos, and numerous rescue pets. If she had an ounce of will power, Marci would embrace healthy living but until cupcakes and wine are no longer available at the local grocery store, she’ll put that ambition on hold and appease her guilt by reading self-help books and promising to join a gym “soon.”
