 by Loki Renard.jpg)
Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 40901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Sheriff Starlight is my worst nightmare.
A harsh lawman ruling over a prison for divine deviants, he has me incarcerated.
Sheriff’s got a reputation for being able to tame even the wildest of our kind, and though everybody says I am beyond redemption, he reckons he’s going to teach me a lesson.
He thinks he is going to rehabilitate me. Make me a good little angel.
But I am not going to make this easy for him.
I refuse to submit.
I won’t kneel.
I won’t bend.
If he wants to rule over me, he’s going to have to break me.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
I am pinned against the wall by my throat. A gloved hand holds me there as this conqueror’s eyes rove my body, and especially my face. He wants to gloat at me. He wants to savor this moment. He has worked long enough for it.
“I’ve got you now, Katie. There’s no way out.”
He is right in the immediate sense. My facility is on fire. Indeed, my whole world is in flames. The last hour has been full of shouting, running, panic as my calm and orderly laboratory was invaded. The invasion is over now. The invader has won. I am surrounded by soldiers with weapons, and looking into the face of a smug, triumphant enemy. But this is just a moment in time, and moments never last.
“You never learn your lesson, Starlight,” I say.
I am not looking at the face of a complete stranger. This is not the first time we have crossed paths. We have injured one another before. Hurt, tricked, betrayed, wounded each other. I thought he would finally have the sense to leave me be, but this man with the devil black eyes and the permanent scent of cowboy about him is persistent.
He changes his grip from my throat to scrunching his big, oafish fist in my blouse. He pulls me forward until my bust meets his hard chest, and I am forced to look up into eyes glittering with bright blue triumph and framed by vicious dark brows. There is an energy between us that I have never felt with any other man, a dark electricity that zaps from my nethers. I feel him rise against me. As always, a man is only a man.
“You’re going to regret this,” I tell him. Nobody will ever be able to say I did not give fair warning.
“I don’t think I am,” he chuckles. “I think you’re finally going to get what you deserve, what you’ve had coming to you for years.”
“You…”
I am not permitted to finish my sentence before he transfers his grip yet again, this time to the back of my blouse and the hair at the back of my head together. It is a rough, wrangling grip designed to control and humiliate.
He drags me through the halls of what used to be my facility in disgrace. I see horrified and scared expressions on the faces of many of my staff who will all be terribly traumatized by this, I am sure. I have no idea how he plans to keep them all quiet. I smell blood on him. Perhaps he’s developed a taste for murder. It would be ironic, but not unsurprising. People who think they’re the good guys are quite often strangely comfortable with killing.
Pulled into the light of day, I discover that there is a van waiting for me. A large, high roofed, black windowed mobile prison. It is marked with information for some generic electrical company, designed to fit in with the hustle and bustle of the city on whose doorstep we sit. Nobody will know that I am captive inside.
Two guards are waiting on either side of the back of the van. They open the door for him to push me up and inside. I’m surprised when he follows me in. I don’t think he intends to take his eyes off me. He’s afraid he’ll lose me again. He should be afraid. I am already thinking of ways to escape. This van is not going to hold me on its own. I will go through a window if I have to.
The doors close behind us, and lights come on inside. I see immediately that every window is barred, and the sapping of my energy reserves tells me that he has taken the trouble to fit this transport out with the latest in angel containment technology. If I am not very much mistaken he is using the same tech my very own company developed. I am hoist by my own petard.
At the very back of the van is a cage or travel crate, barely big enough for a large dog. It is toward this welded structure I am once more propelled. He does not bother to ask for my obedience. He knows he will not get it.
He stops just short of thrusting me down and into the cage. He holds me near it, bent so low it is easier simply to go to my knees to avoid the strain.
“You’re going to transport me in a crate, like an animal.”
“I can’t risk you flying off, or displaying yourself to the general public. I know what you’re like. I know your tricks. I’ve seen them displayed often enough.”
Somewhere deep in his tough southern drawl there is a very small spark of affection. We are in tight corners in this van, shrouded in darkness, shielded from the full use of my power. In this tight box, we are something approximating equals.