His Dark Bond Read Online Free PDF

security came through the lobby.
    Instead, she got dead silence, and that couldn’t possibly be good.
    “You know what the Goblin bond is?” He eyed her like a stranger offering candy. “You heard of the favor?”
    Goblin favors were legend. One favor, any favor at all. The catch was, though, you had to be willing to rent your soul out to the bastard doing the favor. Nothing in this life was free. “You ever thought about it?” His voice was a dark, liquid rasp that promised straight-up sex and pleasure, and she had to remind herself that she had no interest in a Goblin bond. Ever. She’d worked damn hard to get where she was, without owing anyone. “What you might ask for if you had the chance?”
    “Pass,” she said when he stopped, clearly waiting for an answer. “I’m not interested in whatever you and the rest of your gang are selling.”
    “You come with me,” he said, the words half dragged out of him, “and you can have that favor. Anything you want. You want this?” He waved a hand around the lecture hall. “It’s all yours. Tenure. Department chair. Unlimited funding.” He said the words as if he were waving an American Express black card and magic wand rolled into one. And maybe he was. He’d clearly done his research and maybe even knew what had transpired in the dean’s office. Well, she had a new research partner on the hook—the ubiquitous Genecore—so she didn’t need his damn money. Or anything else he had to offer.
    “Fuck off,” she spat. Could the day get any worse? “My soul isn’t for sale.”
    “You know what’s out there in your lobby?” he pressed. She just kept doing that subtle backward hitch that wasn’t as subtle as she’d hoped because, clearly, he knew she was jonesing to make a break for it. “You got at least one dead human. Think my offer over.”
    Okay. So she’d been mistaken. The day clearly could get worse. “Did you kill him?”
    Zer shook his head. “The security guard? No, I didn’t. A rogue did, and if my boys and I hadn’t killed him, he’d be in here gunning for you. You don’t know what you’re up against, my Nessa, and that shit’s going to get you killed.”
    “Why would anyone be coming after me?” He had, a small voice whispered.
    “The Fallen want to bond with you,” he insisted without answering her questions, sliding one booted foot closer to her.
    “All of you?”
    “No.” He shoved a hand through that so-short hair of his. “One of us.”
    “You?”
    “Hell. No.” He looked appalled, and that offended her in a way that all of his manhandling hadn’t. “I’m going to take you back to G2’s, introduce you to the brothers. One of them will bond with you.”
    Right. And apparently her free will didn’t factor into this at all in his Neanderthal worldview. She was done playing his game, and she wasn’t taking a field trip to one of the most notorious clubs in M City. Junior faculty who wanted to make tenure didn’t spend time in those kinds of venues. “Pass. My life doesn’t require the complication”— the added complication, that traitorous little voice whispered in her head—“of taking on a Goblin bond. Look elsewhere,” she suggested sweetly. “Try the French lecture on Thursday afternoons. Maybe you can find a taker there.”
    She wasn’t a sofa or a framed piece of artwork. Sure, he was sexy as hell, but clearly he saw her as little more than an object to be passed around among those like him, hung up on a wall until they found the place where she worked best. Her wishes didn’t come in to it. He could damn well find someone else, someone who needed that Goblin favor. She was off the market as far as he was concerned.
    “No good,” he said, and he dropped his bombshell. “It has to be you.”
    She knew she wasn’t that special. “Find someone else,” she snapped. No way was she buying into his silver-tongued promises. “I don’t want what you have to offer. I like my life as it is just fine.