Torrent (Cosmic Forces Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Gillie? I won’t lose Gillie .
    Alyssa picked up two bricks, held together by mortar. The double brick was heavy.
    One strike, and he wouldn’t be a threat and Gillie would be safe.
    He moaned, grabbed his side.
    Alyssa flinched, leaned back. He was muttering something. She leaned back in again.
    “If I…” he began, then uttered a few more unintelligible phrases.
    She drew even closer. His lips were so full, especially the bottom lip. His jaw was chiseled, with a smidge of blond stubble.
    What was he saying? Did it have anything to do with Gillie? She looked at the potential murder weapon in her hands.
    She couldn’t kill him, not without…
    She blocked the painful memories out. She could kill if she had to. She’d proven that.
    Alyssa put the brick down.
    Faster than a rattlesnake could strike, her wrist was tightly banded by hard fingers, rendering her hand useless. She bit back a cry.
----
    “ W hat are you planning to do with that?”
    Torrent recognized the dark-haired woman. She was the one from the apartment. As if he could forget a woman with fire in the depths of eyes the color of a moonless night.
    He locked eyes with her, holding her gaze captive much the same way his hand held hers captive. He explored those depths, looking into her soul. Torrent found pain and darkness in her eyes, and he blinked to break the connection before it sucked him in any further. He recognized he should not be thinking this way. Something in the crash must have created a short. He ran a quick diagnostic over that part of him, but it indicated that nothing was amiss. Maybe he needed more time to regenerate.
    “Let go of me,” she snapped. “You bastard. I only followed you up here to check on you. You’re bleeding.” She struggled to free her wrist.
    “What do you care?” He frowned at her, uncertain of her motives, especially when she had such venom for him in her tone and was holding that brick.
    “I don’t.” She gave a final yank, grunted and twisted her hand.
    Torrent loosened his grip and the spitfire yanked so hard and twisted at the same time that she landed on his chest.
    Her face was less than a couple of inches away from his own. Her full lips were slightly parted; her breath was warm and sweet, with a hint of cinnamon.
    Apple pie came to his mind, though he couldn’t fathom why. He wanted to kiss her, more than he’d wanted anything as long as he could remember. He wanted to feel her lips, to taste her essence, to claim her mouth with his, to plunge his tongue in and take hers captive. He wanted to hold her to him as much as he’d wanted anything that he could think of.
    She bit her lip, perfect little white squares sinking into pink plushness. A part of him felt a twinge, jerked to a state of awareness that lusted for her, needed her, wanted her.
    This was a complication he didn’t need.
----
    A lyssa couldn’t move . She held her breath, unable to tear her eyes away from the stranger’s crystal-blue intensity. He probed the very core of her, as if he could see her secrets, as if he knew her weaknesses. She placed her hands on a chest made of pure muscle and felt it flex beneath her fingertips. She stifled a gasp and shoved off.
    Maybe she should have killed him.
    No, then she’d never have a chance to find out why he was looking for Gillie.
    She looked at his lips, then moved to his jawline, strong and chiseled, the short blond beard hair catching sunlight and glinting on his face. His nostrils flared and it reminded Alyssa of a stallion she’d seen once, in a picture, long ago. The stallion had been so primal, so majestic. There was something about this man. He exuded the same confidence the horse had.
    She glanced at his lips again. She hadn’t been this close to a man in years. Since before Melissa—
    She wasn’t going to think about that. And this man—he was not that kind of man for her. He wasn’t any kind of man for her. He was a danger to Gillie.
    “Why did you ask about that person,