Guest Author KARINA HALLE showcase & giveaway ENDED

Sometimes the right choice can be the deadliest. When Ellie Watt made the ultimate sacrifice for Camden McQueen, she never thought it would be easy. But walking away with her ex-lover, Javier Bernal, in order to ensure Camden’s safety has brought a whole new set of dangers. With Javier’s plans for Ellie growing more secretive by the moment, Ellie must find a way to stay ahead of the game before her past swallows her whole.

 Meanwhile, Camden’s new life is short-lived. Fueled by revenge and pursued by authorities, he teams up with an unlikely partner in order to save Ellie. But as Camden toes the line between love and retribution, he realizes that in order to get back the woman he loves, he may have to lose himself in the process. He might just turn into the very man he’s hunting.

                Javier shut the door behind me and flicked on the tall standing lamp in the corner, kitschy Mexican décor. “What side of the bed do you want?” he asked.

Then he proceeded to take off his suit. He flung the jacket onto an armchair across the room and began unbuttoning his shirt. I didn’t know where to look, my cheeks growing hot like I was a naïve teenager. I’d seen him shirtless before. Hell, I’d seen and felt every single part of that man. Still, it didn’t make the feeling go away.

“Feeling bashful?” Now his tone was smug.

I looked up and his shirt was off. His body was pretty much the same as I remembered, but wider, in a more athletic and lean kind of way. He’d grown into it and taken great care of his body over the years. His abs and arms looked like he’d do chin-ups in his spare time, yet it was still very elegant and subtle. His skin was a dark bronze, shadowed by the lamp.

“No,” I answered.

“Good.” And then his pants dropped.

And I’d totally forgotten he liked to go commando.

“Oh my god,” I cried out, shielding my eyes and facing the wall. “Please, put some pants on. Or underwear.”

“Say ‘Oh my god’ again, I liked the sound of it,” he said and I could hear him coming closer. “It reminds me of old times.”

“Javier, I’m serious.”

“When are you not serious, Ellie?”

I kept my eyes clamped shut until he started shuffling through the drawers. “Okay, okay, calm down. There, I have pants on now.”

I bent down and snapped up my pajama bottoms and a t-shirt then walked past him to the door, not wanting to risk a look in his direction. When I came out of the bathroom, after a long, hot and much-needed shower, he was already in bed with the lights off. This was exactly what I was counting on. I wanted to go to sleep on my side of the bed and be done with it. No thinking about the situation, no chit chat.

I carefully closed the door and eased my way across the room, my bare feet padding on the woven rugs, the moonlight outside the open window illuminating my passage. With the sea breeze coming in and the sound of the fishing boats rising and falling in their berths, the whole thing was soothing. Even romantic.

I crawled in, pulling only the sheet over my body and faced the wall. The moon was bright on my face.

After a few moments, when my heart rate had started to calm and I was beginning to forget where I was, Javier called out softly. “Angel?”

I wanted to pretend to be asleep. I wanted to ignore him. But he’d used a name I hated and I was sick of hearing it.

“Please don’t call me that,” I whispered back, pulling sheet closer around my shoulders.

He turned over in the bed and suddenly he was right behind me, causing the hairs on my neck to rise. “Why not?”

I tried to steady my breath. “I’m not your angel.”

“You’re someone’s angel. God’s.”

“God’s? How can you call me an angel when you think I’m no good?”

He was silent for a moment. Waves crashed outside.

“There are fallen angels, too. Angels with dirty wings.”

“Lucifer was a fallen angel,” I pointed out.

“You’re right. But Lucifer had no moral code. You and I, angel, I think we fell somewhere in between all of that. We made our place. Our own home.”

I closed my eyes at his words, my soul and heart and everything getting sucked back into a vortex of memories, all bright, shiny, and good. Memories of him and I together, memories I thought I’d done away with.

His lips were at my ear, his warm hand on my shoulder, holding me in place rather than giving comfort. Instead of stiffening, my whole body relaxed into it.

“We evolved, Ellie,” he whispered, sending shivers down my back. “And we’ll keep evolving.” Then he moved away, back to his side of the bed, cozying up under the covers.

I didn’t fall asleep for hours.