Good As Dead (Dying To Meet You Book 1) Read Free Page A

was no more than a whisper. His lips barely moved. They didn’t need to because eye contact alone should have done the job, but something was wrong. The screaming continued.
    Annoyed, he slapped his hands against his thighs and wondered if someone had tossed him into an alternate universe just for laughs. Oh well, there was more than one-way to deal with problems such as these. Placing a hand around the delicate skin of her neck, he gently squeezed her Adam’s apple and got his face up close and personal with hers.
    “Stop it.” This time he spoke with a good deal more volume, and he made sure the look in his eye was menacing as he tightened his grip around her neck. As soon as he put pressure against her windpipe, she quietened down quick enough. After a few hiccupping breaths, she squirmed herself backwards on the sofa, and pushed his hand away.
    “You have such wonderful diplomacy skills, Mr. Sadistic-axe murdering-crazy-psychotic-sociopath-son of a bitch. Have you considered a career in counselling?” She grabbed her neck and rubbed at it with her fingertips. The action was strangely sexy. Throwing him a furious look, she coughed and spluttered as she recovered the use of her larynx.
    His eyes were everywhere at once. He watched the pulse flicker in her neck, the dart of her tongue as it moistened her lips, and the slow blink of her long black feathery eyelashes. Her eyes were the clearest blue. They held his with the kind of chemistry someone was lucky enough to see once or twice in a lifetime…if that someone was a human, of course. The kind of chemistry he’d seen more than his fair share of and was more than happy to avoid. It was like a static charge, which seemed to appear out of nowhere. He stumbled backwards for the second time that evening and swore.
    “Sadistic, yes…crazy, most certainly, but an axe murderer? Not yet but if you keep looking at me like you want to eat me alive, I might decide to invest in one.” He’d said it to goad her, because he wanted to know if she felt it too.
    Her eyes widened. Her mouth formed a perfect, shocked little O and then fury replaced surprise as she spluttered. “Is arrogance another of your charming traits? They seem to be adding up at an alarming rate. As to eating you alive, I’d rather eat snails. Who the hell are you anyway? And where am I?”
    She glared at him, waiting for an answer. He simply grinned at her and received a frown in response. Therefore, she felt the attraction too. Damn. This was exactly what he didn’t want happening. Getting to his feet, he scooped her up in his arms and was rewarded with yet more screaming.
    Pinning her with a dark look, he snarled. “For God’s sake, stop with the caterwauling. I have very delicate hearing and it feels like you’re trying to rupture my eardrums. I’m going to put you to bed where hopefully, you’ll stay out of trouble, at least for the rest of this evening. I don’t think you need any more enemies right now, do you?”
    She struggled in his arms at first, kicking, biting, and scratching until he tossed her over his shoulder and placed an arm over her backside.
    “Another move from you and I’ll spank that backside until it’s blistered, darling.”
    Another scream ensued, followed by an enraged, “You wouldn’t dare. And I’m not your darling.”
    Not missing a beat, his feet flying up the stairs to the bedroom, he barked, “Feel free to test that theory, Lainey.”
    He heard her gasp of surprise that he knew her name, confirming it to him since it was the only name he’d pulled from her mind. Gripping one of her ass cheeks, he squeezed it tightly, to let her know he was deadly serious about his earlier threat. The good news was the struggling stopped instantly. The bad news was that tears replaced it. Floods of the things, until she choked so much she could barely breathe.
    Kicking the door to the guest bedroom open, he held her while rocking her gently until the worst of the tremors that