Rogue Alpha (Alpha 7) Read Free

Armstrong’s suit was, or that his shirt was silk. They couldn’t and didn’t disguise the leashed power of the man beneath.
    Diana gave a pained wince at the anger she now detected in his voice. “I asked you to kiss me because someone’s following me, and—and I didn’t want them to realize who and what you are.”
    “Who and what I am?” he echoed as he finally released her hands.
    Diana clenched those hands together. “An employee at Grayson Security.”
    “Why not?”
    “I— Well—” It all seemed rather silly now. Surely knowing she had gone to a security company would deter whoever was following her from actually approaching her rather than the opposite?
    Maybe.
    She really didn’t know who or what she could trust anymore. Why her apartment had been broken into. Or why she was being followed. And until she did, she intended to question everything and everyone.
    Except Seth Armstrong, the only man she had every reason to trust.
    And maybe she had also wanted him to kiss her? Had needed the physical closeness of being held in the arms of a man who hadn’t hurt her. She had seen the desire in his dark onyx eyes when she sat down beside him, and it had been so long since anyone, other than her parents, had held or kissed her, that she had wanted .
    To feel desired.
    To feel desire in return.
    “You said you’re being followed?”
    His question jerked Diana back from those thoughts, her chin tilting in defense as she heard the skepticism in his voice. “Yes.”
    Seth gave an inward groan. This woman was—well, she was fucking gorgeous. She also had the body of a siren. As for those eyes—a man could lose his soul gazing into those turquoise depths. She was also, he would take a guess, vulnerable as hell—maybe even delusional?—from the trauma of being kidnapped, and then her husband being shot and killed in the street only days later.
    Seth might not have seen Diana Moore since the day he returned her to her husband at the British embassy in Bogotá, but the shooting of the British junior diplomat, Jeremy Moore, had made headlines across the world.
    As far as Seth was aware, the person responsible had never been found. Which wasn’t surprising considering where the shooting had taken place. But the unresolved murder of Diana Moore’s husband, coming so quickly on the heels of her own kidnapping, couldn’t have been easy for her.
    Seth had met Jeremy Moore briefly in Bogotá. Tall, blond-haired, athletic, with the natural bland manner of a diplomat. He and Seth were total opposites, but he remembered thinking the other man would go far in his chosen profession. Except he hadn’t, because only days later, he lay dead on the streets of Bogotá.
    “What happened to your husband?”
    She flinched. “I—I’m not sure. I— We were preparing to go back to England once I was fully recovered from the kidnapping, but Jeremy—Jeremy was shot and killed before we were able to leave.”
    Seth studied her closely. Beautiful and elegant, she appeared nothing like that bedraggled woman in Bogotá. Until you gazed into her eyes. There was a wealth of pain in those shadowed turquoise depths. A result of her husband’s violent death, or something else?
    He’d done what he was hired to do eight months ago. He and his associate Quinn had located and then studied the compound where Diana Moore was being held. Worked out a plan of how he would go in alone and then out again while Quinn waited with the vehicle which would transport them all back to Bogotá.
    In. Rescue. Out. Return kidnap victim to her husband. Fly home.
    Anything that happened from that point onwards was none of Seth’s business. It wasn’t his job to hang around to pick up the pieces afterwards. To be a shoulder to cry on. He never allowed himself to become emotionally involved. Ever.
    As Diana said, there hadn’t been the time or opportunity for the two of them to talk the day he rescued her. She had been traumatized, and he had been too