Stolen Fate Read Free

around him. Soap, her skin. Nothing more. When he’d lain in bed at night, alone, so fucking alone, he’d dreamed of all the things a woman could be. The shape, sound, smell of her—in his mind, it had always been sweet scents, flowers and perfume.  
    But this woman smelled of none of what he’d wanted for so long. Yet she had ensnared his mind all the same, lighting up long-neglected needs. She stood so close he imagined that he could feel the heat of her radiating against his arm. It made his skin prickle with awareness.
    The guard stepped into the room. “Everything all right?”
    “Fine.” Fiona pinned him with a steely gaze, trying to take control of the situation. To take control of him.
    He held out a palm. “I can put it on.”
    He didn’t want her to collar him.
    “I have to do it. It’s part of the spell, so that it knows I’m the one it canna leave.”
    He frowned, then jerked his head in assent, and she stepped closer. Effortlessly, she broke the collar in two and raised the halves of dull metal. Every muscle in his body tightened as her arms neared, anticipation and nerves burning through him. The reaction pissed him off.  
    There’d been a time when he’d been the one in control, able to move a woman with his charm. Make her melt, make her want, make her ache . No longer. Prison had taken his smoothness and turned it into jagged need.
    She was so close it made his muscles tense up and his cock harden. Her gaze was riveted to his neck. He could feel the guard watching the strangely intimate moment as she clipped the two halves in place around his neck. Her fingers brushed against him, hot as a burn, and his nerves lit up all the way to his cock, like a live wire connected the halves. He sucked in a breath to get himself under control. The metal, only a centimeter in diameter, rested at the base of his throat, heavy and obnoxiously symbolic.
    “Done,” she said. “Now me.”
    His eyes snapped to hers. She handed him a smaller circle of metal. A bracelet.  
    Too bad. He wouldn’t mind collaring her.  
    He took it and she held out a wrist. “They’ll link us. If you exceed the ten meters’ distance, your body will freeze up.”
    “Will yours?” Sounded like a dangerous damned device if they were in a bad way. He’d be trapped.
    “Nay. And I’m the only one who can remove your collar.”
    So she was the one he’d have to convince to remove it. He drew in a deep breath and broke the bracelet in two as he’d seen her do with the collar. Though it had looked like a solid circle of iron, it broke easily in two places. He raised the pieces to her wrist, both desperate to put the thing on as quickly as possible and to stroke the pale skin of her wrist.  
    He clipped it on her and stepped back, his eyes lingering on the circle of metal that linked her to him.
    “Good. We’ll go.” She turned and headed for the door.
    That was it? He was free to walk out? Just follow behind this no-nonsense woman and out into the sunlight?  
    Fine by him. He followed his savior out the door, his mind buzzing with the possibility of freedom.
    Fiona, she’d said. Tough, and a little bit ruthless from the look in her steel-gray eyes. But damned if he didn’t like her. Hard not to—she was getting him out of this place.

CHAPTER TWO

    Holy shite, it worked.  
    She’d just busted a prisoner out of jail. And not just any prisoner. A tall, muscular, dangerous-looking one whose eyes felt like they were burning into her back. He was too handsome for her sanity, with black hair and black eyes that saw too much. He looked like a poet but was built like a warrior. A warrior who would help her get that damn book back.
    Fiona marched down the stone hallway like she had every right to be there. Which she did. Sort of . After Logan had delivered his odd message to her this morning and said that Ian was the only one capable of getting through the museum, she’d gone to Lea, the highest-ranking university official