Title: Wanted
and Wired
Author: Vivien
Jackson
Series: Tether, #1
ISBN: 9781492648161
Pubdate: April 4,
2017
Genre: Science
Fiction Romance
A rip-roarin’ new snarky, sexy sci-fi paranormal romance series with the
perfect balance of humor, heat, and heart. Now that Texas has seceded and the
world is spiraling into chaos, good guys come in unlikely packages and love ignites
in the most inconvenient places…
Rogue
scientist • technologically enhanced • deliciously attractive
Heron Farad should be dead. But technology has made him the man he is
today. Now he heads a crew of uniquely skilled outsiders who fight to salvage
what’s left of humanity: art, artifacts, books, ideas—sometimes even people.
People like Mari Vallejo.
Gun for hire
• Texan rebel • always hits her mark
Mari has been lusting after her mysterious handler for months. But when a
by-the-book hit goes horribly sideways, she and Heron land on the universal
most wanted list. Someone set them up. Desperate and on the run, they must
trust each other to survive, while hiding devastating secrets. As their
explosive chemistry heats up, it’s the perfect storm…
EXCERPT
Outside the shower, Heron still looked tense. He
must have read something bad on the smartsurface, because he stood and stalked
to the far end of the living unit, over by the bed. Something in his posture
made her nervous. Or nervouser.
She reached back and palmed the cracked ceramic
knob. It slid back into the wall, and the stream of water trickled to a stop.
“Everything okay?” she called, leaning head and
shoulders out of the stall.
He turned his face toward her—damp and naked and
just-out-of-the-shower her—then slid it right past without so much as a hitch.
A lesser man might have made a comment. Or pushed her ass-first up against the
glass-block wall.
Heron, on the other hand, was the picture of
professionalism. “Law enforcement still hasn’t found us, if that’s what you’re
asking.”
Mentally sighing, Mari snagged a thin towel from
the post by the commode niche and wrapped it around her body as she stepped out
of the shower cube. “Good thinkin’, then, bringing us here. Thanks, partner.”
He didn’t reply, but his eyes tracked her movements
like she was a radar target, the subject of intense interest for a fraction of
a moment but not much longer. No emotion there, no clue to his thoughts.
She bent to dry her legs. She had fresh clothes
folded neatly in her duffel by the door, but her just-scrubbed skin felt raw,
hot. Instead of reaching for her clothes, she donned a cheap terry bathrobe
that had been hanging on a peg by the towel rack. Big one. Its hem dragged the
floor, and the sleeves more than covered her hands, but Mari didn’t mind. There
was something yummy about wearing his clothes. She tied the sash and wrapped
her hair in the already-damp towel.
When she looked up, he was still paying attention
to anything but her. Dangit.
She wrung her hair with the towel and watched him
fiddle around in the kitchenette. Tea. He was making tea. She reached for her
com and held it against her throat, counting her pulse. The pinch of the embeds
flared along her skin.
“Hey,” she said, heading to his end of the narrow
apartment. She plopped down on the bed, within touching distance. “I probably
ought to let Aunt Boo know I’m still breathing, in case she sees vid saying
otherwise. You got a security code to log in?”
This close, it was everything she could manage not
to grab him and pull him down here with her. Her hand might have even moved in
his general direction, but the floppy sleeve disguised it.
“Um, no.” Frowning slightly, he went back to the
kitchenette.
Maybe the sight of a mostly naked her sitting on
his bed was just too much for him. Nah, not likely. Though a girl could hope.
The conk of ceramic and the scuff of his boots on
linoleum: things that were supposed to settle and comfort. But Mari knew
nothing was going to settle her right now. At least, nothing short of an orgasm
so intense, she passed out.
“I don’t log in to the cloud here, not directly,”
he said, “The Pentarc system is closed and only interfaces with the world
outside at intervals. It’s inconvenient sometimes but provides a buffer between
the cloud and…me.” As if one was a danger to the other, though between the two,
Mari would put her money on Heron. “But you can give me your message, and I
will send it along to your aunt.”
He put the tea things aside, and Mari told him her
Aunt Boo’s handle and dictated a short note: “Am fine. Did a bad thing, though.
Running. Like it or not, you’re connected to me, so it’s probably a good idea
for you to hide out a while. Sorry, Auntie B. Love you.”
Heron removed his gloves and pressed his palms
against the kitchen counter. Casual, like he was just leaning there. Nothing
lit beneath his hands, no navigation display, and his posture looked more like
meditation than a brain-machine interface. It occurred to her right then that
this interaction might not be. Human, that is.
Heron wasn’t a mech-clone; he had been born a
whole-organic and lived at least part of his life without implants. But he’d
been altered along the way so much that she might well have been watching one
machine brain speak to another, straight through that kitchen counter.
Straight through his hands. Sharp knuckles, long,
tapered fingers with a glint of sense-tips on the ends. Wires probably
augmented his reflexes, aided in the transmission of instructions from neural
to muscles, and sensory inputs ran back up to command and control. That was all
pretty standard. But most post-human alterations included comprehensive
rebuilds, which covered over the metal and obvious bits. He must have kept the
sensors on the ends of his fingers bare for a reason. Either that, or he hadn’t
gone through a government-licensed clinic.
Like so much of him, though, the things that she
would have once considered off-putting or creepifying were just…him. Confident,
capable, badass him. Her partner. She ached to feel those long hands, tipped in
quicksilver, on her skin, every contour and crease. She wanted to kiss them and
look at them and tell him they were beautiful. That he was. To
her.
She didn’t move.
VIVIEN JACKSON is still waiting
for her Hogwarts letter. In the meantime, she writes, mostly fantastical or
futuristic or kissing-related stories. When she isn’t writing, she’s performing
a sacred duty nurturing the next generation of Whovian Browncoat Sindarin Jedi gamers,
and their little dogs too. With her similarly geeky partner, she lives in
Austin, Texas, and watches a lot of football.
Social Networking Links
Twitter:
@Vivien_Jackson
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