Kissed by a Dark Prince (Eternal Mates Series Book 1) - Sample, Felicity Heaton [free ebook reader for ipad txt] 📗

struggled to keep her voice smooth and level, hiding her mounting hurt and frustration from Mark. “He’s a rare fae and when I spoke to him about how I would like to have the opportunity to study him, he offered to come in and willingly subject himself to it. All I’m asking is that you call a meeting with the higher ups and we can come to some agreement about this opportunity and they can issue an order to the hunters stating that he’s not to be touched.”

Mark steepled his fingers in front of himself and frowned at her. “Your report about the male intrigued me, Olivia, and I agree this appears to be a good opportunity, but I don’t need to remind you that having living fae or demons in the building as guests is not allowed.”

He really didn’t need to remind her. He didn’t need to remind her on the rare occasions he did speak to her, but that didn’t stop him. He was still punishing her for her mistake.

“Mark... please? I know the risks and I’ll take full responsibility for him. He isn’t a threat to us. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to record data and study a species hitherto unknown to us.” Olivia dug her fingertips into his desk, her patience slipping.

He dropped his gaze to his laptop and tapped a few keys. “You know that you can’t judge whether he is a threat or not. What you’re asking for is a leap of faith, Olivia. I’m not sure my superiors will agree to it. Not after last time.”

Her shoulders sagged and her hope deflated. If Mark couldn’t get her clearance to work with Loren in her laboratory, perhaps she could go to the prince’s castle and work with him there. He had teleported her there. Could he teleport the equipment she would need too or was his ability limited to living objects within specific parameters?

“I’ll call the meeting... but on one condition.”

Olivia jerked back to the room and stared at Mark through wide eyes. “Name it.”

“You work in a team and you have armed escorts at all times.”

Loren would never go for that. Neither would she. If she had a team working with her on this, they would ask questions about what she was doing and how was she meant to explain that Loren had accidentally bound them and they were really looking for an out clause?

Never mind the fact that they would realise what Loren was. If they realised he was an elf, and a prince of that species, they would kick her off the team and hand it over to those still in Archangel’s good book.

She was damned if she would let someone steal Loren away from her.

Olivia didn’t want to consider how that sounded. She was talking professionally, not romantically. Never romantically.

“We’ll convene in meeting room three in fifteen minutes. I suggest you prepare.” Mark’s tone made it painfully clear that he knew her thoughts and also believed that their superiors would try to hand this over to someone more worthy of the opportunity to study a new species of fae. If she didn’t make a good case, she would be off the team.

Her only choice then would be to have Loren kidnap her again.

If she went back to his castle, separated from her world and everything here that kept her grounded, it would only be a matter of time before she gave up the fight against the sparks that exploded along her nerve endings and heated her blood whenever she was in Loren’s presence.

Olivia straightened and curled her fingers into fists. That wasn’t going to happen. She would find a way to make her case watertight so Archangel couldn’t remove her from the team or make this about a team at all.

“Thank you.” She picked up the scattered papers of her report from his desk and swiftly left the roomy cream office, heading along the pale corridor to the elevators.

She pressed the call button. She would start with her report and her findings, and then she would state her case, embellishing a few things. If she said that Loren had agreed to the tests on the basis that only she would be involved, and they would be left in peace during them, would her bosses go for that? She wasn’t a great liar, but she was sure that Loren had only agreed to come to Archangel and work with her because he thought they would be working alone.

He wouldn’t want others at the facility finding out what he was. He had taken his people away from the mortal world to protect them. If Archangel discovered that elves not only existed but lived in a whole different realm, accessed via teleportation, they would want to go there and investigate it.

Olivia knew that for a fact because it was what she wanted to do.

She headed down to the next floor, found the meeting room and set herself up at one end of the long oval beech table. She opened the folder and spread her report out in front of her, scanning over Loren’s vitals and the transcription of her voice recording. She could do this.

No sooner had she thought that than the doors opposite her opened and several senior staff members filed in, together with four hunters, one of which was Sable, and some of the top medical staff. Mark was the last to enter. He took the seat at the other end of the table.

Olivia glanced at Sable. It was nice to have a friendly face amongst a sea of scowling ones. No one looked happy to be here and Olivia changed her mind.

She couldn’t do this.

All three grey-haired men on her left, the senior members of Archangel based in this facility, looked as though they had already made up their mind about her request and she was going to be off the team. Two male doctors in white coats sat opposite them to her right, a smug look on their faces. They knew the deal. Let her speak, indulge her, and then watch as her superiors crushed her hope and gave the fae to them.

They had probably all scanned her report in the last few minutes, taken a look at her findings, and then her request, and thought she had gone crazy to even think about asking to lead the study.

Olivia’s hands shook as she shifted her papers around and then sharply raised her head and threw herself onto the tracks of the last train for La-La-Land.

It took her less than fifteen minutes to outline her findings and field some very personal questions that she definitely hadn’t anticipated, and a few disdainful remarks, and then all Olivia could do was try to prove that she hadn’t gone insane and that she believed that the test subject wasn’t out to blow up the building.

One of the doctor’s made a very snide comment about it being a male specimen and her report about his body. Olivia’s blood boiled and she pressed her hands against the desk, fighting to keep her anger below their radars. The chatter amongst the hunters, her superiors, and the doctors verged on an argument.

“What she’s suggesting is crazy. A healthy fae male of unknown origin cannot have free run of the facility. At the very least, he should be contained during the study.” The oldest male hunter’s brown eyes had a twinkle in them that looked a touch sadistic to Olivia.

“The male in question will not subject himself to containment. You’re talking about forcibly restraining him. Doing such a thing to a guest of Archangel is not going to help us improve our image.” Olivia’s words fell on deaf ears as the doctor who had remarked on her relationship with a demon spoke over her.

“Of course we would contain the specimen. He should have been contained when he had first come into the lab. Then we could have carried out a full study on him, without this debacle.”

Oh, he didn’t. Olivia almost growled. “He is willing to come in and let us study him. Surely you can’t expect him to agree to being strapped down while that happens? I want him here as a guest, not a prisoner. He must be free to come and go.”

“As he pleases? That sounds dangerous to me.” The grey-haired man in the middle of the three superiors raised an eyebrow at her and the other two nodded in agreement.

Olivia drew in a breath to stop herself from saying something that would probably get her the same treatment as they were offering to Loren. She had spent a few days in the cells at the containment centre before. She didn’t want to go there again.

“Perhaps we should have a break?” Mark smiled at everyone, defusing the bomb that had come close to exploding.

Olivia nodded and exhaled slowly. Everyone rose from their seats and the doctors immediately made straight for the senior staff members, schmoozing them with false smiles and talk of how they would handle this study. Sable caught Olivia’s arm and pulled her away, towards a table lining the cream wall.

“Don’t kill the other doctors,” Sable said, her voice light and airy. Her friend was deadly serious seventy-five percent of the time. The rare times Sable let her sense of humour out, things were normally dire and about to get worse.

“They’re going to take this away from me.” Olivia knew it. They were going to pull rank on her and take her off the study completely, and then they were going to strap Loren down and do God only knew what to him. “I can’t let that happen.”

“So don’t let it.” Sable’s logic was sound but also full of holes.

“And how do you propose I don’t let it happen? I have zero standing with the five most powerful people in this room. Even Mark doesn’t want to let me have this chance to redeem myself. I can see it in his eyes.” She looked across the room at him where he was talking to the three male hunters.

The air between them shimmered and Olivia gasped as Loren appeared right before her. The air behind him wobbled too and the other one appeared, the one who had looked ready to kill her the few times they had met.

Sable drew her short collapsible crossbow from the belt of her black uniform and had it aimed at Loren before Olivia could react. The other three hunters sprang into action too, drawing their weapons and aiming them at the two elves.

Loren stood before her, dressed in complete black scale-like armour that hugged every inch of his lithe body like a second skin. A black helmet covered most of his head, the top flaring up from a point above the bridge of his nose, sweeping back into serrated curved spikes that almost resembled a crown. The black metallic material obscured the lower half of his face, but she would recognise his blue eyes anywhere.

His fingers flexed around the black sword he had drawn. His armour turned them into long jagged claws with sharp pointed tips that looked deadlier than the blade they gripped.

Loren’s blue eyes met hers, a touch of warmth in their silent greeting, and the lower part of his helmet folded back to reveal his face, stopping when it had cleared his cheeks.

She had forgotten how tall he was, but she hadn’t forgotten how beautiful. He stole her breath.

The hunters behind them called for assistance on their communication wristbands and the alarms in the building wailed, dropping the room into red flashing light.

Loren’s sensual lips peeled back and he bared his teeth. All blunt. He was masking what he was and she couldn’t blame him.

He raised one hand, his claws flashing menacingly in the red strobe, and the alarms went silent and the lights came back on.

Everyone stared at him, surprise written across their faces. She probably looked the same way. What powers did Loren have? Just the abilities she had seen him