Edge of Oblivion by J. T. Geissinger Read Free Book Online

Strong and warm at her shoulders.
    She was caught and steadied, pushed gently back to her knees, where she rocked, finding her balance. Then she lifted her head and looked up—
    —into a pair of eyes, brilliant amber rimmed in kohl, that stared out from a sun-darkened face of such cold, savage beauty it sent a thrill of pure fear humming along every nerve. Adrenaline lashed through her body, primitive and chemical, and abruptly awoke the animal inside that bristled and hissed and screamed
danger!
at the top of its lungs.
    He was huge—tall and thickly muscled, far larger than any of her lithe, sinewy kin—and had shoulders so wide she crouched in a pool of thrown shadows at his feet. His black hair, tipped on his wide forehead to a widow’s peak, was cropped close to his head. His clothes were black as well, simple and form-fitting, made for ease of movement. On his back was a pair of crossed swords, sheathed in leather scabbards. On his belt and boots were more weapons, gleaming wicked in the light.
    But all this paled in comparison to the more imminent threat of his eerie, amber eyes.
    They fixed on hers, unblinking, unfeeling, and she realized with another jolt that this man staring back at her in absolute stillness with that beautiful face and those scorching, firelit eyes wasn’t anything she’d ever seen before. He was alive, his
body
was alive, but behind that mask of perfection, there wasn’t a shred of humanity or mercy or kindness or feeling. There was nothing. He was dead.
    Soul dead.
    Next to the Furiant, he was the most terrifying thing she’d ever seen.
    “Xander,” said a voice from her right. Leander’s, she supposed, aware on a molecular level of her thundering heart, her frozen muscles, the stranger’s gaze, which had dropped to the pulse beating wildly in the hollow of her neck. His nostrils flared with an inhalation, and for one wild, horrified moment, she thought he might lean down and tear out her throat with his teeth.
    But he didn’t. He only lifted that piercing gaze back to hers and, in a motion of fluid, predatory grace, drew her to her feet. He released her and stepped back, never blinking, his attention never wavering, those piercing dead eyes never leaving her face.
    “Xander,” Leander said again. “This is Morgan. Your flight for Rome leaves at one o’clock.”

5
    Morgan was fairly sure the assassin was plotting the details of her death at that very moment, though he wasn’t paying her the slightest bit of attention and hadn’t spoken a single word to her the entire flight.
    She chanced another glance at him from beneath her lashes. He sat still as death in a seat opposite hers at the front of the luxurious cabin, just as he’d been for the last two and a half hours, large hands spread over his muscled thighs, head tilted back against the seat, eyes closed. His chest rose and fell in a calm, steady rhythm, but she knew he wasn’t sleeping; his forefinger tapped a silent beat against his leg, and every once in a while a muscle in his sharp jaw would flex. She had the impression he was barely restraining himself from leaping from his seat.
    Plotting her death. Definitely.
    When Leander had spoken his name she’d known instantly who he was. What he
did
. Infamous throughout all four colonies of
Ikati
, Alexander Luna was called The Shadow or The Hammer or, in his native Portuguese,
Ira de Deus
, The Wrath of God. He was a killer, a very good one, sent on special assignments all over the world by the Alphas to track deserters or eliminate threats.
    Or accompany convicted felons on needle-in-haystack hunting trips.
    Killer or not, he was a beauty. All muscle and sinew and spare, hardened grace, he moved like nothing she’d ever seen, effortless fluidity and instinctual, unstudied prowess. He had a potent, menacing kind of charisma about him, the kind that drew the eye and held it, the kind that captivated the attention to contemplate the disparity of those sensual lips with