DemonicPersuasion by Kim Knox Page B

warning flared across the screen. Weapons released.
    Time slowed, every thud of her heart a hollow drum. She
looked up to Foster, a man she loved, suffering, and now dying because of her—
    “Fade…”
    Foster, his dark eyes ringed with silver, held out his hand.
As if she were a puppet on strings, Fade found her feet, her fingers slipping
into his warm hold. He felt…different. More. She couldn’t explain it.
    His smile was hot and dark as around her the world exploded
into white.

Chapter Eight
     
    Bright sunlight warmed her bare skin and Fade stretched
against smooth, clean sheets. She pulled in a breath and the salted scent of
the ocean slid into her lungs. She let out a long, slow sigh and kept her eyes
closed. Light played against her lids, but she refused to open them. When she
did, the dream would be over and she’d be in her stinking, metal-walled hole of
a flat, with a day in a sealed suit ahead of her.
    Sea breezes chased over her skin, gentle, cool and achingly
real, bringing with them a hint of unknown perfumes. All the fantasy needed was
a naked Taras Foster—
    Fade jerked upright, her legs tangled in the thin sheets.
The dream didn’t fracture. She sat on a wide bed in the center of a white,
vaulted bedroom. Lattice doors stood open and were draped with a delicate,
sheer fabric that billowed and flapped in the sea winds. Beyond them, a deck
and empty blue-green ocean stretching to the horizon.
    “Foster?” She planted her bare feet on the cool boards of
the floor and grabbed a sheet from the bed to knot over her breasts.
“Athanasios?”
    The last thing she remembered was the transports attacking,
Foster’s eyes ringed with a fierce and brilliant silver and then…whiteness.
    She pinched her wrist and pain spiked on her skin. Not a
dream. So she was alive at least. She stepped out onto the deck and into the
first fresh light to touch her skin in months.
    Thin white clouds chased over the pale-blue sky and a great
yellow sun shone down. It wasn’t Earth. The star was a little too big, and the
sky on that crowded planet couldn’t be so…empty.
    Waves lapped against the shore and Fade leaned on a wooden
railing. White rippled sand curved around a huge bay. A dark-green line of
wide-fronded palms ringed the beach, but there was no other sign of life. Something
moved in the clear water, caught in the white roll of the surf…
    “Foster!”
    She snatched up the billowing train of her sheet and ran
down the steps to the hot sand, darting back into the shade cast by the deck.
Shit. She was trapped against the house, while Foster pulled himself out of the
sea. But it was worth it. Water slid in slow rivulets down his sculpted chest
and Fade’s breath caught. “Shorts, Foster? Hardly fair.”
    He slicked back his hair and grinned at her, something free,
open and deliciously wicked. “I could say the same. A sheet, Fadeyka?”
    He strode across the sand and her heart kicked up. She
wetted her lips. “Where are we?”
    “Beta-Sagittae-7. Eastern hemisphere. Quiet and exclusive.”
His fingers teased along the edge of her knotted sheet and her skin prickled at
the cool, wet glide. The need to question him was starting to slip away. And he
knew it. It was there in the increasing ring of fire circling his irises. “The
power of the Yalene brought us here.”
    “They can do that?” Fade caught her sleep-tangled hair and
felt the blush rising. “Of course they can. We’re here.” Her fingers itched to
follow the path of a drop of water sliding over the curve of his collarbone, to
lick it and taste salt and skin on her tongue. She fought to bring her mind
back to their problem. Aleander Dolon. “So what now? Are we safe?”
    “Perfectly safe.” Foster brushed her cheek, a simple, light
touch with the edge of his finger but it slid heat and want fast through her
flesh. “The threat has been…neutralized.”
    Fade stared up at him, her gaze moving over his familiar
features. He looked the same,