Free Darkness Seduced (Primal Heat Trilogy #2) (Order of the Blade) by Stephanie Rowe Page A

self-preservation she’d worked so hard to erect. “Are you kidding with the sex talk?”
    His grin faded. “Not really. Ever since I saw you in that hallway, I’ve been completely fixated on getting you naked. Inappropriate as hell, but I can’t fucking help it.” His blue eyes darkened with utterly masculine heat, and she felt her body burn in response.
    “Cut it out,” Ian snapped. “I can smell your lust all the way up here, and I don’t need to deal with that shit right now.”
    Lily started with surprise, then felt her cheeks flare with embarrassment. Gideon winked at her, and she realized that Ian wasn’t the only one privy to the desire coursing through her at this ridiculously inopportune time. “God, this sucks.”
    “It’s not you he scented.” Gideon touched Lily’s hair, his fingers drifting lightly over the ends. Then he clapped his hand on Ian’s shoulder in a silent apology that got a nod from Ian, and the tension was gone from the air as suddenly as it had appeared.
    “Bridge construction up ahead,” Ian reported. “Three minutes.”
    “Ready.” Gideon released Lily to unzip one of the duffel bags.
    Lily peered out the windshield, then gasped when she saw the red brake lights lining the street several miles ahead and the flood lights from the road crew as they worked on the bridge. “Oh, no.” Behind them, their pursuers were closing in quickly.
    They were trapped. Lily’s heart began to race. “I can’t go back there,” she whispered. “I can’t.”
    “You won’t.” Gideon thrust a black jacket at her. “Put this on and zip it up. Fast.”
    She didn’t ask for a reason; she just jerked off the seatbelt then yanked the jacket on. Her fingers were shaking so badly she barely managed to get her arms in the sleeves. Gideon had his on and zipped before she’d managed to get the ends of her zipper matched up. The sleeves hung way past her hands and she had to shove the collar away from her face so she could see. He took care of her zipper, then grabbed a nylon harness out of the duffel on the floor. “Turn around.”
    She bit her lip and spun around as he quickly fastened the harness over her shoulders and around her chest, looping one strap between her legs, moving so fast that she didn’t have time to be embarrassed by the flood of heat that rushed through her when his hands brushed against her bare thigh, the skirt riding up from the straps.
    “Two minutes.” Ian flicked a button on the dash, and a police siren began wailing from the truck. Blue lights reflected on the hood.
    Up ahead, Lily saw people begin to scatter, clearing the way for the truck speeding toward them, so no one would get hurt. What ordinary Calydon would have a truck equipped with a police siren?
    Suddenly, all the pieces fell into place. The way Gideon and Ian had fought with such dominance when they’d been so outnumbered. How her attacker had vanished into the desert rather than risk Gideon’s wrath. She realized Gideon’s protective instincts weren’t actually that he had some special connection with her. It was what he was trained to do, what the Order of the Blade was trained to do.
    “Protection of innocents at all costs,” she whispered. Was that what Ian and Gideon were? Order members? Her stomach turned. “You’re with the Order of the Blade?” Her blood ran cold as Gideon checked her harness, and she shoved his hand away frantically. “You’re Gideon Roarke? You’re that Gideon?”
    The warrior who had destroyed her family? The murderer who had haunted her nightmares for years? That Gideon?
    “Yeah, I am.” His blue eyes hardened as he donned the mask of the cold, heartless warrior she knew he was. Gone was that rush of heated connection between them. He sucked it all back in, and became the man who killed so ruthlessly. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but I’m your only damn chance to evade the assholes chasing us, so get it together and stay with me. You can