Page 56 of Sublime Target

As far as openings went, it wasn’t huge…

But it was a start.

Now, all he had to do was deal with this cursed hostage situation without scaring her off.

Easier said than done.

TWENTY-ONE

What was that just now?

She turned it over again and again in her mind as she followed the Kordolian down the corridor… back toward the foyer, which led to the meeting room where Mavrel was apparently being held at gunpoint.

She hung back, unable to bring herself to walk alongside him just yet. He was too…

Too much.

Too powerful, too magnetic, too distracting.

Too everything.

She told herself she wasn’t going to stare at him—at his honed physique, encased in sleek obsidian. At his perfectly taut ass.

At the way he walked: brisk, efficient, all business.

He felt different. There was a tension about him—as if he could explode into violence at any moment.

It made her a little bit apprehensive. Her world and her work had always had a certain predictability about it. There was routine. She knew the people and the personalities, and she could handle them.

But the sudden appearance of this alien—which she now knew was partly due to her—had thrown a major spanner into the works.

He was like a grenade that could go off at any moment.

What if they tipped him over the edge, and the civilized veneer he’d shown to her was stripped away?

What then?

And what could she do about it?

If anything, she got the feeling he wanted to prove to her that he wasn’t the kind of monster the rest of the Universe made him out to be. As long as she was around, he would show restraint… right?

As they reached the soaring, marble-floored foyer, a group of armor-clad humans appeared, striding toward them, their boots ringing on the polished floor.

Clarissa’s heart sank as she counted four in total: three men and one woman. Dressed in pixelated grey camo-print and carrying big guns, they wore tight, serious expressions and definitely looked like they were about to start some shit.

She recognized the logo of Garner’s preferred security outfit—Gage Security. It was headed by Erasmus Gage, a former special forces soldier who had leveraged his family’s fortune to build one of the biggest private military companies in the world.

Although Garner had asked Clarissa to alert them when the Kordolians arrived, she’d intentionally delayed, and up until now, she’d had the situation under control.

Garner must’ve contacted them himself.

Great.

Three of the mercs raised their guns. As they came to a stop in the middle of the foyer, meeting Jerik face to face, one of them—the woman—stepped forward.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.”

What the actual fuck? Clarissa moved forward to intervene but stopped as Jerik raised his hand behind him, motioning for her to stay back.

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