The Trouble With Destiny

Mild-mannered Sarah McInnes just wants to be left alone. She’s looking forward to finishing graduate school and then working a nice, normal nine-to-five job as an accountant. But when fate interferes with her carefully laid plans in the form of the mysterious and sexy Dorian, her life takes an unexpected detour.

Dorian is a take-no-prisoners kind of guy. For him, duty comes first. So when he intervenes one night to save Sarah from the murderous hands of a daemon and discovers she has the innate ability to fight them, he of course steps in and offers to train her. Daemons notwithstanding, the job would be much easier and their relationship less complicated if Dorian didn’t also happen to be the hottest thing this side of hell.

Now instead of spending her nights in the library Sarah spends them with Dorian, keeping the city safe from monsters and sending them back where they belong. Whether she wants to or not, Sarah has to face the facts: daemons exist, she possesses the power to kill them, and she may never make it to Calculus on time again.

That’s the Trouble with Destiny...

Excerpt

I grimaced and wrinkled my nose in distaste. “Dor, yuck. Don’t touch me. I need to burn these clothes and maybe spend the next three days in a decontamination chamber.”

His gaze locked to mine and I could see the heat rising in the depths of his eyes once again. His mouth turned up at the corners, just enough to bring out a little dimple in his cheek. He ignored my attempts to shove his hands away and held me close. “Hm, Sarah. At least wait until we get somewhere private before you start burning your clothes.”

My mouth dropped open. Whoa. Was that what I thought it was? Did Dorian—cold, emotionless, eternally professional Dorian—just make a suggestive comment, albeit a pretty lame one? I must be hallucinating. I closed my eyes, feeling suddenly shy. An alien emotion for a girl who played Annie Oakley in the high school musical.

Maybe I’ve collapsed from the strain and now I’m dreaming. It is entirely possible. I’ve had this dream before...um, a few times come to think about it. It’s the one where I go all Xena on a mob of daemons, saving the world from certain Armageddon, and when I’m done Dorian sweeps me into the solid cradle of his arms and asks how he could possibly have gone all this time without kissing me.

He chuckled.

Our eyes met, and I could see it in his face, in the subtle tilt of his full lips. Yep, that was honest to goodness humor. “Uh, Dor, was that an actual laugh?” I lifted my hand and placed it to his forehead. “Are you all right? You don’t feel warm.”

He laughed again, showing straight white teeth and a little dimple in his cheek. The sound reverberated deep inside me, making my pulse jump. I could never have imagined that Dorian’s laughter would sound like that. Rich and deep, it soaks into me and lingers, igniting a warmth in my belly, a tingling in my breasts, a rush of liquid between my thighs. I almost moaned just from that gravely, delicious sound.

I have to catch my breath. Stone-faced Dorian I can handle, the whip-wielding trainer Dorian I can ignore, but I was not prepared to deal with a Dorian who laughed, who showed that he might actually be human. “Are you sick or something? Just what is so darn funny?”

The gold stud in his left ear flashed as he lowered his head close to mine.

Whoa. Close-up is dangerous. Dorian is like a magnet, and I must have too much iron in my blood because the pull is strong. I had to struggle not to lean in and touch my lips to his. I closed my eyes. I could feel his warm breath at my ear, giving me goose bumps.

“You have chow mein noodles in your hair.”