Extraordinary Romances by JenniferLoy

Blurb:

Anna Gregson just can’t get the man she wants for any length of time, it’s like fate is against her. With her partner, Colton Fineman laying in a hospital bed, she wonders if her life will ever turn out the way she chooses. Desperate for a vacation, she ends up in Hawaii where a date from the past emerges; Harold Burns is back. He’s not the only one who shows up. The Political Pirates want revenge and they’ve doubled up on reinforcements. Jude Reed returns and a new unexpected group called the R.R.C. prove to be explosive, cunning, and double-crossing. With Colton not there, Noah Fineman is. After enduring a time with the White Russian, she rethinks who she is, who she should be with and if she wants to be an agent anymore. The FBI might have to go without this Hard Target Incognito.





Excerpt:

I didn’t know what he expected me to do next, but I pulled the tape slowly from my lips.  I put my palms down and lifted myself off the floor.

Anton was a big man.  Taller than Marty Flava.  I would guess about six-five.  If I tried to fight him, he’d probably snap me like a twig.  But after that, it was worth doing some damage.  “Where’s the bathroom?”

He pointed to a room to my left with a smile on his face.

I covered my chest with my arms and quietly walked to the bathroom and shut the door.  I used the toilet and looked around.  Nothing was in there that I could use against him.  He had let me up for a reason.  He wanted to fight me.  The medicine cabinet mirror was in front of me.  I slowly looked down at my exposed chest and turned my left shoulder toward the reflection.  He had carved some kind of flower on my shoulder.  It was red, bleeding in spots, and very swollen.

He opened the door.  “You done?”

I slammed the mirror against the wall and broke it off its hinges and swung it across his chest.

He jumped back but the metal corner grazed his chin and sliced it.  He grabbed the sides of the mirror and pinned me up against the wall.  “Dangerous!” he shouted.

“You’re damn right.”

“Drink with me.”

“Nope.”  I attempted a Russian accent.  “I don’t vont yo so called German gift.”

He pulled the mirror away and it crashed on the floor. 

I threw a knife-hand strike at his throat and he doubled over gasping for air then I kicked him over.  He hit his head on the toilet.  He groaned as I stepped over him and I hurried out of the bathroom.  I picked up a towel from the floor and ran for the door.  When I opened it, it was dark outside.  Tall trees surrounded the place.

An arm wrapped around my neck.  “Not yet, we aren’t done.”  He kicked the door and it slammed shut.

I swung my elbow up and connected with his cheek and turned around in his grip.  A knee to the groin and he went down but he pulled me down with him.

“You can hate me but I haven’t hit you once.”

“Why not?”  I sat up and slapped him hard across the face.  “Why not?”  I pushed off of him and saw my shirt and grabbed it off the table.

He hurried to the table.  “You can’t put that on.  The material will get caught in the cut and infect it.”

“I don’t care!” I shouted and turned to put the shirt on.

He grabbed my hair and in one slice cut my hair off at the length of my shoulders.

I opened my mouth and put the shirt down.

He had about a foot of my hair in his fist.  “Now you look like Tessa.”

I growled and focused on him and my hair.  He had blood dripping down his face from hitting the toilet and blood dripping down his chin from the mirror.  Pain was a game to him.  It wasn’t affecting him.  The scars on his back proved that.  This wasn’t an ordinary psycho.  This guy was a real psycho. A headcase.  The only way to beat him was to become him. 

“What?” he asked.

I shut my mouth and slammed my shirt back on the table.  “Drink with me!”  I took a deep breath.  “White Russian.”

“You do know the drink.”

“Yes,” I replied.