Atone: NEO Chronicles, #2

By Angela Brown

What harm can come from a kiss?

Caine Fordham knows the danger all too well.

As the Kill Circuit’s top lady-killer, business is good. Yet Caine knows the life of an assassin isn’t meant to last forever, just as love is impossible for him. Who could love a man with poison lacing his veins and a kiss that kills?

When Caine decides to take one last job, deal out one last kiss, he discovers there’s more to life than death, and more to love than pain.

Atone is the second in a series of Characters Revealed novellas/short stories for...

NEO – Network of Extraordinaires and Otherworldlies:

Those who answer the call from NEO play their part in maintaining balance in our ever-changing times. With power-hungry malcontents, jealous gods, and even those with misguided good intentions, the fate of our world has oft been held in the hands of unsung heroes such as those that are members of NEO.

But before NEO, these heroes and heroines had lives, loves, issues and interests that didn’t involve saving mankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angela Brown
• Release date: Jun 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781507055823

Book preview

Atone

By

Angela Brown

Atone

Angela Brown

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Copyright 2013 Angela Brown

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, or by any information storage system without written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodies in critical articles and reviews. Because of the dynamic nature of the internet, any web address or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

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Stock imagery provided by Big Stock. Cover design by Heather McCorkle of CP Design.

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@Angela Brown 6/11/2013

This novella is for those poisoned by others' words, deeds, and your own self-inflicted pain. There's no need to let those poisons define your present or your future.

Table of Contents

Chapter One - Caine’s Kiss

Chapter Two - Not-so After Party

Chapter Three - Promises

Chapter Four - Too Good To Be True

Chapter Five - When Conversations Are a Blast

Chapter Six - End of Elusions

Chapter Seven - Burdens to Bear

Chapter Eight - Fight and Flight

Chapter Nine - Drive. Love. NEO.

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Untethered Realms

Chapter One

Caine’s Kiss

I’ve been called many things. Caine Fordham stood behind his target, a woman seated in an elegant dining room chair, hands tied behind her back. He leaned down, chin hovering just above her bare shoulder. Sick bastard is nothing new, Socratine. He whispered the words into her ear with the raspy voice of a lover, not a bringer of death.

A light chuckle escaped his lips when she didn’t flinch. Impressive.

The scent of her golden skin teased his nostrils with sweet vanilla. Building anxiety pushed beads of sweat to the surface. Her shoulder glistened from the heat of her growing anger and her body’s feverish fight against encroaching death. His kiss had that kind of fatal effect.

He traced his thumb along the red sash binding her hands. She’d taken it out of her purse at the beginning of dinner, draped the satin material upon his neck and whispered hopes of binding of another kind, nibbling his earlobe for emphasis. A pang needled his heart and he leaned back, shuddering at the memory. Such was not meant to be, not for an assassin and his target. More to the truth, such was never meant to be for him.

A silver ring wound up Caine’s forefinger, etched with tiny octagons. It flattened out over his fingernail, curving to a point like a fang. A cocktail of poisons filled the tip, ready for use if the deadly kiss he planted upon her lips wasn’t enough for the job.

Is this how you get your kicks? Tying up innocent women? You some kind of freak serial killer? she hissed with as much venom in her tone as the toxins coursing through her veins. Her chest heaved, breasts like half-melons held in place by the bone corset he’d felt beneath her scarlet mini-dress.

Freak serial killer? That could actually be a compliment.

Caine stood up slowly, smirking to conceal how much her questions bothered him. Living a hundred years as a walking wasteland didn’t leave him many career options.

With a long, lean body, a sun-kissed tan (genetics, not from being outdoors) and square jawline, his targets often mistook him for a male model. The brooding type, is what he’d heard many times. If his chest, stomach and back didn’t resemble black lace from the poisons that called