Guardian Knight

by Aarti V Raman

  She tried to keep her eyes from following his lips, her arms from snaking around his back, squashing the flowers between them but, for once, reason wasn’t her friend. And Akira could only feel.

  She could only feel… everything.

  Brandon chuckled. “Sweetheart, I have just retired from a physically demanding, and financially rewarding profession. How about I take it lightly for a little while? We have the rest of our lives to figure the rest of it out.”

  She thought about it for a minute. “I like the idea of that. The rest of our lives part.”

  Hope lit his onyx eyes from the inside, the twin of what flowed in her blood, fizzing in her veins. “You do?”

  Akira smiled shakily, “If you’re ready to brave the wrath of Elahe Naik --”

  Brand nodded fervently. “I am. I so am.”

  He looked so earnest she wanted to laugh out loud, but didn’t. Because this was a serious moment. A precious moment. Time enough for laughter, later.

  “Then,” she took a soft breath and let it out.

  Letting out the anger, the bitterness, the lies they’d told between them, the disappointment and heartbreak and sheer terror of almost losing him.

  “I do, too.”

  Akira Naik cupped Brand’s beloved face in her palms and kissed him. Saving her guardian knight and beginning their happy ever after in this moment.

  And Brandon Rice kissed her back. With everything he was. His battered honor. His aching body. And his soft, loving heart.

  The End

  Loved Guardian Knight? Hop on to a heart-racing royal adventure with plenty of thrills with The Soldier Prince, the first book in the Royals of Stellangård Trilogy - royals surrounded by danger, burdened by heritage, freed by love. If that sounds fascinating then you’ll definitely adore Dev from the Geeks of Caltech – a group of guy friends to die for, while the women who love them are all they wish to live for.

  Read on to catch a glimpse of Alexander and Sasha from The Soldier Prince and Dev and Zara from Still Not Over You.

  ~~~~~

  PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO RATE AND REVIEW Guardian Knight ON GOODREADS. I’d love to know what you think of it. Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8138219.Aarti_V_Raman

  The Soldier Prince

  Royals of Stellangård Book 1

  Buy on Amazon

  Alexander knew they were coming.

  He’d clocked them when he’d first reported for the two pm shift.

  The car had been nicely inconspicuous – a black Ford – but the two men who’d pretended to sit in the car and be limo drivers did a piss poor job of it. They were either too fidgety or too still.

  Either way, it had been easy to see them for what they truly were – some kind of security experts – once he’d seen the tells. From there, it was a matter of time to keep a watch from the seventieth floor as they changed guards and swapped places with two more drivers.

  These two were more careful but the damage was done.

  He didn’t even need to see the walkies in play before realizing that they were coming.

  Who ‘they’ were was an interesting question.

  One he intended to find out as soon as they burst in through the doors. He’d rigged up a small surprise for them on the second floor if they came in through the primary set of stairs. And they would.

  The other stairs were unstable at best and these guys were pros. They would have blueprints and 3D rendering specs of the whole place. They wouldn’t use the unstable stairs.

  He swung the huge sledge hammer in the direction of the wall he’d marked for demolition that night, content to wait for them to come to him. It struck against solid concrete, the shock of it reverberating up his arms and resounding in his head.

  Much like touching that waitress had been.

  She had a cute face with rounded cheeks and a mouth that was constantly smiling. Her eyes were a golden brown that deepened to near black around him.

  He knew he affected her.

  It had been evident in the way she held herself slightly away from him when she came to take his order.

  It had been very evident in the way she tried to not-check him out when he went in there. And it had taken up all his self-restraint to not laugh when he’d seen her covertly measure his height against the door of the deli using a remote tape measure.

  She was cute, in a wholesome way. And he liked the soft copper tone of her hands when she served him his espresso.

  He hadn’t lied when he’d said that the near-naked waitress who’d all but poured her boobs into his lap had left him unmoved.

  He wasn’t interested in her. He wasn’t interested in anyone that way.

  Not anymore.

  But the waitress was cute. She was a distraction.

  And she was an important part of why he’d gone back to the deli the second night. When she’d told him about their pay-it-forward meal program he’d impulsively given her one hundred dollars to feed the next lot of people who came in. Her eyes had brightened to a warm honey color.

  He’d been interested in her then. For just a second.

  He hadn’t done anything about it, of course but, for a second there, something had stirred in him. It had been extinguished the very next second by the melancholy he wore like a cloak around him.

  Alexander slammed the hammer again.

  The wall shook and bits of concrete and mortar fell down. He swung again, his arms straining with the effort of holding the twelve pound hammer steady and placing it at the correct stress point.

  Walls had stress points – every constructed thing had a stress point.

  A stress point was the exact place where, given enough press, a construct would show cracks and break. Walls, such as the one he was currently destroying, had multiple stress points.

  People usually assumed that swinging the hammer in the middle of the wall would do the trick. It didn’t. You had to start at the bottom. Shake the foundation enough and destroy the top.

  Alexander swung his hammer about four feet above the ground and cracked the wall. More pieces of concrete, larger pieces, tumbled down.

  His ears pricked at incoming footsteps. Light. Panicked, if the rhythm was anything to go by.

  His eyes narrowed in concentration even though he continued working on kicking out the wall. It wouldn’t do to let them knew he knew of their approach. They might not reveal their hand then.

  And he needed to know who they were.

  The footsteps were ten feet away, then five. He slammed the hammer one last time and half the wall crumbled down.

  He spun out to see the waitress screech into the room with wide doe eyes and heaving breaths.

  “You…you--” she gasped as words failed her.

  Surprise sucked the action out of him for one long second.

  What was she doing here? She wasn’t supposed to be here.

  They were going to burst into the room any second now and he had to deal with them. He didn’t have time for this woman and her pretty eyes and heaving chest.

  It was appalling that he’d even noticed her heaving chest in the first place.

  They’d laugh him out of the Corps if they knew.

  Then his instincts kicked into high gear and he raced toward her. She shrank from him and he skidded to a stop at the last minute.

  He knew he looked a sight. Sweaty and hulking. The only light came from the hi-powered halo lamp he’d kept on so he could see where he was placing his hammer.

  Half his face was covered by a huge, colorful bandana to keep the dust and dirt out. The hammer was held casually in his left hand as if he knew how to use it. And he did.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, purposefully keeping his voice low.

  He lowered the hammer to the ground, and it thumped against the floor.

  She flinched some more. Her eyes huge, while sweat ran in rivulets down her temples, plastering her hair to the side of her skull.

  “I came to warn you,” she whis
pered.

  “Warn me?”

  She nodded, fear darkening the soft contours of her face. “There was a guy. A homeless guy, Earl, from the building next to this one. He overheard a couple guys with guns talking on a walkie talkie talking about kidnapping you. I didn’t believe him, of course. It’s ridiculous but then I was closing up and I saw a van. And all these men with guns showed up. Big guns.”

  “How many?” he interrupted her crazed outpouring of words.

  “How many what?”

  “Men. How many men?” he prompted her.

  She swallowed and struggled to recall the exact number. “I don’t know. Four? Six?”

  “Somewhere between four and six,” he murmured. “That’s doable.”

  Then he gripped the handle of the hammer tighter in both hands.

  “What are you doing?” He heard the faintest edge of hysteria in her voice. “We need to go now. I used the other stairs. The bad ones. Thank god, Earl told me about them or I’d have fallen down and broken my neck.”

  “Good for Earl,” Alexander said. “And good for you. You’ve done a very brave thing tonight.”

  She reached out and touched his arm. The hammer-holding arm. It was slick with sweat and tense with battle-readiness. She swallowed again but, to her credit, didn’t faint or slide into actual hysterics.

  “We need to go,” she repeated on rote. “You and I. We can’t stay here.”

  “Sasha,” Alexander said gently.

  She jumped visibly at the sound of her name. He cupped her elbow gently, as gently as he could, through rough work gloves. It was fanciful and counterproductive but he thought he felt her shiver too.

  Then he heard it.

  The faint snick of guns cocking with their safeties off. The faintest crackle of radio chatter.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Then Alexander grabbed the surprised waitress by the waist and bounded over to the collapsed wall in two strides.

  “Stay down. Stay out of sight,” he hissed at her, as he pressed her head down and made her kneel behind the still-upright portion of the wall. “Whatever happens do not come out.”

  Then he gripped the hammer and walked out.

  “It’s all going to be alright, Sasha.”

  Then the men swarmed in a burst of bullets and shouts.

  Still Not Over You

  Geeks of Caltech Book 1

  Buy on Amazon

  Zara was tired. She was staring at the pretty, snow-wrapped window of the Chicago Mercy Hospital and she was tired. But she couldn’t close her eyes.

  Because if she did, if she closed her eyes for a single second she’d see it all again. She’d see the orange glow of the fire, the screaming panicked eyes of her brother as he looked mutely at her. She’d see the way Dev had been spotlighted in the single instant before lightning hit them all.

  And she would scream.

  And this time she would never stop.

  Zara whimpered, as she lay on her uninjured side and tried to hold the screams inside.

  What had she done?

  “Zara, you need to rest,” Aunt Vaidehi said tiredly, running a hand over her forehead in a maternal gesture.

  She had refused to see her parents, nearly hysterical when they showed up, but allowed Aunt Vaidehi in. Aunt Vaidehi needed her. Zara scrunched her eyes tight and breathed through her mouth. Her heart, a dried-up shriveled ball in her chest, broke some more. Like a giant hand was squeezing it into even tinier bits.

  “I am fine,” she said. For the hundredth time.

  “You aren’t. You look terrible. And you haven’t said a word. And Dev is crazy with worry.”

  “I don’t want to see him,” she whispered through bloodless lips.

  Digging her nails into her palms. The lie of those words beat in her shriveled up heart. She wanted to see him, touch him, so badly she was physically ill with it.

  “Baby, I know, you’re angry at him, but he had to pull you out first. You were closest to him.” Aunt Vaidehi was crying softly, as she tried to get her niece to understand why it was her son and not she who got to die.

  Zara sucked in a sharp breath, feeling it stab like thousands of knife wounds right down her throat. Right to her stomach. And every inch in between.

  “I--”

  “He won't leave until you see him, Zara. Please, please, for my sake,” Aunt Vaidehi begged her. The mother who’d just lost her only son.

  So, Zara said nothing. She nodded her head.

  She knew the exact moment when he entered the room. The air seemed to be stronger, she was aware of her body, her pulse, her heart. She was aware of her own guilt. She knew those footsteps like the back of her own hand. Steady, assured, already so much like a man.

  She closed her eyes and didn’t want to face him.

  “Zara.” There was a wealth of agony in that one word. A world of love.

  She gulped her own tears down. They wouldn’t help her now. Nothing could.

  “Dev.” She opened her eyes and saw that he was crouched by her good side.

  His bandaged hand hovering in the space between her forehead and nose. She drew back a fraction of an inch, wincing as the gesture hurt her already bruised head. Apparently the impact of the explosion had knocked her backwards by twenty feet and left her with a minor concussion.

  She didn’t care. She’d killed her brother.

  “Zara, I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered in a voice so thready, she thought he’d lost all capacity to speak. Only his eyes, those blazing eyes were alive. With joy and love so incandescent, it was like looking at the fire again.

  She had no right to the love.

  “You didn’t,” she said, while his hand came down and cupped her cheek. Dozens of tiny wounds dotted her skin, all bandaged and iodined. Because of the glass that had shattered on her face.

  “Your face, I’m so sorry,” he said softly, brokenly. One tear tracked down his stubbled cheek.

  She felt her own wave rising up and fought it down. It had to happen now. Before he said anything else. Before her own need weakened her.

  Zara Subramanian had grown up twenty years overnight and it was time to put that to good use.

  “Don’t touch me, Dev.” She moved one taped hand and removed his hand from her cheek.

  He was stunned, upset, she could see that.

  “You don’t mean that.” He smiled. His devil-may-care smile and she remembered.

  “I do.” And then said the words that would make him hate her forever. Make him go away. Her voice was as dead and empty as her soul. Her insides. “I do mean it. In fact, I don’t want you to touch me ever again, Dev. I never want to see you again.”

  “No. You’re just angry, the trauma…” He shook his head, a shock of hair falling on his bandaged forehead. Looking shockingly black against the white cloth.

  “You’re upset. But you don’t mean that.” He was so sure, so certain.

  Then he looked into her eyes and his heart froze. It simply froze, just like this moment. There was hate in her eyes, blinding, consuming hate. And anger. Disgust. Grief so terrible, he sucked in his breath.

  “Stop saying that,” she snapped at him. “I mean every word I say. You know I do.”

  “Why?” It was a bottomless whisper, although his mind, his heart had already started accepting her words. She wasn’t one for lying, his Zara.

  “Because, you killed him,” she said coldly. “You killed him, Dev. And I’ll never forgive you for it. So go away now. Go away before I tell them all what happened. Before I tell Auntie Vee that her precious Dev put her son in the ground.”

  “That’s not true! What are you saying? Why are you saying this? Please, Zara, I love you.”

  He tried while his breath, his heart shattered inside of his chest, and the grief he’d seen in her eyes, now transferred itself to him. His body became weightier, heavier, like the weight of the world rested on his shoulders.

  “No. You don’t understand, Dev. I hate you. I hat
e you for what you did to me and my brother. Go away before you destroy what’s left of my family,” she whispered fiercely. Her eyes gleaming with the conviction of her words.

  Her hate.

  “Don’t say that. Please,” he begged her.

  “It’s true, isn’t it? He wouldn’t ever have done this if it weren’t for--” Her breath hitched. And she turned her head away from him. Just her head. The rejection absolute.

  “Go away, Dev. I don’t love you anymore. And don’t bother coming back.”

  He didn’t say a single word, just knelt at her feet. The only sounds in the room were his harsh, choppy breathing and the steady beep of the monitors that gave readouts of her vitals. But she didn’t turn her head and she didn’t see him. And that, that convinced him more than anything that she’d meant everything she said.

  She couldn’t love him anymore.

  The blow had him reaching for his feet unsteadily.

  “Are you sure?” He asked in a hoarse voice.

  She didn’t answer.

  She didn’t have to.

  Without another word he walked away from her.

  And only when she was certain he was gone, when she knew he wouldn’t hear her, when nobody would hear her, she started screaming.

  She screamed for a long time.

  ~~~~~~

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  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader,

  Did I tell you, I have always wanted to tell stories? Spectacular, incredible, amazing stories of the bravest people – who do impossible, insane things because it’s the right thing to do. Because it saves the world.

  This sentiment is, precisely, the reason why I started writing romances. Because nothing is as brave and inherently honest as discovering two people fall in love. It’s also why I love writing thrillers. It’s about bravery of a different kind, which examines motives, which puts guns in the hands of bad people and which creates explosions in a yacht, or at a playground in Kashmir.