Blurb:

Sevani, a Watcher for the goddess Freya, is a tortured man who killed his wife in a jealous rage and doesn’t believe in love, tasked to kill Ayah Miller. Sevani can’t do it, especially since Ayah’s carrying his dead wife’s soul.

Ayah wants nothing more than rest after burying her father, until an immortal appears in her bedroom and tells her someone is trying to kill her. “Sleep” is the last thing she wants. Ayah doesn’t think Sevani wants her as much as his former wife. They must defeat a goddess if their love is to survive–or die trying.

Excerpt:

The others filed out slowly, kissing her or hugging her, and she didn’t respond, too shocked to do much more than blink. Taylor said something to her about cleaning up the house, but Ayah just sat there. Even after she heard the door close a final time, with words of love from Taylor ringing through the house, she sat there. Nothing, nothing, had prepared her for this.

It wasn’t until goose bumps rose on her flesh, and the house grew dark, that she forced her body to move. She stood slowly, joints popping, and walked from the room. She walked on autopilot to her room. Tomorrow”¦tomorrow she’d think about this, give her mind a chance to assimilate what had happened. Tonight, she just wanted to sleep and to recharge. She reached her room and opened the door, ready for the sight of her soft yellow comforter on her four-poster bed, and the feel of the cool sheets as she slipped under them.

What she wasn’t prepared for was a giant of a man sitting on her bed, with a sword strapped to his back.

The scream bubbled up through her even as the man moved, faster than she ever thought possible, and grabbed her. She wailed into his hand as he covered her mouth.

“Be still,” he commanded. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Yet“¦seemed to echo eerily in her brain, even though he hadn’t said it. Fight or flight kicked in, though, and she struggled in his arms. He was strong, and she felt like a butterfly trapped in the claws of a lion, but she fought anyway.

“You are making this harder than it must be,” he grumbled as he carried her, as if she weighed nothing, to her bed. He stood her up and spun her around to face him. He repositioned his hand over her mouth. It was the first time she got a look at him, really got a look at him. His dark hair, almost darker than the night itself, curled around his shoulders. His face was hard, full of angles, but striking. His bottom lip was fuller than his top one, and his nose was straight. But it was his eyes that captivated her. He stared at her with a blue-gray gaze that was unreal. There was fire there, as if the blue were electric and the gray like moving smoke. He was tall, maybe a foot taller than her, placing him well over six feet. She could see the ripple of his biceps under the short-sleeved black shirt he wore. She could even see they were covered in the glinting silver of daggers.

But something just on the edge of her mind bothered her. She frowned behind his hand, her heart slowing down, as he didn’t move to toss her on the bed or pull one of the wicked-looking blades strapped to his body. He was familiar. She would have remembered seeing a man like him. His commanding presence would have made an impact, she was sure of it, but somehow she knew his hands could be just as soft as they were hard. She knew the right side of his mouth lifted slightly higher than the right side when he smiled. She knew that if she kissed him, she’d taste honey and storms. She shouldn’t know this man, but she did, somewhere, somehow.

“Better?” he asked, and the deep timbre of his voice rolled over her. She nodded.

“Do I know you?” she asked. He closed his eyes, sighing with so much pain she wanted to pull him into her arms.

“In another time, and another place, perhaps.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, frowning.

Why wasn’t she terrified? Why wasn’t she trying to get away? And why was she suddenly so very interested in getting to taste this man? She could recognize the stir of desire licking through her system as he looked at her. His gaze flittered over her soft sable hair, her big green eyes, pert nose, and even her mouth. He missed nothing. She waited for indifference, displeasure even, when his gaze traveled down her form, but that was not what she saw. There was such pain, such need in his eyes as they met hers.

“Who are you?” she asked, unable to stop herself.

“I am called Sevani.”

“Sevani.” She tasted his name on her tongue, again feeling like she should have known that already. It felt right. Something inside of her sang when she said it, like a long-closed door had been finally opened.

“I am Ayah.”

“I know who you are, Ayah, more than, I think, you know yourself.”

Her name rolled on his tongue as if it was a caress, and she felt a very different feeling suffuse her. She wanted to get closer, wanted to hear him say it again. She didn’t even realize that she had been leaning closer to him until he sucked in a shuddering breath and held her away from him.

What was wrong with her? This was a man who had gotten into her house somehow, knew her name, and had lay in wait for her. He looked too good to be true, too perfect, too”¦Another thought blasted to her.

“Are you an angel? Am I dead?” she squeaked. Perhaps she’d been in a dream when she found out she was a millionaire. Maybe she’d died, so distraught over her father, and had only watched from the outside as the will had been read. But then, how had Sam directed questions at her? Maybe she’d died of shock after everyone had left. That was it. She was going to go to heaven.

“Do I look like an angel?” he said then.

He looked yummy, but she wasn’t going to say that out loud. Then again, angels probably didn’t invoke the need to rip their clothes off, right? A soft cherub bouncing around her laughing and singing hymns was very different than the beast of a man standing in front of her. Her kind of heaven, to be sure, but not the sort for the pearly gates.

Okay, maybe I’m not going to heaven.

“Then, who are you?” she asked again.

“That is a question that would take time to explain and a leap of faith to understand, both of which do not matter now. I am here to do a job.” Sevani said the word like a curse, and she wanted to smooth his brow. She had to force her hand back to her side when it lifted, seemingly of its own volition.

“Were you paid to kill me?” she asked then, not sure how she kept herself talking.

“No,” he answered, his thumb rubbing over her cheek. His palm and fingertips were calloused, and she wondered what it would feel like to have them all over her flesh. What would it be like to have him surround her, crowd her on the bed, and take her? The thoughts were her own, and yet not. He dropped his hands and stepped away from her, taking his heat with him. She licked her suddenly dry lips. If he wasn’t here to kill her or take her to heaven or bed her, apparently, she didn’t understand why he was here””or why she even believed what he was saying.

She edged from the bed, slowly making her way toward the door. It didn’t matter. She just had to get out of here. She had to get away from the thoughts that she knew him, had felt him inside her, and had heard his voice whispering in her ear as she slept, get away from the fact that he looked ready to kill someone, especially her, and from the fact that she was turned on. She stepped faster as he watched her, his gaze a mixture of agony and lust that she didn’t understand. The doorknob hit the small of her back, and she spun around, grasping it in her hand to twist.

“I am not here to kill you.” He suddenly crowded her against the door and pinned her hand between her body and her means of escape. She hadn’t even seen, or heard, him move. He was just there, larger than life. “But someone is going to kill you,” he said, and her stomach fell away. “It’s my job to stop them. So tell me, what have you done that would make someone want you dead?”