Primal Heat. Crystal Jordan

      All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

      Acknowledgments

      This book will forever be labeled in my mind as “the burn out book.” Making it through to the end was a task of herculean proportions. I would never have survived without the help of some very wonderful people, to whom this book is dedicated. First, of course, is my best friend, Michal. Never doubt that I appreciate everything you do for me. Even when I’m in deadline hell, I notice. Second, to Loribelle Hunt and Dayna Hart, who were standing by the phone waiting for me to call when a meltdown was imminent. Your fortitude in not putting me out of all our misery still astounds me. Third, to Rowan Larke and Robin L. Rotham, who held my hand and read far too many versions of these stories before we got to the final product. Fourth, to Emily Ryan-Davis and Jennifer Leeland, the most lightning-fast of beta readers in the history of beta reading. Last, but never least, to my editor and agent, without whom none of this would ever have come into being in the first place.

      Thank you.

      CONTENTS

      WICKED LORD

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      CARNAL EMPRESS

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      1

      Brenna couldn’t sleep.

      She sat at her kitchen table, wrapped in a bathrobe and nursing a mug of decaf. Two in the morning was no time to pump caffeine into her system. It sure as hell wouldn’t help. She wasn’t an eighteen-year-old army private who could go days without sleep and not feel it. That time had come and gone over a decade and a half ago. When she was on duty tomorrow, she’d be hurting and wishing to God she’d found a way to get some shut-eye. A sigh slid from her, and she scrubbed a tired hand over her forehead.

      This wasn’t the first sleepless night she’d had recently, and they were becoming more and more frequent. The plus side was her house was spotless. The down side was…well, she was parked in her kitchen at o-dark-thirty blinking grit from her eyes. Again.

      She focused on the only thing out of place in the pristine room. The little device sitting in the middle of her table. It was round, had a dome-shaped speaker on top, and could fit snugly in the palm of her hand. Reaching out, she pushed down on the dome and a high-pitched static with a buzzing, electronic squeal issued from the speaker. Wincing, she clicked it again and turned it off.

      It was hard to believe that something so small could dull the massive psychic powers of an alien. Her commanding officer had had scientists working on the prototype for months, but now it was ready for use in their war against the Kith. She wasn’t sure how it worked exactly, or even how they’d tested it to make sure it did work, but there were a lot of things she wasn’t sure about anymore.

      Which was what was keeping her up at night, if she was honest with herself. Not that she wanted to be. She’d be a lot better off if she could stuff her head back in the sand. Taking a sip of her coffee, she closed her eyes and slumped in her chair.

      “Jesus,” she groaned.

      Pushing to her feet, she wandered into her living room, flipped the television on to the news, and plopped onto her couch. The headlines scrolled by, reports about the imminent alien invasion and what the military was doing to stop it. She shook her head and set her mug down on the coffee table.

      It all came back to General Arthur and the Kith. An entire armada of alien warships had shown up almost a year ago, and they’d been orbiting Earth ever since, a constant menacing presence in the sky. They claimed to be from a planet called Suen. They claimed Earth was an abandoned colony settled by slaves of the weaker Kin race—weaker humans. They claimed they had no interest in Earth except to find their emperor’s soul mate, his One, who was somewhere among the unwashed of humanity.

      Right.

      As if a fleet of warships traveled all the way across the universe for one human woman. Bren snorted and flipped her long braid over her shoulder. They could have at least come up with a story that didn’t insult people’s intelligence.

      Leading the campaign of bullshit was Lord Farid Arjun. Her mind provided an image of the tall, blond, and gorgeous Kith diplomat. She shivered, a frisson of excitement, longing, and loathing went through her. The alien was her enemy, cold, condescending, and rude, but he could do things with his mind that were indecent, and since the first day he’d met her, he’d never stopped toying with her. She stomped down on that thought, embarrassed that she couldn’t control her reaction to an alien with a smooth tongue gilded with lies.

      No matter what diplomats like Arjun said, the world had devolved into mass hysteria when the Sueni arrived. Some people wanted to roll out the welcome wagon, but most were just afraid of a vastly more powerful race of people with technology and weaponry the likes of which had never been seen on Earth before. People were scared. Bren was one of those people. But more than scared, she was mad. Mad that anyone thought they had the right to show up after a couple of millennia and say, “Oh, we’re back, slaves. Thanks for looking after things, now get back in your cage.”

      Hell, no. Earth wasn’t going down without a fight, and she was determined to be on the front line. She’d been William Arthur’s right hand for fifteen of the eighteen years she’d been in the service. She was behind him when he ordered a preemptive strike against the Sueni that had blown one of their ships out of the sky, and she was behind him when he worked to consolidate the military forces of Earth to create a global defense system.

      But more and more often in the last few months, she’d questioned the orders Arthur had given. His new campaigns seemed to be less about protecting people than they were about gathering more power for himself.

      She swallowed, clicked off the TV, and scrambled to her feet, all but running to her bedroom and slamming the door behind her to shut out the truth. Dread cramped her belly. She didn’t want to think about this, didn’t want to consider what it meant.

      The ramifications were even more terrifying than the Sueni shuttles that came and went despite the warnings and missiles fired