Excerpt by Karin Shah
The exclamation’s guttural force spurred her heartbeat into double time. What the hell?
She tracked the alarming sound to a door with a glass window and peered inside.
In the center of a large room, a shirtless man moved with fluid grace on exercise mats. Karate? Or Tae Kwon Do? That explained the shout. She shrugged.
Before she could slip away, the man turned and came closer. She ducked to the side so he couldn’t catch her watching.
Her breath caught as she saw his lean face.
She swallowed, pulse leaping. God, he was gorgeous. Staring much, Anjali? she admonished herself, scraping together the remnants of logic blown away by the sight of him.
This was just a man, his face, just a pleasing arrangement of features.
Papers on the appeal of symmetry to the human mind had been mandatory reading in some of her classes.
His movements took him deeper into the room and she inched closer again, her long exhale fogging the window in front of her. She didn’t need calipers to know when God had handed out facial symmetry, this man had pushed to the front of the line.
Odd shadows lent the suggestion of a tiger’s stripes to the man’s elegant cheekbones and clean jaw. She glanced at the ceiling and noticed metal baskets caging the fluorescent light fixtures, throwing voids into the harsh glare.
Her attention zeroed back to the man.
His hair—raven black with the sheen of a crow’s feather—hung past his chin and fell forward, masking his eyes. She caught herself wishing he would raise his head so she could see them. Her gaze drifted downward, following the delicious curve of his shoulder.
His large body was a work of art, each muscle defined and chiseled, as if Michelangelo had carved him from a piece of granite. The impish light played more tricks, lending his golden skin the sheen of satin as he defended against the attacks of invisible adversaries.
Her mouth dry, she watched him flow through the movement, muscles rippling beneath that flawless skin. Who was he? A guard?
Given his size and superior musculature, if he was a doctor, he was nothing like the doctors and researchers she’d worked with in the past.
Goose flesh pimpled the back of her arms. There was just something about a man that big that called to her most basic instincts.
A disparaging laugh huffed from her chest. She’d been living like a nun for years and now she was drooling over a man so out of her league he might as well have been a movie star.
What sounded like a voice—short and harsh, but indistinct—reverberated through the thick, metal-reinforced glass. The man halted mid-move and glared over his powerful shoulder.
For the first time, Anjali noticed there were other people in the room; uniformed men with sleek, ugly rifles, not only drawn, but leveled at the man as if prepared to shoot him at the slightest misstep.
She gasped as an awful realization washed over her. This man—the first man to draw her interest since her loss—was not a guard or a doctor.
He was Jake Finn, her subject, and a stone-cold killer.
IN LIKE A LION
The Chimera Chronicles Book One
Karin Shah
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing
ASIN: B00AQJ756C
Word Count: 86,673 Cover Artist: Rae Monet
Amazon
Book Description:
Dangerous and forbidden...
Research scientist, Dr. Anjali Mehta, lost her beloved family in an earthquake. Only her work cuts through the paralyzingly grief, but when she finds her new research subject, reputed mass murderer, Jake Finn, maddeningly uncooperative and inexplicably sexy she's tempted to run away. How can she burn to touch a killer--a man behind bars?
What she doesn't know is that Jake is a chimera, a shapeshifter who can change into a lion or a dragon with all the strengths of both even in human form, who believes his ability to shape shift is nothing but a terrifying hallucination, and his overpowering attraction to his new doctor proof positive he’s finally gone over the edge.
And the employer she trusts has an agenda all his own. If she can't believe the impossible, neither she nor Jake may make it out alive.
Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/iLsLAtOMmhM
About the Author:
I live in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio and worship Jeni's Ice Cream, JK Rowling, Jayne Ann Krentz, the tv show Supernatural, and the movies, Hunt For Red October and The Princess Bride(though not necessarily in that order.)
I am a fanatical reader of Romance, particularly Sci-Fi Romance, Fantasy Romance and Paranormal Romance. I always write the book I want to read, so I tend to jump sub-genre a bit. My husband and I are the parents of two kids (a girl and a boy) and slaves to two dogs ( a basenji and a vizsla)
I was born in Rochester, NY, attended SUNY Oswego and got my Master's in Information and Library Science at the University of Buffalo. I was a School Librarian in Webster, NY for five years before starting my writing career. (I still miss my students.)
http://KarinShah.wordpress.com
@KarinShah
www.Facebook.com/KarinShahAuthor
www.Facebook.com/KarinShah
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2878278.Karin_Shah
0 comments:
Post a Comment