Today, I'm going to interrogate someone, because NOTHING says hello, like an interrogation.
Potential Subjects to be interrogated:
Author Alison Aimes
Female Protagonist: Ava Davies
Male Protagonist: Hunter Valdus
Decision process:
Which do I have pictures of...
Alison Aimes
If she seems a bit leery, that could be because I've interrogated her before.
My other choices are....
Very hot Hunter Valdus
whose muscles even have muscles.
Or Ava...being groped by a possessive hand.
I've decided to interrogate....
Hunky Hunter!
Liza: Hunter, were you always so hot, or is this a side effect of being dropped into a steamy prison.
Hunter: *Shrug* I wouldn’t know about hot. I’ve only got one focus. I’ve done what I’ve had to do to survive and keep my team alive. Down here only the strongest and most ruthless make it. It’s no joke. If you want flirtation, female, you should look to my teammates Ryker or Griffin. Me, I’m all about survival. Or, at least I was… Until her.
Liza: Why did you take Ava under your protection?
Hunter: Protection? Where’d you get that idea? She’s bait. Nothing more. Nothing less. And whatever else she may or may not make me feel. It doesn’t matter. It can’t.
Liza: Any chance you two will escape this prison?
Hunter: I will do whatever it takes to free my men and keep my promise to them. No matter what else the cost. No matter who else it costs.
Liza: How about falling in love. Any chance there?
Hunter: No chance at all. I lost that part of my humanity a long time ago. And, even if I hadn’t, love is a weakness no one down here can afford. Least of all me.
Title: TAKEN
Author: Alison Aimes
Release date: 7/31/2018
Blurb:
"Alison Aimes has dragged me into the darkest, hottest, most dangerous pits of desire--and I never want to see the light again...Seriously brutal heroes, kick ass heroines, & filthy, hot sex." -Five stars. E. Hart, Goodreads.
TAKEN, Book Two in the Condemned Series, is a steamy, stand-alone, prison planet romance that burrows to the deepest, hottest recesses of the globe to explore what happens when revenge and lust, redemption and love, collide.
Run-away breeder Ava Davies only wanted to live life on her own terms. Now she’s captive in a labor camp deep within Dragath25’s core, a sweltering maze of caves overrun by brutal prisoners-turned-slaves. Her only chance for survival? Appeasing the leader of the most powerful subterranean gang: a man from her past with his own score to settle.
Two years ago, Resistance fighter Hunter Valdus and his men were sentenced by the Council to live and die as slaves. Now a beautiful, desperate female from his past has landed in his grasp. A woman who just might be the key to his crew’s escape and his revenge. All he has to do is keep her alive and at a distance until he can use her for his own dark purposes.
But raw, blood-pounding lust is a potent force. Forgiveness and love even stronger. And the best-laid plans can be laid to waste, especially on Dragath25.
Excerpt from TAKEN:
Massive hands wrapped around her forearms and spun her, her tiptoes barely reaching the ground. “You can’t let down your guard here,” her captor roared. “Not even for an instant.”
Stunned, she could only blink.
Everything down here was mixed up. As unstable as the shifting plates beneath her feet. Those who should have been her allies were her enemies. While the killer who saw her only as bait kept protecting her time and again.
Nothing made sense.
“Did he touch you?” Her captor’s words were a rough bark, jerking her from her thoughts. “Hurt you?”
“No.” The single word was a croaked whisper.
“People get fucked down here every nanosegment of every rotation.” He half shoved, half carried her through an opening even smaller than the last, hiding them from sight as rough hands flexed around her shoulders. “It doesn’t make them any less dangerous. Hell, if anything, it makes them more so.”
Her back hit the rocky wall. Her captor’s brutish, beautiful face appeared inches from her own.
“He…he seemed so broken.” Her explanation sounded naïve even to her own ears. And breathless. Too breathless. The heat cycling up another dreaded level.
She needed that damn pill and she needed it now.
“You can’t waste time on pity,” he snarled. “It will only get you killed that much faster.”
“I don’t want to live like that.” She’d spent too many years thinking only of herself and how to avoid pain at any expense. Too many years becoming the shiny, numb ornament Hollisworth wanted her to be. “Too many of my kind have lived that way, and I won’t be one of them.”
He stilled, his gaze boring into her—as if seeing her for the first time.
Her breathing hitched, afraid of what he’d perceive.
“You can’t be any other way down here.” He shook her once, but the anger had seeped from his voice. Replaced by a cold resignation that hurt to hear. “Not if you want to stay alive.”
But staying alive and living weren’t the same thing. She’d learned that well under Hollisworth’s tutelage.
“I-I need to get out of here.” The weight of rock and dirt pressed down on her chest, flattening her lungs and stealing her breath.
His hold tightened. “The panic will pass. Just breathe.”
Shame seared through her. He thought she was having a simple panic attack.
But this was a thousand times worse. She was losing it. Slipping into what Hollisworth and his nanotechnology had made her. Good for one thing.
Her fingers clenched as she fought to stop herself from yanking at the closures of her uniform, from pressing her burning flesh against her captor’s, from wrapping her thighs around his hips.
The shame of it made her dizzy. That thing—that bundle of carnal urges and sexual heat—was not who she was. Not who she wanted to be.
“Shhh.” The press of his thumb against her lower lip was a shock of heat, and her first clue that she’d begun making low, needy sounds in the back of her throat. “Breathe in and out. In and out.”
She willed her lungs to listen.
“It’s not all bad down here, captive.” His voice rumbled once more down her spine. “There’s beauty here, too. You just have to know where to look.”
He grasped her chin as if he had the right, titling her gaze upward.
She sucked in an awed breath.
In her panic, she hadn’t registered her surroundings. But she did now. Flickering, glowing lights bobbed at the end of silken threads from the cave ceiling as far as the eye could see, twinkling like stars in the night sky. The chemist in her knew instantly what they were. But it was the woman in her that responded to them now. Exquisite. Magical. Ripe with possibility. They made her feel as if she were above ground and free. As if she could go anywhere and be anything she wanted.
“They’re alive down here. Alive and thriving.” His words brushed across her skin like a caress. His mouth hovering a fraction above the frantic pulse at her neck. “Remember that when it starts to feel like too much. Beautiful, fragile things survive down here despite all the odds.”
Astonishment whispered through her.
He was handing her hope.
Never once in all her years with Hollisworth had he ever done anything like that.
A new, unfamiliar sensation mixed with the heat.
More vivid than anything she’d experienced before.
“You can’t let this place get to you.” The husky timbre of her captor’s voice pulled her like a magnet.
Her gaze shifted from the ceiling to find crystal blue eyes locked on her—and blazing with that now-familiar heat.
She’d dismissed him as a cold, savage beast, but his actions suggested he was far more.
Her breath caught, a warm tug starting low in her lower belly, every nerve firing to alert as awareness crackled along her skin. Different than the hormonal fever. More organic. Real.
He wanted her.
But even more astonishing, a part of her wanted him, too.
The slow, sensual glide of his thumb along her lower lip sending tingles of pleasure down her spine. No fear. No repulsion. Just the slow, rising burn of want.
Ensnared, she leaned into his touch.
“Anytime you feel the walls closing in, look up.” His voice wove around her like a siren, his thumb never ceasing its slow, sensual claim as it glided down the tendon of her neck to toy with the hollows of her throat. “There’s no more beautiful night sky in the world. Even back on New Earth.”
Was this what men and women usually did? Was this seduction?
For an insane heartbeat, she wanted it to be him who saved her from the breeder heat. Who fought with her to thwart Hollisworth’s twisted legacy.
As if her fingers had a will of their own, her bound hand rose.
Slowly, oh so slowly, she reached out. Fingers trembling, they brushed his strong jaw. The rough bristle against her fingertips another shock of tantalizing sensation. The Councilman had been smooth and hairless. Like a child. The beast was all male. Primitive. Fierce. Determined. Terrifying. But that was what was needed down here to survive, a being as brutal and beautiful as their surroundings.
“Is that how you endure this place?” She barely recognized the throaty yearning in her voice. “Find something beautiful to hold on to?”
He froze, his thumb arresting in midswipe—as if he’d been caught doing something wrong.
The heated look in his eyes disappeared. Replaced by familiar ice.
“No.” His hand dropped away. “I survive by dreaming of revenge. By putting aside all mercy. By thinking only of my men and the promise I made them to escape. By letting nothing get in the way of their survival.”
His withdrawal stung like a lash.
“If you were smart,” he took a step back, “you’d do the same and shut down those overactive emotions. Keeping alive a helpless Council breeder is going to be hard enough without you undercutting my plan.”
“I’m not helpless.” She stood taller. Breathed through the foolish crush of pain and self-contempt. No wonder he thought her weak. She was letting the heat win. “I know more than you can ever imagine about getting out of here.”
“Hasn’t your kind already overpromised enough?” He took another step back, the bind connecting them going taut. Stretched to the breaking point. Like her.
“Hasn’t yours learned anything from all the useless imprisonments and deaths? You can’t fight him head-on.”
“Enough time wasted. We need to move. My men will be waiting for us.”
His men? Soon there’d be more of them. And, Janus knows what would happen to her then. He might be too repulsed by who she was to give his lust free reign, but the others might not be so discerning.
The horrific image of being passed from one to the next while her captor looked on with indifference slammed through her.
No. She couldn’t survive something like that.
But time was running out. If she didn’t take the pill now, she’d have no choice. Like always.
The instant he turned, she acted.
AUTHORS BIO
Alison Aimes is the award-winning author of the sexy, sci-fi romance Condemned series as well as the sizzling, contemporary romance Billionaire Bad Boys Collection. A romance fanatic with a PhD in Modern history, she’s an all-over-the-map kind of woman with a love for dramatic stories and great books, no matter the era. Now, she’s creating her own stories full of intrigue and passion, but always with a happy-ever-after ending. She lives in Maryland with her husband, two kids, and her dog. When not in front of the computer, she can be found hanging with family and friends, hiking, or, last but not least, sitting on the couch imagining her characters’ next great adventures.
Alison can be found at www.alisonaimes.com
Connect with Alison Aimes:
Website: http://www.alisonaimes.com
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