First Look: Right Through Me by Shannon McKenna
First Look Celebration for Shannon McKenna’s Right Through Me
NYTimes and USA Today bestselling author Shannon McKenna launches The Obsidian Files with RIGHT THROUGH ME, a pulse-pounding tale of thrilling suspense and searing passion. A beautiful fugitive and a biotech tycoon with strange powers must face the lethal rage of a vicious enemy bent on their annihilation.
Right Through Me
Obsidian Files #1
Shannon McKenna
Stranger, speak softly...
Biotech tycoon Noah Gallagher has a deadly secret: his clandestine training as a super-soldier gives him abilities that go far beyond human. Yet he's very much a man. When Caro Bishop shows up at his Seattle headquarters with a dangerous secret agenda, his ordered life is thrown into chaos. Caro is a woman like no other—and her luminously sensual beauty cloaks a mystery he must solve.
Caro's lying low, evading a false charge of murder. She means to clear her name, and she'll do whatever it takes to survive—but seducing a man like Noah is more than she bargained for. His amber eyes have the strangest glow when he looks at her—she could swear he sees the secrets of her heart. The desire smoldering in Noah's eyes awakens her own secret hunger, but Caro has to resist his magnetic pull. Anyone close to her becomes a target. The only right thing to do is run, far and fast, but Caro can't outrun Noah's ferocious intensity—or deny the searing passion that explodes between them.
Nothing else matters—until a vicious enemy bent on the ultimate revenge puts his murderous plan into play. Noah and Caro must battle for their lives...and their love...
Welcome to the secret and dangerous world of The
Obsidian Files!
I’ve always loved stories about people forced to
widen the idea of what it means to be a human being, as well as stories about
what it would be like to be superhuman. Now that the technology to
augment, enhance, even design human beings is becoming an accepted reality, it
fascinates me even more.
My hero, charismatic biotech tycoon Noah Gallagher,
has a deadly secret—he’s more than human. As a teenager, he was swept up into
the Obsidian program, a plan to create super-soldiers using gene splicing and
nanotech. Noah led the other modified kids in a desperate rebellion. They
barely escaped with their lives and went deep underground.
Now, years later, Noah’s crew now hides in plain
sight, careful to mask their uncanny abilities. All except for breakaway
element Mark Olund, a psychopath who uses his abilities to enrich himself.
Mark is a threat Noah’s group, so when Mark’s mistress, Caro Bishop,
suddenly shows up near Noah’s Seattle headquarters working as a bellydancer,
Noah’s sister decides that they need a closer look at her. Preferably one using
Noah’s enhanced eyes.
But no one could have imagined the effect that Caro
would have on him . . .
Someone just cut the lights.
What the hell?
Noah Gallagher put down his pen
and looked around, startled, as drums began to throb from the Angel Enterprises
penthouse conference room’s hidden sound system.
The door to the conference room
opened to a shimmery jingling sound, then a flash of fluttering purple.
Everyone at the table was staring and murmuring.
Oh, Christ. Not possible. He
rose to his feet, but the bellydancer was already halfway through the door,
hands weaving in a hypnotic pattern. Wide, light-catching green eyes laughed at
him brazenly as she shimmied straight toward him, leading with one pulsing hip.
Her eyes caught him . . . and
held him.
The world narrowed down.
Whatever he was going to say or do just stopped. Words were gone. Air was gone.
Air didn’t matter. Nothing moved while she moved.
She had commandeered all
movement with that smile. Those eyes.
He was sitting again, with no
memory of doing so. His mind had gone blank.
Noah and his crew have been genetically altered and
nanotech modified, with implants and neural programming, all for the purpose of
creating fearless and ferocious supersoldiers. Noah fought hard to stay on top
of himself and his incredible abilities, but something about Caro moves him so
deeply, it compromises his hard-won self-control.
A spotlight from somewhere
gilded the dancer’s body. He was enthralled by silver anklets that jingled over
her small, bare feet. Gilded toenails. Shapely legs flashed between purple
veils that floated from a low slung, glittering belt. The belt and top were
heavy with swags of shining chains and dangling beadwork.
High, full breasts quivered,
lovingly presented in the spangle-studded velvet bra. She arched back, swishing
her thick fall of of glossy black hair around. Had to be fake hair, falling to
well below her ass. It brushed the curve of her hips. Fanned out as she
twirled.
He wanted to rip away all the scraps
of filmy cloth and bling. See her bare-assed. Bare-breasted.
The deep curve of her waist was
perfectly shaped for his fingers to grip. The curves and hollows of her belly
and her hips looked so soft. Touchable.
His hands shook with the urge to
reach, stroke. Seize.
The rush of erotic images ramped
up his advanced visual processor into screaming overdrive. Even using custom
designed shield specs, his AVP combat program was off and running, scrolling a
thick column of data analysis past his inner eye.
The light level in this room
could zap him right into a stress flashback if he didn’t protect his eyes.
Plus, the dark shield strength contact lenses hid the animal flash of amber
luminosity caused by his visual implants. Outsiders couldn’t be allowed to see
that.
He wanted to throw everyone else
out and lock the door. He wanted to gulp in the whole data flow. It was being
filtered out in real time and lost forever, and it drove him . . . fucking . .
. nuts.
One of Noah’s abilities is that he can see a
person’s “energy signature.” His visual implants and augmented visual
processing allow him to see colors and shades and subtleties that no one else
can. He also has learned to interpret them. So by reading a person’s energy
signature, he can sometimes also read their minds.
The dancer’s arms lifted,
swayed. Her skin looked fine-grained, dewy and smooth. He inhaled her scent as
she spun closer. Fresh, sweet, hot. Sun on the flowers. Rain on the grass.
Since what happened at Midlands,
his senses were sharper than normal by orders of magnitude.
He was reading her energy signature, right through the shield lenses. A cloud
of brilliant moving colors surrounded her.
He felt hot, red. No control
over his face. He was stuck here, nailed to the floor while everyone watched
him watch her until the uncontrollable sensations subsided. Along with his
colossal hard-on.
He had not felt this helpless
since Midlands.
Her luminous green eyes met his
and then flicked away, but the electric buzz of that split instant of intimacy
jolted him to depths he’d never felt before.
He knew he’d never seen this
woman before, and yet he recognized her.
Noah feels torn apart by feelings he has never
experienced and has no tools to deal with. But in spite of the danger, in spite
of his doubts, he has never wanted anything as badly as he wants to get closer
to Caro—no matter the cost . . .
I hope you enjoy the
mysterious and exciting new world of the Obsidian Files as much as I loved
creating it! There is still so much yet to discover, so happy reading!
Since she was small she has loved abandoning herself to the magic of a good book, and her fond childhood fantasy was that writing would be just like that, but with the added benefit of being able to take credit for the story at the end. The alchemy of writing turned out to be messier than she'd ever dreamed, but what the hell, she loves it anyway, and hopes that readers enjoy the results of her alchemical experiments. She loves to hear from her readers.
This sounds a bit different from other super soldier books. I might try it.
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