Doranna Durgin - Sentinels - Lion Heart

You really do want him. Right here, right now.

Regret assailed Lyn. Her alarmed expression, her body language…it must have felt like a slap in the face to Joe.

The thought that anything so strong, so overwhelming, could be anything but induced…

She couldn’t. Not with this man. Not with a Sentinel gone dark.

A Sentinel who just left himself open to a painful surge of power to save four people…

That didn’t mean he hadn’t got himself into trouble. Troubled men could mean well…could even be admirable. And a troubled man could damn well drag her down into the dark with him, if she let him.

Secret Delivery by Delores Fossen & Her 24-Hour Protector by Loreth Anne White

Backstreet Hero by Justine Davis & Becoming a Cavanaugh by Marie Ferrarella

The Rancher Bodyguard by Carla Cassidy & Kincaid’s Dangerous Game by Kathleen Creighton

The Bride’s Secrets by Debra Webb

Cry of the Wolf by Karen Whiddon

Sentinels: Lion Heart by Doranna Durgin

By

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Doranna Durginresponded to all early injunctions to “put down that book/notebook and go outside to play” by climbing trees so that she’d have the freedom to read and write. Such a quirkiness of spirit has led to an eclectic publishing journey that has spanned genres and forms and resulted in twenty-five novels, which include mystery, science fiction and fantasy, action romance, paranormal and a slew of essays and short stories. But she still prefers to hang around outside her southwestern home with the animals, riding dressage on her Lipizzan and training for performance sports with the dogs. She doesn’t believe so much in mastering the beast within, but in channelling its power. For good or bad has yet to be decided…

You can find her online at www.doranna.net, where she keeps a picture collection of gorgeous high desert sunsets, lots of silly photos, the scoop on new projects and her contact info.

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Dark Sentinel

Lyn Maines stared at the image of Joe Ryan, big as life—much bigger than life—as it splashed across the high-definition plasma screen of the sleek Sentinel conference room in Tucson, Arizona. Both Joe Ryans, actually—the man and his beast. On the left, tawny mountain lion, heavy masculine head with black tracings and jaw dropped in a snarl as the animal stalked the camera, clearly aware of and annoyed by the photographer’s presence. On the right, Joe Ryan the man, caught unaware, leaning over a railing before an enormous high desert panoramic vista of pines and sere ocher plains, head turned three-quarters to the camera, wind lifting his tawny hair with its dark tracings at the nape of his neck and temple, features clean and strong.

Not always did the human form reflect the Sentinel form. Her own didn’t, aside from a certain something around the eyes. But there in Joe Ryan, the mountain lion lurked out loud—the sinuous authority, the simmering power. All of it.

Too bad that striking exterior covered a corrupt interior.

Joe Ryan was as dirty as they came—a dark Sentinel. He’d killed his partner for cold hard cash, and he’d done it cleverly enough so that the Sentinel’s brevis region consul and his echelon hadn’t been able to pin him down. Cleverly enough so that Ryan had gone on to a new assignment, a new home at the base of Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks, to start a brand-new scheme—acquiring power on top of his money. Still on the Sentinel payroll, still roaming free in his powerful form. Still playing with power itself. And Lyn…

Lyn would prove it.

We think the Atrum Core drozhar might have fled there after the battle near Sonoita, the consul’s grim adjutant had said moments earlier, a warning. He’ll know you if he makes contact with you. He’ll target you.

Then she simply wouldn’t let herself be seen. “Send me there,” she said, flexing her fingers slightly as if she could feel her sharp claws while in this form. Ocelot, small and quick, with a knack for following power traces that had served her well against the Atrum Core this past spring—well enough so that the consul owed her one, if any such thing could ever be said. “I can be on his trail by nightfall.”

Yes. Lyn was the one who would finally prove it.

Joe Ryan took a heady breath of hot, pine-scented air, basking in it—the scents so much stronger to the cougar, so subtly layered. Dirt and fallen pine needles and the scrub oak beside him, tangy and sharp as he barely brushed against it…each scent heated by the rising afternoon temperature and intensified by the moisture in the gathering monsoon clouds.

The humans he followed through this national forest probably noticed none of it, just as they’d missed the red-backed Abert’s squirrel shooting away from their blundering dog and the birds gone quiet overhead.

Joe noticed them all—but it was the humans he stalked.

The humans and their dog.

Joe loved dogs. He’d had one in Nevada, a big lunky hound mix who’d been bitten by a rattlesnake shortly before everything else went so bad. So much loss…

This was his turf now—the western slopes of the San Francisco Peaks. From peripheral Vegas to high-altitude desert. He couldn’t say he regretted the move. But the circumstances? Oh, yeah.

Still, he protected the area as best he could. Today, that meant ghosting along beside this chattering, trail-bound couple and their loose dog, unseen until he was good and ready to show himself.

There. Up ahead. He trotted a few rangy strides, big paws silent against the ground. He fought that ever-present instinct to hunt, to play with the dog like the prey it could be—

Down, boy-o. Dean’s voice in his head—or the memory of it. He slipped out through a sun-dappled spot between two oaks, crouching down tight behind the base of a giant old Ponderosa. He could shift in an instant if he had to.

The couple had stopped. “Did you see—?” asked the man.

“I’m not sure what I saw,” the woman said, alarm in her voice. “Bunky-Dog, come here.”

“Yeah,” the man agreed. “Let’s get him on the leash.”

Joe squeezed his eyes half-shut in practiced patience as the couple cajoled and chased and finally lured the oblivious Bunky-Dog with a treat. If he’d been a wild cougar drawn by the noisy, gamboling canine, they’d be good and mauled by now.

Finally. Their voices faded as they headed down the trail with haste. Mission accomplished. He’d work on saving the world tomorrow.