Page 19 of Sublime Target
Don’t be paranoid. There’s no way a powerful figure like him would be interested in someone like me.
To think she’d stood there right in front of them and put on that little show, acting cool and calm and self-assured, when really, she was a quivering mess inside.
It didn’t help that Jerik Garul had been looking at her the whole time. His penetrating gaze stuck in her mind. It felt like he could see through her, right down to the scared little girl she felt like underneath her polished facade.
Why had he been looking at her like that?
She’d tried not to be affected by his presence, but his mere existence was a magnet for her attention.
Ugh. What is this feeling?
He was so fucking raw and primal and everything she never knew could exist in a sentient being on two legs.
Clarissa took a deep, shuddering breath. She tried to erase the image of Jerik Garul from her mind, but she couldn’t.
He exuded pure power. He was jacked and ripped like nobody’s business, arms bulging, chest and abs sculpted and enhanced by that form-fitting obsidian armor of his.
And even though his features were partially concealed by that sleek black mask, the intensity of his expression had been searing.
It was in the way his pale brows drew together, leaving a slight crease between them.
It was in the crimson depths of his stare.
In the way he just was, and he radiated a certain kind of stillness, reminding her of a giant, immovable boulder.
God, he wasn’t even her type, and she was having these kinds of thoughts?
Wait…
Why had the notion of type even entered her head?
Am I going crazy?
Clarissa shook her head and looked up. She stared out across the city, across the harbor, watching tiny white flecks drift across the water—boats.
These aliens had just rocked up to demand Garner’s land?
Garner never sold off his land. The only thing he ever parted with was long-term leases on the box-like apartments he constructed all over the world.
And the Copernicus site?
That was supposed to be his jewel-in-the-crown; a vast tract of land in the middle of the Oceanic Continent that had been in the Garner family ever since Cooper’s ancestors arrived here. Centuries ago, it had been a cattle station. These days, it was nothing more than barren desert, the pastures and dams long dried up, and Garner wanted to transform it into a lush oasis; a new city within a stone’s throw of Teluria.
There was money to be made from terraforming that baked landscape.
Loads of it.
And now the aliens wanted it?
And that guy was involved…
Although the other two, Kai and Mavrel, were intimidating enough, her attention had always been drawn to Jerik Garul. Never before had she encountered someone who radiated such a commanding aura.
Not even Cooper Garner, the trillionaire, could hold a candle to him.
Speak of the devil…
A gentle chime dragged her out of her temporary madness. Her attention flicked toward a glowing blue light near the top of her desk.