Fighting slavers? Piece of cake! Assassins? Exciting! Love? Terrifying!
Ever since felinoid Xia used the lethal skills she was forced to learn as a kitten, a darkness inside her clamors to be fed. Helping Rahal Mizyar, the felinoid warlord of Cibari, take out slavers will feed that darkness while doing good. Besides, Rahal Mizyar is insanely sexy. The devil’s bargain she made—to work for him and share his bed in exchange for his protection for the Malcolm’s crew—is going to be hot.
Rahal suspects Xia is his mate, but raised by humans, she isn’t familiar with the concept. So he’s determined to make her fall hard and fast for him. That means playing up his bad-ass image and not confessing he became warlord through guile, not violence.
Private lawman Cal Janssen has been hired to learn if Xia is the long-missing granddaughter of the felinoid prime minister. He’s tracked her to Cibari but isn’t sure how he’s going to make contact with her in the warlord’s palace—until someone mistakes him for notorious arms dealer/interplanetary playboy Karn the Viking Anders. Cal’s not sure which is more astonishing: being recruited to help with Cibari’s nascent law enforcement in his disguise as Karn or being seduced by Rahal and Xia. The latter is definitely more fun.
Xia’s in cat-girl paradise, with two adoring men who are also crazy about each other, and a good excuse to kick evil asses.
Then Xia realizes she’s fallen in love with two men who don’t exist. And running away may be a deadly mistake.