Today we have Cover Reveal for 'The Danger You Know' a Dark Stalker Romance by author Lily White. Keep reading for a excerpt!
Title: The Danger You Know
Author: Lily White
Genre: Stalker Dark Romance
Release Date: April 22, 2020
You’ll judge me. Hate me and tell me I’m wrong. Refuse to see how my darkness is what she needs.
While I don’t particularly care about your feelings in the matter, and while I pursue her despite the wedding bells that rang for another, only I can see how she is drowning beneath mediocrity.
How many times must I remind her? It can’t matter that I am the person who ruined her life. The man who killed her father. The constant shadow that watches her sleep. The lover who prefers dirty alleyways to freshly laundered sheets.
She’s mine. Always has been. I'm the worst thing for her, yet I’m the only salvation she knows. He had his chance to make her happy. He failed. He didn't see how she was dying inside because he couldn't know her. Not like I know her.
I am her stalker. Her protector. And the only man that can bring her back to life.
When I remember that night - the first, the last - the beginning and end of it all, I don’t recall the details of the hit. The reason for Liam Kane’s death mattered little to me, really.
I was born and bred for one task, my temperament honed in the flames of adversity, my morality in such things entirely absent.
The only details that mattered to me were that Liam had to die, and if it happened by my hand, my life would all the better for it.
I didn’t know if he was a demon who sold drugs that killed a powerful man’s daughter, or a saint who worked his ass off to donate millions to charity. The facts meant little to me. All that mattered was that he had a price on his head. Two million dollars to be exact.
The only details that I needed to know were that he was a heavyset middle aged man standing approximately six foot, that he lived in a gated community northwest of Hollow Lake, and that he’d be home for the night after ten p.m., alone in his first floor office where nobody would bother him for some time.
Nobody but me, at least. The man who would kill him. The interloper that couldn’t give a damn about why the bullet should be in his brain, just that it should be there. And it was.
At fifteen minutes past ten, Liam took his final breath, his brain worse for the wear, a small hole at his right temple that led to a much larger one of on his left.
By all accounts, Liam had been depressed, had held the weapon himself, had gun powder residue on his hand to prove it. His body was left slumped at his desk.
I was nothing but a ghost, an unseen force that guided his hand. And I would have remained just that if his daughter hadn’t come to check on him shortly after I closed the window.
It was stupid for me to turn back when I heard her voice. I knew better. She was a detail I didn’t need to know. But still, the cry that left her throat stopped me in place, the agony pouring out of her when she called her father’s name caused me to spin in place to look at her.
The darkness I recognized in her trapped me in the shadows to watch her for the first time. That moment was the beginning of an obsession, and the end of a life lived without concern for another person.
It was the first night I saw her, and the last I had the ability to walk without guilt for what I’d done. Adeline Kane was sixteen years old when I first saw her, a vision with raven black hair and skin so pale she would glow beneath moonlight.
She had crystal blue eyes and red lips that defied every shade a lipstick could provide. And she had the bone structure of an angel, not the round cherubic type, but the ones fallen from Heaven and designed solely to punish a man’s soul.
I didn’t want to know she was an artist who preferred tragedy to romance. It shouldn’t have mattered that she felt most comfortable when she was alone.
It wasn’t in me to care that she’d lost her mother only months before I killed her father and that she was the heir to the fortune they left behind. All that concerned me in the years I watched her was that she’d fractured the night her father died, that I’d left her at a moment where her life would spiral out of control.
That I felt responsible for a girl becoming a woman. And that she pulled at something inside me I had never known before. I was ten years older than her. A trained killer. A skilled assassin. But I became something more on the night I first saw her:
A stalker.
A constant shadow.
And the man that would protect her from the world.
I was born and bred for one task, my temperament honed in the flames of adversity, my morality in such things entirely absent.
The only details that mattered to me were that Liam had to die, and if it happened by my hand, my life would all the better for it.
I didn’t know if he was a demon who sold drugs that killed a powerful man’s daughter, or a saint who worked his ass off to donate millions to charity. The facts meant little to me. All that mattered was that he had a price on his head. Two million dollars to be exact.
The only details that I needed to know were that he was a heavyset middle aged man standing approximately six foot, that he lived in a gated community northwest of Hollow Lake, and that he’d be home for the night after ten p.m., alone in his first floor office where nobody would bother him for some time.
Nobody but me, at least. The man who would kill him. The interloper that couldn’t give a damn about why the bullet should be in his brain, just that it should be there. And it was.
At fifteen minutes past ten, Liam took his final breath, his brain worse for the wear, a small hole at his right temple that led to a much larger one of on his left.
By all accounts, Liam had been depressed, had held the weapon himself, had gun powder residue on his hand to prove it. His body was left slumped at his desk.
I was nothing but a ghost, an unseen force that guided his hand. And I would have remained just that if his daughter hadn’t come to check on him shortly after I closed the window.
It was stupid for me to turn back when I heard her voice. I knew better. She was a detail I didn’t need to know. But still, the cry that left her throat stopped me in place, the agony pouring out of her when she called her father’s name caused me to spin in place to look at her.
The darkness I recognized in her trapped me in the shadows to watch her for the first time. That moment was the beginning of an obsession, and the end of a life lived without concern for another person.
It was the first night I saw her, and the last I had the ability to walk without guilt for what I’d done. Adeline Kane was sixteen years old when I first saw her, a vision with raven black hair and skin so pale she would glow beneath moonlight.
She had crystal blue eyes and red lips that defied every shade a lipstick could provide. And she had the bone structure of an angel, not the round cherubic type, but the ones fallen from Heaven and designed solely to punish a man’s soul.
I didn’t want to know she was an artist who preferred tragedy to romance. It shouldn’t have mattered that she felt most comfortable when she was alone.
It wasn’t in me to care that she’d lost her mother only months before I killed her father and that she was the heir to the fortune they left behind. All that concerned me in the years I watched her was that she’d fractured the night her father died, that I’d left her at a moment where her life would spiral out of control.
That I felt responsible for a girl becoming a woman. And that she pulled at something inside me I had never known before. I was ten years older than her. A trained killer. A skilled assassin. But I became something more on the night I first saw her:
A stalker.
A constant shadow.
And the man that would protect her from the world.
©Lily White 2020
đź“šTEASER:
I feel deflated by what he’s telling me, by how close I’d come to being hurt or worse because of the constant partying when I was younger.
Ari’s hand moves so that his palm is warm against my cheek, a gentle touch. “If protecting you was wrong, then it is what it is. You were wild, Adeline-“ “Which is why I needed to grow up!”
He blinks at the interruption. “Which is why you needed to be smarter, but you were young. I saw past that. I watched out for you.”
“You stalked me! How can you not see the problem with all of this? What kind of devil are you that you can think any of this is acceptable?” -
Grey eyes glimmering, he brushes a thumb over my bottom lip, his gaze locking to it for a moment before lifting to mine again.
Ari’s voice is a deep vibration over my skin when he answers, “I guess that’s the thing with enticing a devil to love. We’ll go to the depths of Hell for you without any concern for whether it’s right or wrong.”
Another brush of the pad of his thumb over my mouth and I shiver at the feel of it, my anger bleeding out while something else takes over.
I’m suddenly hyper aware of the feel of his fingers on my wrists, the masculine scent of him that is a balm to my soul. The weight of him against my body, the heat that rolls over my skin from where he leans over me.
I want to hate him. Fear him. Be angry at him for what he’s done. Ari has always been a presence I wasn’t aware I knew about. A freaking shadow hovering over me, fighting for me, watching out for all the other dangers staring me in the face.
Tears roll down my cheeks, partly because of the adrenaline still choking me, but also because I shouldn’t feel this way about a man who has done so much wrong. But I can’t help it. I can’t deny it. Parts of me burn when Ari touches me. The anxiety quiets and it feels right in a way that is so utterly wrong.
He stares at me silently, his gaze tracing the lines of my face. “Are you done fighting me now?” I want to be. But there’s something inside me that won’t stop. Something that keeps telling me this is so insanely wrong that I’d be an idiot to accept it.
“No,” I whisper, both hating and loving how the answer returns the smile to his face. “Good,” he croons, his voice a seductive purr. “I like it when you fight.” His mouth brushes mine and I snap my teeth at him. It only makes him smile more.
Fingers locking over my jaw to keep me from doing it again, he bites down on my bottom lip, licks the sting before kissing me so deep that I’m helpless to the slide of his seductive tongue against mine.
©Lily White 2020
Lily White is a bestselling author who likes to dabble on the dark side of romance. She is most known for her Masters Series, Target This, Wishing Well, and The Five.
When she isn’t writing as Lily White you can find other books by her under M.S. Willis where she has penned the Control Series, the Estate Series, and Because of Ellison (contemporary romance).
Lily enjoys stretching her writing muscles by continuing to challenge herself with each book she publishes.
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