Destiny's Knight: A Fallen Angel Protector Paranormal Romantic Suspense Book (Guarded Souls 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Destiny’s Knight

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  Epilogue Two

  Author’s Note

  Preview another book by this author

  Note from Lexxie

  eBooks by Lexxie Couper

  Lexxie recommends … Lila Dubois

  Excerpt

  From the second Nathanial Knight had smiled at her through the camera of her CCTV screen, she’d accepted she was sexually attracted to him. The second he’d crossed her threshold, the second she’d breathed him in, touched his hard body with her fingers, felt his skin warm hers…yeah, sexual attraction was an understatement. But that last kiss… She’d never had a kiss rock her to the core like that.

  Not even her producer—who’d popped her sexual-exploration cherry in more ways than one—had turned her veins to molten rivers of carnal hunger.

  And yet it was more than that. That kiss…there was a promise to it, a whole new existence.

  A glimmer of something beyond sexual attraction.

  A hope of something…deeper. More profound.

  Significant.

  “And that’s enough thinking of the kiss.” She had to get out of here, before she completely lost all sense of reality and decided it was possible to fall in love with an angel. Rubbing her palms on the thighs of Knight’s sweatpants again, she hurried to the bed. The pillows on it were big and fluffy. One of those pressed to the window would surely muffle the sound of the glass breaking when she smashed her shoulder against it.

  She tested the pillows, weighed them against each other, and selected the one she liked the most.

  You know this is lunacy, right?

  Yep. But to hell with doing nothing. She was not the do-nothing kind.

  If she was, she wouldn’t have up and moved to the US on a whim to see what else life had to offer when she was eighteen. She’d most likely still be working at the deli in her local supermarket, wondering what if?

  Of course, if you were still at the deli, Gilbert the Stalker wouldn’t even know you existed, so he wouldn’t have become obsessed with you, wouldn’t have sold his soul to the devil to get you, and you wouldn’t now be cast in the role of damsel in distress with a sexier than legally allowed angel as your unlikely savior.

  “Oh boy.” Yeah, this situation…

  “Time to get out of it,” she muttered. “Before I go completely crazy.”

  She’d get out, away from the unnerving allure of Nathanial Knight and his equally unnerving story, and get her arse to the nearest police station. Tell them about Gilbert, leave out the abduction-by-angel part, and call Adelaide.

  Yeah, that’s a plan. A sane plan. Let’s get on it.

  Hugging the pillow to her chest, she crossed to the door and—wincing at the possibility of it squeaking—inched it open.

  Listened.

  Knight’s deep voice—like distant thunder—wafted back to her from the living room. Who was he talking to? The djinn he’d mentioned earlier? Himself?

  Voices in his head?

  Didn’t matter. The fact there was no other voice was enough to let her know he was still alone. He may be an angel, and phenomenally sexy, and incomprehensibly the best kisser in existence, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t loopy, too.

  Adding a precautionary cringe to her wince, she closed the door, tested it really was closed—and then realized she had no way of stopping him from coming into the room at the sound of breaking glass, muffled by a pillow or not.

  “Damn it,” she whispered yet again.

  Her mother would want to wash her blasphemous mouth out with soap.

  She scanned the room. Thanks to Knight’s affection for minimalism, there wasn’t a bureau or dresser she could use as a barricade at the door.

  Of course. Had she really thought escaping from an angel would be easy?

  Tugging at her thumbnail, she frowned. Maybe if she pulled all the bedding from the mattress and piled it against the door? It wouldn’t slow him down for long, but it could be enough.

  Cringe and wince firmly back in place, she yanked the duvet, other pillows, and sheets from the bed and heaped them against the door.

  She studied her handiwork. Hardly a fortified barrier, but then, she didn’t have much to work with. “It’ll have to do.”

  Retrieving her preferred glass-smashing pillow from the now naked bed, she crossed to the window, slid the curtains open, and checked outside again.

  It didn’t look that far down to the ground. A few feet.

  It’s also dark. What if there’re rocks? You’re not wearing any shoes.

  Grinding her teeth, she took a few steps away from the window and pressed the pillow to the curve of her shoulder.

  She’d seen stunt doubles on the show do this kind of thing many times, throw themselves through a window. She herself had practiced the move—under the guidance of the show’s stunt coordinator—more than once, in a desire to do her own stunts, until the studio’s insurance agency stepped in and vetoed the idea. Of course, that had been prop glass, and there’d been no need to try to hide the whole routine from an angel in the other room who may or may not be delusional, so there was that, but…

  “Just do it, woman,” she growled, pressing the pillow closer to her shoulder as she backed as far away from the window as the room would allow. Her heels nudged the duvet on the floor. She flicked them a look, and then glared at the window. Swallowed. “Just suck it up and do it.”

  She sprinted at the window.

  And hit the brakes a few feet from her target.

  What the hell was she thinking?

  Her feet tangled beneath her. Arms pinwheeling, the pillow a useless projectile now heading for the floor, she let out a strangled eep.

  Idiot. Idi—

  Her right foot snagged her left ankle and she slammed into the floor, shoulder first, sans pillow.

  Something cracked, splintered. Pain blasted through her shoulder, up into her neck, down her arm.

  “Fuck!” she cried, grabbing at the sudden inferno in her shoulder, even as her momentum continued to carry her in an awkward slide across the hardwood. “Oh fuck, that hurts!”

  Destiny’s Knight

  Guarded Souls, Book 1

  Lexxie Couper

  Published 2018 by Book Boutiques.

  ISBN: 978-1-949797-02-2

  Copyright © 2018, Lexxie Couper.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Book Boutiques.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.

  Manufactured in the USA.

  Email [email protected] with questions, or inquiries about Book Boutiques.

  Blurb

  He fell from Heaven for her…

  Playing the kick-ass demon slayer Destiny, in the blockbuster TV show Destiny’s Knight, is a dream come true for Billie Sheridan. It’s a sur
real, exciting world, and she loves every minute of it. Until her agent tells her an obsessed fan has escaped police custody and is heading her way. She needs protection. Now.

  Enter Nathanial Knight.

  Nathanial Knight’s fall from Heaven wasn’t planned. But no matter how he tried to deny the call of Billie Sheridan, he failed. Cast down, he conceals the fact he’s an angel by working for Guarded Souls Protection and Security, but when he learns Billie’s stalker has sold his soul to the devil to have her, he moves. Fast.

  Billie’s TV character may exist in a world of demons, but discovering her protector is an angel is going to take some getting used to. Especially when he’s so damn sexy, and all she wants to do is discover just how naughty a fallen angel can be…

  Dedication

  For those out there who have fallen, and got back up again.

  Acknowledgements

  Cover Artist: Valerie Tibbs, Tibbs Design

  Chapter 1

  “Don’t open your door.”

  Billie Sheridan frowned at the fierce terror in her agent’s voice. There’d been no greeting, no apology for waking her at 2:45 am, just that one terse command drenched in fear cutting through the fog of Billie’s disturbed sleep.

  Don’t open your door.

  Shoving the heavy waves of her hair—currently dyed a copper auburn and messy as all hell from sleep—from her face, she wriggled into an upright position on her bed. “What the hell are you talking about, Adelaide?”

  “They’ve lost him,” Adelaide Williams rasped through the cellphone connection, a lifetime of cigarettes roughening her voice. “He slipped his ankle restraint a day ago. The police have no idea where he is.”

  Billie frowned again. “Addy, I have no idea who you’re talking about. Are you sure you have the right client?”

  “Christ on a fucking pony, I knew this was going to come back and bite me on the ass,” Adelaide muttered.

  Billie blinked. Adelaide never cursed. The woman was a paragon of good manners.

  A sharp sigh blew into the phone, loud enough to distort in Billie’s ear. “Honey,” Adelaide went on, her voice calmer but no less husky. “I have something to tell you, and I need you to not freak out, okay?”

  Billie shifted on the bed until she was cross-legged, a disquieting knot making itself at home in her stomach.

  Adelaide Williams had been her agent from the day she’d been cast as Destiny Blaq, demon assassin extraordinaire. Not once in all those years had she ever told Billie to not freak out—not even when the studio tried to enforce a clause in her contract that demanded she go topless for an entire episode.

  Brief glimpses of full-frontal nudity were so passé now. In today’s cutthroat world of streaming and cable TV, forty-five minutes of nudity was the way to go, a sure-fire path to ratings success.

  Thank God Adelaide had nixed that mandate quick smart. No freaking out required on Billie’s behalf. A flash of side-boob here and there was okay, but strutting about on set topless, fighting demons that way…yeah, Billie would quit before that happened. Adelaide knew it. So did almost everyone who worked on Destiny’s Knight, from the showrunner right down to the key grip.

  So what possible situation could make Adelaide sound so frazzled now?

  “Promise me you won’t freak out, B,” Adelaide demanded.

  Billie huffed out a shallow breath as she rubbed at her arm. “I won’t freak out, Addy. I promise. Now tell me what’s going on.”

  Adelaide let out a sigh far more shaky than her previous one. “Two months ago, the authorities arrested a man who had been stalking you. He was convinced he was the embodiment of Wraif and was determined to reclaim you—and by you, I mean Destiny. He’s a whack job, honey; he’s dangerous and he’s obsessed with you.”

  A prickling tension crawled up Billie’s spine and over her scalp.

  Wraif was her character’s arch nemesis, a lust demon who used pleasure to kill his victims, and who’d been Destiny’s lover in the pilot episode. Wraif’s fall from Destiny’s bed came when he seduced her twin sister to her death in retaliation for Destiny refusing to let him dominate her via BDSM games. Every time Wraif appeared in a story arc, the ratings spiked—the audience loved his deranged, psychotic obsession, and Destiny’s hatred of him.

  The actor who played Wraif was a born sweetie with a wife and brood of children. Definitely the antithesis of his character on the show.

  Anyone who believed themselves to be Wraif would need to be unhinged.

  A cold shiver joined the prickling heat creeping over Billie. Unhinged, obsessed with her, and on the loose, it seemed. Not a good combination.

  She swallowed. “Why do I not know anything about this?”

  Adelaide made a frustrated sound. Or maybe an embarrassed one. “He’d sent over fifty letters to the studio before the CEO contacted the police. By the time they caught him, he’d sent fifty more, each more graphic than the last about his plans for you.” She paused, the heavy silence broken by the hammering thump of Billie’s heart in her ears. “Once they caught him, I didn’t think you needed to be worried. The authorities had him. He was going to jail. You didn’t need to be…”

  “Freaked out?” Billie finished for her. Her heart wasn’t just thumping in her ears now; it was doing its damnedest to hammer its way out of her body.

  Adelaide had the good grace to mutter out an apologetic sound that turned into an apologetic cough. “I’m sorry, hon. But the Golden Globes were only a week away and I made the call. I didn’t think he’d get away.”

  Billie closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “But he has?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s coming for me?”

  “The authorities believe so.”

  “Awesome.”

  Adelaide made another one of those ambiguous grunts: part shame, part frustration. It was a noise Billie would gladly like to never hear her make again. It was so out of character for her.

  Adelaide had swooped into the waiting area of the Destiny’s Knight open-call audition—an audition Billie had only attended as support for her roommate, the only real friend she’d made since moving to the US. Addy had thrust her card into Billie’s hand and proceeded to sweet-talk the casting director into letting her read for the role of Destiny.

  Up until that point, the sum total of acting work Billie had done was in a dog shampoo commercial back home in Australia, and she’d only landed that gig because she’d been best friends with the advertising agency’s creative director’s daughter.

  Of course, her roommate stopped talking to her the day she was cast as Destiny, something that still hurt Billie deeply. Just as she’d been hurt when her best friend stopped talking to her over the dog shampoo commercial. For Pete’s sake, Billie hadn’t been upset when Jenny passed her black-belt ranking on the same day Billie had failed.

  So much for best friends through thick and thin.

  Adelaide was the closest thing Billie had to a BFF now, which was kind of sad if she thought about it. But the agent had stood by her no matter what, even during the first season of Destiny’s Knight, when the critics slammed Billie for being a “talentless nobody thrust into an underserved limelight.”

  In the four years since, as the show became a ratings juggernaut and cult phenomenon, and Billie’s acting talent was lauded as “ethereal” and “mesmerizing,” Adelaide had become more and more an integral part of Billie’s life. The non-judgmental mother she never had.

  “Just don’t open the door to anyone,” Adelaide repeated, stress eating into the instruction. “The cops are sending over a detail now. When they get there, I’ll let you know. Plus, I’ve arranged extra protection for you with—”

  A sharp buzz sliced across Adelaide’s words.

  Billie jumped, dropping her phone in the process and letting out a little squeak her kick-ass character would have been completely embarrassed by.

  “Billie?” her agent’s voice—tinny and faint—wafted up from the mattress.


  The buzz came again, sharp and insistent.

  Someone was at the front gate of her home, pressing the intercom button.

  “Billie?”

  Billie’s heart crashed fast in her throat.

  The intercom buzzed again. Longer this time.

  Billie stared through her bedroom’s open door at the darkness of her home beyond. A weak silver glow touched the edges and surfaces of her furniture, the moon outside barely penetrating her living room through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors that opened out onto the ocean-facing balcony.

  “Billie?”

  She started, Adelaide’s distant voice like a scream in the silence.

  The gate buzzer sawed at the darkness once more.

  Snatching up her phone, she raised it to her ear. “There’s someone here.”

  “Don’t open the door!” Adelaide damn near screeched. “The cops shouldn’t be there yet. Or the guy from the security agency.”

  Billie stared into the gloom beyond her bedroom door. “But what if they are?”

  “I…I don’t know,” Adelaide admitted, the confession becoming a wheezy cough. If Billie hadn’t been so on edge, she would have been gobsmacked. Adelaide Williams never admitted to not knowing something.

  For a fifth time, her intercom buzzed. Loud. Long. Impatient.

  “I’ll go see who it is,” Billie said, beginning to climb off her bed.

  “No!” Adelaide burst out. “If it’s Gilbert, he’ll know you’re home.”

  Billie paused on the edge of her bed. “My stalker’s name is Gilbert?” A giggling snort escaped her. “Well, that’s just a ridiculous name for a stalker.”

  “Billie,” Adelaide snapped.

  “Sorry.” Billie blushed. A lifetime of being raised by a strict Protestant mother had conditioned her to be shamed by admonishment.

  Once again, the intercom buzzed.

  “I’m going to answer it,” she announced, scrambling completely off the bed. Ignoring her robe, she hurried from her bedroom into the darkness of her home.

  “Wilhelmina Sheridan, don’t you dare!”