Warrior Rising

Ilaria stared at him, her heavy-lidded expression stunned and confused.

Her mouth was swollen and damp from his kisses, a perfect rosy pink that had his hands curling around her shoulders, his muscles straining against the nearly overwhelming need to pull her back into his arms.

“What are you doing to me?” In his mind, the words sounded accusatory, but to his ears the question only sounded confused. “You’re enchanting me.”

She shook her head. Her lips parting as if in denial. But even as Harrison watched, they closed softly on a smile. A sad smile. “You don’t want to desire me. But you do.”

And she was right. Exactly right. He was a man who valued control above almost anything, yet within moments of meeting her, she’d attacked every ounce of control he possessed, and he’d yet to recover. It was all he could do not to pin her to the wall and take everything she offered.

Which only made him angry. She was the enemy.

Dear Reader,

Finally, I present to you the eagerly awaited conclusion to the Esri series. Although I’ve taken care to make certain you won’t be lost if you start with this book, I hope you’ll eventually read the entire series. The first three books of the series, The Dark Gate, Dark Deceiver, and, most recently, A Warrior’s Desire are available in e-book formats.

The Esri series has always been very near and dear to my heart. Previously, ex-Navy SEAL Charlie discovers a woman of strength, beauty, and passion in the pretty little slave, Tarrys, as they complete a dangerous mission into Esria to rescue the imprisoned Esri princess, Ilaria. Now Charlie’s brother, Harrison, whose hatred for the Esri knows no bounds, has been forced to guard the far-too-alluring Princess Ilaria as they struggle to seal the gates between the worlds once and for all.

I hope you enjoy this world and characters as much as I have.

Best always,

Pamela Palmer

PAMELA PALMER is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author. When her initial career goal of captaining starships didn’t pan out, Pamela turned to engineering, satisfying her desire for adventure with books and daydreams until finally succumbing to the need to create worlds of her own. She lives and writes in the suburbs of Washington, DC.

Pamela Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Thanks to Laurin Wittig and Anne Shaw Moran, my

critique partners, my buddies, and the sisters of my heart. I couldn’t do it without you and wouldn’t want to. Thanks, too, to Ann Leslie Tuttle, Robin Rue, Kim Castillo, Emily Cotler, Sarah Drasner, and Dana Hamilton for all your efforts on my behalf. I love working with you all.

And thanks and love to Keith for accompanying me

on the research trips and for always being there for me. My hero.

Midnight was still several hours away, the moon full behind a thick layer of snow clouds. Activity around the Dupont Circle fountain in downtown Washington, D.C., buzzed with a grim, almost desperate determination as more than a dozen metropolitan police, wearing wristbands of holly, cordoned off the traffic circle while a team of D.C. firefighters set up the fire ring that would be lit just before the witching hour.

Harrison Rand strode around the circle, overseeing the activity as the humans busily created a defense against the night’s probable coming invasion. Every month, for an hour at midnight of the full moon, the gates between the human world and Esria opened. For fifteen hundred years, the Esri—the man-sized, malicious creatures at the heart of the legends of fairies and elves—had been locked out of the human world, the gates sealed, but for the one forgotten…a gate that opened, oddly enough, into the heart of Washington, D.C.

Six months ago, an Esri had stumbled upon that forgotten gate by accident, on the scent of one of the seven stones of power, and things had gone downhill fast. Now all twelve gates were open and the Esri’s King Rith was hell-bent on tearing down the walls between the realms and enslaving the entire human race. Apparently, he had the power to do it. Or he would have, if he managed to get his hands on the magically powerful stones that had long ago been left in the human realm, stones that Harrison and his small team had searched for and found, and now guarded with their lives.

Harrison’s sole mission in life had narrowed down to one thing—protecting humanity from the Esri. And the only way any of them could do that was to reseal the gates before King Rith’s minions managed to steal back the stones, giving Rith the power he sought. But sealing those gates was a damn sight easier said than done.

He adjusted the combat vest that he’d donned in case the Esri came through shooting arrows this time. Blasted, uncomfortable thing. The CEO of his own computer software company, his world used to be one of the office, his uniform a pair of khakis and a polo shirt. It was his brother, Charlie, who’d always been the soldier, not him. But thanks to the trace of inhuman blood that apparently ran through their veins—Esri blood from some long-ago immortal ancestor—they were both soldiers now.