Excerpt of Desire Untamed by Pamela Palmer

Kara MacAllister paced the floor of her mother's blue–sprigged bedroom, frustration and grief shredding her insides as rain slashed at the windows.

"Kara, honey." Her mom's words sounded pained and slurred as she eased out of another drug–induced nap. "Why don't you hire a nurse?" The same question every day.

"No nurse, Mom." Kara's heart shriveled as she met her mother's pain–filled gaze. Propped up on thick pillows stuffed into white, lace–trimmed pillowcases, her mother looked twenty years older than she had just a few months ago. Her once full cheeks lay sunken in a pool of skin, the pasty gray of the terminally ill. The doctors had opened her up to remove a tumor on her left lung only to close her back up and send her home to die. A few weeks, they'd said. Maybe a month. That was two weeks ago.

It felt like two lifetimes.

"But your job, honey. You'll lose your job."

Kara squeezed her mother's thin hand. "It's okay, Mom. I found someone to cover my class until I get back." If she went back. For nine years, ever since high school, she'd been content to stay in tiny Spearsville, Missouri, to share the old farm house with her mom, and teach preschool in the basement of the local church. Maybe it wasn't the most exciting life, but her mom had begged her to stay and she'd been okay with it. Even happy.

Until three months ago. Two days after Christmas, she'd woken up a frustrated bundle of restlessness as if overnight she'd developed a chronic, severe case of PMS. Everything annoyed her all of a sudden. Her boyfriend, her friends, her life, even the preschoolers she adored. She'd felt as if she needed something, but didn't have a clue what.

The only thing she knew for certain was her mother's dying wasn't it.

Her mom squeezed her hand, her grip weaker even than yesterday. "I want you to...have fun, honey. Not watch me die."

Fun. As if she could possibly enjoy herself doing anything under these circumstances. Kara leaned down and kissed a fragile cheek. "I love you, Mom. I'm right where I want to be." For now.

Her mother was all the family she had, all the family she'd ever had, and her cancer was killing them both. If only Kara could share with her a bit of her own remarkable health. It was so unfair. Kara was never sick. And her mom lay dying.

She rose, unable to remain still a moment longer. "I'm going to heat some soup and make a batch of blueberry muffins. After dinner we can watch a movie. How's that?"

"Lovely."

On her way out of the room, Kara reached for the television on the dresser and flipped on the local news. Glancing back, she caught her mother's sad smile twisting in pain.

It wasn't fair. She slammed the heel of her fist against the blue painted wall as she started down the stairs. Her mom didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve this.

Kara blinked back the film of moisture that suddenly clouded her eyes. In a few weeks time, she'd be all alone. Orphaned.

Could you call it orphaned at twenty–seven?

The sun had set while Kara was upstairs and the main level of the old farmhouse was shadowed with dusk. But she'd grown up in this house, lived here all her life, and could find her way blindfolded.

She slipped into the dark kitchen...and froze.

Silhouetted against the thin gray light coming through the back window was the dark form of a man inside the house.

Her heart rushed to her throat. Her stomach buckled beneath the slam of fear even as her logical mind screeched, It's just a neighbor. But when she flipped the light switch, the sight that met her gaze beneath the fluorescent strips did nothing to dispel her terror.

He was huge, well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and thick, bulging biceps. Tawny hair hung in waves to his shoulders framing a hard face and cold amber–colored eyes. With his dress pants and expensive–looking shirt, he could never pass as one of the local farmers even if she hadn't known everyone within a ten mile radius of town. This man was a total, and frightening, stranger.

"What do you want?" Her words came out breathy, forced around the constriction in her throat.

Her mind screamed, Run! But she couldn't. Not with her mother upstairs and helpless. Heart thundering, she gathered every last scrap of her courage, rose to her full five foot five and lifted her chin.

"Get out of my house."

A single, tawny eyebrow rose. "Bare your right breast."

Kara gaped at him as the full realization of his intent sent her pulse into a grinding thud in her ears.

As if reading her mind, the man rolled his eyes with an exasperated grunt. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Kara choked out a laugh. "Right. You just want to see my breast, then you'll go."

"Something like that."

She stared at him, her terrified mind grasping for a plan. Any plan.

He started toward her. Kara lunged for the knife rack, but as her fingers curled around the handle of a small paring knife, the stranger closed the distance between them. He hauled her against his chest, face to pecs, his large hand clamping around her wrist, immobilizing her.

Swallowing a scream, she struggled against his iron–like hold, but she might as well have been a fly in a spider web for all the good it did her. He was too strong. Kara tried to kick him, to knee him, but he only pressed her against the counter, his hips tight against hers as he towered over her.

Terror flashed in her mind like an explosion of light. He was going to rape her. Murder her.

Her pulse began to slow, the terror slipping away as if someone had opened a drain in her head. Even her shallow, desperate breathing evened out as if she'd suddenly, inexplicably, lost her fear of the huge man.

He eased the knife from her hand and returned it to the knife block. "I'm calming you."

And that's exactly what it felt like, she realized. A strange, unnatural calm settling over her as if an invisible hand were squashing her fear.

"How?" Though the word rang incredulous in her head, her tone, as it left her lips, was one of simple curiosity.

This wasn't right. He shouldn't have this kind of control over her. Her pulse tried to leap fearfully, but was instantly stroked into complaisance.

"Stop it." She needed to be afraid of him. He overpowered her. Overwhelmed her. Her senses swam in his nearness, in the elemental scent of wind and earth and pure, raw male. The intoxicating blend teased and tantalized, sending the blood rushing to the surface of her skin in a hot flush of awareness. An awareness that horrified her.

"Let me go."

"I'm not going to harm you. I need to know that you're the one I'm looking for."

"I'm not."

He stepped back, putting a slight distance between them even as he kept tight hold of her wrist. Feeling utterly detached, she watched him reach for her with his free hand, felt the pad of his finger slide down her upper chest to hook into the top of her scoop–neck tee and tug downward.

His eyes flared, those well–sculpted lips compressing as his thumb brushed over the flesh rising above the lace of her bra, tracing the odd stretch marks she'd noticed for the first time around Christmas.

Her gaze caught on his lips, mesmerized by their perfect fullness as a single, disturbing emotion finally broke free of his unnatural control to sweep her imprisoned body. Lust. Delicious fire skimmed over her skin, burrowing deep into her bones and blood, rushing straight down to her core.

He released her shirt as if he'd been burned and met her gaze, his own cool and shuttered. "You are the Radiant."

"I'm the what?" She stared at him, trying to make sense of his words. Of any of this. "What do you want?"

Those amber eyes glowed with a dark determination that would have made her heart pound if he weren't tamping her emotions. He slid his free hand over her jaw, his palm rough and calloused, his touch not ungentle as his forefinger hooked around the back of her jaw, coming to rest beneath her ear.

"What do you want?"

"You."

The sudden, sharp pressure at the base of her ear stole her thoughts and vision, sending Kara tumbling into a dark, unconscious abyss.