Braided Silk

Futuristic Romance/Twisted Fairytale/Biopunk -- Novella (ebook)

Rapunzel was made with technologically advanced hair. As a trained Mother agent, Zel can't escape the DNA that makes her a pawn in corporate espionage. Kidnapped and held in a tower on Gothel Island, she falls to the sexual allure of her captor’s son, Langley, a man whose every tantalizing touch makes her forget she wasn’t born human.

Langley Gothel protests the existence of creations such as Zel, but when faced with losing her, he sees the truth: Life is precious, whether born, modified, or shaped in a Petri dish. He does the one thing he's thought he'd never do. He has to give up Zel, or become a mod. But will that be enough to get them down from the floating islands and safely to ground?

From Liquid Silver Books

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EXCERPT from Braided Silk

Chapter One

Rapunzel shaved her head in protest. Her dead hair now lay at her feet in strands of unique protein filaments.

The follicle hand laser dropped to the floor from her slack fingers with a clank. Rubbing the top of her unnaturally smooth scalp, she fought back the sting in her eyes and the burn in her nose. Her below-the-waist hair had, understandably, never been sheared since it was made of an uncuttable substance. She blinked rapidly, willing the vanity at bay as she steeled herself to gather up all the strands and pitch them out the window of her room in the top tower of a floating island, far, far above the city of New Castle. The city where she’d dump all that hair to rain down on landers who’d never see it coming.

“What have you done?” The deep baritone from the doorway startled her.

Hand pressed to her chest as if it’d calm her racing heart, she stared out the window at the passing clouds and didn’t turn to the door she hadn’t heard open. The door she’d tried and failed to escape through many times. The hand laser skidded across the floor and against the wall where her visitor kicked it.

“I see. So you managed to steal the laser from Mère’s lab.” Langley Gothel, veritable prince of this forsaken floating island, pulled a chair from the hall with a screech along the cold stone floor. “Sit.”

Unwilling to be used any longer, she’d managed to steal the laser before it’d been used by her kidnapper. This stalemate had come to a head at that moment. She’d let herself be distracted Langley Gothel for too long. When the follicle hand laser had sat on a lab cart—unnoticed my all but her the last time she’d been poked and prodded for research—she’d tucked into her pocket. Better she get rid of all her hair than let it go to the bitch who’d put her in this tower.

Langley lowered his voice and said again, “Sit. Let me see the damage.”

As all their assignations started, she ignored him. Ignored the zing of lust that trembled through her. Ignored the longing to stay wrapped in him, a longing nearly as fierce as the one to escape. And as it always progressed, he entreated her again, as if daily, he courted her in an accelerated fashion of gentling, wooing, and taking. “Turn around. Face me. I didn’t put you in here.”

He knew just how to make her spin around, rage snatching at her, heating her skin, and snarl at him. “You didn’t get me out.”

His luscious mouth frowned below deep pools of bottomless eyes that his glasses did nothing to detract from, and he ran a hand through his dark black curls, the texture of which she knew by heart. She’d clutched at the shoulder length silken threads, giving herself over to the bliss of forgetfulness. He had her whenever he wanted her, and she gave it to him, melted for him with one touch. Willingly, even if she hated him for it, and herself. They’d started the affair in a desperate clash of groping hands and impatient mouths before they’d settled into a consuming, fiery intimacy.

“Uppity-ass,” she sneered the insult at him. The helpless anger propelled her forward. She swung a hand back in her usual swipe to lift the mass of long hair behind her back. The course strands weren’t there. She ignored the sense of loss and pinioned her body, rotating on one heel, and brought her other foot around. Before she connected, Langley ducked. The harsh sound of his grunt as he reached for her thrummed through her belly. She swirled away from the heat of his fingers as they brushed across her waist.

They sparred daily. At first, she’d done it to strike out, but then they’d simply continued the practice that always ended in foreplay. He admired her talent and applied himself to the lessons. Now, she wanted to hurt him, to block the pain he caused her and she caused herself, by killing off her hair to force the end of her imprisonment and the end of their affair.

“Get me out of here.” She thrust out an arm and knocked him back with a palm to his chest.

“I won’t do that.” He spun away and circled.

“You know it’s not right.” She whipped about to keep his flushed face in view. “To keep me here.”

His chest rose and fell, his sensual lips half curved, and the sun spilled through the window to sparkle on his glasses. A curl of hair fell across his forehead, and she battled the urge to push it back.

He lunged. Spinning her, he gripped her close from behind and pinned her arms to her body. She fought against him but couldn’t break free. The scent of salt and warm, clean fabric clouded her senses.

His hold loosened. She dove away, sliding across her bed, away from the window, to crouch in front of the door. Panting, she grudgingly admitted, “You’ve gotten better. You didn’t telegraph that move.”

“I had the best teacher.” He slid up out of his stance, a graceful, sleek movement that made her knees weak. Then he glanced at her head with a frown and did something different, unexpected. He stepped back. It went entirely against the usual give and take before they fell to her bed in a heated thrashing. His gaze dropped to the floor at her hair, like golden hay scattered beneath his shiny dress shoes.

More of this chapter excerpted on goodreads.