Spotlight & Giveaway: Nothing to Fear by Juno Rushdan

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Juno Rushdan’s new release: Nothing to Fear

The clock is ticking

 
Fearsome Gray Box operative Gideon Stone is devoted to his work and his team. He’s never given reason to doubt his loyalty…until he’s tasked with investigating Willow Harper, a beguiling cryptologist suspected of selling deadly bio-agents on the black market.
 
He knows she’s innocent. He knows she’s being framed. And he knows that without him, Willow will be dead before sunrise.
 
Thrust into the crossfire of an insidious international conspiracy, Gideon will do anything to keep Willow safe…even if that means waging war against his own. With time running out, an unlikely bond pushes limits―and forges loyalties. Every move they make counts. And the real traitor is always watching…

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Nothing to Fear 

The last time he let a woman take care of him in any capacity—Maddox not included—it had ended up being one of the biggest regrets of his life.
Gideon shook his head. “I’ve stitched up others and myself so many times, I should be an honorary medic.”
“You’re hurt because of me. Let me help you.” The unadulterated look of entreaty on her face sent the strangest sensation rolling through the pit of his stomach. “Please, Gideon.”
Her eyes shone with a resolve that wouldn’t take no for a response. Not many people would be willing to do what she proposed, and fewer still could stomach it. Her offer meant more than he’d care to admit. Against his better judgment, he nodded.
“Tell me what to do,” she said.
“Put this in the squeeze bottle.” He gave her a packet of salt. “Fill it with water to flush out the wound.” A saline solution was better than alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, which could damage the skin and delay healing. “And I need an extra four ounces of plain water.”
While she scrubbed her hands at the sink, he shut the engine and laid out everything from the med kit. Damn it, he was out of gloves and thread for stitches, which meant they’d have to use the skin stapler.
She hurried to him with the other supplies. He stared at her, looking past her stained blouse, the loose red hair flowing around her shoulders, soiled legs, scuffed shoes. Past her haunting beauty that had hooked him and wouldn’t let go. She exuded such an alluring warmth.
Tension shivered through him, rippling deep to that cold pit in his gut.
The ugliness that was his job drained him, sucked the soul dry, leaving him a wretched husk on a good day. But the way she made him feel—the fact that she made him feel anything at all—was nothing short of a miracle.
“Maybe asking you to do something that’ll give you nightmares isn’t a good idea.” With this shitstorm she had to contend with, he didn’t want to add to her troubles. “It’s okay if you want to reconsider.” No way he’d blame her. “Besides, I don’t have gloves.”
Which was reason enough not to embroil her in the horrible nitty-gritty bits of this job analysts never had to see. Bits he never wanted her to see. Much less touch without gloves.
“You didn’t ask. I offered. And I don’t dream, so no danger of nightmares.” She set everything on the dinette table. “I’ll work better without gloves. Latex irritates my skin.”
Suddenly, not having condoms was a positive.
As quickly as the errant thought had sprouted, he hacked it away. He was bleeding from his gut. This wasn’t the time to think about the wild, dirty sex he wasn’t going to have with her.
“Let’s get started.” She gave him an expectant look. “Take off your pants and lie down on the bed.”
The words tangled in his head, curling like strangling vines. “What?”
“With the irrigation, you should remove your jeans. The blood will ruin them.”
“Yeah. Sure. Okay.” Hell no. Trapped in a confined space with Willow and no pants on added up to bad idea. Far from okay.
“Gideon.” A question danced in her eyes. “Your pants?”
Holy mother. He was scared, a big yellow-bellied coward, and nothing scared him. Nada. Zilch. Not deep-cover missions, hunting terrorists, hit squads, the prospect of dying—none of it elevated his pulse past eighty. Yet this sexy half-pint had his pulse in a flat-out sprint over the idea of taking off his stupid pants.
Willow snagged a finger through a belt loop and tugged him closer. His mutinous feet moved forward, and the next thing he knew, she lowered his zipper.
He swatted her hand away. “I’ve got it.”
If his pants were coming off—and they had to, as clothes were limited and blood on his jeans wouldn’t be inconspicuous in the Caymans—then he’d be the one to remove them.
“Don’t snap at me when I’m only trying to help,” she said. “I don’t appreciate it.”
He admired a woman who wasn’t afraid to put him in his place. “Got it. Sorry.” Kicking off his boots, he slid his pants down, revealing his boxer briefs, and shoved them aside.
Her gaze dipped past his waist. She wet her bottom lip and snagged it between her teeth. “You’d be more comfortable lying down. Let’s go to the bed.”
Yeah, that was not going to happen. “We’ll do it out here.” He sat on the L-shaped bench.
“Fine.” She sank to her knees between his legs and draped a towel across his hip below the wound. Her knuckles skimmed his inner thigh, stirring a tingle across every nerve ending. The hot and hungry kiss they’d shared came roaring back to him, her curves filling his palms, her eager tongue licking up into his mouth and luring him deeper.
Stiffening, he beat his monstrous libido unconscious, threw it in a trunk along with the memory of that kiss, and locked both away.
He popped a couple of pain-reliever tablets and snagged a packet of ceftriaxone. The one-dose antibiotic came as a crystalline powder. He mixed it with water, filled a sterile syringe, and injected it in a vein in his arm.
Peeling off the gauze, Willow inspected his injury. Then she looked up at him with those sparkling eyes. His skin turned tight as a vacuum-sealed pack with the need for something ineffable, and for a split second, he forgot the pain.
Ice-cold saline shot into the wound. Shards of agony bloomed and splintered through his body.
“Jeez!” He clenched his jaw and turned his hands into fists, breathing through his nose. “It’s freezing. A little warning next time.”
“Warm water sits in a hot water tank where sediment and sludge accumulate. I thought it was better to use cold water to flush the wound.”
In theory, it sounded smart. In reality, it gave him the startling equivalent of a much-needed cold shower. He’d take a lot of those in the next two days.
Blood leaked onto the towel. She dabbed at his abdomen with gauze. He watched for any signs she was about to toss her cookies, but her gaze didn’t waver, and her fingers stayed steady. Impressive.
She grabbed a new dressing treated with the blood-clotting agent and pressed it to the slit. “You’ll have to talk me through stitches. The more specifics, the better. In college, I could wing anything, except social stuff. I’ve always sucked at that.”
Her openness was astonishing, took his breath away, and left him in awe.
“No stitches. You’ll have to use this.” He handed her the skin stapler. “Hold the wound closed and line up the arrow with the center of the cut. Then press down hard with the device and deploy a staple about every centimeter.”
He pulled away the gauze. The blood-clotting agent had worked, giving him a clear view. All in all, the wound wasn’t too bad. Barring infection, it would heal, but with a nasty scar.
“This is going to hurt, isn’t it? A lot.”
He nodded. It was going to hurt like a son of a bitch, but there was no way around it. “Have at it. Has to be done.” He gripped the edge of the table and braced himself.
She held the two sides of the wound together and, following his instructions, pressed the first of ten staples in.
A sharp pang arced through him and he gritted his teeth. If he were the one wielding the stapler, he’d focus on the internal ticking in his head until he was done. But with Willow touching him, the one sound in the world he longed to hear was her voice.
“Talk to me. How is it that you’re not squeamish about this?”
“During my checkups, I have to watch as they draw blood. Not seeing the needle sink into a vein is unbearable. When I was little, I had trouble with some types of physical sensations.”
He recalled reading about that in his research on autism. “Sensory processing disorder?”
Her gaze flickered up to his, her mouth agape for an instant in surprise. “Uh, yeah.”
She lowered her eyes and pushed another staple in. He groaned through the pain.
“Touching certain things would make my skin crawl. My parents had me work with a therapist who put me through loads of tactile exercises like putting my hand in a box filled with sand or grains of rice and groping around for as long as possible.” Drawing in a deep breath, she shuddered. “I’d last a whopping thirty seconds. And it felt an eternity, screaming on the inside, wanting to rip off my skin.”
He stayed focused on her voice. She worked quickly but with precision, and he gripped the table, refusing to flinch or make the slightest sound of weakness.
“Then the therapist had me accomplish something specific such as fishing out ten marbles from funny foam. Shifting the focus from time to completing a task changed everything. This daunting world crammed with insurmountable obstacles became something manageable.”
She depressed the last staple, and he hissed with relief.
“Attagirl. You showed no mercy.” Downright ruthless. Kind of twisted, but he liked that about her. A lot.
“It had to be done. Besides, I knew you could take it.”
Hot. Damn. He didn’t know if it was her smile, the way she’d bucked up to help him without getting jittery and squeamish, or how she didn’t apologize for torturing him, but what she’d said was so damn hot.
He ached to do the one thing he absolutely couldn’t.
Kiss her.

Excerpt. ©Juno Rushdan. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: Paperback copy of Nothing to Fear (Final Hour) by Juno Rushdan

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and post a comment to this Q: In Nothing to Fear, Gideon and Willow forge a powerful connection. Neither is a virgin, but both make love for the first time in the book. Do you remember the first time you made love instead of simply having sex?

 
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Meet the Author:

Juno Rushdan draws from real-life inspiration as a former U.S. Air Force Intelligence Officer to craft sizzling romantic thrillers. Although she is a native New Yorker, wanderlust has taken her across the globe. She’s visited more than twenty different countries and has lived in England and Germany. When she’s not writing, Juno loves spending time with her family. She currently resides in Virginia. Visit her online at www.junorushdan.com.

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