Take the Heat

He groaned at the wretched level of his desperation. He needed to let her go. For a guy who always let them go, it shouldn’t be a problem. Yet, every cell in his body fired in objection.

Frustrated and clouded with desire, he stood in his lonely corner of the coffee shop and deliberated the risks. Laws would be broken. She could have him arrested.

She could offer him her body.

He plucked out the envelope. Blitz Luxury Suites. Room #106. Two magnetic keys. His blood thrummed in a turbulent mess of excitement, panic and determination. He pocketed a key, counting on her to have overlooked the extra, and returned the envelope.

Never had he expected to find someone who could entice him enough to set his fantasies in motion. What if his untested seduction failed? It could cost him his job, his freedom and her trust. He gave the bathroom door a hesitant and longing look.

He wouldn’t fail. In a few hours, she would be obliviously asleep, and he would have everything prepared. With a hand in his pocket, fingers curled around the key card, he shoved out the door. The cold air sliced through him and sharpened the edges of his resolve.

* * *

Three hours later…

Something heavy pressed down on Joni’s chest, nudging her from sleep. She dragged her eyes open.

Hazy layers of darkness smudged the outline of a man, the silhouette of his face inches from hers. No, that couldn’t be right. How the hell had he gotten past her safeguards?

The familiar woodsy musk of cologne chased away her drowsiness. She bucked beneath the immovable weight, blinking rapidly, arms and legs hemmed in by bedding and the body above her.

A scream tore through her throat and garbled against the salty, hot palm clasped over her mouth. Fingers dug into her cheek. Her lungs launched into a fit of spasms, stretching her nostrils and pumping her chest in a bid for more air.

Her eyes adjusted, taking in the strong lines that sharpened his jaw. Thick lashes edged gray eyes. She knew those eyes. They’d glinted ice blue in the low-lit ambiance of the coffee shop. She’d fallen asleep fantasizing about them.

His ragged breaths heightened her own. She arched her back, tried to knock him off. Jerked her arms. No wiggle room. His knees bracketed the outsides of hers, and the tops of his feet hooked her ankles.

“Deep breaths, Joni.” A kiss of whiskey traced his whisper.

Oh God, had he gotten drunk before he decided to use the key card she’d lured him with? How had he gotten past the alarm system rigged on her door or her colleague waiting in another room in the hotel?

She glared at him and growled low in her throat, her words indiscernible against his hand. Release me, motherfucker.

He stuffed a towel in her mouth, drowning her roar in the scratchy material. She twisted and flailed anew, succeeding only in exhausting her tension-strained body.

Smoothing her hair from her face, he spoke in a rumbling tone. “I can see the questions wheeling in your eyes.” His soft timbre contrasted with the rigid tension in his body. Uncertainty clouded the depths of his eyes, and his limbs vibrated with some kind of internal battle. He blinked, clearing it, and held up a pair of felt-lined cuffs. “I’m going to restrain—”

She shook her head, hard and fast, her tongue pushing uselessly at the terrycloth.

“Stop, Joni, and listen.” The steel of his eyes sliced through her, stilling her. “I am going to restrain you; then you are going to hear my proposition.”

The beat of her blood thundered in her ears. Proposition? One that she could accept or decline? Doubt shuddered through her, and she tried to engage her logic with a deep inhale. This was the guy she’d so badly wanted to go home with, and she would have under different circumstances. But he didn’t know who she was or the true intentions of her interview.

The impulse to scream weakened under the gravity of how this would play out. She had liked him, really liked him, but he’d taken the bait and stolen her key. His job was as good as finished. If he took this much further, unemployment would be the least of his worries. She needed to talk him out of whatever he had planned. She pleaded with her eyes, tried to turn her muffles into words. Remove the gag.

His attention sharpened on the vicinity of her arm concealed by the bedding, and he wrestled it free. She fought, but it was an unmatched struggle. He was twice her size, quicker, and trained to subdue with a skill honed in the police academy. Within a few minutes, her arms and legs were shackled and tied to the bed frame. Restraints he’d apparently set up while she slept.

He flicked on the lamp, and light drenched the room. She lay stretched in an X on her back, chest heaving, her voice strangled by the towel. The sheets were somewhere on the floor, lost in the scuffle.

He stood at the foot of the bed, hands in his jeans pockets, buttoned shirt untucked and loose at the collar. “You always sleep in a sports bra and shorts?”

Shit, shit, shit. She’d been assigned a local operative to back her up, and damn it, she’d spoken to him before she’d fallen asleep. Everything had been in place. The alarm should’ve sounded in both of their rooms. Where the fuck was Agent Garcia?

Dev reached in his back pocket and held up a pocketknife. The room shrank, constricting all the oxygen, accelerating the pump of her lungs. He knelt between her spread thighs and trailed the dull edge of the blade from her navel to her sports bra.

She shuddered, her fear of the weapon warring with her anticipation of what he planned to do with it. Maybe she was thick in the head, but she believed, to the hammering depths of her heart, that he wouldn’t hurt her.

He slid the steel point beneath her sports bra and cut. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck, and her body froze. What if he slipped?