Brazen (B-Squad 1)

The click of the lock turning in the doorknob sounded.

There wasn’t time to consider, only react.

He grabbed the USB and pushed Bianca toward the door on the other side of the room. She pulled open the door and rushed inside, Taz close on her heels. He pushed the door shut right as the other one opened.

Bianca

Bianca held her breath. Fuck. If something could just go as expected sometime soon, that would be great. As it is, she and Taz were trapped in the resort’s small computer server room. There weren’t any windows or exits other than the door they’d come in through.

She pressed her ear to the door. No sound came through. Letting out a soft exhale, she turned to Taz and pressed a finger to her lip and jerked her head toward the door. He nodded.

Easing the door open a crack, she sent up a silent prayer to whoever was in charge of things to please, please, please let something go right. Through the narrow opening, she spotted the guard sitting in front of the wall of video screens next to the computer now running Lexie’s tap-in bug. An unwrapped foot-long hoagie, bag of chips and two liter of soda sat on the desk. The guard took his nine millimeter from his holster and sat it down next to his food. Then, he sat back in the chair and loosened his belt before reaching for his sandwich.

She pressed the door shut and leaned against it. Someone up there had it out for her today. Taking a quick look around, she took in the precise layout of the computer racks, the raised floor tiles with the anti-static finish and the digital wall thermometer that read sixty-nine degrees. Okay, finally good news. Whoever had built the server room had followed the standard guidelines Lexie had insisted on when creating the B-Squad’s secure computer server room. That meant the room was soundproof.

“He’s settling in for the long haul,” she said and pulled her cell from her chemise’s decorative pocket.

“Calling in a 9-1-1?” Taz asked.

She nodded. “Lexie and Marko are on surveillance duty, but between the rest of the team’s devious minds, they’ll be able to come up with something to spring us without alerting anyone that we were here.”

BIANCA: TRAPPED. NEED A DISTRACTION TO PULL THE GUARD FROM SECURITY ROOM.

LEXIE: ON IT. GIVE ME FIFTEEN.

She put the cell on the shelf. Nothing to do now but wait and try not to think about everything Taz had revealed. From the few bits and pieces he’d let slip before, she’d known his childhood hadn’t been great. She hadn’t realizes just how grim it had been. It explained why he didn’t like sharing any more than she did.

They were quite the pair. Both of them were all jagged edges but their sharp points fit together seamlessly—at least that’s what it had seemed like in the cabana. But after all they’d been through in the past twenty-four hours with Tamara, Taz’s almos

t still-married status and getting hit with Genie’s Wish, it made it hard to figure out what was real and what was fake.

Not when it comes to what really matters.

She knew what she had to do, and she had to do it now before she lost her nerve and took the easy way out.

“Do you have the contacts in?”

Taz turned to face her. “No, why?”

Heart hammering in her chest, she stretched up on her tiptoes and looked into his eyes. The scent of his sandalwood soap surrounded her, this close in, and she had to fight to remember the point of all of this. “No dilation.”

“You either.”

Desire, unaided by anything chemicals beyond the testosterone punch of Taz’s pheromones, unfurled in her belly, warming her skin and making her nipples pebble. “We have fifteen minutes, and I want to know if that connection we felt in the cabana is true.”

His lips curled in a dangerous, predatory grin. “What do you have in mind?”

She hooked a finger in his waistband. “Let me show you.”

Chapter 12

Taz

Taz captured her wrist before she could take down his boxers. If she thought sex was all there was between them, was their only connection, then he wasn’t going to just give in that easily. She was going to have to work for it.

“That is not how this is going to go.” He pulled her hand away and the elastic of his boxers snapped back against his lower abs, leaving a satisfying sting.

Her pink tongue darted out and wet her bottom lip as she looked up at him with her big brown eyes. “Oh really?”