Dare Me (Take Me 2)

And yet…

When Nikki had been reading to Nico Valdiviesio in his hospital room…when she’d been hearing about this mysterious stranger who’d saved thirteen lives and had warned countless others of the impending danger in the first building that exploded in Mexico City… She’d sensed that perhaps it was time to move on from Conner.

Especially since Nico had stirred emotions inside her and had ignited sensations she thought were so fizzled out and buried, they’d never resurface.

Now, while “Nico” sat beside her as Damen Castillo… She felt those emotions and sensations more acutely.

The sensations were easy to attribute to inherent sexual tension related to their attraction to each other.

The emotions were a bit more complex to reconcile. They were wrapped around her past and his present. Her memories and his job. Her need to cling to what she’d lost—and his need to ensure no one else suffered. Not on his watch.

Son of a bitch. Why can’t he be the bad guy?

That would make it easier to extract herself from this situation. She could hate him if he were the bad guy.

But, of course, he wasn’t.

He played on the same team she did—helping people, especially in times of extreme emergency. In this case, even dedicating himself to thwarting a traumatic crisis or an international catastrophe.

She took a deep breath, tinged with his cologne. And suddenly tingled from head to toe.

Nikki fought a sigh of exasperation.

This was soo inconvenient. Soo inappropriate. And soo…inescapable.

And why for the love of God had she not backed up her hard drive to an external source or uploaded it to a cloud environment?

Ugh!

She’d only been reminding herself once a week, at least, to do something to ensure that if her computer crashed, all of her files and photos would still be preserved. Yes, she had photos on her phone. But certainly not all of them. And not Conner’s love letters to her, which she’d scanned and loaded onto her laptop for posterity. Also so that they were always with her.

She stamped her foot as she lamented her procrastination. If she’d followed through, she wouldn’t be nearly as twisted up over Damen having possession of her laptop!

“Wishing you’d gone to the Maldives instead?” he quietly mused, his warm breath teasing the shell of her ear.

And didn’t his deep, evocative voice alter her entire disposition? Making her conjure an image of her lounging on a sandy white beach at the water’s edge, Mai Tai in hand, as she listened to the gentle rolling of waves onto the shore and his sexy voice murmuring suggestive comments that would make her nipples tighten and her breath catch. Sexy suggestions that would lead to her unraveling the strings of her bikini top and tossing it aside. So he could massage tanning oil over her breasts and—

Whoa.

Wait.

What?!

Nikki’s eyelids flew open.

You have got to be shitting me!

She was fantasizing about Damen Castillo?

The man who held her entire life in his hands at this very moment—literally?

The man who’d confiscated from her the one thing that meant the most to her?

Nikki fumed as her head whipped in his direction.

But as they stared into each other’s eyes, she merely gaped, unable to say a word.

He was so devilishly handsome. And so close in proximity, all she’d have to do was raise her arm from the console separating them and her fingertips would graze his set jaw.