Undercover Captor (Shadow Agents 5)

“Will you dance with me?”

That was not what he’d expected the doc to say. Drew just stared at her.

Then he saw the color flood her cheeks. The embarrassment because she thought he was rejecting her.

“Never mind.” She spun away from him. “That was stupid. I—”

He caught her shoulders in his hands and slowly pulled her around to face him. “I’m not much of a dancer.”

Her lashes lifted. She gazed up into his eyes. “Neither am I.”

No, she didn’t understand. “My life is about missions and violence. Following orders and getting the job done.” His left hand slid down to the curve of her waist. His right caught her hand and cradled her fingers in his.

Her breasts brushed against his chest as she stepped closer to him. Her scent filled his head. Strawberries shouldn’t make a man feel drunk, but her scent worked better than wine on him.

“There wasn’t a lot of dancing when I was young,” he confessed to her. The music was still playing from downstairs. “There wasn’t a whole lot of anything.” Except a kid on the path of destruction. A mother with a heart that was breaking because she couldn’t seem to stop her son.

His feet moved. Slowly. Carefully. “I won’t ever be the polished guy.” Not the one who could blend in at any party or ball.

Her movements matched his. But she wasn’t awkward. She was graceful and perfect.

His doc.

He took his time, trying to give her what she wanted because making her happy mattered to him.

“There’s more to you,” Tina said softly as she glanced up at him with eyes that seemed to gaze right into his soul, “than just bullets and combat.”

She didn’t understand. It was the combat that had saved him. “When I was eighteen...” His fingers tightened around hers. At eighteen, Tina had watched her parents die. And at eighteen, Drew had been trying to find his life. “I had a choice. Get my life in order, join the army, or find myself in jail.”

“Jail?”

“I told you before I wasn’t the good guy back then.” He’d been the guy always looking for trouble, and finding it. “I was on a crash course with destruction. I knew what waited in my future, and it wasn’t pretty.”

“Why?” No judgment. No censure. Just curiosity. “What was happening to you?”

The music kept playing. So he kept dancing with her, bringing her even closer to his body as they moved so slowly around that little room.

“My old man didn’t want to be a father, and my town... Hell, ‘poor’ didn’t even describe it. There was no way out for us. My mom was trying, but she couldn’t make enough to take care of me and my three sisters.”

For an instant she stilled.

“Crime was the way to make money for them. So I did whatever I could. Whatever I had to do. The only law I followed was my own.”

He waited

for her to stop looking at him with such trust in her eyes.

Only, she didn’t.

They kept dancing.

“I stole,” he confessed. “I cheated. I found myself in the back of a patrol car a dozen times.”

“What made you change?”

The money had been good. He’d finally been able to buy nice clothes for his sisters. For his mother. My mom... “My mother cried over me. When the cops came—when they were taking me back to juvie—she begged me to stop.”

He could still see her tears. “I wanted to help her, but all I was doing was hurting her worse.”