The Girl Next Door (Shadow Agents 6)

Fantastic.

His arms wrapped around her. He lifted her up against him, and Gabrielle’s toes barely skimmed the ground.

His tongue licked across her bottom lip then thrust into her mouth. He tasted her. He claimed. He—

“The cop was still here,” Cooper growled against her lips. “I didn’t want him suspicious.”

He was kissing her for a cover.

Had she moaned? She’d definitely sunk her nails into his shoulders. She’d even arched against him.

“I—I know,” she lied. Their mouths were barely an inch apart. “The kiss was a good idea.”

A car cranked. The engine growled.

“I’m guessing that’s him,” Gabrielle said as she kept her hands on Cooper. But she did retract her nails. “Pulling away?”

He nodded. “I’m not letting you go until he’s gone.”

His body was so warm.

The kiss had been a fake.

Humiliating. Maybe she’d played it off, though. Maybe.

They stood there, embracing, mouths so incredibly close, and in that moment, Gabrielle realized a very important fact.

Cooper was aroused.

If she hadn’t been so distracted a moment before, she would have been keyed in to that situation sooner. She was so focused on the hot feel of his mouth she hadn’t realized until now that the hips thrusting against her—

He freed her.

Gabrielle stopped feeling quite so humiliated. He had been affected by the kiss. Mr. Dangerous had gotten just as caught up as she had in the heat of the moment.

“We need to get home,” he said in that deep rumble of his. “Come on, my bike’s waiting.”

Her phone vibrated, jerking in her pocket. She’d turned the ringer off before her little stint of B&E. “Hold on,” Gabrielle told him. She yanked out her phone and recognized her boss’s number at the Inquisitor.

“Gabrielle...” Cooper gritted out.

“It’s my boss. Calling after midnight. I have to take this.” Because there was only one reason Hugh Peters would call her this late.

A story.

“What is it, Hugh?”

“I just heard on the police scanner...” Excitement thickened his voice. “They got another vic. A female. Same MO as Archer.”

Her fingers tightened around the phone. “Where.”

He rattled off the address.

The address was close, just a few blocks away. She could jog there.

She would jog there.

“You get there and you find out what the hell is happening, got it?” Hugh said. Before she could answer, he continued, “Three kills? This mess is starting to look like the work of a serial.”