The Girl Next Door (Shadow Agents 6)

He downed his own glass in seemingly one swallow. “It’s been one hell of a night,” he muttered as he set his glass down on the nearby end table.

She put her glass down, too. The whiskey was burning her throat. When it came to drinking, she was way too much of a lightweight.

“You don’t want to take the edge off?” Cooper asked her, frowning slightly.

She sank into the couch. I should be heading for the door. “I don’t mix so well with whiskey.”

“I can make you something else...”

“No.” The leather was supple beneath her fingers. Tension still held her body tight, and she kept thinking—

“It doesn’t do any good to keep picturing the dead.” Cooper sat next to her. His thighs brushed against hers. “Turn around.”

“Wh-what?” Now that was just sad. He was making her so nervous that she was actually stuttering.

“You’re so stiff you’re driving me crazy,” he said.

She turned around. His hands reached for her shoulders. Oh, no, there was no way those fighting fists were going to give any kind of relaxing massage—

His fingers began to knead her flesh.

Gabrielle’s eyes nearly rolled back in her head. She was wrong. So very wrong. His fingers were magic.

“I can help you to relax. Just breathe. Don’t picture him. Get that image out of your head.”

The man was way too good with his hands. “Is this...how you usually deal with adrenaline?”

A soft laugh. “No, I usually use sex.”

The tension snapped right back in her shoulders.

“Relax,” Cooper ordered, “that wasn’t an offer.”

&n

bsp; Oh, right.

“Unless you want it to be...”

Trouble. She’d known that the guy was serious trouble from day one.

“What cold case are you working on?” He asked before she could do more than suck in a shocked gasp of air. “I know you told me that you were starting to profile them.”

She had told him that, during one of their brief two-minute conversations when their paths occasionally crossed. “Kylie Archer. Her case isn’t as old as the others, but the cops don’t have any leads, so I thought I could try digging.”

“That digging led you to the body?”

“Keith Lockwood,” she whispered. The image of his body tried to push into her mind again, but she shoved it back.

He kept rubbing her shoulders. His broad fingers were sliding down her back.

Her thighs shifted restlessly.

“He knew who killed the woman?”

“I don’t know.” She would find out. As soon as the cops backed off, Gabrielle would be making her way back inside that apartment.

Her eyes drifted closed as he kept caressing her skin. His fingers skimmed over the edge of her arms. Then he returned his attention to her shoulders, started working down. Down...