Take the Heat: A Criminal Romance Anthology

by Skye Warren

  He groaned at the wretched level of his desperation. He needed to let her go. For a guy who always let them go, it shouldn’t be a problem. Yet, every cell in his body fired in objection.

  Frustrated and clouded with desire, he stood in his lonely corner of the coffee shop and deliberated the risks. Laws would be broken. She could have him arrested.

  She could offer him her body.

  He plucked out the envelope. Blitz Luxury Suites. Room #106. Two magnetic keys. His blood thrummed in a turbulent mess of excitement, panic and determination. He pocketed a key, counting on her to have overlooked the extra, and returned the envelope.

  Never had he expected to find someone who could entice him enough to set his fantasies in motion. What if his untested seduction failed? It could cost him his job, his freedom and her trust. He gave the bathroom door a hesitant and longing look.

  He wouldn’t fail. In a few hours, she would be obliviously asleep, and he would have everything prepared. With a hand in his pocket, fingers curled around the key card, he shoved out the door. The cold air sliced through him and sharpened the edges of his resolve.

  * * *

  Three hours later…

  Something heavy pressed down on Joni’s chest, nudging her from sleep. She dragged her eyes open.

  Hazy layers of darkness smudged the outline of a man, the silhouette of his face inches from hers. No, that couldn’t be right. How the hell had he gotten past her safeguards?

  The familiar woodsy musk of cologne chased away her drowsiness. She bucked beneath the immovable weight, blinking rapidly, arms and legs hemmed in by bedding and the body above her.

  A scream tore through her throat and garbled against the salty, hot palm clasped over her mouth. Fingers dug into her cheek. Her lungs launched into a fit of spasms, stretching her nostrils and pumping her chest in a bid for more air.

  Her eyes adjusted, taking in the strong lines that sharpened his jaw. Thick lashes edged gray eyes. She knew those eyes. They’d glinted ice blue in the low-lit ambiance of the coffee shop. She’d fallen asleep fantasizing about them.

  His ragged breaths heightened her own. She arched her back, tried to knock him off. Jerked her arms. No wiggle room. His knees bracketed the outsides of hers, and the tops of his feet hooked her ankles.

  “Deep breaths, Joni.” A kiss of whiskey traced his whisper.

  Oh God, had he gotten drunk before he decided to use the key card she’d lured him with? How had he gotten past the alarm system rigged on her door or her colleague waiting in another room in the hotel?

  She glared at him and growled low in her throat, her words indiscernible against his hand. Release me, motherfucker.

  He stuffed a towel in her mouth, drowning her roar in the scratchy material. She twisted and flailed anew, succeeding only in exhausting her tension-strained body.

  Smoothing her hair from her face, he spoke in a rumbling tone. “I can see the questions wheeling in your eyes.” His soft timbre contrasted with the rigid tension in his body. Uncertainty clouded the depths of his eyes, and his limbs vibrated with some kind of internal battle. He blinked, clearing it, and held up a pair of felt-lined cuffs. “I’m going to restrain—”

  She shook her head, hard and fast, her tongue pushing uselessly at the terrycloth.

  “Stop, Joni, and listen.” The steel of his eyes sliced through her, stilling her. “I am going to restrain you; then you are going to hear my proposition.”

  The beat of her blood thundered in her ears. Proposition? One that she could accept or decline? Doubt shuddered through her, and she tried to engage her logic with a deep inhale. This was the guy she’d so badly wanted to go home with, and she would have under different circumstances. But he didn’t know who she was or the true intentions of her interview.

  The impulse to scream weakened under the gravity of how this would play out. She had liked him, really liked him, but he’d taken the bait and stolen her key. His job was as good as finished. If he took this much further, unemployment would be the least of his worries. She needed to talk him out of whatever he had planned. She pleaded with her eyes, tried to turn her muffles into words. Remove the gag.

  His attention sharpened on the vicinity of her arm concealed by the bedding, and he wrestled it free. She fought, but it was an unmatched struggle. He was twice her size, quicker, and trained to subdue with a skill honed in the police academy. Within a few minutes, her arms and legs were shackled and tied to the bed frame. Restraints he’d apparently set up while she slept.

  He flicked on the lamp, and light drenched the room. She lay stretched in an X on her back, chest heaving, her voice strangled by the towel. The sheets were somewhere on the floor, lost in the scuffle.

  He stood at the foot of the bed, hands in his jeans pockets, buttoned shirt untucked and loose at the collar. “You always sleep in a sports bra and shorts?”

  Shit, shit, shit. She’d been assigned a local operative to back her up, and damn it, she’d spoken to him before she’d fallen asleep. Everything had been in place. The alarm should’ve sounded in both of their rooms. Where the fuck was Agent Garcia?

  Dev reached in his back pocket and held up a pocketknife. The room shrank, constricting all the oxygen, accelerating the pump of her lungs. He knelt between her spread thighs and trailed the dull edge of the blade from her navel to her sports bra.

  She shuddered, her fear of the weapon warring with her anticipation of what he planned to do with it. Maybe she was thick in the head, but she believed, to the hammering depths of her heart, that he wouldn’t hurt her.

  He slid the steel point beneath her sports bra and cut. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck, and her body froze. What if he slipped?

  The angles of his masculine jaw locked with tension, his whiskered cheeks flexing with the grind of his teeth. “Relax. I won’t cut you.” He sliced through both straps and removed the material.

  Heat liquefied her body, from the adrenaline surging through her blood, from the way he was staring at her bared breasts. He shifted downward, cut off her shorts, and returned the knife to his back pocket.

  She released a breath, her thighs flexing, stretched open and held down.

  His gaze stroked every inch of her nudity and came to a stop on her pussy. “Jesus,” he rasped. “You’re fucking gorgeous.”

  The man knew how to send a thrilling shiver through her, whether she wanted it or not. He could do it just by flashing those intense blue eyes. His blond hair, long on top, shaved on the sides, formed a messy spike of bangs and framed the hard lines of his striking features. He was insanely attractive. And dangerous. She bit down on the towel.

  “I’m not going to rape you, Joni.” The iron resolve in his voice sank her into the mattress, overpowering her like the ropes on her arms and legs. “Nod if you understand.”

  In her five-year stint in Internal Affairs, she’d never miscalculated in an investigation. After her assessment of him in the coffee shop, she’d concluded he walked a precarious line of the law. She trusted his intentions not to rape her, but her instincts rioted against the chance he might lose control and force her.

  She nodded but gave one of her restrained arms a pointed glare.

  “You’re restrained because it excites me.” He fisted his hands on the mattress between her feet, his upper body braced on his arms, his eyes piercing places inside her he shouldn’t be able to reach. “And because it excites you too.”

  The bed warmed beneath her, wrapping tendrils of heat around her, cinching her body in a fevered embrace. She’d wanted him when he’d kissed her in the shop, but her investigation and her ambivalence prohibited it. Bound and gagged, it was terrifying how much she still desired him.

  “I don’t want you to be afraid. That’s not my thing. I want you aroused.”

  Her inner muscles clenched. If he fucked her without the appearance of consent, she wouldn’t lose her job, wouldn’t break a professional code of conduct. She tugged on the rope. Her choices had been taken fr
om her, hadn’t they? Maybe she was deluded by shock and arousal, but there was a startling amount of freedom in her restraints.

  “I will not put my cock in you until you beg for it.” He prowled around the bed and sat on the edge beside her hip. “I’m breaking some laws tonight, but rape isn’t one of them. I’ve never…” He smiled crookedly and rubbed the back of his blond head. “I’ve never done this before.”

  She melted into the bed, lightened by that confirmation.

  He leaned in, imprisoning her in the bluest reaches of his eyes. “If you aren’t begging for it by morning, I’m yours to punch, kick, haul off to jail, and utterly destroy.”

  His expression was neither regretful nor cruel. Dark eyebrows made his hard eyes even more determined. A shiver ran down her spine.

  “If I succeed…” He bent his head and skimmed his lips over her jaw, his sultry exhale rousing goose bumps down her neck. “If you beg me to fuck you…” His tongue swiped over her earlobe. He leaned back, snagged her eyes. “Then I will fuck you.”

  The crudeness in his language should’ve renewed her struggle against the cuffs. Instead, it sent a wave of pulsations through her clit. What if she didn’t have the willpower to fight his seduction? Suddenly, the gag was a comforting restraint, a barrier to prevent her from begging.

  He stood and unbuttoned his shirt, his watchful eyes holding hers hostage. Each button exposed an inch of tight skin, another crest of muscle. When the shirt dropped to the floor, he freed the button on his jeans and slid down the zipper.

  The throb between her legs beat to the pound of her heart. She could ignore it. Yep, ignoring it. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.

  He shoved his pants and underwear to his feet, and his cock jutted up, hard, thick and glistening at the tip. Good God, she couldn’t look away. A blaze of desire heated her sex, lubricating her for penetration. Fucking hell, he could slide right in.

  He circled the base of his girth with a finger and thumb, palm out, and stroked the length slowly. Another stroke. He regarded her, the seam of his mouth separating, his shoulders rolling forward. “Do you want this?”

  She glared at him, her pussy convulsing.

  A grin spread over his face, illuminating his eyes. Kneeling between her legs, he leaned in on his elbows, his knuckles just a nudge away from grazing her slit. Her hips rolled, and fuck him, he chuckled.

  His head dipped, his eyes searing her needy flesh. Could he see the contractions in her inner muscles? Was her clitoris swollen and flushed? She panted around the towel.

  “You have a tiny little clit, and your cunt is sopping.” He drew in a long, deep breath, and his eyes shuttered, opened. “Fuck, you smell like sex and sugar.”

  It was too much. He was too close. She jerked against the shackles and gnawed on the gag.

  He climbed up her body, still not touching her, and pinched the towel in her mouth. “You are not going to scream, because you don’t want to. Trust me, Joni.”

  She trusted his intentions, not his control.

  He yanked the gag free. She widened her jaw, wiggled it side to side. “Are you drunk?”

  The silken caress of his chuckle enveloped her. “Had a couple shots of fortitude.”

  Drinking and driving, breaking and entering, holding her hostage…he was so fucking screwed. “You could have any woman. A willing woman.” With his looks alone, he could walk into a bar and snap his fingers. “Why are you doing this?”

  His mouth hovered a kiss away, their breaths swirling. “To seduce someone so unlawfully she pleads despite herself, to win her so thoroughly she won’t turn me in”—he closed his eyes, inhaled—“is the essence of my fantasies.” His eyes opened, hard and unrelenting. “I want you to share it with me, and whatever the outcome, you are worth the punishment.”

  The sincerity in his words, as fucked up as they were, scrambled her convictions. She wanted to scream no. She wanted to beg yes. She didn’t know what to do.

  He studied her, his eyes roaming her mouth, hair, throat, returning to her lips. His hands were planted on either side of her head, trembles skittering down his arms, and the hard tip of his cock tapped against her thigh.

  The way he looked at her, the vehemence of his desire was an effective tactic. His mouth parted, and his slack bottom lip begged to be suckled. She lifted her head, her limbs shaking to close the distance. Captured in the dominating trap of his eyes, she felt altogether owned. It both scared and titillated her.

  “Few things are more arousing”—he brushed his lips over hers—“than breaking the rules and smudging the lines while smiling into the narrowed stare of the law.”

  She startled. Did he know who she was? She bit her lip. No, her investigation was confidential. The uncertainty dimmed, but it left a lingering fear. What would he do if he found out?

  He shifted to kneel between her legs, his muscular thighs sliding beneath her spread ones. The side of his mouth kicked up as he gripped his cock and began to stroke. With his eyes on hers, the speed of his stroking accelerated.

  Her skin quivered, yearning to be beneath the hard, desperate rub of that hand, at the center of his attention. The more he stroked, the shorter and tighter the movement became. His gaze flitted between her face and the apex of her thighs, lingering longer and longer on the latter. She absorbed the heat in his expression. She wanted him to fall over her, sink between her folds, and thrust his length to the root. Her pussy squeezed, her hips shifting up.

  They stared at one another, panting. The desire in his eyes swept a trail of fire to her womb, electrifying every nerve ending in its path. “I get off on you watching me, Joni.” Ragged breaths tumbled from his lips. “Do you like what you see?”

  “You’re an exhibitionist.” And damn it, her breathy response gave him his answer.

  “Just horny, Joni.” His abs contracted as his hips thrust against his hand. The corner of his mouth pulled up. “You and your labels.”

  Gorgeous. Seductive. Unlawful. He vibrated with labels. The twisting and compressing of his fist and the beauty and raw power of his strong body nearing climax propelled her pelvis into a rocking motion.

  All that toned flesh slick with sweat, his chest and abs flexing and straining for release built an explosive pressure in her core. She wanted him, but if she begged him, what part would she be playing in his twisted game? What would she write in her report? He broke into her room, tied her up, and she begged him to fuck her? She would lose her job.

  His mouth hung open, gasping. He jerked his fist up and down along his cock and caught his forward lean with a hand beside her hip. Groaning, he gave himself the relief he so desperately needed. She moaned with him as he pumped stream after stream of warm come on her belly.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, her body humming for her own release.

  “Hey, man.” At the sound of his voice, her eyes flew open. Phone to his ear, he shoved the towel back in her mouth.

  What the hell? Her shocked glare was a wasted effort as he paced toward the door, muscles flexing in his tight ass. “We’re ready.” He disconnected and tossed the phone on a nearby table.

  Ice shot through her veins. Was someone coming to the room? She twisted and writhed as the bastard kept his back to her.

  A few minutes later, he opened the door. A handsome Hispanic man strode through, brown eyes as bright as his smile. Dev shook his hand and led him into the room.

  A drug dealer? Male prostitute? Hired hit man? A tumult of nerves stiffened the hairs on her arms.

  The man stripped his clothes on the way to the bed. Waxed, oiled, and toned, his dark skin glistened in the lamplight. A male prostitute.

  She tried to close her legs. Of course, she fucking couldn’t. She should’ve screamed when she had the chance. Her heart rate doubled, and her breaths rushed loud and wet through her nose.

  “Do you know who this is, Joni?” Dev strode past him, unabashed in his nudity, his cock hardening again.

  She shook her head, pretending that her gaping, soaked p
ussy wasn’t broadcasting fuck me to the too-crowded room of naked men.

  The stranger dropped to his knees beside the bed and smirked. “I’m Agent Manuel Garcia. Sorry I’m late.”

  She stopped breathing, her head spinning with objections. No no no. He was lying.

  Dev ran a finger over the arch of her foot, drawing her attention. “Manuel’s an old friend of mine. He tipped me off a couple hours ago, got me past the alarm system.” He tsked. “Setting me up, Joni?”

  Her stomach dropped. Manuel was supposed to protect her, not betray her to Dev.

  Dev’s hand slid up her leg, leaving a shiver of goose bumps. “So my exhibitionism in New Orleans aroused Internal Affairs’ suspicion about my extracurricular activities, yeah?”

  Yeah. The guy he’d fucked in a crowded club had learned who he was and reported him. It had been consensual, albeit messy for someone in Dev’s profession, which was why the bureau had sent her.

  “Good thing Manuel owes me a favor.” His velvet laugh made her blood boil and nipples tighten. “I would’ve fallen right into your trap.”

  Instead, she’d fallen into his. Her back arched, and she moaned against the towel.

  As if their movements had been choreographed, Manuel rolled a condom over Dev’s length without uttering a word. When the man proceeded to deep throat him, everything in her went completely still.

  Dev palmed the back of Manuel’s head and guided the speed of the sucking. His heavy-lidded eyes, the slack of his jaw, and the grind of his hips communicated unbridled lust. The way they moved together reeked of sexual familiarity. Was he gay? Was he using her only as a voyeur to satisfy his kink to be watched?

  Frustration coiled between her legs, and a quivering exhale escaped her tight throat.

  Dev looked up, and his smoldering expression made her thighs tremble, sweeping a tingle to her toes. He dragged his gaze to her cunt, to the damp heat that promised a smooth and pleasurable glide of his girth.

  “Stand up and turn around.” Dev tapped Manuel’s jaw and held her eyes. “Do you want my cock?”