Danger and Desire: Ten Full-Length Steamy Romantic Suspense Novels

by Pamela Clare

  “I’m trying to keep us safe,” he said. “It’s not like you got naked.”

  “Yeah, I just bared everything else.” All that lightness and joy flew out the window. She just felt dirty now. She wanted to cry. “You tricked me.”

  “I didn’t trick you. And it strengthens our hand for the job,” he said.

  “For the job?” she whispered. “Cole, he’s got surveillance on your room, and you still want to go through with it? He’s suspicious. My girls and I would never go through with a job under these conditions.”

  “There’s no other way.”

  “Why? What’s the rush?”

  “This isn’t a debate. We’re going forward. If he really suspected, we’d be dead.”

  She wanted to get out of the shower, out of view, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of being right.

  “Let’s keep sight of this job. He sees that footage—”

  “And he will,” she said. She felt embarrassed that she’d wanted Cole to tie her wrists and pull her hair—on camera. Proof of some sort of ugliness inside of her. All the amorphous guilt came flooding back. The feeling of shame.

  “Well, then there’s no question in his mind we’re a couple now, is there?” he said. “We needed to establish that for our mission. And that’s what we did.”

  But he’d made her feel dirty. And then he’d fucked her. “With the pool thing, at least I knew what I was getting into. At least the whole thing was voluntary.”

  He flicked his hair from his eyes. It occurred to her that it was a defensive movement. A way to look tough, to put up a wall. “Well, Angel,” he said, “that scene in the living room seemed pretty goddamn voluntary to me.”

  She slapped him.

  He just stood there, wet, water pounding him. Like she hadn’t even done it.

  “It wasn’t voluntary to be put on display like that,” she hissed.

  “Why do you care? You might as well have been washing dishes for all the shock value it would have for Borgola.”

  “I care, Cole.”

  “Why?” He looked at her keenly. “What is it? What does it show, Angel?”

  “Screw off,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Get out.”

  “You’re amazing. Nobody can take that away.”

  A few minutes ago she might have believed he thought that. How could she be so stupid? He was blackmailing her. She was a means to an end. “I’ll do your damn job. You don’t have to insult me on top of it with your bullshit platitudes, comprende, amigo?” The slip into Spanish was deliberate, there to create distance.

  He seemed about to protest, about to say something.

  She waited, wanting him to say that it was the truth, that she was amazing, beautiful.

  He took a last look at her, eyes dull as nickel. “Okay, then.” With that, he got out. Left her alone. She closed her eyes as the water beat down over her head.

  Pull it together, she told herself.

  But she didn’t know how she could deal with him after this. She’d let down her guard with him. She’d felt beautiful. She’d felt happy.

  Angel. Her ironic name. She was anything but—even to this lowlife.

  Fool. The bathroom door clicked shut.

  She let the water stream down on her for a long time. The mansion would have a massive hot water supply, and she might just use it all.

  She visualized the upcoming job. Or more, she resorted to it. She imagined sinking into the shadows, and the way everything bad seemed to melt away when she did that, at least for a little while. And there was the thrill of cracking the safe to look forward to. It would be even more dangerous now. The danger would even her out.

  And if things went well, she would be able to slip back into her life, but that was hardly enticing. What was even worthwhile there? Five years she’d been out, and still nothing felt as good as the rush of a heist.

  She shut off the water and stepped out. Her dress and panties lay in a heap on the floor. No way was she putting that stuff back on. She knotted the towel around herself and stepped out.

  Cole was at the little desk. “Hey, you,” he said. “How was the shower?”

  “Fine.” She opened her suitcase.

  “Take a look at this, baby. What do you think?”

  She went over to the desk. A word doc was up on his tablet. It said: We have the location of the safe. The other side of the bed is a blind spot for the camera in this room. You can change there w/o being seen. Then turn out the lights & get into bed.

  She sniffed. “I’d use a proper and between those two sentences,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “Thank you.” He slid an arm around her waist and looked up, playing the boyfriend for the camera. “You good?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He looked at her a little too long. Was she good to do this job? That’s what he wanted to know.

  She was more than good to do this job—she needed to do it. It called to her like a purifying flame.

  He got up and went into the bathroom, letting her change in private. She went to the blind spot and put on the alternate safecracking outfit they’d picked out—jeans, a dark long-sleeved T-shirt, and tennis shoes. She braided her hair and nestled her tool into her pocket. Then she turned out the lights and got under the covers. The bathroom door opened with a sliver of light. Cole shut it off and came out. With the blinds shut, the room was totally dark, but she could hear him moving around. He was over at the shelf.

  Then he slid into bed and flicked on a tablet. The light of its screen illuminated the firm outline of his jaw and reflected in his glasses as two lit squares. It was 2:12 in the morning, according to the little number in the upper right hand corner.

  He typed slowly. Camera covered w towels. But shhhhh. He brought up a screen that showed the schematics of the place. She’d seen something like this on White Jenny’s computer, though Cole had more of it worked out.

  He pointed to a red dot on the first floor. The location of the secret safe.

  She furrowed her brow. A space behind a room. White Jenny had wondered about that space, but it had been out of their way. Cole moved the cursor to the room they were in. He looked at her to see if she got it. She nodded. He plotted the path they would need to follow by moving the cursor slowly, out of their room, down the hall.

  She gestured for the thing and he gave it to her. She opened a word doc and typed: What about the cameras in the hall?

  He moved close, tipped it his way and typed. Act normal. This room feed would go to Borgola. The hall doesn’t. The guys watching the hall won’t think anything.

  She nodded.

  He pointed to a corner. He turned to her and straightened, gave a salute. She got his meaning: Guard. He pointed at his chest, then took the tablet back and typed. I’ll handle him. Hang back. We’ll travel only in blind spots after. Stick close.

  She nodded, wondering what he meant by handle.

  They went over the route, and an alternate. He knew the mansion well. He typed, if we get into trouble, I may have to kiss you.

  She nodded.

  Is that a problem?

  She sniffed in derision. They were both pros. Well, she used to be one. Truth be told, she felt like one again, senses cranked high for a job, focus narrowed on a goal, awareness widened to take in all possible danger. She was calm, yet dizzyingly alert. She sensed that he felt like that, too. She recognized him on so many levels.

  She typed, Got a plan B? Contingency if we’re busted?

  He typed, Don’t worry.

  She didn’t like that, but it wasn’t as if she had veto power. He pointed to the room next to the one with the secret safe and typed some more. Borgola’s office. It has to stay dark. Stick close to me.

  He erased everything and put the tablet aside, then brought out a gun—her gun. A gesture of trust. She nodded and put it in her pocket, stuffing down her hurt and her anger along with it.

  She applied a coat of lucky lipst
ick. He smiled. He liked that.

  Together they slipped out of bed and out the door, which he shut soundlessly. He’d oiled it. He seemed to think of everything.

  He grabbed her hand and they walked down the hall. She supposed anybody watching would think they were going for a late-night stroll.

  Cole stopped her just before a corner. She hung back as he stole ahead. He threw something down the other hall and melted back into the shadows. The guard there wandered off to investigate. Cole yanked her up behind him and they slipped past his post into the main part of the house, through the dining room, and outside into the night, alive with crickets and the hum of distant traffic. The course was circuitous, meant to skirt guards and cameras.

  Working with Cole was easy; they both knew when to move slowly, when to dart, when to hunch or stand tall and slip, how to avoid the crunch of gravel. At one point he pulled her under a bush to let a guard pass; they existed in perfect silence, part of the scenery.

  She’d never thought she could trust somebody else the way she’d trusted Macy and Jenny. But she found, perversely, that she trusted Cole—on the job, anyway. Not off it.

  Cole knelt and picked a lock on the side of the home, getting it open without too much fuss. They snuck into a hall that led to another locked door. He picked that one open, too, and opened a door to what she now understood to be Borgola’s office. She could make out animal heads and bookcases along one wall; a massive desk stood at the far end.

  They moved along the floor like tigers in the dark until they reached a closet in the far corner. Cole pulled a meter of some sort from his pack.

  “Hot,” he whispered. He had another tool out. If it was the kind of interruptor Jenny used, it was far more advanced. He went to work setting up a bypass, and then he tucked a thread-like wire under the rug. “Better if he doesn’t know he’s been robbed for as long as possible,” he explained. “They’d have to test the system to know I did this.” He started picking the lock. “I always thought this was a closet,” he whispered. “I even got a peek in when it was open once. It looks like a closet.”

  A door sounded. Footsteps neared.

  They melted to the floor together, scrunched so close, Angel could hear Cole’s heartbeat.

  The footsteps receded.

  “Usually not a place for guard rounds,” Cole said.

  “Should we worry?

  He held up a finger, eyes closed, and listened some more. Cole was a man who heard and saw more than even most seasoned burglars.

  Eventually, he went back to picking the lock. Apparently nothing short of a lethal attack would sway him from his need to get into that safe.

  Finally they were in. Angel shut the door and Cole flicked on a small flashlight. It did seem to be a closet, lined with shelves holding mildewy-smelling boxes. Coats hung at the very end. Cole parted the coats to reveal a combination lock and handle in the wall.

  Angel went up and ran her hands all around it, discerning the outlines of a door. She held out her hand for the flashlight. Cole gave it to her she inspected. Very basic spindle, not a Fenton Furst. She passed the flashlight back. “Home cooked,” she said. “They use this a lot.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Smell.” She applied the stick-on dial markings, set up the magnifying glass, and pulled out her tool. She shoved in her earbuds and pressed the body of the tool to the area around the lock. She turned the dial, which was nice and loose, and started in, linking up the gates. Eventually the fence dropped. She pushed and the door opened a crack.

  “That was fast.”

  “Every lock has a personality. This one was…” she tilted her head. “Cooperative.”

  He shoved the coats to one side and opened the door all the way. They slipped into a new room. Cole flicked his light around in a space large enough to hold three or four cars. The floor was dark linoleum, with a drain in the middle of it, like an autopsy room, and she could make out dark stains in the seams of the tiles and around the baseboards. Then he flashed over some dungeon-y implements hanging on the walls. Manacles, Medieval stretching things. Three cameras set on tripods were clustered in a corner. She caught sight of a glass coffin-looking thing that stood upright against a wall. It had spikes in it. Dark stains coated the bottom of the thing and the floor underneath it; the upper part was clean, yet streaky, as if it had been washed.

  She felt ill when she got what it was. That a person closed in there would die. Horribly. And the cameras would film it.

  She gave Cole a horrified look.

  “Focus,” he whispered. He began to wander around the perimeter, examining the fixtures and edges. “The safe is in here somewhere. This room leads to it.”

  Focus? They killed people and filmed them dying here. Cole searched for the safe. Was he not shocked? Was this business as usual for his set? What did he propose to do about this discovery? And if he didn’t mean to do something about it, she sure as hell did.

  Chapter Twelve

  He wasn’t surprised to find a mini-studio, knowing Borgola’s proclivities. This wouldn’t be where the main films took place—Cole would’ve noticed that level of activity, but Borgola didn’t use the room for nothing. Cole would’ve warned her if he’d known what they were going to find. Of course the old man would layer up his secrets.

  His eyes fell on a rack of chains and whips—just the right size to conceal a walk-in safe door. He went over, lifted it easily, and set it aside. There it was—a small door embedded in the wall, and what looked to him like a Fenton Furst combination lock. Angel would know. She was back in the main part of the room, transfixed by the glass iron maiden.

  He went to her. “Ready?”

  She gave him a dark glance. “So he’s more than the world’s biggest slime-pimp-bag.”

  “Come on.”

  “Why aren’t you surprised? Did you know about this?”

  “I know what kind of guy he is.”

  “This can’t just go on,” she said.

  “Don’t worry.”

  “What does don’t worry mean? Don’t worry, it’s just a torture chamber? Never mind? What kind of business are you people in?”

  Cole wanted to tell her he wasn’t in any kind of business like Borgola. He wanted to tell her about the boat, that getting into the safe would help people in trouble, but he couldn’t risk it. If they were caught, he wouldn’t talk, but she might. “Do I seem like I’m on his side here?”

  “Obviously not. But are you on the side of this?”

  “Of course not.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her around, faced her toward the alcove. “Open it.”

  She turned back to him. “I can’t forget seeing something like this.”

  “Leave him to me,” he said. She watched his eyes, looked for something more, but it’s all he could give her. He nodded at the safe. “In and out,” he said.

  She sucked a breath through her teeth. “Fine.” She approached the safe, circling her shoulders, loosening them. He trailed behind and stopped when she stopped. She put out her hand for the flashlight. He handed it over and she played the beam around the face of the safe, out to the corners, in to the lock mechanism.

  She passed back the flashlight and ran her fingers almost lovingly down its face. “Hello,” she whispered.

  “Can you do it?”

  “Yeah. This is a deluxe Fenton Furst. Two kinds of interference built in, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this one had something extra. No two are alike.”

  “You can open it?”

  “If you take the alarm off.”

  “That I can do.” He began creating a workaround, just like he’d done on the outer door, re-routing the signal.

  “I’m sure it’s inside, too,” she said.

  “Not for this one.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m on the security team. I know how this place gets wired.” He worked away, rerouting and clipping the wire so that the alarm wouldn’t sound when the seal got broken.

/>   “We missed the internal alarm in the bedroom the other night.”

  “You think?”

  “Well, who the hell adds extra security to a Fenton Furst?”

  Cole smiled wistfully. “Walter Borgola.”

  She held the tools for him as he worked around the alarm, seeming to anticipate his needs. He loved how she knew her way around the process, and he loved how she felt like a partner. Every Associate had a quality of presence on a job; Arturio was predatory and lethal, like a very dangerous fox, or at least he had been before he lost his wife. Macmillan tended to be leonine—brilliant, majestic, splendid in his arrogance. But Angel was smooth, and there was a calm, wily softness to her. Like a mink, he thought. Soft and dangerous. Beautiful and sharp. A mink in the wild, though—not there to make anybody’s goddamn coat. And so alive, too—she seemed more alive in the dark and the danger.

  “Ready for you,” he said. “I thought I’d have to blow this thing once I found it.”

  “You can’t blow this kind,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “At all?”

  “A blast big enough to blow this model would destroy the contents.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “It was part of my apprenticeship. Blowing these things.”

  He straightened in surprise. She’d worked with Furst. Jesus. Furst only took the best—like the MIT of safecracking.

  She set a stool in front of the safe and stepped on. No shortage of stools in this room, he thought wryly. She loosened her shoulders some more, getting into the zone. Then she set up the safe like she’d set up the first one with her numerical sticker and magnifying glass. She stuck the earbuds into her ears and placed her tool—that seemed to be what she called it—onto the flat face of the safe, and went to work.

  He moved to the other side of the room to listen for anything out in the office and beyond, Glock in hand.

  This was probably how she worked with her gang, he thought. Somebody looking out, somebody doing tech, though she hardly needed a lot of help for an inside job like this. He suspected she could’ve handled taking off the alarm if she’d needed to—certainly given the schematics she could’ve. And she’d had the best training; the woman was nothing short of a master criminal. He shouldn’t admire that, but he did; Cole had always admired true mastery. He loved how she’d greeted the safe like an old friend. He loved how she was cool under fire but just a little bit vulnerable, and how she could melt into the shadows as well as any pro, yet she hated the limelight. It made him want to know everything about her.