by Desiree Holt
Again the mention of Greg’s name made her feel sick. “He’s just under six feet but not more than one-seventy, I’d say.”
Brian gave her a hard look. “I wouldn‘t have guessed you went for twigs.”
“He has a certain…appeal.” Why was she even defending him? “But I’m telling you, I don’t think it’s Greg.”
He took her elbow. “Let’s go hunt him up and we’ll find out. I can tell in five seconds if he’s lying.”
But they got nothing out of Greg except defiance and anger. Dejected, Regan led Brian back to her office. “I have to appear in court this afternoon then go over the depositions Lisa Jensen took for me.”
“And I’ll be right beside you. There are good people at the agency working on this. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
If anyone was curious about the tall, fierce-looking man sitting behind Regan in the courtroom, they were either too polite or too intimidated to say anything. At last, the day was over, and she went to pack up her briefcase. The first thing she noticed was the missing files.
“Something wrong?” Brian asked.
“The depositions I wanted to read and the case files. I left everything here on my desk. Now they’re gone.” She buzzed the intercom. “Sharon, can you come in for a minute?”
“I’m just on my way out,” Sharon said, entering the office. “Can this wait?”
“I can’t find the files that I left here. The depositions and everything else.”
“I never saw them,” Sharon said defensively, smoothing her hand over her straight blonde hair. “You must have misplaced them.”
“I never misplace a file,” Regan snapped.
“You did last week.”
Was it her imagination or was Sharon enjoying her discomfort and worry? Last week, two files she was working on had gone missing. She’d found them two days later stuck between two file cabinets, with no idea how they’d gotten there. It still rankled, because she was meticulous about her work.
“What happened last week?” Brian demanded.
When she told him, he didn’t comment, but his lips thinned to a hard line.
“I’m sure they’ll show up like the last ones did,” Sharon said, looking at her watch. “And I hate to leave you like this, but I have a date waiting.”
Regan waved a hand at her. “All right. Go, go.” She picked up the phone and punched in three numbers. “Lisa? It’s Regan. Just checking, but you did leave those depositions on my desk, right? Uh huh. Uh huh. Okay, thanks.” She looked at Brian. “She swears she left them on my desk.”
She began picking up everything on her desk and the table next to it, checking each piece of paper. A knock at the door interrupted her.
“I’ll get it.” Brian opened the door, blocking entrance with his body. “Can we help you?”
A head of tousled dark curls peeked around the lean body. “Regan? Do I need a password?”
“Lisa. Thank goodness.” Regan dropped the papers in her hand. “It’s okay, Brian. This is Lisa Jensen. She’s the one who took the depositions for me.”
Lisa looked back at Brian. “Oh, my. Is this one yours? No wonder you’ve been off your feed.”
“I have not been off my feed. I wish people would quit saying that. I just can’t find a couple of file folders.”
“I swear I put them right on top of your desk.” She skittered around Brian, pushing her curls away from her face. “I know you need them for tomorrow. I’d hate to think they’ve gotten lost.”
Regan gritted her teeth. “They are not lost. I don’t lose important files.”
“Oh, honey.” Lisa’s voice turned sympathetic. “I know you’re just the best around here, but you have been a touch distracted lately.”
“For God’s sake,” Regan huffed. “I’m fine.”
“Do you want me to take those court appearances for you tomorrow? You look real disturbed about something.”
Lisa’s Texas drawl was beginning to grate on Regan’s nerves. “No. Thank you. I’ll find the depositions, and I’ll be in court. Thanks again for your help.” She made her tone as dismissive as possible.
“Okay, then.” Lisa all but fluttered her eyelashes at Brian. “Maybe tall, dark and handsome here can help you.” She looked back at Regan. “Unless he’s not yours. In which case, I’d like first dibs.”
“Good night, Lisa.”
“Okay, okay. I can take a hint. Can’t blame a girl for trying, though.” Like Sharon, she managed to brush against Brian’s body as she left.
“Are all the women in your office this predatory?” Brian asked.
“I guess.” Regan unclipped her hair and shoved her fingers through it. “I guess I’ll just keep looking.”
“No you won’t,” Brian told her. “We’ll lock the office so no one can get in or out, and you can start looking again in the morning. I’m going to hook up the new alarm system to your car and alert the guard that we’re leaving your car here overnight. I think that’ll work best. Then we’re going to pick up some dinner and go back to your house. Your day is done, counsellor.”
Chapter Four
A panel truck with a logo on the side that said Electric Man was parked in her driveway. Regan looked at Brian as he parked next to it and raised an eyebrow.
“Nobody questions an electrician,” he explained. He opened her garage door with the opener he’d taken from her car, drove in and parked. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to everyone.”
“It must be a big crowd,” she said. “You bought enough Chinese food for an army.”
“Trust me,” he chuckled. “These guys eat like animals.”
Four people were in her kitchen. The three men were all as tall, lean and muscular as Brian, two of them as dark, one a golden blond. The fourth was a woman, slender with red-gold hair in a long braid tossed over her shoulder. Brian looked surprised to see her.
“Hey, Sierra.” He nodded at the dark man standing with his arm around her shoulders. “Sorry if we delayed you guys heading back to Maine.”
She grinned and went to give him a kiss on the cheek. “You know nothing’s hanging fire up there right now.” She gave him a look Regan had trouble defining. “And Luke thought I might be of some help here.”
“Always glad of some assistance, darlin’.” He grinned, set the large bags on the table and gave her a hug.
Regan, feeling like a third wheel, cleared her throat. “I take it you’re all from the agency?”
The woman smiled and held out her hand. “Please forgive us for being so rude. Especially Brian, who is sorely lacking in manners.”
Brian grunted.
“I’m Sierra Spencer, Brian’s sister-in-law.” She nodded at the man sprawled at the kitchen table. “My husband, Luke. Also not known for his manners.”
Luke rose in a lithe, graceful movement, and held out his hand. “I apologise for the Spencer family. Nice to meet you, Miss Matthews. Sorry it isn’t under better circumstances.”
“Regan, please. Thank you all for doing this. It’s been a…trying experience, to say the least.”
The other two men introduce themselves as Grey Montgomery and Michael Dancer. Sierra began taking the food from the bags while Regan took out plates, utensils and glasses. Brian had purchased two twelve-packs of soft drinks.
“Nothing alcoholic on the job,” he’d told Regan.
Curiosity piqued her when she saw Brian whisper in Sierra’s ear and the two of them moved into the next room, but she said nothing. If the woman’s husband didn’t mind, why should she? Still, she wondered what they couldn’t discuss in front of the others.
When they were all seated around the table with full plates, Brian looked at each one individually. “Okay. Reports, please.”
“You know we couldn’t do anything with the text message,” Luke reminded him. “But Michael,” he nodded at the blond, “took the list of possible suspects and using his computer magic is checking to see who might have bought disposable phones in the city i
n the last month.”
“But how can you find that out?” Regan asked. “Don’t you need sales slips or something?”
“As long as they didn’t pay cash, which is a possibility,” Michael said, “you’d be surprised at what we can find out. Something, by the way, I don’t think you, as a prosecutor, want to look at too closely.”
Privately, Regan agreed with them. She’d hired The Sentinels because they got the job done, whatever it took. She didn’t need to know the details or all the ways they might be skirting the law.
“I’ve got the profiles on your four top suspects,” Grey said. “The folders are on the counter. You can look at them after we eat, but I don’t think you’ll find much there.”
“Not even Greg Sampson?” Brian asked.
“I told, you,” Regan said. “I really don’t think Greg would do something like this.”
“The new system’s in place,” Luke told him. “Once it’s turned on, if anyone trips a sensor, they’ll think a brass band is standing next to them.”
“Good. All good. And we’re set for tonight?”
They all nodded.
“Tonight the system will be off,” Michael told him.
“What’s happening tonight? Why will the alarm be off after you went to so much trouble to install it?” Regan felt as if she was missing something here. “And what’s Sierra’s role?” She smiled at the other woman. “Not that it isn’t nice to have you here.”
“We’re going to do some outside guard duty,” Brian told her. “Sierra’s going to keep you company for a while. Maybe have some girl talk with you.”
Her jaw dropped. “Girl talk?” She wasn’t even sure she knew how.
“Why don’t you let me take care of that?” Sierra said, beginning to clear the plates from the table. “You and Regan need some private time before it gets dark.”
* * * *
“Okay, what’s this all about?” They were in her bedroom with the door locked, Regan’s hands clenched into fists, her emotions a mix of irritation and anxiety. Brian’s warm hands smoothed her shoulders, his body so close to hers she could feel the heat radiating from it. “And don’t think you can distract me with sex,” she told him.
“Not even a little bit?” he teased, brushing his lips against hers.
Regan tried to push him away, but when she opened her hands and pressed them against his chest, her mind began to wander. God help her. One touch and this man had her reduced to nothing but a puddle of hormones, all running a marathon through her body. The sexual chemistry between them was so incendiary it almost frightened her. No other man had ever called to her senses this way, possessed her so completely, drove her need for him higher even as he satisfied her again and again.
What was happening to her? Sex in her office. Sex with a house full of people below. And no more ability to stop this than to stop a speeding freight train.
What is happening to me?
Brian licked at her lips, tracing the outline with his tongue, his hands moving from her shoulders to her back and down to cup the cheeks of her ass.
“Jesus, Regan. I feel like a stallion after a mare in heat with you. I can’t be around you for five minutes without wanting to get you naked and fuck you every way possible. What the hell are you doing to me?”
“What are you doing to me?” she asked.
“Not nearly enough.”
He pressed his lips to hers again. Unable to resist, she opened her mouth to let his tongue in and danced her own with it. Just that quickly, moisture soaked her panties, and her nipples sprang to life.
With a desperate effort she pulled her mouth away from his, gasping for air.
“Wait, wait, wait.” She tried to make some space between them. “What about everyone downstairs? They’ll know exactly what we’re doing up here.”
Brian’s eyes burned into hers with a hunger that fuelled a fire within her. “Nobody pays attention to what we’re doing. We’ll just be very quiet. I want this, Regan. I want you. Anytime. Any place. And you want me, too. Admit it.”
She would have if she could find her power of speech. His mouth was all over her, kissing her cheeks, her eyelids, the column of her neck, her breasts, stealing her breath and heating her blood.
“Brian. I can’t think when you do this. Take a minute and tell me what’s happening.”
He loosened his hold on her, but only slightly. “You’re right. You need to be in the loop. It’s just that I want to spend every minute fucking you every way possible.” He backed her up and sat her on the edge of the bed then stepped away. “There. That’s better. At least, I can think.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Okay. That footprint indicates that whoever this is doesn’t mind coming around your house. And with today’s message, we have a feeling whoever it is will try something tonight.”
“Here? In my house?”
“It’s difficult to get at you physically in your office—or anywhere in that building, for that matter. Trying to run you off the road didn’t work too well, so this is all that’s left. It’s someone with a bitter grudge. The language of the notes clearly expresses that. And they’ve been building a campaign to knock you off balance.”
“So what are you all going to do?”
“Like I said earlier, tonight Luke, Grey, Michael and I are going to be on guard duty.” He smiled. “The Sentinels.”
“But won’t he see you?” she asked “And why will the alarm be off? Why install it and not use it? Isn’t the purpose to catch whoever this is?”
He shook his head. “It won’t catch the person unless someone’s here to do it. Besides, when I decided to install it, I hadn’t realised yet I’d be closer to you than your own skin. I had the guys set it up anyway, though. In your line of work you need it. But tonight, the alarm will be off.”
“Why?” she asked again
“So whoever this is can get close enough to the house that we can catch him in the act. We’ll turn it back on when I come in to go to sleep.”
“But—”
He pressed his fingers to her lips. “Sierra will answer the rest of your questions.”
“Does she work with the agency, too?”
“No. Actually, she and Luke spend most of their time in Maine. We opened up an office there, but Sierra does her own thing. She met Luke when she was an unofficial client. They just happen to be in town, fortunately, and she has…things to say you’ll want to hear. Meanwhile, it won’t be dark for half an hour, and I don’t want to waste the time arguing.”
While he’d talked, he’d moved close to her again. Now, he was pulling her silk sweater over her head, unzipping her skirt and dragging it down her hips along with her panty hose and tiny panties. He managed to toss them to the side while she tugged at his T-shirt and tried to unfasten his jeans.
“You make me crazy,” he murmured in a raw voice as he helped her with his clothes. “I’ve never been like this with anyone else. Jesus, Regan. I’m supposed to be protecting you and finding your stalker, and all I can think about is being inside you every minute.”
“Me, too,” she said, struggling for breath. “Oh, God, am I losing my mind?”
“If you are, we both are.”
In a frenzy, he dug a condom out of his pocket and rolled it on. Then neither of them said a word as he moved her up on the bed, settled himself between her thighs and took her mouth in a kiss that stole her senses. One arm cradled her while his other hand trailed down to her breasts, lightly pinched each nipple in turn then slid around to her spine. His fingers traced the cleft of her buttocks, moving up and down the length between her firm cheeks.
“Soon,” he told her, lifting his head. “Soon, I’m going to have my cock in this tight channel back here. I’m going to fill it with my shaft and fuck you until you don’t know your own name. Then you’ll truly belong to me. You hear me, Regan?”
She could only nod her head, all her breath trapped in her throat, a ribbon of dark lust tightening inside her. She wanted th
is. She wanted him. For one brief second, she wondered if they were just caught up in the seductive sense of danger. The next minute, she couldn’t think at all as he moved his free hand between them down to her clit and rasped his thumb back and forth over it.
Tiny spasms set up in her pussy, and the liquid of her arousal spilled onto her thighs.
“I love your scent,” Brian growled. “Sweet, hot and musky. One tiny little whiff of that aroma and my brain takes a holiday.”
Regan ran her hands over his heated body, touching his broad shoulders, his back, the ridges of his spine, loving the feel of hard muscles beneath taut skin. The hair on his chest chafed her hardened nipples, and she pressed hard against him, trying to rub herself back and forth.
“Not much time for foreplay tonight, darlin’.” His voice was heavy with lust. “Later, I promise I’ll take my time, but right now, I have to be inside you.”
He moved his hand to her cunt, testing her readiness, spread her legs wide and drove into her. This time she was prepared for it, her inner muscles elastic as they accepted the hugeness of him, her body already learning his size and feel and adapting to it. She wrapped her legs around him and locked her ankles at the small of his back, dragging him into her even deeper.
Bracing himself on his forearms, he set a steady pace, in and out, in and out, adjusting his body so the crisp hair above his cock rubbed her clit with every movement forward. Using her position as leverage and gripping his shoulders, Regan adjusted to his rhythm, hips thrusting, meeting him stroke for stroke. Her body was like a live wire, filled with an electrical charge, nerves firing, pulses pounding. She felt as if somehow Brian had tapped into a basic element of her nature, raw and greedy. Nothing existed at that moment except the two of them and the magical ride to the top of the mountain.
When they exploded, it was like the eruption of a volcano, her hot liquid bathing his sheathed cock, the muscles of her cunt spasming around him and pulling on him. Her blood pounded in her ears, and her whole body convulsed like the tightening of a giant fist.