Wanted by a Dangerous Man (8 page)

Whatever normal was between me and this beautiful, mysterious man.

“It did turn me on,” I said shyly as we descended to the first floor. “A lot. At least, before I freaked out. Just so you know.”

Corbin smiled. “Oh, I know.”

Blush.

He grabbed a handful of chocolate kisses from a bowl on the dining room table and gave me half. I unwrapped one and popped it into my mouth. At times like this, it was hard to believe who… what… Corbin was. I’d fully intended to question him about his job, the people he’d killed. He’d told me that he’d killed five people in the year before—and that assumed he’d taken December off.

On the way to the storage facility, I told Corbin about Henry’s lead.

“Thanks for letting me know,” he said. He squeezed my hand.

“Aren’t you worried? Obviously he knows something.”

“Not really. I’ve seen Henry.”
 

I thought he meant at the dinner, but then he added, “Henry has good instincts, but he gets discouraged easily.”

“You know him?”

“I know
of
him. He’s been in the business for a long time. What was up with the dinner, anyway?”

“I thought it’d be nice to have a friend who understood my job.”

“You come work for me, you’ll have plenty of friends like that.”

“Friends like Henry? No thanks.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And you know I’m not going to do it.”

“I don’t know that. People change their minds.
You’ve
changed your mind. Even after I saved your life, you were ready to hogtie me and drop me off at the nearest police station. But then after some thorough lovin’ you didn’t.” He couldn’t even keep a straight face.

“Should have,” I muttered. “Well, my New Year’s resolution was to stop changing my mind.”

Corbin grinned. “My resolution was to make you change yours more often.”

Traffic was light, and we reached the storage facility only a few minutes later than I’d initially planned. Not bad, considering.

I parked down the street from the facility in the darkness provided by a dense group of trees. I got out, and Corbin did as well.

“Just going to check that he’s not here already,” I said.

He smiled easily, radiating laid-back charm. “Then I’m just coming with you.”

Okay then.
 

First we did a turn around the perimeter. There was a family with a minivan inside the gate, but other than that, it was quiet.

Under different circumstances, I would have shimmied over the fence and pressed an ear to Syre’s unit, to make sure he wasn’t in there and quiet for the night.

But I didn’t want Corbin to see me; then he’d start in about me working for him, pointing out that I was already breaking the law. Personally, I considered a little minor trespassing to be bending the law, but I didn’t want to argue the point.

We walked back to the car and sat under the trees. From there, I had an excellent view of the comings and goings.

A stray cat darted under my car, its body a long, straight arrow. I didn’t see it until it was almost on us, and I jumped, but Corbin didn’t react.
 

“Did you see that?”

He frowned. “See what?”

“The cat.”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“Nothing.” I checked that my coat was firmly zipped up to the top (it was) and jiggled my legs, trying to work up some extra warmth.
 

“Why not wait in the car?”

“Don’t want Syre driving by, seeing me, and then continuing.”

“We could make out. He wouldn’t worry about two people sucking face.”

I snorted. “Nice try.”
 

“Thought you’d want to be warm while I kiss you.” He leaned in, his hands on the ground behind him. It was a sweet kiss, probing.

I circled my arms around his neck and kissed him back. He tasted like chocolate, and he smelled like heaven, like the forest plus a hint of smoky fireplace, with an undercurrent of naughty.

I loved how the stubble on his jaw scratched me when he kissed my neck. He unzipped my coat and went down lower.

“All those sweaters. It’s worse than a chastity belt,” he complained, zipping me back up. He pulled me onto his lap so that I was straddling him.

It was strange to be on top, looking down at him instead of looking up. I let my weight rest on him. I wasn’t sure, but he felt a little excited underneath me.
 

“You’re like a whole new guy from this angle. You’ve got really thick hair.” I pulled off my gloves and buried my hands in the dense waves. I squeezed my fingers, enjoying the way his glossy hair slipped over my skin. I leaned down and carefully nibbled at the edge of one of his sideburns. They were perfect, really, not too long. Manly, but not furry. “You are the sexiest guy I’ve ever met,” I murmured.

He tightened his arms around my waist. There was no doubt about it; I wasn’t imagining the hardening mound underneath me. I ground my hips down.

“Not fair.”

“You know the safe word,” I said, continuing to grind.

He ran his hands under the backs of my thighs, stopping at my ass, then pulled me down firmly as he pressed up. The thick seam of my jeans pushed against my panties. A little higher, and I would have been panting an aria.

“Your phone,” Corbin said, his voice sexy.

“What?”

“It’s vibrating.”

He was right. I dug it out of my pocket. “Hey, Rob.”

“Where are you?”

“Where I’m supposed to be. Where are you?”
And why are you somehow the one running this job?

“It cost me a thousand bucks, but I know where Syre is staying. You got a pen?”

“Um…” I frantically searched through my pockets. Corbin snapped his fingers, catching my attention. He tapped his temple and nodded. “Ok, Rob, I’m ready,” I said.

He read out the address, and Corbin nodded. I repeated it aloud in case Corbin hadn’t heard.

“You’re a lot closer,” Rob said, “but Katrina and I are on the way. Hang tight when you get there. If you see him go in or out, call me.” He hung up.

I stared at the phone a moment, wondering how my lazy twin had gotten possessed by someone with an actual work ethic. “We have to go,” I said reluctantly.
 

“I heard. You’re so sexy when you’ve got your work face on. Not as sexy as your defiant submissive face, but close.” Corbin didn’t make to move, and neither did I.

“You’re sexy. That’s it. Just sexy. Always.”

“Keep talking like that and I’ll kidnap you and drag you around the world with me.”

“If I turn you in, we could get hitched. Conjugal visits.”

“That is an excellent backup plan. I’ll think on it later.” He grabbed my face and kissed me, somehow managing to remain in control even though I was on top. “You make the sexiest little noises when I kiss you.” He wrinkled his brow and batted his eyelashes. “
Mm. Oh. Ah. Mm.
Subtext?
Oh, Corbin, your raw animal power makes my lady bits tingle.
”
 

“Ew. I do
not
sound like that!”

He raised an eyebrow. “That is exactly how you sound.”

It hit me out of nowhere, a hurricane of emotion. I didn’t know him well enough to love him, but I was falling in love. I was in love. Infatuated for certain. If he’d asked me at that moment to work with him, I would have agreed to do it.

The world seemed to freeze. This couldn’t be happening. Not to me. I didn’t fall in love, and I didn’t fall for bad boy criminals. But it was.

I fell forward, squeezing him in an impromptu hug and burying my face in his neck so that he wouldn’t see my expression. I probably caught him off-guard, but after a moment, he squeezed me back. In another world, we could have had a chance.

He stood, taking me with him. I hooked my legs around his waist, wanting him so much that my panties were slippery wet.
 

“We have to go,” he murmured into my ear.

I reluctantly lowered my feet. Time to go to work. The good part was that if I was working, I wouldn’t be having utterly unrealistic fantasies about spending the rest of my life with this man who I barely knew.

I called Rob when I arrived at the address. It was a five-story apartment building. Not modern, but not exactly old, either. A little run down. The surrounding buildings were warehouses, all of them either abandoned or in the process of being converted to condos.

“Ok,” Rob said. “I’m half an hour away.”

“Still? Did the grand you dropped on the stripper come with a little extra?”

“I’ll have you know that she likes me very much,” he said. “She said I’m the only guy she’s ever wanted to fuck… if I’d had another grand.”

I laughed and hung up. For all the joking, it wouldn’t surprise me if Rob ended up dating someone he met there. I had no idea what women saw in him. Not because he was my brother. He wasn’t unattractive, and his easygoing nature could be charming. But he was so unreliable when it came to relationships. Or work stuff, actually.

A light turned on at the back of the building, and I unbuckled my seat belt.

“Your brother said for you to stay in the car,” Corbin chided. He appeared to be sending an email on his phone and didn’t look at me.

I got out and walked along the length of the building. I didn’t hear Corbin come up behind me. I hadn’t heard the car door close, either, but when I looked back, it was closed, and the light wasn’t on.

“You’re looking in the wrong place, Audrey,” he said.
 

“What?” I turned to look at the front of the building, and Corbin grabbed my shoulders and rotated me so that I was facing an empty warehouse. “You think he’s in there?”

He took off at a slow, graceful run, his shoulders hunched forward. After a moment, I followed, skidded on a patch of ice, then caught up.

He stopped abruptly, and I slammed into him. “Careful,” he said. “If you break me, you’ll have to do my job until I’m recovered.”

“Not funny.”

“No.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cloth bundle. I watched in fascination as he unwrapped a set of lock-picking tools. He chose two slender picks. I looked around in confusion. I didn’t see a door.

He backed up, head raised, and I saw what he had in mind. On the second floor, a row of windows covered in grates.
 

“Hold this.” He pressed the bundle into my hand, put the tools between his teeth, backed up more, then ran at the building. He jumped gracefully and caught the bottom of a ledge that I hadn’t even noticed.

If someone saw him… I glanced around. There wasn’t anyone in the area, though. We were too far from the road.

He pulled, and his body seemed to float up, allowing him to hook one of his feet on the narrow ledge. I was in pretty good shape, but I hadn’t been able to do a chin-up without grunting since I was in elementary school and weighed sixty pounds. But then I wasn’t wrapped in muscle.
 

His foot slipped off the ledge, leaving him hanging by his fingertips. He pulled—still no grunting. When his chin was level with the ledge, he rocked back a little, then swung himself up so that his long body pressed against the grate. I stared in shock.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. The first time I saw Corbin’s sculpted muscles, I knew that he didn’t get that way just from pushing weight around in a gym.

Apparently I needed to ask Corbin a lot more questions. Rather, I needed to make him
answer
a lot more questions, not get distracted by his sex voodoo.

He gripped the grate and worked at a lock on the inside. He was balanced only on his toes. I held my breath, but after a moment, half of the grate came away.

He looked over his shoulder, and I hurried over to catch the grate. I carefully laid it against the building, then put the second half next to it.
 

“Watch out,” he said. I stepped back, and he dropped the tools onto the ground. I retrieved them and folded them into the bundle, then stuffed it back into my pocket.

Getting the window open took him longer than getting up there, which would have been funny if I hadn’t been so worried that he was about to fall backward and break his neck. But he got it open, disappeared inside. Light flared, then dimmed. Flashlight, and he must have been muting the beam with a cupped hand. It was something I had to do fairly often.

He reappeared at the window. “Go to the front,” he said, gesturing. “I’ll let you in.”

A car drove by as I reached the street. The driver didn’t spare me a second glance. A few minutes later, the door opened.

I slipped inside. “That was very cool and very stupid.”

“You could have stopped at cool,” he suggested. “But you’re right. It was stupid. There are homeless people living on the other side of the building, so clearly there’s a much easier way in. But to impress you? I’d say it was worth it.”

“Don’t forget the stupid part.” We walked up two flights of wide concrete stairs, Corbin lighting my path. Workmen had been active in the building not so long ago. I stepped over a few empty water bottles and a pair of cracked safety goggles, everything covered in a distinct but shallow layer of dust.

Corbin opened a window. It didn’t have grates on the other side, being three floors up. The moonlight filtering in through the window muted Corbin’s features. I wanted to touch him, feel every inch of his body under my fingertips, convince myself that he was real and not fading into a dream. But it wasn’t the time to lust after him, so I reluctantly turned my attention back to work.
 

Across the way, nothing was happening. Even the light that had been on was now extinguished. I leaned against the wall. “I really hope Syre didn’t sneak out the front door.”

Corbin gave me a funny look. “It’s self-preservation. Maybe his life isn’t literally on the line, but to him, it certainly feels like it. Guy like that is paranoid as hell. The last thing he’ll do is use the front door.”

It was a good point. “I take back the stupid comment.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t realize you were making a character assessment.”

“I wasn’t. But I’d rather erase the insult than call you smart.”