Page 100 of Vicious Temptation

“Of course you don’t. You’re fucking reckless.”

I still don’t know what to make of this man. I tell him to leave, and he refuses. I swing at him, and he cuffs me. Now he’s sitting here pissed off because strangers on the internet are looking at me.

Maybe I’m done trying to figure him out. And maybe I’m done fighting whatever this is between us too. A smile curves across my mouth as I lean closer and brush my lips along the edge of his jaw.

“You know, Officer Braga,” I say softly, “what if the only opinion I care about is yours?”

His hand leaves my waist, and he waits until my eyes meet his before grabbing a handful of my ass and pulling me tighter against him. The sudden movement steals my breath as his other hand slides around the back of my neck and into my hair.

“Well?” I whisper. “What do you have to say?”

“What do you want to hear?” His grip on me tightens. “That I fucking hate knowing your face is all over the internet for every asshole to fantasize about?”

“Why?” I ask, rolling my hips just enough to test him.

His nostrils flare as he draws a slow breath.

“Because they don’t deserve you,” he says, his voice dropping. “You don’t belong to them, Remi.”

“No?”

“Fuck no.”

A smile threatens my lips, but I hold his gaze as I move against him again.

“And exactly who do I belong to, Officer Braga?”

Twenty-Seven

Thiago

Her question hangs between us, the answer on the tip of my tongue, dangerously close to slipping free.

Mine.

The thought comes too easily, and that alone should scare the hell out of me.

She has no idea I was drawn to her long before that night on the road or at the tattoo shop, before pizza, snakes, and late-night conversations in her condo. Before she ever looked at me with those extraordinary blue eyes that somehow make me feel like I’m the one being hunted.

It started the night her face appeared on that screen in Texas, when I told myself she was just another job. I didn’t know it then, but I was already paying too much attention to her. All I know now is that the professional boundaries I once had with Remi Cain are disappearing fast. I can’t keep my distance from her the way Elena demands, and every time Remi lets me in, walking away becomes a little harder.

Right now, with her in my lap, her wrists cuffed behind her back and her lips parted just enough to ruin me, I know one thing with absolute certainty: I’m losing my fucking grip where she’s concerned.

“Well?” she asks, taunting me as she shifts in my lap, rubbing against the erection trapped between us and making coherent thought nearly impossible.

“Remi,” I scrape out, pressing my forehead against hers. “Remi, Remi…what the hell are you doing to me?”

Her smile curls slowly, as if she already knows she’s won. Maybe she has, but for the first time in a long time, I don’t think I care.

“Take the cuffs off,” she whispers. “And let me show you.”

The tip of her tongue brushes my cheek, and whatever control I have left takes another fucking hit. I’m too consumed by her to think straight, too far gone to care that I should stop.

“Or better yet…” She looks directly at me. “Don’t.”

I know she feels it too. This is our last chance to stop whatever the fuck we’re doing.

Neither of us takes it.