Authors: Lizzie Lynn Lee
Rose gasped in panic, her heart pounding so loud that she worried the men down beneath her might overhear it. At first, she didn’t see Joe. He wasn’t one of the guys talking down there. But then…she caught sight of him.
Two reflective golden eyes flashed in the darkness.
She backed up a couple feet in terror as she realized that he was perched in the rafters, balancing on a couple of crossed beams. His body was so agile and lithe in its movement as he glared at her, moving ever so slightly closer. His eyes widened in shock as it dawned on him that he was looking at his sweet little secretary.
Panic mingled with genuine concern flickered across his darkened features and he tried to approach her, stepping lightly across the beams toward her. But Rose was terrified to see him essentially walking a tightrope twenty feet up in the air, and she let out a little shriek of fear.
Instantly the conversation down below came to a halt.
“Wait—did you hear that?” asked one of the men in a business suit.
The second man, who was just out of sight, hissed, “Rats in the rafters.”
A third guy pointed upward—directly at Rose! “There! Who the hell is that?”
“Rose, watch out!” shouted Joe, just before there was a bright flash of light and a deafening crack. A bullet whizzed just past Rose’s face to lodge itself in the crumbling wall. As the men below caught onto Joe’s presence, as well, he nimbly leaped from the beams to land on the top shelf of a metal storage rack. Rose clasped her hand over her mouth in shock as her handsome, mysterious boss bolted for the two men in business suits.
They aimed their guns at him and fired multiple rounds, several bullets exploding in the sacks of sawdust littering the warehouse. Rose screamed, tears blurring her vision. If they killed him, it would be all her fault. She couldn’t live with that. Just then, the third man went barreling out of the warehouse before the clouds of dust even cleared.
When it finally did, she was incredulous at the sight of Joe tackling both the corporate guys to the ground, his fists pummeling them into unconsciousness. His body moved with such animalistic force that it frightened her. The men couldn’t even get a shot in, and their guns lay abandoned several feet away from the scene. Joe slammed his fists into the pair of them again and again, blood spattering the floor, as the men resisted in vain. Finally, they both stopped struggling altogether and Joe stood up, turning back to look up at Rose.
He was covered in blood.
This had to be some kind of nightmare. It simply could not be real.
Rose began to feel lightheaded, her heart beating so fast that her chest ached. Far below, she could just make out Joe running, crying out her name.
Then everything started to go dark, and she felt herself falling… from twenty feet up.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Rose wondered what it would feel like to die. And just before the world sank into total blackness, she felt the bizarre, impossible sensation of strong, muscular arms catching her, cradling her close…
***
When she awoke later, her head was pounding and she couldn’t move her left arm at all. Slowly, her eyes opened and vision returned in patches of dim light. She was alone in a hotel room, and most importantly, she was alive.
But… how?
And why was she handcuffed to the bed? Rose looked around in horror and confusion, afraid that she’d been kidnapped. And then she saw it: Joe’s laptop, the screen bright as though he had only just left the room. As she painstakingly propped herself up on her right elbow, she felt a scrap of paper crinkling under her arm. It was a note.
Rose--
You fainted in the warehouse. I don’t know what the hell you were doing there, but you are safe now. I had to leave to take care of some unfinished business. I will come back for you. Please try not to fall from any other great heights or otherwise throw yourself into direct peril while I’m gone. We will talk about this upon my return.
--Joe
Simultaneously annoyed and relieved, Rose set about picking the lock on her handcuff with a safety pin she found on the bedside table. Luckily, she had been kind of a punk kid in high school, and she had taught herself how to pick locks in order to break into people’s lockers and prank them.
It was embarrassing, something she definitely did
not
put on her resume, but it did come in handy at times like this. Upon finding that the doors were locked and bolted to keep her in, she settled on the bed and began doing the only thing she could do under the circumstances… snoop through Joe’s computer. She spent the next few hours reading over his encrypted, bizarre notes on genetic experimentation, mutations, and governmental agendas.
It was like reading the script to an
X-Files
episode.
But as much as Rose wanted to discount it, to shrug it off and just tell herself that either she’d decoded the encryption incorrectly or that her boss was a secret nutcase— something told her neither of those scenarios were true. That this was real. And that somehow, in some inexplicable way, Joe was tangled up in this insanity.
When he finally returned, he burst through the door looking disheveled, but at least he wasn’t soaked in someone else’s blood this time. However, she realized with dismay, he did have cuts and bruises up and down his arms.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Joe growled, bounding towards her with fury in his amber eyes. He stopped just short of grasping her by the collar, scaring her half to death. But she was going to stand her ground, damn it. She was tired of being the one in question.
“I’m worried about you,” she argued.
“I didn’t hire you to play detective. You’re my secretary, goddamnit.”
“I can’t help it, you never told me anything.”
“It’s not your place to know. Your job is to manage my office.”
“I can’t help it. You came to work banged up. If you had just told me what was going on, I wouldn’t have had to tail you!” Rose retorted, anger building in her gut.
“Do you think this is some kind of game? You could’ve died back there, Rose!”
“I wasn’t planning on getting caught.”
“But you
did
get caught.”
“Well.” She crossed her arms indignantly. “What about you?”
“This is my job. This is what I do. And you need to stay the hell out of it, if you want to stay alive,” Joe snarled, but that tinge of worry colored his tone.
She gave up. “I can’t work like this, Joe! You ask so much of me but you refuse to trust me!” Rose shot back, standing up in front of him, glaring up into his handsome face. Maybe she was being irrational. But she had feelings for him, and not knowing what was going on was driving her crazy. She didn’t want to get a call from the morgue and find out she had a body to identify.
She didn’t want to lose him…
She had just found love. She didn’t care if he returned her feelings or not, she just wanted him to be okay.
Joe glared down at her and made her feel so small. But she held her ground.
“And why would I trust you?” He looked so intimidating. “Damn it, Rose, you almost got us both killed! If you had just stayed out of it, nothing would have happened. I can’t keep you safe this way. It just… it won’t work.”
They glared at each other with fire in their eyes for a long, tense moment. Rose’s cheeks were flushed, and a lock of strawberry-blonde hair fell over her eyes as she clenched her fists. “So what’s the point, Joe?” she breathed, anger still thick in her voice. “I read your files, I break your encryption in half, and I nearly get us killed in a firefight. If I’m so much trouble that you have to handcuff me to a goddamn hotel bed, why not just fire me?” she taunted without thinking. The second her bluff left her mouth, she immediately regretted it. She managed not to let it show.
His gaze bored into her, something more than human in those golden eyes as they fixated on her, and it was only then that Rose saw the deep, longing hunger in them.
He sighed. “I... I can’t. I can’t fire you.”
“Because I know too much?” she asked bitterly.
Unexpectedly, he closed the gap between them, he was over a head taller than her, and Rose felt her face go beet-red as his strong hands gripped her curvy hips. “Because,” he said in a low rumble, “you’re absolutely irresistible, Rose.” He pulled her in against his chest, pressing his lips into hers, kissing her hard.
She froze. His kiss was rough, forceful and dominating and took her breath away and it was more wonderful than anything she’d imagined. As she let out a breathy, low-pitched moan into the kiss, she melted in his arms and her knees weakened. She wanted to say something but she found herself returning his kiss. Her world swam around her as the impossibly hard-muscled man towering over her pressed her back onto the bed, forcing her to sit as he put one knee on the bedside. Her hands went up to his chest, groping at his exquisitely chiseled body, loathing the shirt that kept her from feeling it firsthand. She reveled in the sensation of his hands exploring her, and with a gasp, she realized that he was pulling her shirt off, tossing it aside and leaving her exposed.
It had been so long since she’d been exposed to a man. Her reflexes told her to cover up, to wrap her arms around herself.
She wasn’t made for this rough-and-tumble world of espionage and intrigue. She was totally out of her element. What was she doing here, in front of
him
of all people, this obscenely gorgeous man?
“What am I going to do with you, Rose?” he whispered between kisses, his voice thick with lust. “I shouldn’t have let you into my life in the first place and you wouldn’t be dragged into this mess. You have kids. You should have lived a normal, safe life. But I’m so selfish. I want you for myself…”
“It’s not for you to decide what best for me,” she countered. “I’m an adult and I’ve decided I
want
to meddle in your mess.”
“You’ve made a bad choice.”
“Maybe. You don’t know that. I followed my heart this time and I’m content with that.”
He watched her hungrily. She had never been so turned on in her life.
Don’t you dare change your mind,
she screamed inside.
I want you.
Joe seemed to be restraining himself. She realized she was like prey before him, his eyes holding her paralyzed for a moment as he waited. Rose knew he was waiting for her to make the move—she had to invite him to claim her.
“If I let you go, would you leave this room this instant? Run. Flee. As far as you can. I’m not who you think I am, Rose. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.” His question was a mere whisper, but she heard him loud and clear.
“No.”
“I’m giving you one last chance. There’s no going back after this. We still could go back to … normal, like it used to be. We won’t talk about it anymore.”
“I don’t want to!” Her eyes flared. “And don’t you dare pretend that this never happened.”
We’ve gone this far…
“Oh, Rose.” His whole body was tense, though, and oh, how he wanted her! There was no mistaking that look.
But Rose wanted this. She needed this. With a trembling hand, she reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, letting it fall to the side.
He moved in, swift and fluid, looming over her on the bed and bringing his mouth close to her ear. “You’re a naughty girl, Rose,” he remarked out, his voice husky. “You should have run from me.”
What came next was a storm of sensation. His mouth went to her neck, teeth grazing the sensitive skin as he mouthed her, her jaw hanging open as he explored the sensitive, exposed flesh. A greedy hand tightened around her breast, a thumb toying with her stiff, hard nipple while he savored the feel of her, of every part of her exposed body as he climbed further onto the bed, pressing her onto her back as he ravaged from the small angle of her neck to where it met her jaw. He yanked aside the rest of her clothes, leaving her bare under his predatory gaze.
“I’ve thought about you, Rose. A lot. Fuck, day and night, even,” he told her, and it sent a shiver of delight up her spine, “from the moment you walked into my office, I wanted to claim you. I wanted to push you against those walls, bend you over my desk, rip your panties and take you from the beginning. You have no idea how much I fantasized on having you like this…”
“You bastard,” Rose whimpered. Her body burned hot. Delicious aches thrummed from her naked sex. “You know you could have had me any time you wanted. You know I like you.”
Love you.
“You’ve been more than a handful,” he growled, hands grabbing at her harder and greedier as his mouth moved to her breasts, “I wanted to see just how far you could go.”
“What, this isn’t far enough?” she half-laughed, half-gasped as his breath reached her sensitive nipples, “or did you get off on drawing out this game of cat and mo--aaaAAH!”
Her words were cut off as Joe lowered himself to her pussy and gave her a long lick. He slid two fingers inside her and stroked her expertly, sending ripples of ecstasy all over her lust-fevered body.