Chapter 1 #2
Peyton had scored a job as Alban’s assistant, and Alban always invited his staff members to his parties.
Tonight, Serena had come as Peyton’s plus-one.
One day, after working for him for several months, Peyton spotted the safe while snooping, under the guise of cleaning, in a cupboard on the wall of shelves and cabinets behind his desk.
Knowing where the safe lay made the job that much easier.
She stopped at the doorway and scanned the room.
Empty.
Time to get the rocks. She crossed the room, pulled out her tools, and laid them on the shelf next to the cupboard. “I’m at the safe.”
“He’s talking to the prince of Dubai, and I did a head count of the guards,” Dani said. “Still can’t find the fourteenth, but maybe he called in sick or had to leave early.”
“Thanks. Get ready to write down the combs.” Serena yanked the cupboard door open.
The safe’s gunmetal steel stared back at her.
Her nerve endings tingled. She pressed one of the stethoscope’s plastic-covered tips into her ear and laid the diaphragm of it against the metal, near the handle.
She closed her eyes and turned the dial one miniscule increment at a time.
Click
“Ninety-seven,” she said into the mic. She turned the dial again.
Click
“Fourteen.” Her pulse kicked up a notch. Almost there. She turned it again.
Click
“Twenty—”
A hand crushed over her mouth, jerking her head back.
She shrieked but the sound remained lodged behind thick fingers.
Panic shot through her veins, and she froze.
The stethoscope fell from her fingers and bounced on the floor at her feet.
The hot, hard wall of a chest pressed against her back, and a steady huff of breath danced over her ear. Cold metal ground into her temple.
A gun.
Milo’s fingers twitched over Serena’s mouth.
Her chest rose and fell against his forearm, making goosebumps stand up on his skin beneath the stupid tuxedo Alban’s bodyguards had to wear.
He caught the scent of . . . what was that?
Lilies? Hydrangeas? Some kind of flower that never would have attracted him before but now it did, because it was on her.
Her hair was the same natural blonde shade, and the heels she wore added a good four inches to her five-foot-two frame.
A tattoo, script he couldn’t read from this angle, peeked out from underneath her hair, right between her shoulder blades.
Serena with a tattoo? Damn. That was so far from her character, so far from the woman he remembered, that he almost questioned if she was who he thought.
But there was no doubt. He’d watched her weasel her perfectly shaped ass and bare back right into Alban’s suite, and that brief flicker of her body had sent flashes of memories through his brain—memories that had been buried deep.
The last time he’d seen her, she’d been seventeen.
Nine fucking years ago. He’d thought of her hundreds, no, thousands of times over the years.
He hadn’t allowed himself to get in touch with her, hadn’t wanted to taint her with their past, just in case she’d gotten out.
He lowered the gun and spun her around. Nope. She wasn’t out. She was here, still pretty as ever and in the thick of thieving. Her eyes, big blue plates the color of his favorite pair of jeans, widened. She inhaled sharply, and her back pressed against the safe she’d been trying to break into.
Alban Moussa’s. Of all fucking people.
It shouldn’t have turned him on. And in truth, part of him wanted to throttle her for being so brazen and stupid. But her live-on-the-edge streak was what had always driven him so crazy.
“Milo?”
Her fingers fluttered to her breastbone, between the plunging neckline of her dress.
Pfft. If you could even call the garment that.
The material on her torso left little to the imagination.
He couldn’t stop his gaze from coasting down the column of her throat and over the hollow of her collarbone to her perky breasts, which practically begged to be licked.
He dragged his attention up to her lips, plump and pink and as kissable as they’d been back in the day.
She still gave him a hard-on like no other.
“Serena.” Her name slipped over his tongue like aged wine. He drew his eyebrows into a scowl. As happy as his dick was to see her, he didn’t want to see her here. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Creeeak
He snapped his head toward the bedroom attached to the office.
Serena’s hand shot out and grabbed the material of his suit jacket.
Her breath whistled in and out between her teeth.
She’d heard it too. Shit. Had someone seen him come upstairs?
Had he been followed? It wasn’t time yet.
He had exactly fifteen minutes before the raid.
He couldn’t be holed up upstairs when it happened.
He lifted his finger to his lips. Her hand gripped him tighter. He strained his ears toward the bedroom. The damn exotic scent tickling his nostrils dimmed his senses.
Creeeak
The beam of a flashlight bobbed through the master bedroom. Sonofafuckingbitch. He gripped her arm and pulled her to the floor with him, pressing her back against the side of the desk. He crouched down, his knee next to her thigh. One hand fit snugly around her waist, the other around his gun.
“Is someone here?” she mouthed. He lowered his gaze to her face. Her nice, even skin tone had paled two shades.
The light swept over their heads and hit the wall beyond them. He coiled his body tighter to hers. If one of the guards spotted her, they’d beat the shit out of her before taking her to Alban for his sick forms of punishment.
Her belly lifted and fell. He twitched his thumb in an effort to reassure her, but there was no way in hell he could pull his attention from the flashlight.
He stayed low and peered around the back of the desk, through the chair legs, at the doorway.
Black pants moved into view, and the light swept over the room again.
A beat passed. The guard moved away and the bedroom door creaked before closing.
“He’s gone.”
“What are you doing here?” she whispered. Her gaze slid down his body and back up. “Are you working for Alban?” Indignation burned her words.
“No.” He didn’t have time to explain.
She pushed herself to her feet, moved toward the safe, and picked up the stethoscope—which, thankfully, hadn’t been spotted—from the floor.
“Then keep a lookout and I’ll give you a cut of the profit.” She turned her back to him and then spoke again, this time with her mouth hovering at her wrist. “Dani, read me back the combs I gave you.”
He tore his gaze from the gentle curve of her spine and clenched his hands with the effort it took not to touch her.
God, how could he still want her so badly?
He’d pictured her smile and dimpled cheeks a thousand times.
Her laugh had always made him grab her and kiss her.
And right now, all he wanted to do was study that tattoo while he drove into her.
He shoved all those delicious images from his head.
Her words circled back around his thoughts:
Dani.
He should have known that Serena on a job meant her sister was in the shadows, if not beside her. Dani was probably the sole reason Serena was still stealing.
He cupped her elbow and wheeled her around. “Are you crazy? You must have a death wish if you’re stealing from Alban.” He brought his fingertips to her ear and plucked the tiny bud out.
“Hey!”
He caught the device in his palm and scowled. “You need to get out of here.” He swooped up all her tools and shoved them inside her Go Go Gadget clutch. “Now.”
Her eyes squinted into ferocious blue slits. “I’m not going anywhere without the diamonds.” She wrestled the earbud from his grasp and tucked it in her cleavage.
“Then be ready to talk to the FBI because they’re going to be raining down in about”—he lifted his wrist and peeled back the sleeve of his jacket—“nine minutes.”
Her jaw snapped open and her breasts rose on a breath. “The FBI?” She squeezed the hair at her scalp, and he tried like hell to push from his mind the picture of those blonde waves spread out on his pillow. “You’re . . . You’re a snitch?” Her voice climbed an octave.