Chapter 3
THREE
brOOKS
She freezes.
Then the woman darts out a hand, reaching for the handle of the safe.
Caught and still trying to go for whatever she wanted to steal.
Fucking ballsy.
Or maybe fucking stupid.
Growling, I yank her back more firmly against me, ignoring the odd sensation that I’ve held her just like this before, that I’ve felt the lush curve of her ass brushing against my pelvis, that I’ve wrestled with her stubbornness.
I spin her away from the safe, shove her toward the far side of the room.
I don’t know why I don’t call out. Security could be here in ten seconds, could take care of this tiny woman and discover what she’d been trying to steal—and do it all faster and more efficiently than I can.
My specialty is finance.
Not interrogation.
But I don’t open my mouth, don’t call down the hall.
Instead, I drag her across the room and toss her on the couch.
She immediately bursts up to her feet and lurches toward the window.
A window she somehow knew wouldn’t alarm when she broke in.
That pings around my brain, raising the hairs on my nape, but I don’t have time to truly process that realization.
Not when she’s reached the window, is yanking up the frame.
I grab her arm.
“Fuck!” I growl when her elbow digs into my side, sending pain radiating through my ribs, and she slips free, grabbing at the window again. I grind my teeth together, ignore my aching torso, and grab her before she can crawl out, gripping both of her shoulders from behind.
“Stop,” I grit out, pulling her back.
She struggles against me, but I just wrap my arm around her middle and turn us, pinning her body between mine and the wall.
We’re both breathing heavy and maybe I’m a fucking creep, but that lush ass is brushing against my pelvis again and my dick is getting hard and…
I grunt when she kicks back, boot scraping against my shin, slamming against my bare foot.
I lean more heavily against her. “I said stop.”
But she doesn’t stop, doesn’t quit fighting, elbows jabbing into my side, boots still kicking, gloved hands trying to dislodge mine.
I should grab her more tightly—I know it. I should call out for security—I know that too.
But something inside me is unable to make that happen, unable to dig my fingers into her flesh with the intent to hurt, unable to use the force necessary to contain her, unable to call out and leave her to the men who’ve been paid to protect me and will have absolutely no qualms about doing what they need to in order to keep drawing a paycheck.
“Stop,” I order again, the word a rasp that tangles with her staccato breathing…
And has absolutely no effect on her fight.
She has to be exhausted—I can already feel the fatigue creeping into my limbs and my lungs are working overtime, my breaths short and sharp—but she’s not showing any sign of slowing down.
“Fucking stop,” I growl. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She goes still—statue still, not a single flicker of movement, not a ragged breath.
Just…still.
Completely still.
Yet even as I process that, she’s suddenly moving again, and if I thought she was fighting before, that was child’s play.
She’s like a rabid dog suddenly cornered and on the offensive.
Crack!
I groan and stumble away from her when she throws her head back, her skull colliding with my chin.
Pain explodes through my face and my vision goes hazy, stars flashing and melding with the shadows of the room.
“Fuck,” I groan, hands slipping from her shoulders, one lifting to my temple, the other flailing after her as she spins toward the window again.
I manage to catch the back of her knit cap, but it just slides off her head, and then my vision is hazy for a completely different reason.
Because the hair…
The color of that hair—
It’s moonlight. Its silver shadows coaxed from the night sky.
It’s—
I don’t even see the blow, she moves so fast, that cape of silken pearls flowing behind her as she pivots and kicks me right in the junk.
Gasping, I bend forward, hands cupped over my dick, pain a persistent and growing drumbeat through my body. Still, I reach for her again…
And slip on a sheaf of papers that must have fallen to the floor.
My arms windmill and I stagger, trying to regain my balance.
It’s too late, I’m falling backward and—
Crack!
My head hits the edge of my desk and I go down hard, liquid dripping down my face.
Did I spill a drink when I fell?
No, I realize as the scent of iron hits my nose.
It’s blood.
Her boots stomping on my toes, colliding with my dick hurt like a motherfucker.
Now the pain barely registers as stars and shadows fight for control of my eyesight.
There’s a blip of quiet, then she whispers, “Shit,” and suddenly there are hands on my face, pressing something—the beanie—against my skin. “Keep the pressure there.”
Shouts ring out somewhere in the distance and she curses again.
Then she’s stepping over my prone body, her footsteps clipping across the floor as she rushes away from me—
But she’s not moving toward the window.
She’s heading for the safe.
I hear the distinct beep-beep-beep-beep as she inputs the code again.
Hear the whir of the lock disengaging.
The scrape of the door opening.
A moment later the footsteps are coming back toward me. I groan, try to lift up so I can grab her, but she just sidesteps my hand, moves to the window, and yanks it up.
Then pauses, looks back at me.
The last thing I see before the blackness in my vision swells up and takes over…
Is a ghost with silver hair.