Red-Hot & Reckless

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” she whispered, uncrossing her ankles behind his back and sliding her feet down to stand on her own. “You don’t have a rubber?”

“The tux is a rental.”

“Your wallet?”

“Contains my ID and cash.”

“No condom.”

He shook his head, looking as frustrated as she felt. “No condom.”

Nicole sagged against the wall, feeling the incredible, confusing urge to cry as sexual frustration pressed from the inside out. She wanted release. But for her there was only one way that would really do it for her. And that was feeling Alex deep inside her. Oral sex wouldn’t do. Petting, no matter how heavy, could never lessen the need.

She swallowed hard, just then realizing that Alex was staring as hardly at her as she was at him.

“Wait a minute,” she whispered, looking toward the large bed they had purposely avoided.

She brushed by Alex, the tips of her breasts rubbing against his wide chest as she made her way to the nightstand to the right of the bed. She opened and closed the three drawers there, then rounded the bed and checked the drawers on the other side.

No condoms.

What kind of hosts were the Theismans, anyway?

She felt Alex’s heat against her back where she stood staring at the nightstand. She wanted to scream with the frustration of it all. Until she felt something cold encircle her left wrist, then heard the unmistakable sound of metal teeth ratcheting against each other.

“Sorry,” Alex said into her ear. “But once I say what I have to, I think you’ll understand.”

Handcuffs.

Nicole turned and watched as he fastened the other side of the handcuffs to his right wrist. Not to the bedpost.

Not that it made a difference. Without a condom, sex was out of the question. She loved sex, and seriously wanted to indulge in some major mind-blowing sex with Alex, but she wasn’t stupid. Intimacy without a rubber was like playing Russian roulette with half the chambers filled.

She collapsed to sit on the mattress and sighed. “You don’t have a condom, but you have handcuffs,” she said absently, considering the heavy metal weighing down her wrist.

She blinked up at him. “You seriously need to reevaluate your priorities, man.”

He chuckled softly then took out his cell phone and called a taxi.

“Where are you taking me?” Nicole was afraid he was going to say the nearest police station. Although she knew that he had nothing on her, and she certainly didn’t have any stolen goods on her person, that didn’t mean he didn’t intend to have her arrested. After all, he still had to tell her what he was doing watching her.

He slid the phone back into his inside jacket pocket. “Home.”

FIVE HOURS and a plane trip later, Alex cursed his decision not to stop at the nearest drug store to stock up on, um, certain supplies before taking Nicole to his recently and very roughly renovated loft in lower Manhattan. Just seeing Nicole handcuffed to the headboard of his old iron bed made him hard as a rock, despite the majorly annoyed expression on her face as she tried to cross her arms over her chest but could only cross one. A loud thwap sounded when she slapped her free hand against the mattress. “This really stinks, you know.”

Didn’t it just.

Never had been the time that Alex had regretted who he was. But in that one moment, he’d have given his pension not to be an insurance investigator. Instead he wished he was a regular guy free to do what he would with the walking sexpot looking at him with barely contained rage.

Then again, if he were a regular guy with no professional interest in Nicole, he wouldn’t be standing where he was, either, essentially having kidnapped Nicole Bennett. If anyone knew the repercussions of his actions, he did, no matter how desperate he was for her help. Although he sensed Nicole would be the last one to press charges.

He hated catch-22s. The problem was that lately life had turned into one huge catch-22 for him.

Standing at the end of the bed, he dragged toward him Nicole’s ever-present black leather backpack, which he’d retrieved from the Theisman’s neighbor’s shrubs before leaving the wealthy Baltimore subdivision in a taxi.

Nicole sighed and rolled her eyes to stare at the ceiling.

Alex ignored the stretch of elegant neck she presented him with, and the way one side of her dress dipped dangerously low from where he’d torn the strap. He looked down at where he was pulling items out of the pack. A small bag of toiletries. Black leather pants, vest, coat and boots and…God was that a leather thong? He let the scrap of material hang from his index finger and decided that it must be. He looked at her. She glared back.

“Interesting.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure I could find an interesting item of clothing or two if I went through your stuff, too.”

He checked the empty bag. “No pajamas?”

She hiked a brow. “You’re holding them.”

Alex let the thong drop to the bed.

His gaze slid up to where she had her long, long legs crossed at the ankles on the bed, lingering around the hemline and the bare area in question just beyond.

Oh, boy. This wasn’t going exactly the way he planned.

He stuffed her things back into her bag then tossed it to a nearby chair. Moments later, he threw a pair of lightweight summer pajamas to her from his top drawer.

Nicole picked them up. “Are these for me or you?”

“Both,” he muttered under his breath, thinking he should have cuffed her to the dormant radiator. “You.”

“They still have the tags on them.”

That was because his mother had bought them for him and, like Nicole, he wasn’t much of a pajama man.

“They’re new,” he told her. “Put them on.”

She tossed them to lay on top of her bag across the room. He had to give her credit for her aim. “I’m not doing anything until you tell me what’s going on.”

Alex grinned. There it was. The demand he’d been waiting for since he’d snapped the cuffs on her in Maryland.

Throughout the two taxi rides and a plane flight back to New York, he had waited for Nicole to ask the question. She hadn’t, of course. Instead she’d sat like a she-cat, alternately glaring at him then licking her lips in a way that made him forget his own name, much less what his objective was.

And his objective was very simple.

He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her across the foot of the bed. “I need you to help me catch Dark Man.”

She squinted at him with those unsettling eyes, then snapped her mouth shut, trying again to cross her arms over her chest, causing the cuffs to rattle.

He didn’t have to explain who Dark Man was. Most thieves, once they reached a certain level of success and notoriety, were known by nicknames. He absently rubbed his chin. He’d taken to calling Nicole Black Cat. Some other names included Pablo, for the English thief who stole strictly Picassos, and there was even a Mr. Ed, who concentrated his extracurricular activities on rustling highly insured thoroughbred racehorses.

Bestowing the nickname Dark Man, however, hadn’t been done in a light or amusing way. Dark Man was named as such because he was utterly and totally dark. When he was involved in a theft, people usually ended up hurt. Or dead.

And no one seemed to know who he was.

Alex went on. “Two months ago he was involved in the Norton Museum job in Omaha. Two security guards and an assistant curator—who was father to twin two-year-old boys—were shot dead at point-blank range.”

Nicole stared at where she was running her palm along the length of her skirt then back again. Stress lines bracketed the sides of her naughty mouth, but otherwise he couldn’t tell how she was taking what he was saying.

“Three months before that, there was the gallery job in San Francisco. Four injured, one paralyzed for life.”

He rounded the bed and sat down next to her on the mattress. “I want this guy, Nicole. I want him so bad I can’t think straight.”

She blinked to stare at him, her dark eyes questioning. “I thought you weren’t a cop anymore.”

“I’m not,” he said, but didn’t offer anything more. She didn’t have to know that Dark Man had haunted him throughout his career. Or that the thief was responsible for twenty-five percent of the policy payouts issued by his company last year.

“And I should help you…why?” she asked.

Because it’s the right thing to do, he wanted to say.

But he didn’t. Because if there was one thing he’d learned during his career in the N.Y.P.D., it was that right and wrong were twisted in the criminal underworld. Black became white and the gray area stretched to a point where even the black and white were essentially obliterated.

“Because if you don’t, then I turn you over to the authorities investigating the Bowman diamond heist last summer.”

He had to give her credit—she didn’t even blink. “I wasn’t involved with it.”

He gave her a half smile. “After I get done explaining everything to the authorities, do you really think it will matter?”

He watched her slender throat work around a swallow. Alex decided he liked the blond wig. It was short and sassy and showed her neck and shoulders off in a sexily elegant way.

Nicole said, “I can’t help you.”

“Why?”

She slanted a gaze in his direction as if addressing a particularly slow child. “The code.”

“Ah,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “You mean honor among thieves and all that.”

She smiled at him, but there was little or no amusement in the action. “Something like that.”

“And what do you think your fellow thieves would think of you targeting them for theft, then leaving them alone to take the fall?”

Color flushed her cheeks as she cursed under her breath. “You wouldn’t dare.”

At this point, Alex would.

Dark Man had plagued him throughout his eight-year career with the N.Y.P.D. He even suspected that the thief’s first known job at a small folk art museum in SoHo had coincided with Alex’s first day on the job in robbery/homicide.

But it wasn’t just that Dark Man was a thorn in his side, or that Alex wanted to settle a score like you see in those macho “B” movies or dime-store novels.

No. He needed to get him because he was no longer a harmless thief. He was a serial killer who seemed to enjoy taking people’s lives more than the loot.

And no one, nowhere, had a clue as to his real identity.

Oh, sure, the police had worked up a psychological profile on him. Mid-thirties. Loner. Classic passive-aggressive with sociopathic tendencies. But Alex could have told you that just reading the crime reports. The thief taunted his victims before killing them. Goaded them into risking their lives for material objects, then appeared to take great joy in making them pay for such a shallow move.

But the police profiler had also said that Dark Man would be a good-looking man. Popular with the ladies. Perhaps even a man well known in the public sector.

Did Nicole know him?

Alex discovered that during his thought processes he’d placed his hand on her bare knee and was lightly tracing circles on her pale skin with his thumb. If she did know who Dark Man was, he knew straight-out asking her wouldn’t get the intended results.

But forcing her to work with him…well, that was an altogether different tack that he hoped would yield him the man he’d been searching for so long. His determination had little to do with the fact that the insurance company had paid out a great deal of money to cover the items he’d stolen. It had everything to do with his belief that the only room the guy was entitled to inhabit was an eight-by-eight prison cell for the rest of his unnatural life.

Alex raised his eyes to look into Nicole’s, only she was watching his thumb make those lazy circles.

He removed his hand.

She moved her leg out of the way, then reached up to draw the blond wig from her head. Alex watched, fascinated, as she removed one, then two pins and her silky dark hair swept down to frame her pale face, in one blink taking her from icy cold temptress to dangerously sexy seductress.

“How do you think I can help you?”

Risky question, that, he thought as his gaze dropped to where her dark hair teased her nipples through the thin black fabric of her dress. His mouth watered just remembering the tangy taste of her skin. Her instant, uninhibited response.

Had he ever been with a woman so spontaneous? A woman who knew straight off what she wanted, no game-playing, no wondering if it was too soon or if she would look too bad if she revealed she wanted him as badly as he wanted her?

Oh, and Alex definitely wanted Nicole. Just like a sinner who couldn’t help but sin.

He got up from the bed and held out his hand. She instantly dropped the two hairpins into his palm.

“You have the uncanny ability to know when something’s going to happen before it does,” he told her.

The cuffs clanked against the iron headboard as she propped the wig on one of the two iron posts. “How long, exactly, have you been watching me?”

Alex pocketed the pins, then picked up the pajamas and refolded them, thinking of the countless photographs of her that covered the corkboard in his office at work. “Long enough.”

“Mmm.” He watched her recross her legs in a slow, languid way designed to drive any man mad. “And did it make you…hot? You know, watching me when I didn’t know you were?”

Alex couldn’t seem to take his gaze away from her slender thighs, still hearing the sound of skin sliding against skin.

“You know, watching me, but not being able to touch me?”

Alex forced his gaze up to her face. “My surveillance was of a strictly professional nature.”

She considered him for a long moment, then held up the hand bearing the metal shackles. “And I take it this is a new addition to the insurance investigator’s handbook?”

Alex cracked a grin.

She shook her head, appearing to fight her own smile. “You’re a naughty, naughty boy, Alex…”

“Cassavetes,” he offered.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, then she relaxed. “Cassavetes. I should have guessed when you told me Astoria. Greek, right?”

He ran his hand through his hair then sighed. “You couldn’t be more Greek unless you lived in Greece.”

He wasn’t exactly sure why he’d offered up that little bit of information as he placed the folded pajamas next to her again.

His family, immediate and extended, seemed to exist in a sort of isolated cultural vacuum. His parents had moved to New York from the Peloponnese right after he was born, bringing his father’s widowed mother with them. Then five years later, his mother’s two brothers and a female cousin had come over, as well. His grandmother, right up until she had died a couple years ago, had never learned to communicate in English. And almost all of his uncle’s shoe repair business was conducted in Greek.

Of course, he and his younger sister, Athena, were the only ones in the family to dare venture beyond the borough boundaries, Alex to work in a precinct in lower Manhattan, Athena to work in a restaurant in Little Italy, committing the worst of all crimes by not only rejecting her own heritage, but seeming to adopt that of another country.

What went unsaid was that they were already living under the flag of yet another country.

Strangely, though, his family was proud of their Greek-American heritage and dedicatedly displayed both flags outside both their house and at their corner supermarket in Astoria.

Nicole cleared her throat. “You know, I’ve always wondered…how do you say ‘sex’ in Greek?”

He bet she’d always wondered. More likely, she was looking for a way to throw him off track. And it was working. “Sex.”

She laughed. “No. Seriously.”

“I am serious.”

She considered him for a long moment. “Okay, then. Although it’s not much a part of my vocabulary…what about ‘love’?”

“Agapee,” he said automatically.

He reached for the throw at the foot of the bed and moved it so she could get it if she wanted without risking injury.

“I thought we’d get some sleep first,” he said, glancing at his watch to find it after 2:00 a.m. “Then we can get a fresh start in the morning.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

He gestured toward the cuffs. “You will.”

“Confident. I like that in a man.”

Sexy. He liked that in a woman.

Nicole watched him move around the large open area of the loft, taking an extra top sheet from a set of drawers, and a pillow from the other side of the bed, then heading for the couch a good twenty feet away but still with a clear sight of the bed.

The cuffs clanked again. “You, um, wouldn’t have any condoms in those drawers over there, would you?” she asked quietly.

Alex grinned as he made up the couch, then stretched out to lay across it in his newly rented tux slacks and shirt. “Nope.”

Her long-suffering sigh filled the high-ceilinged area. “Some sex life you must have.”

“Who says I don’t go through a case of them a month and that I just ran out last night?” he asked.

He waited for her response, thinking she looked all too tempting there, handcuffed to his bed.

There was a twenty-four-hour convenience store on the corner….

“I say,” she whispered, then scooted down and rolled to her side.

Unfortunately, she was right.

Alex lay staring at the ceiling some twenty-five feet above him, thinking not for the first time that he should paint the black beams white or beige or something. Open the place up a bit.

But the diversionary tactic didn’t work. Because all he could think about was how long the night was going to be without sleep. And the reason he wasn’t going to be able to sleep was that there was a red-hot sexy woman lying in his bed and not only did she appear to want him in it with her, but he wanted more than anything to be in it with her.

Oh, he definitely had not thought this plan through. Because if he had, he would have not only bought a box of condoms, he would have invested in the damn company that made them.

4

ALEX GROANED and tried to snag the sexy, ghostly image haunting his dream. Nicole Bennett. He had not only apprehended her, but had finally put into action his plan to entice her to help him. But she had this strange blond wig on…and was wearing his pajamas. Well, “wearing” wasn’t quite accurate. Partially wearing them was closer. She’d only buttoned the top button, letting the flaps fall on either side of her toned abdomen, and she’d rolled the tops of the pants down dangerously low so that pale, taut skin taunted and teased and her navel ring winked at him as she moved. With a smoldering, provocative look, she kept tempting him closer. He moved the top flap of the pajama shirt aside and laved her large nipples with his tongue, and then tunneled his fingers into the back of the pants and molded her sweet bottom with his fingers…only to have her move away and waggle her finger at him teasingly, reminding him that he couldn’t have her.

Alex awakened with a start, surprised to find his breathing ragged, his member rock hard and his heart hammering.

Good God, what had that been about?

He ran his hands through his hair again and again, trying to get a grip on his runaway thoughts.

Condoms, he realized. The damn dream had been about the lack of available condoms.

He jackknifed upright on the sofa, then planted his bare feet firmly on the pitted wood planks of his floor, waiting for his vision to clear. Slowly he registered that sunlight was streaming through the tall multipane windows that ran the length of the wall to his left…and that his apartment was strangely silent.

He jerked his head up to stare at the bed across the room, then catapulted from the sofa.

Empty.

The covers were pushed aside, the handcuffs left hanging open on the iron bar where he’d fastened one cuff.

Of course last night the other cuff had been firmly attached to Nicole Bennett’s wrist.

“Damn,” he muttered, striding across the room. Her bag was gone along with her. He picked up the blanket. Also gone were his pajamas.

What did she want with his pajamas?

And just how in the hell had she gotten out of the cuffs?

He checked his pocket for the hairpins. No, she hadn’t managed to get them out somehow. There they still were. But obviously she hadn’t needed them to free herself. That explained why she’d given them up so readily.

He smacked the pins against the night table then stalked to the bathroom. He saw to his morning ritual of brushing his teeth, washing his face and applying deodorant by rote, then changed out of the tux and into a pair of jeans and black T-shirt. He stared at the T-shirt in the mirror, then yanked it off, replacing it with a red one. Black reminded him too much of the damn woman who had slipped through his fingers yet again.

Only this time she knew not only who he was and what he wanted, but where he lived.

Damn, damn, damn.

The telephone rang.

Alex stepped toward the kitchen—little more than a stretch of counters with a sink flanked by a refrigerator and stove against the far wall—and snatched up the cordless receiver.

“Hey,” he said gruffly. Coffee. He needed coffee, he thought, staring at the ancient coffeepot a few feet away.

“Kalimera,” his mother said—“good morning” in Greek. “Is that any way to answer your phone?”

Not Nicole.

Alex’s shoulders slumped as he looked at his watch. It was after nine. Since he’d finally dropped off to sleep at somewhere around five, that meant Nicole could be virtually anywhere east of the Mississippi, on her way to anywhere beyond that point. And he was completely clueless as to where to look for her first. Now that she knew he’d been following her, finding her at any of her regular hangouts was a no go.

The thought that she could virtually disappear from the face of the earth made his throat tighten.

He hadn’t realized he’d let rip a series of curse words in Greek until his mother asked, “What is it, agapemou, my love?”

“Nothing,” he muttered. “Look, Ma, can I call you back?”

Like sometime next week when he had his shit back together?

“Actually, this is more than a courtesy call, Alexanthros,” she said. “Your sister…she’s gone.”

Again? he thought but didn’t say.

He really couldn’t deal with this right now. Not when someone else was noticeably missing.

“Your father and I are worried sick. She went to work and we haven’t seen her since.”

“Maybe she spent the night at a friend’s place.”

“Two nights ago,” her mother said. “We haven’t seen her for two nights. Do you think I would call if it was only one? She’s never stayed away two nights in a row before.”

And there was a time when she hadn’t stayed out one, but lately it had been a regular occurrence. One night had certainly been nothing to write home about, and definitely nothing to warrant calling her ex-cop brother to look for her.

But two nights…

Alex stretched his neck and walked to the bed, pressing his hand against the imprint of where Nicole’s body had been. Still warm from her body heat.

“Ma, I’m sure she’s fine.”

“But—”

“I’ll check around for you if it will make you and Dad feel better.”

“Oh, thank you, agapemou, thank you.”

Alex punched the disconnect button then tossed the phone across the empty bed.

Athena was twenty-eight, no longer a child, and the only reason she still lived at home was because their parents wanted it that way. It was traditional in Greek culture that children lived at home until they married. And since Alex hadn’t taken that route, it made Athena’s situation doubly difficult. But while her mailing address might still be the Tudor-style house in Astoria, more and more often she stayed with one of her girlfriends in Manhattan, nearer to where she worked in Little Italy. The way he figured it, his parents should be happy she came home at all, considering the way they rode her. It was easy for him to avoid the “when are you getting married?”, “when are you going to settle down?”, “when are you going to get a real job?”, “when are you going to continue the family name?” questions. He didn’t have to see his parents nearly every day. Athena, on the other hand, described nightly dinner at the Cassavetes house as hell on earth.