his brother Julio dead on the bedroom floor. She tasted of forbidden fruit, the fruit a man like him had knowingly sworn off in exchange for the life he’d dedicated himself to leading.
A life that, if conducted correctly, would allow him to get rid of at least a few scum of the earth before he himself was terminated. That the last part was inevitable, he was well aware of. But he didn’t care as long as he took as many of them with him when it happened’if not before.
* * *
Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.
This time she had gotten more than she had bargained for. Maybe even more than she could possibly handle, Kari realized.
It felt as if her very soul was being sucked into a heated vortex.
The smart thing, she knew, was to push this man away and run for her life. But that presupposed that her knees and legs were still working’which they weren’t. Both had turned to mush of varying consistencies.
Besides, she didn’t really feel all that compelled to do the smart thing anyway. Not when it involved pulling away from what was the surprisingly delicious feast of his mouth.
Yes, the man, even in his scruffy state, was sexy and attractive to a fault, but who knew this lay beneath it all?
Her reluctant partner’s kiss left her feeling a hell of a lot more intoxicated than the amber liquid she had brought with her. The latter did not hold a candle to what he could accomplish with that mouth of his.
So, just for a moment longer’or so she tried to convince herself’she allowed herself to linger.
And linger.
Kari closed her arms around the man’s neck, leaning her body into his and patiently waiting for the kick of that mule that had somehow managed to sneak into all this to subside.
It didn’t.
If anything, it increased.
And, to her utter surprise, she had no complaints.
* * *
He hadn’t survived these last three years by allowing his emotions, or the sensations that were at times generated by those emotions, to decide his path for him. He was the one who forged the path, the one who kept himself safe in the most unsafe situations.
He didn’t do it letting down his guard by so much as a sliver.
That took strength. Strength he knew he had to tap into now.
So it was with superhuman effort that Esteban put his hands on her shoulders and pushed Cavanaugh’s niece away from him. “Get out of here,” he growled, secretly afraid of where the next step might take him. He had no room in his life for more regrets.
Kari stood her ground. “No.”
Her defiance temporarily threw him for a loop. He stared at her, as if not comprehending her negative response to his order.
What the hell was wrong with her?
Did she think this was easy for him? Being noble wasn’t exactly his calling.
“Get the hell out of here,” he repeated, his voice more malevolent now than it had been before. “I don’t think either one of us is ready for the consequences if you stay.”
She didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay, to see what happened. To see exactly where this would go and what she would feel when it got there.
Kari wavered inside, more than ready to deal with any consequences if this wondrous condition could be persuaded to continue.
But she had a feeling that what she felt here wasn’t important. Esteban was the important one in this scheme of things. He was the one she’d been sent to convince to remain in the department any way she could. She wasn’t fool enough to believe that if what was happening between them at this moment was allowed to go on to its logical conclusion’if they wound up making love’then he would remain.
She knew damn well that the exact opposite would occur.
If they made love tonight’and the promise of that was something she ached for with her entire being’then Esteban would disappear by morning, most likely never to be heard from again. Kari could sense that in every bone in her body.
So she banked down all the unleashed emotions that were now madly unfurling within her. She was struggling to hold them in check, struggling to keep herself from throwing her arms around Esteban once again and pulling him back to that hotbed of sensual heat their coming together had generated.
“All right,” she said thickly, doing her best not to suck in air as she spoke, but to take it in slowly and calmly. “I’ll go,” she agreed, then flippantly added, “It looks like we’re out of alcohol anyway, so I guess the party’s over for tonight.”
He barely glanced in the direction of the bottles. “Looks like,” he muttered in agreement. Anything to get her to leave’before he gave in to temptation and refused to let her walk out.
Taking a deep breath, Kari did what she could to center herself.
“You don’t have to bother showing me to the door,” she told him sweetly. “I can see myself out.”
Esteban merely nodded. “Wasn’t planning on it,” he retorted.
At least he was honest to a fault, she thought, though she would have preferred to hear a token protest from him.
But then, since he was so honest, she would always know where she stood with him.
If he became her partner.
She nodded in response to his last words, turning to leave. She stopped for one more second, looking at him over her shoulder.
“And you’ll be there tomorrow morning? At the precinct?” she added when he’d made no response to her question.
When he still remained silent, she took a step back toward him, her hand on her hip as she waited for him to say something.
He didn’t want her walking back in. What had caused him to kiss her was still very much with him, and this time around, he was fairly certain that kissing would be the least of it. The stakes were definitely set to go higher, and he had no idea just where’and if’it would stop.
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” he told her curtly, ready to say, to promise, anything just to get her to leave. To get her out of harm’s way before he did something that both of them would live to regret. “Now, go!”
She ignored his last words, focusing only on the first part. “Good,” she pronounced. Her hand on the doorknob, she uttered one last parting shot. “Just remember, I know where you live.”
Then, to forestall any further exchange’or, more important, any further temptation’she closed the door and left.
Chapter 4
Every time he walked into the state prison on visitor’s day, Esteban could feel a slight tightening in his chest. All his senses would go on high alert and he became even more aware of the details of everything that was going on around him, including each person within his line of vision.
It was more than just his survival instinct going into high gear, the way it did when he was working undercover.
Because every time he walked through those prison gates, the thought There but for the grace of God went he would echo through his brain and continue to do so until he was back in his car, driving away from the prison.
Esteban was well aware of the fact that it wouldn’t have taken much for his life to have gone off on a different path. At the very least, if he’d been home instead of away at school, he might have been murdered, as his mother was. But most likely, he would have been in prison now the way his stepfather was, because he would have been the one who had killed the dealer who’d sold drugs to his stepbrother.
The drugs that had cut short