Joey had gotten to his knees, only to topple over as Jared dealt him a vicious kick to the kidneys.

Kara broke a chair over another one, kicking his gun across the floor where it skittered beneath a table.

She looked around, grinning and unable to stop. Chaos reigned. In less than thirty seconds, the situation had radically changed. Now it was no longer a question of “gee, I hope I can kill Carlotti before he kills me”. Now there was no doubt. She would kill him and end this. There was time to do one of two things: save herself, or do what should have been done years ago.

No contest.

She started toward Carlotti, who was trying to help two of his men up at the same time, urging them to

“get her, shoot her, fuckin’ get her, dammit!” too much a coward to take her on alone. He wasn’t armed—he’d been planning to beat her to death—and she was still grinning, could feel the expression on her face and knew it wasn’t a nice smile, but oh, she wanted his death so badly, wanted Jared safe forever and now, now it was going to be done, it finally—

Someone tackled her from behind; it was like being taken down by a diesel truck. She got her arm up on front of her face before her nose connected with the cement floor, then felt herself lifted quickly and hustled toward the door at the back of the room. She got a whiff of Jared’s aftershave and in a moment of perfect understanding realized what he had done. And what he had prevented her from doing.

“Jared, let go ! I can’t let the opportunity go by, I can’t run away from this! You idiot, you’re ruining everything!”

“Wrong, blondie,” he said and the tricky bastard didn’t even sound out of breath. He had one arm twisted into the center of the back and was propelling her so firmly and quickly, it was all she could do to keep her feet.

They left the chaos of the main room behind them and, to the stunned mobsters, it must have seemed that they disappeared into the shadows.

CHAPTER TEN

“You idiot!” she hissed as he yanked her into a small storage room. She got a brief glimpse of a short counter, some mops and a few pails before he closed the door. She stood perfectly still, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark, while he stumbled around, feeling for something to block the door.

“You—you might have been killed!” Never had she felt so many conflicting emotions: anger, relief, giddiness, fear. “I left you in bed for a reason, you know. I—”

He shushed her scolding with a long kiss, then lifted her and placed her on the counter. She wondered how he could see a thing in the dark and was a little annoyed, frankly. She was the fly-by-night cat burglar, for heaven’s sake…it was ridiculous that she had been cursed with lousy night vision.

She pulled away from the kiss—not without regret—and opened her mouth to continue listing his wrongdoings and brother, they were legion, when he pinched her on the underside of her right breast, hard.

“Ow!”

“Quiet. You don’t get to yell at me. I get to yell at you. Quit putting yourself in danger for my sake!”

“Keep your voice down.” They had been whispering and it was doubtless Carlotti and Co. were mobilized yet, but old cautionary habits died hard.

He sighed, a depressing sound in the dark. She wished she could see his expression. “Look, Kara, I guess I’m a—a closet chauvinist.”

“Closet imbecile, you mean.”

“I know you can take care of yourself most of the time—”

“Most of the time?”

He ignored the interruption. “But I can’t help coming to your rescue. And admit it! This time you needed it. If I hadn’t distracted those guys, you’d—”

She didn’t want to think of that. Her stupidity. How she had been led to the warehouse like a child of five. “You should have stayed home,” she said stonily.

“You’re not listening. If you ever leave me alone in the dark to go off and confront a killer—if you ever try to take on five men by yourself again, I’ll break your neck.” He was hissing in her ear, making all the hairs on her left arm stand up. She couldn’t tell if he was scolding her out of relief or if he was really furious. “I’ll take you to the D.A. myself…I’ll never cook lunch for you again…and…and…” Then he kissed her again, hard enough to make her lean backward. It was a bruising, possessive kiss and she could feel her unwitting response to it, feel the wanting flare up in her like newspaper catching fire.

“We have to get out of here,” she managed and he took advantage of her open mouth; his tongue thrust past her teeth and she gasped. “Carlotti—”

“Could you not say another man’s name when I’m having my way with you?” he teased. His anger seemed to have vanished for the moment and she was glad. She didn’t like being reminded about leaving him alone. She had regretted it the moment it was done.

“We’re still in a lot of trouble,” she couldn’t help reminding him, feeling like a nag but unable to help it.

“Carlotti and his men will tear this warehouse apart looking for us. We have to be absolutely quiet—”

“You’re right.”

“—and find a way out of here without being seen.”

“This warehouse takes up the block,” he pointed out. “They’ll be searching for a while.”

She assumed he was intimidated at the thought of leaving the temporary safety of the closet and took pity on him. He had been remarkably fearless when he posed as a pizza delivery man, but Jared was a regular guy and not used to the violence that was her day-to-day existence. And he did save her life.

Probably. The least she could do was humor him before pushing for them to leave.

“Remember,” he whispered, so quietly it was more breath than sound, “no noise.” Then he stood very close, so close he forced her knees apart. Not for the first time, she vowed to never again wear a skirt, but she’d thought a skirt would fool Carlotti into seeing her as more helpless than she really was.

Jared’s fingers were sliding up her inner thighs.

“Wh—”

“You have to be utterly silent,” he murmured in her ear, so quietly she had to concentrate carefully to catch what he was saying. And concentrating was difficult, given where his fingers were. “If you make a lot of noise, the bad guys will find us and what kind of a bodyguard would endanger the man she’s supposed to protect?”

Shocked beyond words, she realized the depth of the trap he had set for her. She couldn’t protest much louder than a whisper—which he could ignore—and couldn’t fight him off—however carefully—without bringing attention to their position. Anything much above a whisper could be heard and what if Carlotti’s men were in this hallway right now? They most likely were not, but she dared not take the chance. As Jared said, what kind of a bodyguard would she be if she brought the bad guys down on them?

She was amazed at his ruthlessness, at how he was taking advantage of her protective nature to do as he liked, regardless of her feelings.

While this went through her mind, his hands were at her sweater, unbuttoning it and then spreading it apart. Annoyed and strangely excited and more annoyed at being excited, she tried to slap her knees together, but they merely thudded against his hips. She felt him ease her breasts from their bra cups, then felt his breath a moment before his mouth closed over one nipple. She swallowed her gasp as he sucked hard, drawing her nipple against the roof of his mouth and then tracing a circle around it with his tongue.

Abruptly her breasts felt warmer, heavier and she had the absurd thought that she was wearing too many clothes. And so was he.

He lavished attention on her breasts while she fought the urge to squirm against him. This was beyond madness. This was asking to get caught and killed. This was—this was unprofessional! Her distracted mind seized on the perfect description for their situation, desperate to think about something besides his mouth and hands. If she couldn’t talk him out of it—couldn’t talk at all!—or fend him off with a few well-placed smacks, she certainly wasn’t going to let him know how his touch affected her. He would get tired of the game soon and…

His thumbs were stroking her inner thighs, only centimeters away from the elastic of her panties. And his mouth was still on her breasts, kissing and licking and sucking. Now she did squirm, having no more control of the motion than she did her heartbeat. His touch was so feather-light it was almost like a dream. And with every stroke he got nearer her panties, the crotch of which had become embarrassingly damp.

When his thumbs slipped past the elastic and caressed her plump outer lips, her hands snapped into fists and she managed to restrain herself from seizing his hair and demanding he do something, right now! In seconds, she had gone from annoyance to pure sexual heat. Carlotti could have been standing at Jared’s shoulder and she wouldn’t have cared. She forgot about the foolishness of Jared’s actions and turned her formidable concentration to keeping quiet.

Abruptly, shockingly, Jared spread her apart, a thumb on each fold and did nothing more down there, just held her apart while kissing her deeply, sucking her lower lip into his mouth. Her knees slapped into his hips again as she wriggled against him, trying to get closer, to touch more of him, but he stayed where he was, taking her frustrated whimpers into his mouth and nipping her gently as a warning to stay quiet.

He breathed a command into her ear and she complied at once, hooking her legs around his waist. He lifted her with one arm and with the other hand, stripped her panties past her hips, setting her down and pulling them off as she let go of his waist. He slowly inched her skirt past her thighs until it was bunched around her waist, then passed his hand down her lower stomach, pausing to caress the dark forest of hair above her aching center. Everything was aching; her breasts wanted his hands back, her nipples were so tight and hard it was almost painful and as for the sensations below her waist…she bit her lip, hard, so as not to shriek at him to take her now, yes, right now, stop torturing me and take me right now !