Annika
Svenson loved her job. As a special operative for the Agency
for Covert Rare Operatives, she was given awesome assignments
— lots of danger, action, and really freaky situations.
Because ACRO didn’t employ the average agent. No, ACRO
specialized in people with unique talents, like Annika’s
electric eel ability to shock the hell out of whoever she touched.
Her skill, combined with the fact that she’d been raised
to be a secret agent from the age of two, made her someone every
ACRO operative wanted to work with.
It also made her someone those very operatives avoided when
they weren’t working with her. Annika wasn’t the
nicest person on the planet, but she couldn’t care less
what anyone thought of her. As long as she had Dev, ACRO’s
big boss, on her side, she had all she needed.
Her cell rang and, speak of the devil, Dev’s Carry
on my Wayward Son tone jingled in her pocket. As she dug
the phone from her jeans, she glanced outside the window of
the East Seattle house ACRO had rented. The mansion across the
street looked back at her like some kind of million-eyed monster,
which was appropriate, since the man hiding inside was a beast
in his own right. All was annoyingly calm, which was the first
thing she said to Dev when she answered.
“Nothing going on,” she said. “Mikey-boy
hasn’t so much as opened the front door to get the paper
in two days.”
Dev sighed. “You tried to gain entry again last night?”
“Yep. And I have a lump on my head to prove it.”
Normally, nothing could keep her out of a secured building,
but Michael Bender wasn’t your usual arms-dealing, bank-robbing,
terrorist scum. No, this slimeball sold his services to the
highest bidder, and he used the spirit world to do his evil
work. Now that Annika had trapped him, he’d used those
same talents to make his house impenetrable — anyone trying
to break in was going to get their asses kicked by things they
couldn’t fight…or see.
Sure, Annika could charge her body up to dissipate a ghost’s
energy, but apparently, the entities Mike had enslaved could
actually manipulate electricity, and the last time Annika had
gone up against them, they’d drained her power and whacked
her on the head with a brick.
“Understood,” Dev said. “I’ve got backup
on the way. Play nice.”
The way her boss had said, “Play nice,” sent tingles
of both dread and anticipation up her spine, because she knew
exactly who he’d deployed for this mission.
“Creed,”
she breathed. “You’re sending that—”
“I know there’s no love lost there,” he interrupted,
“but you two need to deal with it.” The sound of
Dev tapping on his computer keyboard came over the secure line,
followed by a curse. “Gotta go. Creed should be there
any minute. Don’t kill him.”
Don’t kill him.
Yeah. Okay. Whatever. She’d tried once…the last
time they’d worked together in a haunted mansion. Turned
out that he was one person in the world who was immune to her
electric surges. Which made him the one person in the world
she could have sex with. Oh, she could control her power, but
sometimes, like when she was startled — or when she had
an orgasm — her body lit up like a neon sign and short-circuited
whatever she was touching.
Including people. Except Creed.
Her cheeks heated as those memories roared back in
excruciatingly vivid detail. He’d taken her virginity
at the mansion, and afterward they’d barely spoken for
weeks. Until last month, anyway, when he’d been sent to
her for martial arts training, and they’d done just a
little too much rolling around on the mat.
And once again, they hadn’t spoken since, though not
for lack of trying on his part. Their lack of communication
was her fault, and she could admit it. She didn’t need
him, didn’t want him, didn’t even like him. That
crazy fluttering in her belly and skipping of her heart meant
nothing.
A heavy pounding on the back door made her jump. Dammit. She
was never jumpy.
“Annika?” His deep, low voice rumbled through her,
and she resented the way it made her pulse race.
Casually, as though she wasn’t trembling on the inside,
she turned away from the window and the rainy Seattle evening.
Creed stood at the entrance to the living room, the dim glow
of the single candle casting more than enough light for her
to get a good view of all six-foot-five of him wrapped in black
leather from his biker boots to his pants to his jacket. His
shoulder-length, dark hair fell in unruly waves against his
face, the right side of which was covered with tattoos that
decorated the entire right side length of his body.
Her
mouth watered as if getting ready to lick every one of them.
“Creed,” she ground out, more angry at her body’s
response to him than at the fact that he was here when she’d
told Dev she didn’t want to work with him ever again.
He strode into the living room like he owned the house, and
he scanned her from head to toe as though he owned her.
“Nice seeing you, too.”
Arrogant jerk. She wasn’t going to let him get to her
this time. No way. “I hope you brought your little ghost
tagalong with you, because we’re going to need all the
help we can get on this one,” she said crisply, all business.
“Wow. You’re eager to get to it, aren’t you?”
He smiled, the cocky one that made her want to slap him. Or
kiss him. Maybe both.
“I’m always eager to work.” She turned to
the table next to her, where she had the plans for Bender’s
house laid out. “As you can see—”
Creed’s hand came down on her shoulder and spun her around.
“Oh, I can see,” he said, in a husky, rich voice.
“I can see that before we take down this scumbag, we’re
going to have to get something out of the way.”
Swallowing dryly, she took him in, his dark, heavy-lidded eyes,
his full lips, and the eyebrow piercing that inched up the longer
she stared like a dolt and said nothing.
Finally, she cleared her throat and said with a calm she didn’t
feel, “What do we need to get out of the way? Do you need
me to kick your ass? Because that, I will happily do.”
“Always with the attitude,” he murmured, as he
thrust his hand into her hair and held her immobile more with
the force of his will than his grip. “This is what we
need to get out of the way.”
Before she could protest, he lowered his head and kissed her.
-top-
