Red-Hot & Reckless. Tori Carrington

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,”