Dead No More. L. R. Nicolello

time behind bars.”

      Follow his lead, my ass. She fought hard, desperate to put some space between herself and this brute of a man. He cocked his head and grinned down at her.

      “Don’t forget I asked nicely.”

       Asked nice—

      The stranger lowered his head and brought his lips to hers.

      Lily froze. Every nerve ending in her body fired spontaneously—and without her consent—as he deepened the kiss, pulling a sensual reaction from her that she hadn’t experienced since Jackson. It hummed within every fiber of her being. What the hell? She tried to twist away, but he pressed down harder, the heat of his body seeping into her coiled muscles, coaxing them to relax, to let go.

      To trust.

      Not able to break his iron grip, Lily did the only thing she could think of.

      She bit him. Hard.

      With a surprised yelp, the stranger jerked back and stared down at her as if she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had—she’d drawn blood.

      “Is everything okay here?” an older woman asked, eyeing them suspiciously. Her male running companion reached for his phone.

      Lily’s eyes flickered between the couple and the man on top of her. He licked away the drops of blood on his lip and gently increased the pressure against her wrists as he spoke softly in her ear. “Damn it, Lily. Sell it. Make them believe I’m your lover.”

      Of course. That was why he’d kissed her. It was the perfect cover with so many public, prying eyes. She forced her muscles to relax, hating that this stranger invading her personal space was right.

      “Lovers’ spat,” Lily muttered, glaring up at him.

      The man straddling her pressed his lips to hers again, looked up and shrugged, feigning sheepishness.

      Lily wanted to kill him.

      The older woman shook her head, muttered something that sounded like “stupid young people” and walked off. The man with her laughed as he pocketed his phone, put his earbuds back in and followed his companion.

      Lily wrestled against the stranger’s strong, but gentle, hold. “Get off me.”

      “Are you going to behave?”

      She glared up at him.

      Chuckling, he rolled off her and stood.

      Scrambling to her feet, Lily dug around in the tall grass until her fingers landed on cold metal. She scooped up her gun, letting it hang by her side. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Who was this guy? A shudder swept through her, followed closely by fiery heat that sucked the air out of her lungs.

      “I see today isn’t a good day to chat.” He took a step back, put on his sunglasses and flashed her a grin, sending her heart into overdrive. “I’m out.”

      Before she could respond, he turned and joined a passing group of runners, melting into their small pack.

      * * *

      SHE BIT ME.

      After seven years of covertly working as a black ops agent for Unit 67, Derek Moretti could safely say that no one had ever bitten him—until today. That was one for the books.

      When she’d turned on him, he’d all but forgotten to breathe. She wasn’t as tall as some of the other female agents he’d worked with, but she’d held her ground as she glared up at him, the wind whipping strands of brown hair around her delicate face. Her hazel eyes flashed as she’d shoved her hands onto her slim hips. He couldn’t tell if it was anger or the sun that had kissed the tops of her cheeks, coloring her olive skin to a rosy pink, but he didn’t care.

      She was drop-dead gorgeous...and hell-bent on killing him, a fact Derek couldn’t ignore.

      Curiosity curled in his stomach like a warm fire when he’d taken the now-familiar running path along the river. Lily Andrews in the flesh. What would she say? How would she respond? After months of reconnaissance work, watching her, studying her, he’d conjured up a handful of scenarios. But her biting him?

      Yeah, he hadn’t seen that coming.

      But then again, none of Derek’s scenarios had involved tackling Lily to the ground, pinning her beneath him—at least not this time around. That was a different fantasy, for another time...maybe.

      He chuckled to himself briefly, then stopped as the searing memory of her body beneath his flashed through his mind. Her body had been hard, yet soft in all the right places. Just the sheer awareness of her underneath him, at his mercy, left him momentarily frozen, wanting more. He doubted she’d felt the same—in fact, he was pretty positive that he’d seen fire flash when she’d turned those hazel eyes on him.

      The woman was a freakin’ tigress.

      No doubt she’d meant to deter him, but her feistiness did exactly the opposite—it entranced him.

      Clearly the kiss had taken it too far. But how could he resist? The woman was a knockout of epic proportions. Derek reached up, touched his fingers lightly to his still-throbbing lip and smiled. Yeah, that was definitely not the response he’d hoped for.

      Veering off from the running path, he headed west, making his way back to his place. He needed time and space to regroup before he approached Lily again with a proposal she wouldn’t be able to resist.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Monday, September 15, 5:00 p.m.

      LILY STALKED INTO the downstairs lobby of her penthouse loft. Despite another hour of pounding the running trail, she couldn’t shake the image of that strange man smiling down at her...or the memory of his body pressing against hers. He was all male, all alpha—and taking up way too much real estate in her mind.

      George, her doorman and longtime family friend, looked up from behind the concierge’s desk. He frowned. “You okay, Lil?”

      Of course he’d sense something was off. “I’ve had better runs.”

      Wasn’t that the understatement of the year. How had that stranger known where to find her? Better yet, how had he known so much about her?

      She headed to the elevator, having no intention of starting that powder keg of a conversation with George. No doubt the giant man would quietly corner her, demanding full disclosure of whatever had spooked her—because she was spooked.

      “Lily,” George’s low baritone voice interrupted her mental tirade. “There’s a note for you.”

      She stopped midstride and turned slowly back toward George. He held out a cream-colored envelope and watched her warily, his bushy black eyebrows furrowed. “A man came in a few minutes ago. Says he owes you an apology.”

      She clenched both hands into tight fists, her nails digging into the softness of her palms. “Toss it.”

      “That’s what he said you would say, and I was tempted.” He tilted his bald head to the side and searched her face with his deep brown eyes. “Why does he owe you an apology?”

      She shrugged, reached across the desk and snatched the envelope. “It’s a long story.”

      “Time is all I’ve got these days.” George crossed his log-like arms across his barrel of a chest and didn’t move. Despite his concierge uniform, he looked menacing and huge, and every bit like the Senegalese warrior he was. For all Lily could tell, he didn’t even blink before he slowly spoke, his voice dark. “I’d appreciate an answer.”

      Lily swallowed down the frustration seeping up. He’d been tasked to do one thing and one thing alone: watch her six. Which was one hell of an assignment, given the independent, stubborn