Back in the Bedroom. Jill Shalvis

      Unbelievable. She watched him breathe slowly and evenly for another moment before letting out a frustrated sigh. “Fine. Sleep.” Without a care to her own possible fears and pain. Wasn’t that just like an alpha?

      She eyed the room again. The window was still too small, with no fire escape or way to climb down. Interestingly enough though, there appeared to be an attic access in the ceiling, a decent-sized one, too. Not that she could reach it alone, but they had to get out. Maybe if he helped— “Reilly?”

      He let out a long-suffering sigh. “What?”

      “I have another option than sleep.”

      He opened his eyes, the look in them blatantly sexual. “Oh, yeah?”

      Oh boy, definitely alpha. Extremely alpha. So why his low, husky tone and those suggestive words made her body tingle, she hadn’t a clue.

      “What did you have in mind?” His voice dripped an earthy sensuality.

      “Uh…” Oddly enough, the only thing she had in mind right now was X-rated. “I forgot.”

      His gaze ran over her from head to toe, flared with heat, shocking her, before he closed his eyes. “Okay, then.”

      Okay, then.

      2

      REILLY DRIFTED off pleasantly, to a place where his head didn’t hurt and he was wearing clothes—

      “Reilly.” This extremely loud whisper was accompanied by a shove at his shoulder.

      She was ba-a-ack. His father’s latest fling, the petite pixie with the shoulder-length brown hair and mossy-green eyes that flashed her every thought for the world to see.

      Was she even of legal age?

      “Reilly?”

      He had no idea why she bothered to whisper, when she was doing it so loudly she could have woken the dead.

      “I think you should wake up now,” she said, and added another teeth-rattling shake. “Come on. Get up and count to ten or something.”

      Honest to God, the woman talked more than any woman he’d ever met.

      “Just to make sure you don’t go into a coma.” Another shake. “It’s only been five minutes but I can’t remember how long you’re supposed to let someone with a bleeding head injury sleep.”

      “I’m not in a coma,” he said with his eyes still closed. It wasn’t really sleep he was interested in, but a way to pass the time other than looking at the oddly sweet and sexy Tessa. “And my head is no longer bleeding.”

      “I still don’t think you should sleep.”

      All those years in the army and then the CIA, one thing had stuck with him—how to catch quality Zs in five short little minutes. He’d rather have had longer than five minutes. Say the whole night, so the time would have passed painlessly, but slowly he opened his eyes, staring into her wide green ones. “I’m fine.”

      “How many fingers am I holding up?” She wriggled three in front of his nose.

      He grabbed them. “I’m fine,” he repeated.

      “Fine enough to go up the attic access in the ceiling? I think it has good escape potential.”

      In the meager but adequate light he took in her slight little form bending over him, her hand on his chest. Not that he minded a woman’s fingers on him, but his head felt like it was going to roll right off his shoulders. And if she shoved him one more time, yet again jarring his head, he was going to roll her pretty little body beneath his to hold her still. “Escape potential,” he repeated, and she smiled at him and nodded.

      “All you have to do is climb up. Then shimmy your way through whatever is up there, and drop down through another access in another room. Voilà, escape. I know you said you didn’t grow up here, but you could probably find a phone, right?”

      He’d had his cell on him, before he’d made the mistake of actually coming here to see Eddie. Before he’d knocked out three of the four idiots, then realized too late there was one more idiot behind him. Suddenly, he’d seen stars from the hit with a vase probably worth enough to feed a small country.

      Which made him the idiot.

      And to think, all he’d wanted was to tell his father to knock it off, to stop sending sexy little temps to his office and to stop sending him messages to come visit.

      Instead, he’d ended up on the wrong end of a strip search, being held hostage by his own gun no less. He, a guy who knew how to kill a man in more ways than he could count, had been taken down by a few punks with a vendetta against his father.

      If that didn’t bite, watching them mess with his gun while he sat in his shorts sure did. And if that didn’t also say how much he’d lost his edge, how dead-on-target his decision had been to get out of the CIA, he didn’t know what did.

      He supposed it could have been worse.

      They could have killed him.

      “Can you? Find a phone?”

      The cute young thing was still talking. He let out a long breath and opened his eyes. “Probably.”

      “So…will you?”

      “No.”

      She blinked. “What?”

      “No,” he repeated clearly.

      “But…why not?”

      “Because it’s dark.”

      She eyed him from head to toe, making him glad he’d been allowed to keep his shorts because for some reason, even though she drove him crazy, his body didn’t seem to want to agree with his brain on that assessment.

      “The dark shouldn’t bother a guy like you,” she finally said.

      Think again, sweetheart. “I’ll go at daylight.”

      “But…”

      “Daylight. Now…was there something you wanted to do to pass the time?”

      “No,” she squeaked.

      “Fine.” He tried to forget he was stuck with one of his father’s babes. She looked like heaven, he’d give her that, but she talked too much. At the ripe old age of thirty-one, Reilly had come to realize he liked women, he liked them a lot, but he liked them quiet, reserved and controlled…much like himself, actually.

      But this one couldn’t be quiet to save her life, much less be restrained and controlled. She was pacing the floor right this very second. “We’re not going to get out of here for a few hours, so you might as well stop wearing a hole in that tile.”

      She stopped and looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

      And in truth, maybe he had. Certainly the old Reilly would have gotten up and rescued the damsel in distress.

      The new Reilly, no longer of CIA, no longer of anything or anyone else except Reilly Ledger of Accountant-4-Hire, his small accounting firm with clients as reclusive as he was. He pushed papers around when and how he felt like it, didn’t take orders from anyone but himself, and never, ever rescued damsels in distress.

      Unless it was accounting-related, and, in that case, he charged by the hour.

      She put her hands on her hips, a gesture it appeared she used a lot to compensate for being so short, but it did draw his attention to her mid-thigh sundress. It was pale-green with flowers on it and was actually quite demure, except that every time she moved it danced around her tanned, toned legs.

      Very distracting, those legs.

      “There’s no good reason why we have to stay in here,” she said.

      “Other than