The Girl Next Door (Shadow Agents #6)(28)
Author: Cynthia Eden

His hands stroked her, caressed. Her skin was softer than silk, smooth and perfect.

She wore a black, lacy bra. A temptation that was going to force him to his knees.

But then her hand went to her jeans. She shimmied out of her jeans. Long, tan legs were bared to him. Those legs—and the matching scrap of black lace panties that covered her hips.

Don’t pounce. Because he wanted to pounce. He wanted to take and take and take and let the pleasure drive out the last of the chill that clung to his skin.

Instead, he lowered her onto the bed. He kissed. He touched. Her bra joined her clothes when he tossed it to the floor. Her br**sts were perfect, full with tight, pink tips. His tongue licked those taut peaks. She arched against him. Her nails dug into his back, pressing through the thin T-shirt that he wore.

Her hips pushed up against him. Her spread legs moved restlessly against his body.

His hands slid down to the front of her panties. Panties that had surely been designed to make a man go crazy. Carefully, he stroked her through the lace. She was hot and so ready for him.

He had to make this good for her. He wanted Gabrielle as wild and hungry as he was.

His fingers pushed into her. Her breath rushed out.

Then she was the one yanking up his T-shirt and trying to touch his skin.

But when she touched him…

I need her too much.

He pulled back and stripped in seconds. He reached into the nightstand and fumbled for the protection he’d put there.

Then he slowly removed the scrap of lace that covered her sex. He tried to be careful, but he wanted her so badly—the lace ripped.

Gabrielle just laughed. She lifted her hips toward him. “I don’t want to wait anymore.”

Her voice—her husky words—pushed him over the edge. His hands closed over her thighs. He parted them even more, making room for his body. He put his aroused flesh against her.

Their gazes locked.

He drove into her with one long, hard thrust.

Her breath gasped out. Her eyes darkened even more. Cooper stilled, worried that he was hurting her.

At his hesitation, her legs wrapped around his hips. She arched against him. “More,” Gabrielle whispered.

He’d give her more. He’d give her all that he had.

His fingers threaded with hers. He withdrew then thrust harder, deeper, again and again. The moans she made urged him on. They were the sexiest sounds he’d ever heard. Pleasure waited, so close, so close. Her body felt amazing against his. Being in her, that hot, tight paradise of her body—it made the blood in his body seem to burn.

She cried out and he saw the pleasure on her face. Her cheeks flushed. Her eyes went blind.

She whispered his name.

He drove into her, not able to hold back. The headboard thudded into the wall, and when the pleasure hit him, it was like nothing he’d felt before.

His body shuddered as he pumped into her. He held her with hands that were too tight, but he couldn’t let go.

She was all he knew. The only thing he wanted.

The one thing that he wasn’t going to give up.

His gaze met hers. Pleasure was a drug making him desperate, light-headed.

Gabrielle smiled up at him.

For Cooper, in that instant, everything changed.

* * *

THE RAIN FELL down in a hard, heavy torrent. The local forecasters had predicted that the storm would last for hours.

Cooper had taken the reporter home.

He’d called, given Gabrielle a warning that she should heed, but the woman had seemed to pay him no attention.

Her mistake.

She would learn the truth soon enough.

When you trusted the wrong person, you wound up dead.

Another woman had trusted Cooper once. She’d believed in him, just as Gabrielle believed in the man now.

That woman was buried in a cemetery thirty miles away.

Soon, Cooper would be buried, too.

The killer pulled up his coat and whistled as he turned away from the brownstone.

It was almost time for his next attack. Almost…

Chapter Eight

He didn’t look nearly as fierce when he slept. Gabrielle turned her head, letting her gaze slide over Cooper’s face. The danger was gone. The dark intensity vanished when he was unaware.

He looked younger but still as handsome.

Just not as deadly.

His blond hair was mussed. The brilliant blue of his eyes was hidden. His tanned skin looked even darker against the white of the sheets.

And, in the light, Gabrielle could see that Cooper had scars—a lot of them.

When they’d made love, her fingers had skimmed over his body. She’d been so far gone, though, that she hadn’t recognized the rough outline of the scars for what they were.

Her stare drifted down his body. Since the sheet pooled at his hips, she had a great view of his truly impressive chest and abs.

And the seven scars there. She counted those scars again. Yes. Seven.

From gunshots? Knife wounds? Just what had happened to Cooper in his life? What made him so dangerous?

He’s not who you think he is.

That dark voice wouldn’t get out of her head.

She couldn’t escape into sleep, not the way Cooper could. Maybe it was the storm. Storms always reminded her too much of her past.

It had been storming—a fierce, hard storm, just like this one—the night she’d found her father.

The thunder had cloaked the sound of the gunshot. None of her neighbors had even known that he was hurt.

By the time she’d gotten home, it had been too late.

Lightning flashed outside of the window.

Swallowing, Gabrielle lifted her hand. One of Cooper’s arms had curled over her stomach. Carefully, she eased out from under that arm. Then she put his hand back down on the bed. Her gaze studied his face closely, but he didn’t stir.

She pulled on his robe. It was there, so surely he wouldn’t mind if she borrowed it, right?

Gabrielle tiptoed out of his bedroom. It was still early, barely past nine at night, and there was no way she could sleep.

Once back in the den, she hesitated.

The place just seemed so empty. Why didn’t Cooper have any personal mementos there? His place…it was just like Van McAdams’s.

Van and Keith had been in the military, and so had Cooper.

She glanced over her shoulder.

Why had Cooper been at the scene of Keith Lockwood’s death that first night? She’d thought it was just coincidence at the time, but…

She found herself creeping toward the small desk in the corner. A laptop sat on the desk, closed, turned off. Her fingers slid over the laptop.

She’d just made love with a man—and she knew only the barest of details about his past.