Take It Down

He found himself unnervingly intrigued by Elle Monroe. And considering he knew she was up to no good, that probably wasn’t an intelligent reaction.

ELLE HATED THAT SHE WAS dripping all over the lobby floor. While the place was clearly a hotel, it also retained the air of someone’s home, which came from its previous life as a working cocoa plantation.

It just went against the manners Nana had drilled into her brain. But the woman behind the desk smiled as she walked past, not even flinching at her bedraggled state. She supposed the front-desk clerk had seen plenty of shocking things at Escape…especially if she usually worked the night shift.

Elle watched as the woman’s expression changed the minute Zane walked in behind her. Purely from objective observation, Elle recognized the feminine interest in the woman’s eyes. How her dark brown irises sharpened.

“Zane. You’re out and about late tonight.” His shoes squeaked loudly against the highly polished wood floor. “Wet.”

Elle heard the barely suppressed giggle in the woman’s voice and fought the urge to snarl.

“We had a small mishap at the pool.”

“Should I call Marcy?”

“No!” The word burst from both of them at the exact same time. The last thing she wanted was to have to explain how both she and the head of security had ended up wet. Together.

Without another word, they continued past the reception desk and into the hallway. Elle reached for the up button by the single elevator, but before she could punch it, Zane’s hand was wrapped around her elbow again.

It was a nasty habit she was definitely going to have to break him of.

Zane steered her down the quiet hallway, toward a door marked Staff Only. Pulling a key card from his pocket, he unlocked the door, saying, “Faster.”

The elevator he unceremoniously pushed her into spit them both out directly across from the door to her room. She’d looked at the door they walked out of several times and could have sworn it housed another suite…definitely not a freight elevator.

The building did have a few mysteries.

This time, it was her turn to yank out her key. Once the lock disengaged, Elle maneuvered herself so that her body stood between Zane and her open doorway.

That didn’t stop him from peering in. And then pushing inside. “Jesus. Someone’s ransacked your room. What did they take?”

Zane shoved her behind the towering wall of his body. His palm stayed wrapped around the jutting bone of her hip. The heat of his hand soaked through the suddenly cold material suctioned to her skin. A wave of awareness rolled through her.

It took her several seconds to register his words and see the room through his eyes.

“Nothing.” Elle batted his hand away, both for the liberation and as a reminder that she really didn’t want his hands on her. She didn’t.

“I was…looking for something before I went down to the bar.”

Zane turned to stare at her, genuine bafflement written all over his face. “What? The Hope Diamond? This place is a mess.”

Elle spun around slowly, taking in her toiletries spread out across the top of the antique dresser. The way her jewelry spilled out of the little pouch she kept it in, one of her favorite necklaces hanging half in and half out. Reaching over, she pushed it back inside. One of her shirts hung over the arm of a chair. Another rested in a heap on the floor beside it. Her silky half-length robe fluttered against the porcelain washbasin that stood in the corner.

She shrugged. She was used to living inside chaos. It came with the territory. When inspiration struck, she dropped everything to paint or sculpt or draw or whatever.

She had to admit that the room looked a little worse than normal, thanks to her earlier scavenger hunt. But she was always one to acknowledge her faults and being scattered was definitely among them.

“Let me guess, your room is spotless. I bet there isn’t even a speck of lint on the floor.” Regimented. That was definitely a word she’d use to describe Agent Zane whatever. She had no idea what he’d done with the CIA, but all law-enforcement officers were pretty much the same.

And she admitted that part of her refusal to make the bed every morning stemmed from being forced to do it every day of her childhood. Rebelling was healthy…sometimes.

“Maybe.”

However, in the face of his scrutiny, Elle found herself walking through the room, gathering her things so that she could dump them into the waiting suitcase. She did the same thing before her father visited. They now had an agreement. He called at least thirty minutes before he showed up at her door, and they both lived happily inside the illusion.

Besides, it wasn’t as if she’d expected anyone to see her room this way. If she’d known a man was coming up… Oh, who was she kidding?

Zane stood in the center of the room and watched, his damp feet leaving a spot on the floor. Her hand touched the thin shell of her robe, reminding her that she was still wet and cold.

Spinning on her heel, she headed to the en suite, but realized that between the heavy antique furniture, her strewn luggage and the man standing in the center of her suite, she didn’t have space to pass. Not without touching him.

Her nipples hardened at the thought, tingling as they’d done after she’d gotten out of the pool. The memory of his arm wrapped around her waist eased into her mind, like an old friend or the buzz from a perfect glass of wine.

Her breath hitched as her feet stopped just short of where he stood. Her clothes were extremely constricting. Zane stood before her, the flecks in his multicolored eyes glowing with the same awareness she was trying to deny.

Her tongue licked across her lips. She hadn’t meant to do it, but they were suddenly so dry. His gaze snared on the motion. He didn’t reach for her. He didn’t have to. His tempting stare beckoned her to come just a little closer.

And she did, closing the space between them.

Their bodies didn’t touch, and yet she could feel the heat of him. A shiver snaked down her spine, his warmth reminding her yet again that she was wet.

Her fingers suddenly itched to hold a charcoal pencil between them, to capture the expression of lust and awareness and male power that stretched his skin across the bones of his face. He was so beautiful in an unconventional way. And she had no doubt he’d protest at that word being used to describe him. He’d prefer rugged, hard, masculine, determined. And he really was all of those things. He held power, and the straight line of his shoulders said he knew it, and relished it. But the combination of sharp lines and arching curves, the perfect proportions pulled those rough edges together and softened them somehow into something very appealing.

And she noticed these things strictly from an artistic point of view of course.

Her eyes toured the length of his body. In for a penny, in for a pound. She appreciated that the strength of him carried all the way down. He was lean and powerful in a way that made her insides turn to mush. Normally, she would have said he wasn’t her type. She tended toward guys with wiry frames and an artistic bent. It made things so much easier if she was with a man who understood her disposition. She’d learned over the years that it saved her heartache and headaches.

Zane reminded her of her father and brothers more than she wanted to admit. They were the same body type. The same personality. The kind of guy she steered clear of because she’d lived with him all her life and it hadn’t gone well for anyone involved.

And yet, her blood chugged faster beneath her skin, picking up speed and heat and carrying oxygen laden with the smell of him to every cell in her body. Every inch of her would remember this moment long after it ended.

Her body moved of its own volition, yearning closer, wanting more of him. But she didn’t close the gap.

Her lips parted. His warm breath brushed across her cheek, fluttering the tendrils of hair at her temple. They tickled her skin, but she wasn’t laughing. His eyes held her in place, and she was unable to slip away or move closer.

They darkened with an awareness that echoed through her entire body. Her breath came increasingly faster, as if her lungs couldn’t expand far enough to give her what she wanted.

And what she wanted was for him to kiss her. As much as she shouldn’t. As much as that would complicate things beyond belief. Elle wasn’t thinking about those things now.