Friction

Friction
Samantha Hunter

Sarah Jessup is supposed to be taking some R & R. A former hacker, she's now legit as a member of the crack HotWires team, investigating computer crime on Uncle Sam's dime. Taking her first real vacation in years means leaving the laptop–and handcuffs–at home. Or so she thinks.After one too many run-ins with sexy Logan Sullivan at the beach, Sarah is ready to indulge in a fling. Until she accidentally discovers he's a renegade cop on leave working a cold case–one involving an Internet sex scandal. Is Logan just using their relationship for cover? And how's he going to react when Sarah pulls out her own police badge?

Logan cupped her breast

Sarah closed her eyes, trying to shut out the thousand sparks of desire he was igniting. She didn’t want to feel these things, but maybe it was time to reclaim a part of her life again.

Shifting, she ended up solidly on top of him, pushing him into the sand. She pressed along the entire length of him, leaving her intentions in no doubt.

Sarah felt a rumble in his chest, a laugh maybe or a groan, as his hands closed over her buttocks. “Smooth move. Someone took some self-defense classes at the local Y?”

She just smiled, locking her knees around his hips before launching an assault on his mouth. Classes at the Y. Yeah, right. If he only knew.

And then before she could take her next breath, she found herself flipped over on her back. Logan settled between her sprawled legs, his hands pinning hers on either side of her head.

“Pretty smooth yourself,” she murmured. “You must have taken those same classes.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Sarah stared up at him wondering what he was planning. Hadn’t she made it clear she was willing? And ready, she thought, feeling his hardness pressing between her legs. Oh, was she ever ready. She was hot all over, and it wasn’t from the midday sun.

Dear Reader,

I hope you are as exited about Friction, the second hot installment of THE HOTWIRES miniseries, as I am. It was so much fun to get Sarah and Logan together in this book, even if they didn’t always make it easy. One of my favorite things about writing for Harlequin Blaze is that I get to create characters who deal with their deepest fears to discover love. Sarah and Logan certainly face these issues head-on, and with life-changing results.

I wrote this book in the middle of a frosty Syracuse winter, and it was a treat to visit the summer beaches and waters of the Chesapeake in my imagination while the snow was piling up outside. I hope Sarah and Logan’s passionate adventures will warm things up for you, as well!

All of the books in THE HOTWIRES miniseries are set on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay; as such, a percentage of the sales from this series will be donated to conservation projects in that area. Keep an eye out for book three, Flirtation, coming in February 2006!

Please stop by my Web site, www.samanthahunter.com, and see what’s new.

Samantha Hunter

Friction

Samantha Hunter

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

This book is dedicated to all those who work every single day to return the Chesapeake Bay Watershed to being a healthy, vibrant environment. You rock.

Many thanks to Michael Perecca for his wonderful “walk through” of the streets of Brooklyn, and for inspiring me to go there to experience it for myself.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

1

SARAH JESSUP stretched languorously under the warm rays of the sun. It was late June and the Virginia Beach hotels were already packed. The beach was swarming with vacationers: children scooping sand into red buckets under the watchful eyes of their moms sitting in low chairs planted in the gentle surf and, of course, the see-and-be-seen bikini crowd. And Sarah definitely wanted to be seen.

She’d cut her long, curly, brown hair boy-short for the summer, which just served to accentuate the strong features of her face. Her huge blue eyes, hidden by her Jackie-O sunglasses, narrowed as she perused the scene. Leaning back in her chair, her pale skin coated with the highest-SPF sunblock she could buy, she bent one knee up, letting the flimsy material of the cover-up skirt—which really didn’t cover up much at all—float around her.

Sarah reached for more sunblock, spreading it along the tender skin of her thigh, and smiled coyly at some male passersby who clearly appreciated her efforts. She didn’t want a tan, but the bathing suit she wore exposed most of her skin to the sun—barring the few scraps and strings that held the thing together—so she was being careful.

Having grown up around New York City and used to northern climates, she’d just relocated to southern Virginia last August when she’d taken a new job as a computer crime investigator for the Norfolk police department. She never in her life imagined having such a perfect gig.

Up until she joined the unit, she’d been a computer hacker, making her living at various part-time jobs, though she did find occasional, profitable, under-the-table computer stints in Manhattan. It all paid the bills and allowed her to buy the gadgets she’d needed for her trade. There’d been plenty of full-time jobs available in the city, and with her skills she could have earned a decent wage on Wall Street, but that kind of work didn’t satisfy her. Money wasn’t her motivator; getting the bad guys was.

To that end, the larger percentage of her time had been spent in her tiny Brooklyn apartment, sitting in front of her computer tracking down Internet porn sites and clueing in the feds to what she’d found. She’d always loved the irony of breaking the law—which she’d done pretty much on a daily basis in her pursuits—to uphold it.

She had no regrets about any of the lines she had crossed in those days. The fact that she was a free agent had made her information valuable to the feds. She could go where the law couldn’t—not unless they wanted Congress on their doorstep.

Hackers were a tight community, and she’d been part of it. While she’d known people who broke the rules, most of them had been quick to help take down the real bad guys. They’d been her friends. They’d known what she was doing, though not why—and they’d never asked. But they’d helped her. And she’d helped the FBI, in turn.

That was how she’d met Ian Chandler, the FBI hotshot who’d fielded most of her information. When he quit being a fed to run his own team in Norfolk, he’d hired her as part of the unit.

Now here she was, gainfully employed doing what she was best at, earning more than enough to pay the rent and buy plenty more electronic gadgets.

Sarah gazed out over the hazy ocean horizon. She had been working constantly for six months; along with her work for the unit, she’d been attending an accelerated program at the Norfolk police academy, a requirement since she’d had no formal law enforcement training. She hadn’t had a day off in a long time, and she couldn’t have been happier about it. She loved her work. It was where she functioned best.