Page 31 of When He Protects

Her mouth had been less than an inch from his. He’dwanted to kiss her. To taste her. To make her moan. He’d wantedher.

To fuck her and claim her and have her scratching her nails down his back as she begged for more.

He’d never crossed a line on any case. But with her, that was all he wanted to do. Cross lines. Break rules. Take. Her.

And she knows it.Esme knew how sexy she was. It was a game to her. Her seduction was a power play. He had to remember that. No matter how damn cute and engaging she looked when she flashed her dimples at him. He could not trust her.

Con artist. Thief. Criminal.

He knew what she was.

The problem?

His body didn’t seem tocare.

Satisfied that the location was, in fact, safe, he headed back into the home. Locked the door. Set the system for the remainder of the night. The interior lights were still on, blazing, but there was no sign of Esme in the den. Good. She’d gone to bed. One less problem for him to face.

“Oh, Tyler!”

Shit.

He looked up.

Esme stood at the top of the stairs. She’d changed clothes. Put on some silky pajama top.Where was the pajama bottom to match the top?“Aren’t you missing pants?” he rumbled.

She laughed and darted down a few of the steps. Her bare feet skated over the stairs. “The top is long enough to cover me.”

No, it wasn’t. It stopped mid-thigh.

“We have bigger problems,” she told him.

His body instantly went on alert. Well, a differentkind of alert because his dick had already decided to salute the moment he’d seen her standing at the top of the stairs in that silky top.

He rushed up the stairs and met her half-way. “What’s wrong?” Dammit, he’d been so busy checking outside. He should have lookedinsidefirst. But he hadn’t thought the place could be compromised so quickly. Only a select few trusted individuals knew he’d been planning to arrive at the house with Esme.

“You’ve been misled.” Her hands were tucked behind her back. The placement stretched the fabric of the black, silk pajama top across her breasts.

Misled? Tell me something I didn’t already figure out, sweetheart.Like he and Gray didn’t realize the woman was working her own agenda? Not their first ballgame. But he’d decided to play along. He had two jobs on this case.

Job one…Keep Esme alive. Protect her. He would absolutely get that job done. No one would hurt her on his watch.

Job two? That was a little more complicated. Because job two involved him getting close to her and discovering every single secret that Esme possessed. The Feds and the CIA wanted her intel. He was the guy who was supposed to deliver those juicy secrets to them on a silver platter. In order to do that, though, Tyler had to make Esme trust him completely.

He suspected Esme didn’t trust easily.

He’d stopped a few stairs below her, but she still had to tip her head back just a little to stare up at him. Her eyes were big and deep and so dark. If a man looked into them too long, he might just lose his soul.

So why am I looking so long?“How was I misled?” Was she already about to confess?

She looked both innocent and tempting as she stood on the stairs. Innocent because her hands were behind her back. Her eyes so wide.

Tempting because…it was Esme. And she appeared to only wear a top, dammit. Did she even have on a bra beneath that top? Panties?

Sweet hell. Esme…with no panties.His back teeth clenched.

Her hands came up. Curled around his shoulders. “We have a problem,” she whispered.

Battle-ready tension flooded through him. As if he hadn’t already been tense enough.

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