Page 45 of The Chance

No. She wasn’t. No matter what.

Her fingers tightened around her phone. Her other arm—it was injured. Maybe broken, sprained, something—he’d hurt her. But she’d been hurt before. Even had that arm broken before, by a foster mother who hadn’t liked her bad attitude when she’d been nine. She kicked out. As he dragged her toward the stairwell just past her office. The one that led to the… basement.

“Go ahead and struggle,” Howard said, his voice low and venomous. “I like it when they fight me.”

“Stop!” she tried to scream, but the sound barely escaped.

She fought, and fought. None of it did any good.

She just had to hold on.

37

It had takenthem thirty seconds to get from his office to the west entrance to the basement. Thirty seconds too long. Justin pulled Mandy against him, rough. Like he knew she liked it. And went to work on her top. It was over her head in an additional two seconds.

Mandy tilted her head back, her lips curling into a smirk. Hell, this woman saw straight into his soul. He needed this, he really needed this.

“You’re a little tense, baby.” Her fingers moved to the buttons of his shirt, flicking one open. “What is it this time? Fisher and her crusade? Howard acting like the shady bastard he is? Or is it Guthrie Hiller breathing down your neck?”

“Shut up, Mandy.” Justin slipped his hand over her chest. She was warm, her skin soft, firm. “This isn’t the time.”

“It’s always the time.” Her breath ghosted against his ear. “You act like you don’t love hearing me talk.”

“There are other things I want you to do with your mouth.” He pressed his mouth to hers instead, silencing her in the only way he knew would work. She almost melted against him. Mandy loved to be kissed, to be touched.

Her hands slid down his chest, tugging at the hem of his shirt, and he felt the knot of tension in his shoulders start to unravel. He didn’t want to think about Fisher or Hiller or the mess Dale was all screwed up in. He just didn’t.

Mandy’s fingers curled into his shirt as she pulled it off his shoulders. It joined her scrub top on the floor next to them.

“Still tense,” she said.

“You’re not helping.”

“Am I supposed to?” There was a challenge in her gaze, that familiar spark that always made his blood run hot. Mandy thrived on pushing him, on seeing how far she could go before he snapped. It was maddening. It was intoxicating.

He wanted this woman more than he ever had any other. “Maybe you should try harder.”

She laughed again, but before she could retort, a faint noise echoed from outside the room.

“What was that?” He stopped touching her, listened. They had been down here so many times before, he knew every sound and what it meant. That one was different.

“Who cares? We’re the only ones who ever come down here. Relax.”

Justin hesitated, his ears straining against the hum of the machinery. But when the sound didn’t repeat, he let it go. Mandy was right—no one came down here. That was the point. Why they spent so much time down here. But maybe… they shouldn’t. Maybe they should take this into the real world. She could move in with him. He would like that. He’d talk about that with her. After. Right now… he had other things to think about.

“Focus,” Mandy said, her fingers working the buckle of his belt. “You can’t think about anything else when you’re with me, remember?”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Justin asked.

The door slammed open.

Justin jerked around. Mandy screamed. She yanked his shirt up to cover herself.

Justin just stared. Into Aubrey Fisher’s unbelievably blue eyes.

38

He had been intendingto find his woman, seduce her, and then buy her dinner, or… buy her dinner and then seduce her all night long. He wasn’t picky about the order. But he’d been stopped by McCoy in the hallway.

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