Page 75 of Covert Temptation

FOURTEEN

The safe house was dark, the only light the faint glow of the laptop screen and the occasional snowflake drifting past the window. The furnace hummed in the background, a steady, low thrum that did little to calm the storm in Dante’s chest.

Everything was a stark contrast to the knot twisting tighter inside him.

Kennedy lay asleep in the bed where they’d just… Well, the only term for what they just shared was “making love.”

When he left her, she was curled up in the sheets. Her golden hair fanned over the pillow, plump lips slightly parted in peaceful sleep.

She looked so damn serene, like she hadn’t dropped a verbal grenade on his soul a few hours ago.

“I’m falling in love with you,” she’d said, soft and uncertain, like maybe she didn’t believe it herself.

He hadn’t known what to say. Hell, he still didn’t. No one had ever said they loved him—not his parents, who were supposed to. Not his siblings, who were too young when they parted ways to vocalize something as elusive as feelings.

Definitely not any of the half-dozen foster families that passed him around like a broken object. The only things people had wanted from Dante King were silence, obedience and results. Love? That had never been in the damn equation.

But now it was. And it was wrecking him.

He let the weight of her words sink in, drifting in the strange warmth of it. Something about her saying it made him feel like he hadn’t entirely failed at life. Like maybe he was worth loving.

And then, because the universe never let him sit in one emotion too long, the laptop pinged.

The search he’d set to run in the background, the one of Kennedy’s photos, had a hit.

He stared at the screen, dread and shock swirling in the recesses of his brain and cutting off the blood to his fingers.

Setting his icy, wooden fingers to the keys, he tapped to open the response and saw a new file.

An encrypted file.

He filled his lungs with air, but it didn’t stop the searing sensation.

Dante straightened, all warmth of his afterglow—of hearing that Kennedy loved him—vanished.

The intel came through the back channel—the same one he used to communicate with his contacts when they didn’t want anyone else to see it. A box popped up, requesting a code.

The cursor blinked at him ten times, then twenty, before he made up his mind to open the file.

He entered the key code and watched with dread.

A picture filled the screen. At first, he thought it was a mistake.

Kennedy.

Onstage. Under red lights.

Dressed in next to nothing, the lingerie far too close to what she’d worn for him tonight.

Dante froze, breath stoppered in his throat. His first instinct was denial. It couldn’t be her. But then he looked again—the mouth he’d kissed raw, the eyes that softened with emotion every time she looked at him. Even the curve of her hips he knew too well.

It was her. No doubt.

Another file auto-loaded, revealing something that had been left off her government clearance application—her employment history.

In college, it seemed that Kennedy Bloom had been a dancer at a local club.

His mind blanked to his own feelings and went straight to intel specialist mode. Lying on a federal form was a felony, and she hadn’t disclosed this job. She’dliedher way into the embassy.

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