Page 4 of Dangerous Games (Tempting SEALs 2)

From all appearances she knew the crowd she was running with well, which meant she had progressed past fairy tales and daydreams and into reality. He could fuck her and walk away, just as he had with every other woman he had taken to his bed. There would be no tears, no recriminations, no dreams of happily ever after.

Did she have a lover? He watched the men who seemed to flock around her like wolves. She wore a collar around her neck with no adornments, no leash. It meant here, within Diva's, she was unclaimed. No other Dom held her loyalty and no Dom could be penalized with the loss of membership by disappearing with her.

Clint watched the men around her. That didn't mean she didn't have a lover. Not that he cared at the moment. Not that he would care later.

She didn't seem to pay attention to one man more than the other, and as she ordered a drink from the waitress, Clint could have sworn he caught a glimpse of weariness in Morganna's face.

He grimaced at his overactive imagination. Morganna had been a social butterfly even before she came of age. She was one of those women perfectly at home in the middle of a crowd, finding her sense of purpose in the number of so-called friends she could gather around her at any one time. It shouldn't have surprised him that she had stepped into this lifestyle. The fact that it did caused a moment's worry.

It was driving him crazy, watching the men who were drawn to her like flies to honey, their hands touching her bare shoulder, her. satiny arm, trying to feel that ribbon of silk she called her hair.

For eight years he had fought to stay away from her, to keep from sinking into that sweet, curvy body and destroying both of them. The two years before she turned eighteen didn't count. Seeing her as a woman and reacting to her as a woman, as he had just after she turned eighteen, were two different things.

He had convinced himself she was innocent, too soft for his sexuality, too gentle for a dead-end relationship. Because Clint had learned years ago, at the brutality of his father's fists and his mother's faithlessness, that happy ever afters just didn't exist.

And he didn't want to hurt Morganna. He had no desire to break her tender heart or to see her soft gray eyes fill with tears. But if she was here, enmeshed in the seedy sexuality of the club scene, then she surely knew the score.

He could have her. Just once. Maybe twice. And he could walk away without risking his soul.

He set his jaw in determination as he straightened from the wall and began moving toward her. The crowd parted before him. In a room of male Dom wannabes, Clint knew he stood out in the crowd. He wasn't a wannabe. He was strong enough to take what he wanted and make it stick. The crowd here knew him, understood him.

He shrugged away the feminine hands that reached out as he passed by them. Women he had known in the past or those who had wanted a ride. He knew them, too. They craved the adventure, the excitement, the dark, carnal excesses that could only be found with a certain type man. He had a reputation for being just such a man. As Morganna was soon to find out.

MORGANNA STILLED HER IMPATIENCE, THE instinctive

irritation at having so many people around her, so many men trying to touch. You'd think they'd never touched a woman before. Sweaty hands running over her hair, her arm, and even worse were the ones who thought they could start at her knee and she would never notice their hands attempting to slide to her thigh and beyond.

Twits. She gripped the wrist of yet another, glancing up at him as she attempted a polite smile.

"I just washed," she informed him with what she hoped was a decent facsimile of a smile.

A husky chuckle sounded in her ear before the bozo gripped the curve of her shoulder and arm and squeezed intimately. As though she knew him.

Thankfully, the waitress chose that moment to arrive with their drinks, forcing him to move.

Twit.

Morganna took the soda she had ordered, sipping at it gratefully as the band shot into a dark, primal number that sent the energy level in the room pulsing. Lowering her glass but keeping it in her hand, she stared around casually, paying particular attention to the tables around them.

She couldn't see her mark. She had glimpsed him earlier as he made his way across the room, a short Latino in black leather, his hand casually gripping a short dog chain. She knew what he was looking for. A woman who would allow him to leash her, to dominate her. He was also suspected to be one of the men involved in the drugging and kidnapping of six women who had turned up dead in the area. The new date rape drug was rumored to be under strict control until the suppliers could determine its worth on the streets. It was making them a fortune in the pornographic rape videos they were making; that was a certainty.

Morganna suspected this man was the supplier whom the two men Joe Merino and his teams had arrested last week had refused to name. Adonis Santos had also been arrested last week when Morganna witnessed him tapping the powdered drug into a young woman's drink as two of his friends kept her occupied. The arrests of the three men had

been a major .break in the case Morganna had been assigned to in her first assignment with the Atlanta division of the DEA.

"Hey, Morg, w

e need to hit this song." Jenna Lancaster, a secretary, from the office Morganna worked at, bounded from her seat when another teeth-jarring set began.

Morganna lifted her drink as she shook her head firmly. Hell no. She was out for a while. She hit the glass for another long swallow, wondering at the tingling at the back of her neck. Reaching back, she rubbed at the skin beneath her hair, looking around casually, wondering why she was suddenly so uncomfortable.

She drained the soda, setting the glass on the table as it began to vacate, nominally, as the crowd moved for the floor.

Pulling her hair over her shoulder, she sighed in relief at the brush of a breeze over her nape.

"Another drink, Morganna?" Sandoval Mitchell watched her with dark eyes, his expression somber, watchful. He was like that. Always so serious it made her wonder why he even came here. He didn't dance much, rarely flirted. He just seemed to enjoy being on the outskirts of the crowd, always watching.

Morganna knew most of the people gathered around her. It would be the same no matter which club she hit in town. Most were regulars, and some were even harmless. But mixed in were a few deadly individuals intent on destroying lives. It was the deadly Morganna was looking for.

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