Free Crazy Sweet by Tara Janzen

fucked.
    “What’s your name?” he asked, a little too loudly, because he could hardly hear himself think.
    A pair of large designer sunglasses peeked up over the edge of the tub.
    “Honoria,” she said breathlessly, and he could just imagine how fast her heart was beating. His sure as hell hadn’t slowed down yet. “Honoria York, but most people call me Honey.”
    Yeah, he just bet they did, and for a couple hundred bucks an hour, he could probably call her Honey, too.
    “Take off your glasses,” he ordered. He didn’t know where in the hell that had come from particularly, but when bombs were exploding, and cars were burning, and guns were being drawn, giving orders was what he did best.
    Besides, he wanted to see what she looked like from the neck up, and the glasses covered half her face. Her hair was a mess. All those little bows had given up, and so had her bobby pins. They were sticking out of her French twist here and there, and every place where a pin had fallen out, there was a curl. She had definitely lost the sleek Riviera look and was heading toward the wild side.
    She reached up to take off the glasses, but whether it was because he’d told her to, or because it had gotten dark outside and was definitely dim in the room, was actually a moot point.
    It didn’t matter.
    Not at all.
    Because once the glasses came off, and he saw her face, he had the answer to his question. It wasn’t dumb luck or clean living that had put her in his bathtub. It was one of those cosmic laws of the universe that had kicked in and said, “Let’s screw with Rydell’s head tonight, just for the hell of it.”
    Because she had a face guaranteed to bust him, a real heartbreaker, one of those little, goddamn pixie faces that had been his downfall more times than he cared to remember.
    Honey —yeah, he just bet.
    “Stay put.” Another order, perfect, but it was for her own good—and his. Half a room away with a slab of cast iron between them was about as close as he wanted to get to her.
    It was about as close as he dared, and that pissed him off in a way that having to face four gunmen had not. Because, dammit, his odds had been better against the damn gunmen. He was a helluva shot, and nothing but a sucker for a green-eyed blonde.
    CHAPTER
    9

    G ILLIAN HAD PUT the boy to bed, drugged with sex and all but knocked out. Jet lag from Thailand hadn’t hurt the cause, and was probably what had actually pushed Travis over the edge into such a deep sleep. Either way, she was afraid he wasn’t going to get to rest for long. His phone was going to ring in about twenty minutes, and after he took the call she’d programmed to his number, he was going to be busy the rest of the night—busy someplace else.
    And she would be on her own, which was the way things had to be.
    She crossed the loft again, heading toward her gun safe and letting her gaze slide over him where he lay naked on top of the sheets. He was so beautiful, his face almost sweet in sleep, like the angel he was, but there was nothing sweet about his body. Six feet of raw power and testosterone roped with muscle and sinew, he was a force to be reckoned with, a force of destruction when he so chose—and a force of near unbearable pleasure when she chose.
    She let her gaze run back over the length of him and hardened herself against the easy way, against her own weakness. She had a job to do, and he couldn’t be any part of it, not if she was to live with herself afterward.
    And she would live with herself. She always did, no matter what she’d done—and she’d done things in the last two years that other people, so-called normal people, couldn’t even imagine, let alone carry out.
    They didn’t need to, because guys like Travis, and Creed, and Hawkins were there, doing it for them. Guys like Kid and Quinn were there, watching their backs. Guys like Rydell were there, working in Central America against odds he knew he would never beat.
    She was there.
    And