Free His Wicked Ways by Joanne Rock

sit beside her. “You know they were drugged up on something, right?”
    Nodding, she remembered the way her attacker yanked her over the concrete with excessive force. Her back still burned from the abrasions. “Sometimes the drugs give them a superhero complex. They act as invincible as they feel.”
    “You did the right thing.” He tipped her chin up as he cradled her cheek in his hand.
    Her heart pounded again at his touch, reminding her Alec possessed some sort of alchemical power over her, some magnetic force of nature that inevitably drew her close. Sensation swamped her as he drew his fingers across her cheekbone, his thumb straying lower to graze the fullness of her lip.
    Awareness crackled through the old numbness, penetrating a barrier she hadn’t broken even in those few manic months of seeking out male companionship in the futile hope that sex would revive her. Make her whole again.
    She didn’t know what had happened between her and Alec, but it was too late to deny it, and she couldn’t run away now without jeopardizing them both. Come what may, she would spend the night under the same roof as him and she didn’t know if she could make it to dawn without seeking out that burning blaze that lit his dark eyes from within. How could she get so close to all that heat without finding out for herself if he could work the magic no other man could?
    While she waited and debated, however, Alec’s hands fell away from her skin.
    “I should let you get some sleep.” He pointed to a door on the opposite wall, his broad, masculine hands catching her eye far more than his words caught her attention. “If you want to shower, there’s a bathroom through there.”
    She didn’t want him to leave. Couldn’t let him leave. Not now when he might be her only chance to pull herself off a ledge she’d been perched on for five years.
    “What about you?” She blurted the question without thinking. But when you were on the ledge, you didn’t much care about framing your words.
    If she’d surprised him with the edge of desperation in her voice, he did a credible job of not showing it. “I’m too wired to sleep.”
    “Wait.” Her emotions too raw to sift through exactly what she needed from him, Vanessa stuck with the basics of it so there could be no misunderstanding. “Stay with me.”
    She could tell she’d surprised him. Shocked him even. For a man who’d had plenty of experience staying in hiding, he didn’t know how to cloak his emotions worth a damn.
    And if he wanted to think all she wanted was sex, that settled just fine with her.
    Better that he think her insatiable than ever to guess she was scared.

    S CRATCHING HIS HEAD , Alec didn’t think he could be reading her right. She’d just been jumped by a street thug toting an automatic weapon, so she couldn’t want sex. She should be tired. Or scared. Or worried.
    Definitely not horny.
    “I know you had your doubts about bunking in with me, and I don’t blame you since I’ve obviously come onto the NYPD radar this week.” He knew he wasn’t really addressing her unexpected request, but he’d been on the receiving end of enough sticky questions in his life to know how to dance around an issue. “But I’m going to prove to you that even a wanted man can be a gentleman.”
    Hell, now she looked even more panicked than before.
    “Maybe I don’t have any use for a gentleman after what we’ve just been through.” Her fingers, so slender and strong, crept over his shoulders. And although her touch remained light and silky, Alec felt himself being pulled down to her. Closer.
    Heat slogged through his veins, fiery and fierce, as anger at the carjackers, at his worthless uncle, mingled with hunger for Vanessa. What would it be like to stay with her, to let loose the blaze roaring inside him?
    “You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying.” Although, as she skimmed her hands down his chest to the coiled muscles of his abs, he began to