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CHAPTER 21
ELLE WAS DREAMING. A FIRM, soft touch lifted her hands above her head and secured them with fur-lined cuffs. She smiled in her dream. This was new. He’d never used handcuffs before. And neither had she. Elle liked new experiences. Even if they only happened in her dreams.
“Did you miss me, gorgeous?”
“Mmm.” She shifted on the bed, feeling the cool sheets against her suddenly hot and sensitive skin. “Where have you been?”
In her dreams, he often talked of new and exotic places, keeping her guessing about where he was, exactly the way he did in real life.
“You figured out who I am yet?” She felt his breath against her hair and realised he was sitting on the bed beside her.
“Nearly.” She sounded sultry and needy. Something she would never have let him see outside of her dream. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“Time, huh?”
She felt fingertips trail down her cheek to her lips, and her eyes opened, seeking out the face she’d seen ever so briefly in Peru, but couldn’t get out of her mind. “David,” she whispered.
Only this time, the room was dark in her dream and she could barely make him out in the shadows. She blinked to get a better look and realised her eyes weren’t only open in her dream. All at once, she was staring into the dark of her borrowed bedroom, looking up at the man she’d been trying to identify for months. She blinked several times, trying to figure out what was reality and what wasn’t.
“You’re really here, aren’t you?” She sounded sleepy and slightly disorientated.
“Yeah.” That nondescript accent of his seemed to roll more than she remembered. Southern US? Was there a hint in there? “Cute nightwear.” She heard, rather than saw, a smile in his voice.
All at once, Elle was very much awake and more than aware that she had been sleeping in her Wonder Woman vest and underpants. She jerked up, but her arms held her back. Her eyes shot to her wrists, and damn if he hadn’t actually handcuffed her. Only they weren’t the fur-lined leather cuffs from her dream. These ones were fluffy and, if she wasn’t mistaken in the dark, pink.
“Release me,” she said with false sweetness, “so that I can kill you.”
He barked out a laugh and sat back, looking down at her. “I like having you all tied up. It’s the only way a woman like you would ever be at my mercy.”
“This isn’t funny. I’m going to scream, and you’ll get your backside shot full of holes by my teammates.”
“Go ahead.” He spread his arms wide and smiled.
Elle scissored her legs under the blankets, hoping to free them and kick the smile off his face. All he did was lean over her and use his weight to pin her down.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Mostly I’m listening to you moan my name in your sleep. Makes a man wonder, gorgeous.” He brushed her hair from her face. “Makes him wonder what it would feel like to hear those moans in reality. Makes him wonder if hearing you scream his name would be even better.”
She felt her heart pick up speed and resisted the urge to wet her lips. No doubt he would only take it as an invite. “I’m really hoping you don’t mean scream in pain.”
“I would never cause you pain,” David said. “Unless you begged me, and even then, it’d only be the kind of pain that leads to pleasure.”
Why that made her insides melt, she didn’t know. All she knew was that this man was dangerous. Not only to the world at large, but to her personally.
“What do you want?” She hated that her sultry voice gave away more than she’d like him to know. But then, the man had witnessed her very audible dreams about him. He’d become her obsession. Months of trying to crack the mystery surrounding who he really was and whom he worked for. He’d thrown down the gauntlet when he’d given her his DNA, and she’d been like a woman possessed ever since.
“I was in the neighbourhood and thought I’d drop in.” His fingers played with her hair as he spoke. He sounded almost wistful.
“Last I heard, you were on a suicide mission in South America.”
He shrugged, bringing her attention to his broad shoulders under his dark suede bomber jacket. “I get around. It’s what you’ve been up to that’s much more interesting.”
“And what would that be?”
“You’ve been hacking into systems you really shouldn’t be in, Miss Elle.” He ran his thumb back and forth over her bottom lips. “Naughty, naughty, naughty.”
Elle couldn’t contain the shiver that went through her at his touch, and she knew he noticed.
