Shades of Temptation by Virna Depaul Page A

mouth. She sucked in a breath, wondering if he would
kiss her. Hoping he would.
    Instead, he frowned and took a step back. “Good morning. Did
you sleep well?”
    She immediately tensed but there was no hint of taunting or
innuendo in his expression. To the contrary, he looked subdued. Tired. As if
he’d done the exact opposite of sleeping well.
Because of her? Had he replayed their time together as much as she—
    “Listen, Carrie. I need to talk to you about something,” he
said, his expression growing even more solemn.
    She cleared her throat and tried to look anywhere but at his
bare body. “Did you have more thoughts about the case? Because it really helped
me to talk things out with you last night, Jase. After you left, I thought
about—” She couldn’t help it. Her attention had strayed to his naked chest. Then
his six-pack abs. Her gaze would probably have continued its downward path but
for the fact that she caught sight of a crisscrossing network of raised scars on
his smooth, slightly tan skin. She sucked in a breath. “Jesus, Jase, what
happened?” Without thinking, she reached out to touch the scars that riddled his
left side. Before she could, he caught her wrist.
    “It happened a few years ago,” he said, still holding her.
“When I worked for Dallas P.D.”
    “They look like knife wounds.”
    “They are. I got called to a domestic situation. Met the woman
outside. She was beaten pretty bad but she told me her husband, the guy who’d
done it to her, had left. When I walked her back inside, he ambushed me. Sliced
me up six ways to Sunday before I could get to my gun.”
    “She let you walk in there knowing he was going to do that?
Knowing that you were just trying to help her?”
    “I don’t think she knew what he was going to do. She thought he
was hiding in the bedroom. Waiting for me to leave.”
    “So he could beat her up some more,” she snapped.
    He shrugged. “You know the reality of domestic abuse, Carrie.
He probably apologized before I got there and that was enough for her to believe
that maybe, just maybe, this time he’d change. Anyway, it was touch-and-go for a
while, but…” He shrugged.
    Her mind reeled at his words. She shouldn’t be so surprised to
learn he’d been hurt on the job or that he’d almost died, but seeing the proof
of his wounds, hearing him describe the incident that had almost taken his life,
rattled her so much that she shocked them both.
    With him still holding her wrist, she bent awkwardly and
pressed her lips against the worst of his scars.
    He sucked in a hissing breath and went perfectly still.
    Straightening, she swallowed hard. “I’m sorry you got hurt. I’m
really—”
    He curled his arm around her and yanked her against him. Then
his mouth slanted over hers. This time, she knew he kissed her with absolutely
no thoughts of comfort in mind. Instead, he seemed to care only about possessing
her. And despite where they were, who they were, she wanted to be possessed by
him.
    * * *
    J ASE SLIPPED HIS TONGUE into the heated cavern of Carrie’s mouth and
groaned at the pure pleasure of it. Despite her prickly demeanor whenever they
were together, she was as soft and warm as he’d always imagined she’d be. As
soon as her body touched his, their individual components locked together with
ease, as if every part of her had been created for the sole purpose of
complementing every part of him. At work, they were equals; by nature, they were
opposites, but opposites of the best sort. Where he was hard, she was soft.
Where he was male, she was fabulously female. Her plump breasts gave to the
pressure of his torso. Her graceful hips cradled his. And her scent? God, her
feminine scent wound around him the way he knew her hair would if it was
loose.
    With his free hand, he reached up and carefully withdrew the
band from her ponytail. Her russet curls spilled over his hands like molten
lava, and he buried his fingers in the tangled mass. Cradling the back