he’d mentioned the Cortez Cartel. Kalina would pore through financial records looking for the name Raul Cortez; once she found it Rome’s ass would be toast.
“The minute she comes in I want to see her in my office,” Rome said into the phone to Dan Mathison, his chief financial officer.
Rome had been furious when he’d left this morning’s impromptu meeting. Kalina was not a shifter! She was a woman and she was soft and passionate and … something he’d never dared dream of in his life.
And she was his.
Not his companheiro, but his woman. He’d thought that each time he touched her last night, each time he’d stroked inside of her, each time she’d called his name as if he were the only man for her. He’d dreamed of her, longed for her for two years and she was finally here, finally a part of his life.
But she wasn’t.
When he’d returned to his room she’d been gone. Baxter, who normally had eyes in the back of his head, hadn’t seen her go. Rome suspected that wasn’t totally true. Ezra had bought her car back to Rome’s house sometime during the night, which proved just too damn convenient for her getaway.
He’d made it into the office in time to find out she still wasn’t here but had called in saying she was on her way. And the minute she arrived he wanted her here, in his office. He wasn’t letting her get away from him that easily. He couldn’t.
In the meantime, he had a phone call to make.
“Roman, my boy. It’s good to hear from you again,” Bingham said in his gravelly voice.
“I want to know who his contact was,” Rome said without preamble. He’d pored over his father’s notes on that disk and knew that there was a good chance Bingham knew what was there and who to contact about that information.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me, Bingham! I know what’s on that disk and I know you do, too. Don’t bullshit me. Tell me who my father was getting his information from.”
Silence filled the line. Rome’s patience grew thinner. “Look, he’s gone. You gave his secrets to me. I have to handle this, and the sooner the better.”
“He didn’t tell me everything. There was so much I didn’t know,” Bingham insisted.
“Tell me what you did know,” he insisted. Bingham didn’t know about the shifters, that was most likely true. The notes on the disk were just cryptic enough that if a person didn’t already know about the tribes, they would simply assume Vance Reynolds was making a play for political office. The outlines for enforcement of a new government could have possibly been construed as treason or even a long-shot attempt at a terrorist uprising. Any of which was enough to plant his father’s name firmly on Homeland Security’s hit list, a thought that threw a few more suspects into the pool of killers. But Rome knew it wasn’t a human who’d taken his parents’ lives. The house had been invaded by shifters. He remembered their scent, remembered their laughter and the pure hatred that had flowed through them.
But Vance had known someone within the government was on to him, to what he was doing. Rome needed to find that person, he needed to know what they knew before he ordered them taken care of. He wouldn’t kill needlessly, but he would protect their secret. That was a promise.
Kalina didn’t want to be here, she didn’t want to knock on this door or see the person on the other side. But her choices were limited. Dan had been adamant about her coming to see Rome immediately. Causing a fuss would have no doubt drawn unwanted attention to the reasons, so she’d simply clamped her lips shut and stalked all the way to the elevators. She’d staunchly ignored Ava’s snide remarks about her being late and whatever else had come out of the woman’s mouth.
Mel, thankfully, had not been at her desk, because that was another person Kalina wasn’t up to facing. At least not before coming up with a convincing reason why she’d disappeared from the woman’s house last night without saying a word. She should have never gone there, she thought now. Her resolve to keep to herself should have remained in place. Making connections and building relationships was just not in her. She was a loner and always would be. No matter how much that thought hurt.
So her knock on Rome’s office door was rapid as emotions rippled through her body, making her temples throb. She braced herself, waiting to hear his deep voice telling her to come in, but the sound didn’t come. Instead the door swung open and she was pulled inside and pressed against the wall as it slammed closed again. It happened so fast she lost her breath.
“What—” She tried to speak but words were lost by the crush of his lips against hers.
Kalina didn’t want to kiss him. No, this was not how this meeting was supposed to go. There were things she had to say to this man, words that were meant to rip him a new one for the callous way he’d treated her. But damm if she could stop it.
His lips were like a drug and she sipped heartily, taking her fill of everything he offered at this moment. Her fists stayed clenched at her sides as she dared them to move. All he had was her lips and really, wasn’t that enough? Her body responded to his instantly, heat pooling in her center, moisture dampening her folds already. She tilted her head, hoping maybe to end the connection, but it didn’t work.
Rome plunged deeper, his tongue touching every recess of her mouth. She couldn’t breathe, her chest heaving as her nipples tingled. She wanted to scream, to lift her hands to his handsome face and scratch until she’d given him just an inkling of the pain he’d inflicted on her. No, she wanted her gun, then she could shoot him right in the balls. But as his thick erection pressed against her she heard a moan escape and knew that was the last thing she wanted to do to that particular body part.
Damn her, she still wanted him.
He was the one to break the connection of their lips, but his mouth stayed hungrily on her as he scraped his teeth along the line of her jaw. She was so out of breath she let her head rest against the wall, panting, needing his touch and hating it just the same.
“Don’t you ever leave me,” he growled, moving down to ravage her neck with his mouth.
“What?” she asked through a mind blurred with arousal.
“When I returned you were gone.” His hands moved to her arms, giving her a little shake as he spoke. “Don’t ever do that again!”
Lifting her head Kalina blinked, then stared up into his eyes. “Are you serious? You’re the one who left.” A tiny remnant of her backbone reared up, and she lifted her palms to push at his chest. The action must have caught him off guard because he took a step back. And she took two steps away from him.
“I woke up and you were gone. All that was missing was the money on the table,” she snapped. “If you wanted a cheap fuck you could have hired someone for that. Oh, I forgot”—she feigned innocence—“I do work for you, don’t I? But sleeping with you wasn’t in the job description.” And that was no lie. Nowhere in the DEA’s or the MPD’s description of this assignment did it say fuck Roman Reynolds. She could attest to that.
“Wait a minute, you think I left you?” Rome said, moving to the door and switching the lock in place before turning to face her.
He wore a dark suit, or at least the pants were dark; his shirt was white with a coral-colored tie that was the perfect shade to offset his mocha skin. She assumed his suit jacket was somewhere in the office because he always wore a suit to work. His shoes shone like the gold watch at his wrist. He looked impeccably perfect, and her body ached for him.
“That’s usually the conclusion people reach when they wake up in a bed alone where someone had once lain beside them.”
He was shaking his head. “I went to a meeting.”
“It wasn’t even eight in the morning, Rome. You don’t have to lie to me,” she huffed, brushing her hands down the front of her clothes as if they were rumpled; she didn’t know what else to do with them. “Look, if it was just meant to be a one-night thing, that’s fine. I can deal with that. What I’d really like to know is how I ended up at your house in the first place? I went to a cookout at Melanie’s. But then I wasn’t there, I was…” Her voice trailed off as pieces began to click into place.
“What happened when you were at Melanie’s?” Rome asked, taking a measured step toward her.
“I saw something, or I thought I saw something.” She’d seen eyes in the bushes, eyes that weren’t human.
