And yet Cody’s thirst for justice was still not appeased. He needed new cases, tougher cases, meaner criminals, all to keep his head buried so deep in work, he wouldn’t think of what he’d lost in the blink of an eye. With one bad call. One bad day.
He heard footsteps up in his bedroom, and he cocked his head as he pictured Megan coming down the stairs, doing that hip-swing thing she did that drove him crazy. His eyebrows furrowed when she took her goddamned time. What in the hell was she doing up there? Wrestling?
“Megan?” he growled, annoyed.
Ding.
He ignored the microwave when a thump was followed by an eerie silence, and a chilling premonition slid up the back of his neck. His hackles rose. Legs tensing as his blood began to pump faster through his veins, he yanked his Glock out of its hip holster and climbed the stairs, two at a time, silent as death.
All was quiet upstairs—unnaturally quiet. Not natural, when Megan was around, for things to be still for more than a second. If she gets hurt … He pushed the thought aside, narrowed his eyes and scanned the hallway, dark at this time of night.
A window screeched from the guest bedroom, but it had been the master bedroom where he’d heard the noise, and it was from that direction that he heard a soft moan.
He parted the door and peered into the darkness, gun carefully doing a one-eighty-degree turn. “Megan?”
Again, that damned tickle in the back of his neck. It had happened far too many times to ignore. Something was wrong. Megan wasn’t answering.
The moan became louder, as if pained. He hit the light switch and he saw, sprawled over his duvet and pillows, a little bundle of flawless white skin and loose honey-wheat hair.
“Megan?”
He froze one step into his bedroom, and his cock shot up like steel. Holy Mother of God, I’m not seeing what I’m seeing.
But he was.
Megan. With skin that looked air-brushed and sweet. Hair you could wrap yourself in. Sweet little Megan was in his bed—wearing the cutest, sexiest, out-of-this-world outfit.
His heart pounded as his mouth watered, and for this moment, this one moment, he didn’t wonder what she was doing there. It felt like she belonged there, like every time he had dreamed her there had summoned her to do it for real. Make his every wet dream come true.
He pulled his eyes away, off her chest—a chest he wanted to taste with his tongue—no, he didn’t just think that, fuck, this was Megan! Meg, dammit, not some bimbo, and he glanced up, swallowing thickly.
His voice came out raspy, and what he said made not one lick of sense. “That’s my bed you’re in.”
She stared at him with those big, wide, green eyes, and he stared back. No, he wasn’t staring, he was gawking like a stupid idiot, like a complete moronic idiot with his gun still in his hand, but he couldn’t stop. He had worked on his discipline, for twenty years he had worked like a dog to one day be able to forget what the monster inside him was capable of doing, but damned if this girl didn’t tempt him.
She moved, a sinewy undulation like a ribbon being made into a twist, and when she kicked her legs, more of her perfect, nearly-nude body became exposed.
His gun trembled in his hand as he slowly put it back in its holster, but he could not tear his eyes away from that shadowed valley between her legs, a V of curls glistening dark under the sheer leopard print of her panties.
Greedily, he took in the length of her toned thighs, down to her slim, creamy white ankles, and his blood rushed through his veins as he imagined … imagined what it would be like with her. With the one woman he’d sworn to himself to never touch.
And the only one you’ve ever wanted.
She moaned, softly, the sound sexy and making a growl get trapped in his throat as he fisted his hands at his sides and reined himself back, locked his legs in place. And then it finally registered that she did not seem happy, that the moisture shining in her eyes wasn’t desire, but tears.
Another muffled sound came, and he noticed her mouth was not moving as she spoke, and she was … struggling in her binds? Binds?
“What the hell?” He took a step closer and his heart sputtered when he saw the words scrawled on dark red marker on her navel. A name. His name all over her perfect skin. One for every year he’d served in jail …
IVAN IVAN IVAN IVAN IVAN IVAN IVAN.
But Ivan was locked up.
Cody had locked up his own brother.
The kid he’d protected when he was young.
Against his every raging instinct to protect his own kin, he had trained like a mad man. He’d chased him for years, in his dreams and fantasies, and later, for real, so that he could have the pleasure of finding him, catching him, and locking him in.
And he had.
He had come back to Phoenix, hell on Earth, if you asked him, and he had the bastard convicted for their parents’ murder—even though evidence had been scarce, he’d still managed to prove him guilty. And yet now … his name was written on Megan’s body. How the fuck was that even possible?
Never, in his life, had he ever felt this all-consuming frustration, except the time he’d seen his parents lying sightless in a pool of their own blood.
His eyes flew up to Megan’s tear-filled ones,
