“A bonus.”

Anger crackled off of him. “So he told you to f**k me, then f**k me over, and you did it.” He paused. “For money.”

Kara had been confronted, she’d been in awkward positions, but not since her rookie days had she felt rattled like she did now. “I did my job.”

“Which included f**king me.”

Kara flinched, and not just because it was part of the character she’d created. She’d never meant to sleep with him. She just…had.

“Did it include f**king me?” he demanded softly, and the tightness in his voice was more an order than any shout would have been.

“I made my own choices,” Kara rasped out, and though she needed him to believe her, to see her like a victim as he had the night they’d met, she wanted him to believe her as well. The idea of this man hating her answer, and her, bothered her. Lord help her, he was the enemy and she cared what he thought. She was in big trouble.

“And you decided to ensure you got your big payday any way necessary, even if it meant getting naked.” It wasn’t a question.

“No,” she whispered urgently before she could stop herself. “That’s not how it happened. I didn’t intend for it to happen. It just…it felt…necessary.”

“Fucking me was necessary,” he repeated flatly.

“Yes.” Her mouth was dry all over again, and good lord, she was dizzy remembering all the delicious things his mouth had done to her. “Necessary.”

“I didn’t realize you and Mr. Wright knew each other, Kara.”

Kara jerked backward at the sound of Mendez’s voice, but not before she saw the slight narrowing of Blake’s eyes. And damn it, she’d let him see her cards. Blake knew just how nervous she was at the idea of Mendez discovering what she’d done in Denver. He’d assume it was because Mendez was a monster, but he’d still have that leverage over her when she’d tried to make this secret leverage for her use instead.

“We were just getting properly acquainted,” Blake drawled lazily, holding her stare a beat before his attention slid to Mendez.

Kara’s stomach knotted at the way Blake had left the door open to tell Mendez he’d met her in Denver. “I was just about to let you know he’d arrived,” she added, cutting her gaze to Mendez and the amused twist on his brutal mouth. Beneath the man’s mid-thirties dark good looks and perfectly fitted designer suit was a tyrant who’d kill you at the snap of his fingers.

“I’m sure you were,” he replied, and flicked Blake a look. “Join me, Mr. Wright. We have much to discuss.”

Unlike everyone else around Mendez, Blake didn’t immediately jump at his command. For several beats his eyes lingered on her face before he finally stepped away from her desk. A slow trickle of air slid from Kara’s lips, tension easing from her body, at her escape from his too-knowing, too-compelling, attention. Compelling. Yes. He was compelling in all possible ways. Wickedly, intensely, hotly compelling. He demanded her attention, his presence resonating with the woman in her in a way no other man ever had. This was what every woman wanted to feel for a man, but thought she never would. And if she got lucky enough to have it happen to her, she wanted him to be the right man, a good man. In Kara’s case, this man she was responding to was without a doubt the wrong man.

After an eternity seemed to pass, when it was merely seconds, the door behind her opened and shut. Kara cast a glance over her shoulder, ensuring she was alone. Then, and only then, did she slump over her desk, letting her long, dark hair cover her face, thankful no one could see her reaction to the man who’d just taken her by storm all over again. Blake not only put her on edge, he set her on fire and left her breathless. He was dangerous to her agenda, her big picture. Her reason for everything she’d done the past six months. Everything she’d given up. Everything she’d left that mattered. He was a weakness she couldn’t afford and a problem she had to deal with quickly and efficiently before he destroyed everything she’d been working for.

Chapter Two

Blake followed Mendez into his office, the lingering scent of Tiffany Snow, or Kara, or whatever the hell her name was, spiraling through his nostrils and heating his limbs. The woman had drugged him and almost destroyed his reputation with the cartel, and still she had him hot and bothered and more than a little distracted. Not so much, though, that he hadn’t seen the fear in her eyes when Mendez had assumed they’d known each other. Because she’d helped Richter for cash and her boss would see that as disloyal? Or because she was one big secret she didn’t want revealed?

Pausing midway inside the office, Blake watched Milo Mendez round his massive cherry wood desk, a picture of greed and arrogance in the way he moved, the way he wore his fine silk grey suit. And most definitely in the glint in his dark eyes as he settled into a leather chair and claimed the position of power in the room.

Not about to give him that power, Blake feigned interest in his surroundings, not the man, inspecting the wall of windows to his left and the leather couch and chair to his right with exaggerated interest. “Nice office.”

“Sit,” Mendez ordered, indicating a visitor’s chair, his tone etched with irritation.

Out of the blue, as they often came, a flashback of his Whitney lying in a pool of blood ripped through Blake, and carved out his insides. Mendez might not have pulled the trigger, but he was deep inside the wallet of the man who had. It was all Blake could do not to rip him from behind his desk and beat him senseless. His fingers flexed, curling into his palms, and the twitchy feeling that he used fast cars and fast woman to escape crackled along his nerve endings like raw electricity.