Chapter One
“Get your big-ass body off me, Commander Bates!” Paxton Lee hissed like a hognose snake. She struggled to breathe under the sheer weight of the black ops commander who had pressed her flat to the ground. Her anger sprouted from the Cobras arrival minutes after they started their surveillance.
In response to her expletive-laced outburst, he clamped a meaty paw over her mouth and growled into her ear, “Keep quiet or you’ll get us both killed.”
If she could’ve uttered a word, she would have succinctly informed him that she wasn’t an imbecile and knew exactly what she was doing— until he butted in. She was becoming exceedingly annoyed that he and his team continuously pitched up where they weren’t wanted or needed. This was the third surveillance job of the Red Reign PI team with which they had interfered.
“Fuck,” Jared Bates cursed and glowered at the squirming woman under him.
“For the love of god, woman, bite me again and you’ll reap the consequences,” he growled. To her, the sound of his voice snapped like the bark of a feral dog and yet, it had been hissed through barely moving lips.
Although Paxton couldn't see much in the darkness, she was transfixed by the fullness of his lips enough to wonder what they might feel like. That thought quickly metastasized into an almost uncontrollable urge. If that wasn’t bad enough, feeling his hard, muscled frame pressed against her only ramped up the voltage. Her now unhinged libido responded like a five-alarm fire with a white-hot flash of heat to her loins.
An untimely response considering they were on a job to establish if the kidnapped daughter of Senator Wilson was being held in the house they were watching.
He shifted slightly. To her mortification, his hips settled snugly between her thighs. Paxton didn’t appreciate being held down and silenced in such an intimate manner— however much unintended.
“Gahh!” She desperately tried to get a word out from behind his hand before she embarrassed herself.
“Behave. If you weren't where you shouldn’t be, this wouldn’t have been necessary.” He stilled her squirming body by pressing himself down harder. Her eyes widened when she felt a hard ridge pressing against her stomach.
That had better be your gun, you asshole!
She forced her body to remain still as a raw grunt escaped his lips. It seemed he was just as annoyed with his body’s reaction as she was with hers.
Of course, the horny devil on her shoulder urged Paxton to throttle up her power to show the oaf she wasn’t intimidated by his size and sexual allure.
Sexual allure? Where the devil did that come from?
The thought shook Paxton out of her carnal thoughts. She glanced at his face. He was holding her down with his body, his one hand pressed over her mouth while he gazed through a pair of night vision goggles. She relaxed and waited.
“Get ready, Cobras. We move in ten,” Jared barked through a headset as he lifted his weight ever so slightly off her.
“Oomph!” He grunted at the unexpected twist of the shapely woman under him that resulted in her knee grazing his cock. He growled furiously as she rolled away into a crouching position.
“Keep your paws off me, Bates. My team is exactly where we’re supposed to be, so why don’tyoujust hit the road?” Paxton sneered under her breath.
“Not only do I outrank you, Miss Lee, I’m also here acting on official orders. You have no idea what you’ve stumbled onto. You and yourkittieseither play by my rules or piss off.”
“Kitties? Kick his fucking ass, Paxton!” The disembodied voice of Jordan Sutton, her best friend and second in command, spoke into her earpiece.
“No, squeeze the shit out of his nut sack, the fucking dick!” Kezlin Bates snapped, the newest member on Paxton’s team— and, ironically, who happened to be Jared’s younger sister. She was the only one who would dare speak like that about the commander.
“Heads up. There’s movement inside the gate,” Knox Clark, the lookout on the Red Reign Team, warned.
“Get down and shut the fuck up,” Jared barked as the voice of his lookout, Cruz Powers, warned of an approaching vehicle. Paxton and Jared hit the ground simultaneously and wouldn’t you know it, his mammoth body was on top of her again.
“I’m beginning to think you just can’t help yourself,” Paxton snapped irritably. “Get the fuck off me, Bates,” she ordered.
His warning grunt quieted her. Why he had the sudden need to protect her, Jared hadn't a clue. Every time there was a slight indication of danger, he acted instinctively.
Yeah, maybe that’s it.Being aroused by her curvaceous silhouette was part of the male DNA but that didn’t mean he intended to act on it.
“Be quiet,” he snapped and cursed to himself as a raw seam of lust broke open in his voice.
Paxton was speechless for the first time in her life as she listened to the unchecked eroticism in his gruff tone. It didn’t sit well with her to be struck mute. Not at all. She resented that he, of all people, was the one who stole her usual snarky remarks that were always at the ready.
Is he reading my playbook? Is that where all these carnal thoughts came from? Because of the dark tones in his voice?