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Perhaps because this woman was getting his wires crossed, getting his signals mixed up, getting his cold-as-ice blood boiling like a fucking inferno.
She was just straight-upgettingto him.
But maybe it wasn’t just her—it wasallof it. Everything from Benson being a secretive snake to Moses being a clueless coward. If Ice’s instincts were working as well as they’d been a couple of years ago, the last time he’d been out in the field, then hell, he might actually believe this fiery-eyed, raven-haired bombshell of a woman who was sitting there cross-legged and glaring up at him like she thought her stare could cut him in half.
Except obviously Ice’s instincts werenotas sharp as they’d been.
He was rusty with his technique, out of touch with his usually spot-on intuition to read a suspect and knowimmediatelyif they were dirty or not.
Yeah, maybe Ice’s gut was only telling him what he wanted to hear.
After all, hadn’t he started this mission apprehensive about the prospect of putting down a woman, crossing a line he’d never crossed before?
So wasn’t it possible that a part of himwantedher to be innocent so he wouldn’t have to cross that line at all?
Shit, Ice thought. He was in trouble now. Because that guilty-or-innocent intuition usually kicked in on the very first impression of his suspect.
It was all about that one moment when you were first in the physical presence of your target.
That moment was when the body’s intelligence sent you signals after making an instantaneous judgement about a person’s character, a person’s motives, a person’s intentions.
A person’s essence.
Yeah, he was in trouble now.
Because the signals his body was sending werenotuseful in this situation.
In fact they were downright dangerous.
And from the way she was looking up at him now, Ice wondered if she could see it.
See that she could get to him.
Maybe even break him before he broke her.
“Look, O’Donnell,” he said, forcing himself to speak before his thoughts dragged him to a very dangerous place, that dark place in every man’s psyche, that demon which lives in every man’s heart, a beast that urges him to take what he wants, to devour what he desires, to seize what he seeks.
“My friends call me Indy,” she said, her brown eyes still flashing but with something else now, as if she was studying him like he’d studied her, reading him like he’d read her, playing him like he’d played her. “Don’t you want us to be friends?”
“No,” said Ice, wincing inwardly for answering the damn question, for even acknowledging the game she was trying to play.
She shrugged her narrow shoulders, leaned back against the wall, looked up at him.
And smiled.
It was a teasing, taunting smile, and along with her mussed-up hair and the beginnings of a bruise on her cheekbone where Ice had pushed her against the wall, Indy O’Donnell looked a bit wild, slightly unhinged.
And hot as hell.
Stay focused, you idiot, Ice warned himself as his cock throbbed in his pants, the cool metal of the chair doing nothing to contain the heat generated by his cock and balls right now.
Ice swallowed hard, wishing to hell he hadn’t taken off his shades, hadn’t given her a window into his soul. But shit, now he couldn’t put them back on. It would be a show of weakness, a sign of vulnerability, a crack in the frame of dominance that he needed to establish so she’d submit, surrender, spill her secrets, tell her truths.
“Tell me the truth and this ends now,” Ice said, keeping his gaze as cool as he could, hoping to hell his poker face was as solid as it used to be, praying to the angels and demons that his eyes didn’t reveal what his heart was whispering with every beat:
She’s already telling you the truth.
But Ice silenced the whisper, shut down the feeling, informed his instincts that they were rusty and out-of-touch, that he needed his intelligence to take over, get rationality to run the show.