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ONE

Kane

She’s close. I can sense her, catch the faint whiff of Eagle’s unique, mesmerizing aroma.

I have to see her. The need to make sure Eagle is safe thrums inside me like a war machine.

Look only, Kane.

The boss’s angry voice echoes off the marble floor, escaping the confines of his office, slithering from beneath the heavy wooden door.

I’m wondering who the unlucky victim is this time when the yelled name makes my temples throb with anger.

“Eagle!” the man bellows. “I swear to God, if you leave this compound, I’m chaining you up in the basement for a month!”

My pace goes from casual to full-steam stomping. I close the distance, my fists clenched, ready for battle.

“Motherfucker,” I rumble, my vision wavering from corked-up rage.

I’m D.O.N.E. with this shit.

The door swings open, nearly cracking me in the face.

Carried on a rush of fragranced air is the object of my fantasies. Eagle McKenna. Too young. Too pretty, with her youthful attitude and wild spirit.

Like dominoes tumbling, my body cinches up, strung tight from my knees to my Adam’s apple.

“That man!” With a hiss, she slams her father’s office door so hard a naked statue falls out of an alcove ten feet down the hallway. Pieces of ceramic ricochet everywhere.

“Oh! Kane.” Surprise taking over her features, she stumbles over her own feet, bumping into my shoulder, color shooting up her already flushed neck. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Are you okay, doll?”

I took the job for money, so I could fund my sister’s company for her. It took me twenty-four hours to decide I was going to quit—but then I experienced the Eagle effect.

“Huh, sweetheart?” Fuck, my voice is rough and low, and full of all the dirty thoughts she elicits any time I’m within a half-mile of her.

“Just furious.” Fanning her heated face, she glares at the door. “The usual, but he’s getting worse. He won’t even let me go to class today.”

Stiffening my spine, I quell the urge to twist her father’s head off—for now at least. I’m too busy being near Eagle.

Close but too far.

Only I know better than to get to touch. With a grunt of displeasure, I command my muscles not to allow me to lean forward, to inhale that strawberry and cream scent she hypnotizes me with every damned time she breezes through her father’s mansion.

Keep it together, Kane.

There are about a million reasons why I can’t have this woman.

The fact that I work for her father is way down on the list. But until she’s out of his grasp, I’ll be here. Watching. Protecting.

Watching being the operative word. But hell if I can stop myself from asking a personal question. “What’s his reason this time?”

Because I know there is a reason. Eagle McKenna’s name is synonymous with trouble. The kind that begs for a spanking, gets so far under a man’s skin that he tears her sweet little cunt up working out his frustration.

Another damned reason she’s firmly in the hands-off category.

I’d break her.

Looking up at me, she shrugs a delicate, tan shoulder, pushing her thick mahogany hair back, making me bite the lining of my jaw like I’m chewing steak.

I want to devour the girl.

My body is producing enough testosterone to power an army. Inside my pants, my dick is inching down my leg, a heat-seeking missile with the target in range.

Fuck. She’s a virgin. Quit that shit.

“I… well,” she pauses, giving me a look that’s somehow embarrassed and defiant. “I told him I’m selling my car. I don’t want it. It’s too much. I just want something simple.”

“Simple…” My eyes disobey and drop down, and down, and down. Past the delicate gold chain with the little heart pendant circling her tender neck, over the high-end clothing, all the way to the cherry red nail polish on her toes.

“Nothing about you is simple, Eagle. You’re a goddamned diamond in a sea of rocks.”

She gulps. I fight a groan.

Watching her shift restlessly, her nipples hardening below that thin shirt in reaction to me, makes me shove my hand in my pocket, pressing my dick down for relief.

“That’s so sweet, Kane.”

Wrong. Not a damned thing about me is sweet. Especially not the turgid beast that’s shredding my boxer briefs.

For a beat, those luminous hazel eyes of hers stray southbound on me as well. Burning my skin below my tactical clothing. Locking on the stacks of muscle. Tracing the veins.

Eagle’s knees drift together, her rough swallow making her tender, youthful throat bob. “I really like this rugged-looking Jeep that I saw in town.”

My brain locks onto that, cogs spinning, chest laboring at the very thought: Is virgin Eagle throwing out a sexual innuendo?

The hallway is ten degrees hotter and a fuck of a lot smaller than it was two minutes ago.

Demanding hormones are gushing through me now, and I like it very fucking much. My brows go up as my voice goes lower.

“Yeah?” I grind out, “You saw something you like?”

A smile ghosts over her pretty, kissable mouth.

I’ll be her rugged Jeep. I’m sure as hell not a Porsche like the one she wants to ditch. There is nothing luxury about me. Except maybe a ride on my dick in the early morning hours when I’m drunk off her warmth and sated from the night before.

Fuck. Yeah. I want that.

Eagle sounds a little breathless as she speaks, undoubtedly because the fire we are kindling is burning all the oxygen. “It’s sturdy, and capable. And a ride like that wouldn’t make people look at me like I’m wealthy?—”

“You are rich,” I rumble, the last acidic word coating my tongue. “Ready to slum with the likes of a mean fucker like me, princess?”

She blinks, a flicker of disbelief widening her eyes. “You’re not slumming, Kane. I mean, I don’t know you well, but you’re such a good employee. Loyal and skilled.”

At killing.

My laugh is dry, humorless. I lean into the space between us. “You have no idea what I’m doing, Eagle.”

She blinks innocently, lips parting.

That’s right. Eye-fucking her innocent little ass all goddamned day is what I’m doing. And she’s too damned naive to know it when she sees the writing on the wall.

I’m sprung for this girl, and my interest doesn’t stop at a passing visual inspection. Obsession is thrumming through my wiring—fuel that’s ready to ignite and blow our very dissimilar worlds sky high.

“What do you mean?” she asks, whisper-soft words driving into me like hot nails from a compressed air nail gun.

“I’m dangerously close to raking my thumb over that freshly bitten lower lip of yours and letting my tongue do what my dick can’t.”

“Oh! Really?”

“Yep.” I’m reaching for her when the door to her father’s office bangs open.

So much for not snapping his head off. Now he’s gonna get it. For. Fucking. Sure.

As I straighten and turn with a war march in my ears, Eagle flattens herself to the wall behind me, her breath escaping in a rush, hitting my skin with teasing heat.

“Don’t do anything dumb, Kane.”

Dumb? I think taking her father out is the best idea I’ve had in eons. When she hooks her delicate hand into the back of my belt, she drives her point home, tugging, pleading. “Please.”

Dammit.

It’s physically impossible for me to ignore her wishes when Paul McKenna explodes into the hallway, blustery expression, dead eyes flicking around, cell phone glued to his ear.

Usual asshole CEO shit.

“Kane! Follow me, I need you to deal with something.”

His loafers click like high heels on the hall floor, quickly fading as I turn to rest my hand on the wall above his twenty-year-old daughter’s pretty head.

This is an epically bad idea. But since when did I do what was right? Pretty much never.

Pinning Eagle beneath my angled lean puts me at the perfect angle to take what I’m hungry for.

“Don’t push your father, little girl. I’ll have to kill him if he hurts you. I don’t think you’d really want that.”

“Kane,” she whispers in shock, worry tensing her delicate, young face. “You think he’d really hurt me?”

In truth, I don’t know. But I trust the man less every day, and her safety is all that matters.

“Don’t find out,” I warn as I wrap a locket of glossy, thick hair around my finger and tug her closer, my mouth thirsting for hers. “Be a good girl for me, Eagle.”

She inhales sharply. “Aren’t I always?”

The girl knows how to needle her father into madness. Most of the time, making me laugh. She’s just trying to be free of his ridiculous repression, his need for ultimate control.

But the dark side of me wants to control her too. Command all her attention. Capture all that sweet, spirited light just for me.

The steady dilation of her pupils hits me, knocking my heart up into my throat. A sledgehammer to the balls would have less effect than seeing arousal in the girl’s eyes.

“No. You’re not. Give me your phone.”

“What? Why?” she stammers, her gaze rapidly searching my face. But she digs into the waist of her tights and produces a cell phone with a gold, sparkly case.

Light and bright. That’s Eagle.

“You are to call me and only me if he upsets you. Got it?”

“Okay.” Her hand shakes with a tiny tremor as she passes the iPhone to me. “Thank you. That makes me feel better. I like knowing I can call you.”

Every number I thumb into the phone feels like one more click on a dial that’s sealing our fate.

Fuck. I’m doing it. I’m crossing the line.

“There,” I rumble when I’m done. I bunch up her shirt and slide the phone back into the band of fabric against her hip. “Memorize it in case he takes your phone or some bullshit like that. I saved it under KC Chief.”

She looks up at me, still a little confused, almost dazed. Is my touch having the same effect on her that it is on me?

“Why did you do that?” she asks quietly.

“Because he could have software that can monitor your phone.”

“Oh my God, really?”

I’m not sure how I’m having a coherent conversation because my fingers are still resting against warm, creamy smooth skin. The static charge of touching her is gluing my hand in place.

“Yeah. All that shit you see on Netflix, that’s more real than you know.”

Expression falling, she swallows nervously, her shoulders shuddering in a shiver. “I didn’t know. But I’m worried, I don’t want you to get in trouble. You should go.”

Reaching into my pocket, I find my key fob. “Keep this on you. I’ve got a spare.”

“What’s this to?”

“My truck. It’s out back every day. You need to get out of here, you take it.”

Forming a little ‘o’ with her mouth, she stares at the black plastic fob. “What man gives a girl like me the key to their truck?”

“Someone that cares that you’ve got a way out any time you need it.”

Looking me in the eyes, she tucks the fob into her cleavage. “I’ll hide it here.”

Oh. Fuck.

I nod, but don’t move. I’m already in trouble, and it doesn’t have anything to do with her father yet.

Eagle McKenna, innocent, beautiful, young Eagle, is temptation incarnate and I’m caught in the woman’s snare.

If I get close to her again, she’s going to be on her back and beneath me before she can blink those goddamned long lashes.

“Be good, Mischief. I’ll be back.”

Rocked, I shove off the wall, folding my other hand to keep the heat from her skin, and stride away.

I need to stay AWAY. Or I’ll defile something too sweet for a fucked up man like me.

Now I just need to figure out how to arrange to get her away from this hellhole so she can have the life she deserves.