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Everly felt the heat first, thick, clinging, the kind that slid down the spine like a lover’s hand. The air tasted like smoke and salt, steeped in gold, the world lit by a fire that pulsed just beyond reach.

Why is it so hot?

The flames licked at the walls, casting shadows that danced like ghosts across her skin. Heat pressed around her, wrapping her in a haze of want and warning. It wasn’t just the temperature.

She felt him…Zorro, in every breath that skipped, in the sudden ache blooming between her thighs. The flames whispered his name, their crackling a seductive murmur, tugging at something low and primal inside her.

Her nipples peaked, her clit throbbed, as tendrils of fire seemed to stroke her with deliberate tease, licks of heat across aching skin. She gasped, her breath shallow and sharp, and her body arched into the touch that wasn’t touch at all.

Mateo. The flames whispered his name.

He stepped through the glow, naked and devastating, each step lighting the ground beneath him. The curve of his chest begged her tongue, his abdominals were a map she wanted to lose herself in, and below, hard and heavy and needing, his cock jutted upward, thick and unapologetic.

His eyes were molten molasses, fixed on her like she was the fire now.

She reached without thinking. Her hands found his shoulders, traced the flame-warmed ridges of muscle and bone. Her body aligned with his like it had always known the shape of him. Like it had been waiting.

“No,” she whispered. But her fingers dug deeper. “I can’t. Why are you doing this?”

His hand cupped her breast, thumb grazing the hardened tip, and she cried out at the heat of it, how helpless she felt. His mouth followed, hot, wet, devastating, sucking until pleasure rippled out from her core like shockwaves, and it felt so good.

“You’ve wanted me to take you, Everly, for so long.”

“No.”

“You want my body, every hard inch of me, my mouth on you in places where you burn for me.”

“I can’t?—”

“You ache for me in a place where your armor can’t hold me back.”

“Don’t touch…oh, God…” Her need flooded her. “…touch me. You beautiful man, please .”

“You think you don’t know me. Fuck you do. You know me, you want me, admit it.” He whispered against her skin, “You carry too much.” Then he kissed her ribs like a vow. “But you’re so good to love, Everly. So good.”

Rob’s words twisted into something exquisite, but all she heard was that she was too good for anyone to love. “You’re cruel and you lie ,” she sobbed. “I won’t…I can’t?—”

His hair slid through her fingers like silk as he moved lower, lower, the flicker of his breath a warning before his tongue met her clit in a slow, torturous stroke.

“I’m going to go down on you,” he murmured in a voice rich with hunger.

“I’m going to use my tongue to make you come, no matter how long it takes.

” But she didn’t hear it in English. Somehow, it echoed in sinuous, musical Portuguese.

“Vou fazer sexo oral em você e usar minha língua para fazer você gozar, n?o importa quanto tempo leve.”

Her hips lifted without command. Her hands fisted in the sheets of fire. Her mouth opened around a moan that fractured her shame.

But her body betrayed her. She arched into his mouth, into his heat, the wet scorch of his tongue driving her higher. Her legs shook. Her hips begged. Her soul burned. When she reached for him, when she pulled him over her, he turned into burning flesh. Male and perfect.

She whispered, “Oh please. Oh, please…”

He pushed in deep, thick, slow. She shattered around him, her body breaking open as he thrust all hard, penetrating need that burned from his exquisite erection to the heart within her, drowning her in black fire and glittering darkness.

She let him, weeping with humiliation, moving and pulsing with pleasure.

She woke to her body’s release, violent, sweet, aching. Pleasure that throbbed like grief. Sweat slicked her bare skin. The sheets were gone. Her nightgown lay bunched on the floor. Her mouth parted on a sob as her chest heaved.

“Oh, God… Mateo… ”

The echo of his dream-voice haunted her. You're so wet and soft and ready for me, I’m going to fuck you deep, so deep…

Tears spilled. You want me in a place where your armor can’t reach. She folded into herself, fetal, sobbing into her pillow, empty, throbbing, ashamed.

Mortified by how she’d treated him.Crushed by how much she still wanted him.Shattered by the memory of a man who had become both her desire and her torment.

Everly’s heart pounded in her chest, every beat a reminder of the disdain she’d carried for men like him, men who took her husband’s life, and had her dream reflected her turmoil of her perception, had all that fighting with him been more denial than conflict?

Now…

She dreamed of one.

Woke up climaxing over one.

She had to escape, not just from the heat, not just from the memory, from the man who had found a chink in her armor and was inside the walls, her emotions too jumbled to process, her heart and her head warring.

Best to avoid the whole mess completely. It would be a cold day in hell before she ever let herself near him again.

That ship had sailed all right, and she was still on board, sinking with it like the goddamn Titanic .

Hotel Lobby, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Everly padded across the polished floor, her conference packet bumping her hip, enjoying the lull of Portuguese murmurs, until the air changed. Thicker. Charged.

A low, teasing voice, then laughter rippled across the lobby, low, warm, threaded with affection and intimacy.

Her whole body reacted to the sound. Only one man affected her this way.

She looked up, the breath left her body, and time slowed down.

Zorro.

Casually dressed, which only made it worse.

That man loose in any way was a danger to all females in the immediate vicinity.

He moved like a tactical dancer, smooth and lethal.

He was part of that gleaming one-point-six rule.

Not only the shape of his face, but that V, the twenty-second letter of the alphabet, forming the “golden ratio” that was found in every perfectly portioned structure on the planet from the face of the Mona Lisa to the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Zorro, math in motion.

Poetry in motion.

Bad boy in motion.

Threat to a woman’s equilibrium.

After her dream…hers was completely shot and Zorro the sniper.

A T-shirt clung to him with the kind of ease that made it seem unfair.

It sculpted over his chest, hugged his shoulders, dipped into that deep vee that marked the place his abdomen sloped into muscle and temptation, that other, melting unmistakable V, that sinful cut of anatomy that should be criminal for any man to flaunt in daylight.

The white of his shirt made his dark bronze skin stand out in stark contrast, and above it, those molasses eyes scanned the room, alert, steady, slow-burning.

His jeans, low on narrow hips, hugged powerful thighs like they had been tailored by sin.

His black military-style boots, the laces untied and dangling, only added to his easy charm.

As if conjured by some cruel twist of fate, came the rest.

He was flanked by his family, a dignified father, a regal mother with Valkyrie grace, and a sun-kissed sister laughing beside him. Trailing behind…

Bear.

His name suited him, the quiet sentinel of their team.

His hair was unbound today, falling in dark waves around his shoulders.

He wore a plain black T-shirt that stretched across his wide chest and fell just past the waistband of dark jeans.

Boots echoed as he walked, slow and deliberate. Women tracked his every move.

Everly ducked behind a column, heart thudding. She couldn’t face him. Not after that dream. Not after everything. She pressed her palm to her chest. Zorro. Here. In Rio. Laughing. Beautiful. Whole. She was hiding like a woman unraveling at the seams.

The elevator dinged. Footsteps receded. Her pulse spiked. Then Flint. The dog looked right at her. A soft chuff. Recognition. Then Bear’s command. “Flint.”

Calm. Dismissive. But his glance, brief and sharp, said he knew she was there.

She held her breath. They kept walking. Only when they vanished from view did she move. Still trembling, she stood, adjusted her bag, and peeked around the column.

Clear.

She bolted for the elevator, muttering, “Do you hate me that much, universe?”

Apparently… yes .

The elevator loomed like salvation. She mashed the button, shifted from foot to foot. Just get upstairs. Just make it to the room. She twitched as she rode up.

A soft ding . The elevator doors slid open.

“No, I’ll grab it from the room and meet you down there in two minutes.”

That voice. Low. Familiar. Wicked in its memory. Zorro. On her floor.

Universe you are really a cruel bitch.

She practically launched out of the elevator like her life depended on it because in some ways, it did.

Her heart thundered, blood roaring in her ears, her body still shaken from the lobby ambush.

One hand clutched her keycard, the other her conference tote like it held answers to the psychological trauma currently tap-dancing through her nervous system.

Too bad panic didn’t have GPS.

Instead of turning left toward her corridor, she whipped right and sprinted .

It wasn’t until she rounded the next corner at full tilt, breath snagging in her throat, that she saw him, far too late.

Zorro.

In the flesh.

Right in front of her.

Oh, God.

There was no time to stop. She collided with him like a linebacker on adrenaline and bad decisions, the momentum knocking him clean off his feet.

His body hit the carpeted hallway with a solid thud.

She landed sprawled on top of him, hands on his chest, legs tangled with his, the bag half-flung over his hip, the weight of her body stretched over every sculpted inch of his.