Tawny Weber - Sunsets & Seduction

And still wanted to.

It wasn’t the first time he’d made that mistake. His mind wandered back to his last year on the force. His unit had been working with the Bunko Squad to take down an underground gambling ring.

The bodies of several people associated with the ring had surfaced around town, and Homicide was called in, where Jonas had made detective two years before. When Bunko undercover officers had snagged an inside CI, a confidential informant, to serve as a witness, she’d been given to Homicide to watch while the undercover team closed in.

Jonas, the junior detective at the time, had been on protection detail at the safe house. He still remembered Irena Nadik. Young, lovely and lethal.

The lethal part he’d had no idea about. Jonas had believed she was a victim, and that was how she played it. Forced to comply with a ruthless crime boss’s orders, she’d tearfully relayed a story about her father’s murder by the men who held her now against her will, the constant threats to sell her into the sex trade when they were done with her.

Jonas had fallen for her, let her seduce him, and looked forward to when the case was closed and they could be together. He’d even thought of marriage. Maybe that was how he’d rationalized breaking the rules for love.

He’d had no idea she was playing him the whole time. Slept with him, got him to tell her things he shouldn’t have.

On the night of the raid, she’d drugged him, and used his own phone to try to warn the ring. Luckily, his partner had shown up and caught her before she succeeded.

The ring was taken down, Irena was in jail for a good long time, but Jonas had messed up big-time. He was suspended during an investigation, but eventually cleared for duty with only a light reprimand on his record.

But Jonas knew the truth. He couldn’t look the guys he worked with in the eye each day and expect them to trust him when he had messed up so seriously. For a woman.

He left the force the following year and joined the personal security business Garrett was launching. It had taken him a long time to trust his instincts again, and that’s what bothered him the most. He didn’t know what to think about Tessa.

It was easy to focus on the job.

The senator was out of the country, and he was given a light-duty assignment to keep her company, make sure she was okay. He had no idea what the senator’s agenda was, or Tessa’s, for that matter, but he could focus on the job. That he knew how to do.

“All set. Kate’s house is about six blocks from here, though we had better hurry,” Tessa said briskly, breaking into his brief foray into the past. “The storm is winding up again.”

He didn’t say anything, still caught up in dark thoughts, but let her take his hand.

“I picked up a few things for later,” she said mischievously, putting a bag in his hand, where he felt the corner of what he assumed were several rather large boxes of condoms.

“You’re overestimating my endurance,” he said.

“I just thought we’d like some variety,” she countered.

Feeling cornered, wanting what he couldn’t, and shouldn’t, have, but not knowing how to walk away, he just kept moving.

“Everything okay?” she asked, clearly picking up on his change in mood.

“Let’s get to Kate’s before the storm hits,” he said shortly.

He couldn’t let this go any further.

He had to walk away. He’d get her safely to her friend’s, then back to her place, and try to finish this job without making things worse. The crunching sound of the bag of condoms he carried seemed to mock him.

The wind was picking up, and she linked her elbow in his, picking up the pace.

“Is this storm never going to stop?” Tessa said breathlessly as they hurried down the street.

She guided him flawlessly, alerting him to step down or up, holding him close with her elbow linked in his. “It’s like some bad Armageddon movie out here,” she joked.

The end of the world as we know it.

Jonas twisted his mouth sardonically at his own sense of melodrama.

“Tomorrow the sun will come out, and it will just be a memory,” he said, unsure if he was talking completely about the storm.

She yipped as thunder cracked overhead, and jumped closer to him, moving faster.

Jonas stopped suddenly, wrenching her to a stop as well, the flash of light obliterating any of his previous thoughts.

The flash that he saw.

He pointed. “Was that lightning—over there, this direction,” he asked while pointing, his voice urgent.

“I think so,” Tessa said cautiously. “It’s kind of all around us.”

Then it happened again. A dim flash at the corner of his eye, and he whipped his head in that direction.

“There!”

Tessa sucked in a breath, realizing what he was saying.

“Oh, my God, Jonas, you saw it! You saw the lightning!”

She let out a whoop and flew into his arms as the thunder growled even more loudly above, following the lightning strike.

Jonas held her, but lifted his face into the rain, eager, urgently wanting to see another flash, needing more confirmation that he hadn’t imagined it.

Tessa’s arms were tight around his neck, and he wasn’t sure if it was rain or tears he felt on her skin. In his excitement, he’d forgotten how afraid she was of the storm.

“I’m sorry. I just remembered you don’t like storms. I … can’t believe I might have actually seen something.”

“I don’t care about the storm,” she said. “I’m so happy for you.”

Then she was kissing him as the rain came down harder and the wind picked up around them. He gathered her up close, returning the kiss with everything he had, jubilant in the moment.

Tessa’s not Irena, he thought, and neither were his feelings for the two women at all similar.

Irena had been exotic, different and had appealed to him as a younger man who was easily fooled by beauty and charm.

Jonas wasn’t as easy to fool anymore—was he?

He wasn’t so sure he could walk away, in spite of his temporary resolve to do so. They parted, breathing heavily, as the rain came down harder.

Jonas wished more than anything that he could see her. Maybe if he could see her face, her expression, her eyes, he could know if she was being honest with him. If any of this was real.

Soon, he thought, another bright flash showing up in his field of vision.

“We have to go,” he said.

They ran the rest of the way to the address where Kate lived, and Jonas was relieved to finally be under cover as the weather worsened. On the relative shelter of the porch, Tessa searched for her keys.

“Damn, I left Kate’s keys at home,” she blurted in frustration. “How could I have done that?”

Jonas’s attention was split. His body felt electric, as if the storm was surging through him. He’d seen several more flashes on the way to the house, enough to cement his certainty that his vision had started to return.

One of the flashes had even been very bright, from a relatively close lightning strike that had scared the death out of Tessa, but thrilled him—both because he saw it and because it sent her into his arms.

He couldn’t find any way around his dilemma. There was no way to counter the damage that Senator Rose could do to his family, but he would take every chance he had to taste, touch and experience Tessa while he could.

“Kate will love meeting you, but I warn you, she’s a real pistol,” Tessa said, pressing the doorbell.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said, nipping at her earlobe. “You’re delicious, you know,” he added.

“Behave,” Tessa warned playfully as they stood outside Kate’s door, and she pushed the buzzer one more time.