Tori Carrington - Submission

And at the top of the list was a beautiful woman who smelled like sin and who wanted to be touched.

I swallowed thickly and slipped my hands from Molly’s lush hips to wrap them around her waist. She felt so good tucked against my body that I didn’t want the moment to end. My throbbing erection rested against her trembling stomach, making me want far more, but I restrained myself. Something I wasn’t used to doing.

I knew that if I wanted, I could have her. Walk her back to her hotel nearby and seduce my way into her bed. But some invisible force held me back. Her reaction a moment ago when she’d accidentally made contact with my police-issue firearm had shuddered through me as surely as if I was the one who’d had a cold bucket of reality dumped over my head.

I felt her hands move from where they were plastered against my back. Her fingertips worked their way under the hem of my shirt and touched my bare skin. I sucked in a breath.

“You’d better decide, Molly. Because in two seconds there won’t be a decision to make….”

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Dear Reader,

When it comes to sequels, we all know that it’s hard to top the story that’s come before. But in this third and final installment in our DANGEROUS LIAISONS miniseries…well, let’s just say that our characters made our job easy, providing an explosive conclusion that pulls all three books together.

In Submission, darkly sexy homicide detective Alan Chevalier is at the end of his rope in both his career and his personal life. So far he’s arrested the wrong man, looked in all the wrong places, and the Quarter Killer seems to have singled him out for taunting. Facts that Molly, city outsider and the all-too-tempting twin sister of the first victim, won’t let him forget…in bed or out.

We hope you enjoy this journey through the minds and hearts of Alan and Molly. We’d love to hear what you think. Contact us at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612 (we’ll respond with a signed bookplate, newsletter and bookmark), or visit us on the Web at www.toricarrington.net for fun drawings.

Here’s wishing you love, romance and hot reading.

Lori and Tony Karayianni

aka Tori Carrington

Bestselling, multi-award-winning duo Lori and Tony Karayianni have published over thirty novels under the pen name Tori Carrington. They are two-time finalists for the prestigious Romance Writers of America’s RITA ®Award, and their personal motto is “Have laptop, will travel!” Look for the authors—and if you’re lucky, a tray of Tony’s Famous Baklava—at bookstores and conferences in your neck of the woods. For more info on Lori and Tony and their titles, visit them on the Web at www.toricarrington.net or write to them at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, Ohio 43612.

We dedicate this book wholeheartedly

to two people we encounter nearly every day—

postal workers Jeanne Murphy and Sandi Weaks.

You both make the mundane something

to look forward to. Thank you!

And to Brenda Chin’s boys, Kenai and Koda,

for inspiring a special “character” in this book.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

A SOUND AS GRATING AS A woman’s fingernails scratching against a chalkboard wrenched me from sleep. I pulled my pillow over my head and tried to ignore it. But like my ex-wife, it refused to go away.

I snaked a hand out from under the pillow, then dragged the telephone receiver to my ear. “What?”

“Detective Alan Chevalier, please.”

“That would be me.”

“Sir, we have a possible three-zero.” The dispatcher stated the address of the homicide.

I mumbled something that she must have taken as an okay because she hung up. On my end, it took three tries before I finally got the receiver back into the cradle. In one move I hauled the pillow from my face and sat up, then stared blearily at the closed shades drawn tight against the windows, the edges ablaze with the morning sunlight slamming against them. I squinted at the digital clock half turned away from me on the nightstand. Just after eight in the morning.

Damn.

I was late starting my normal weekday. Although the definition of normal was up for grabs.

Sometimes being a homicide detective in New Orleans’s Eighth Precinct, French Quarter, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Sometimes? Lately I’d come to view my job as a necessary evil. Necessary because, since I presently lacked the pleasure of a big-busted blonde to wake me up in the middle of the night, what else would I do with my time? Evil because lately I didn’t look much better than the victims of a killer who didn’t want to be found.

I stared at my morning erection, feeling part of yet separate from the organ that had gotten me into more trouble than it was worth. I covered it by putting on the slacks lying on the floor and then I moved into the bathroom on autopilot. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I wasn’t entirely certain what was to blame for the blurriness—the grimy mirror or the half bottle of bourbon I’d downed last night. I flicked on the light, winced at the ice pick it stuck into my skull, then switched it back off, relying on the bedside lamp in the other room to cast enough light for me to do what I had to. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much. A quick splash of water over a face that women called full of character but never handsome (although recently they hadn’t called it much of anything at all because women didn’t much factor into my life as of late): green eyes that were often mistaken for brown, sandy brown hair a month overdue for a cut and lines that may have once been laugh lines but were now just wear and tear.

I scraped my palm against the stubble on my jaw. I could get away with another day of not shaving. Anyway, a dead body waited. And while it wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon, there would be others waiting for me to do my job so they could do theirs. And while my appearance wasn’t much of a priority for me, my job was. Simply because I wanted to keep it.

Shortly thereafter I walked down the two flights of stairs to the street and stood fighting against the bright morning sunlight to keep my eyes open. An interesting percentage of the Quarter’s denizens—and an even bigger chunk of visitors—liked to think of themselves as vampires. With my present aversion to sunlight, I could have been bitten by one last night.