Samantha Hunter - Fascination

Sage slid her hand along Ian’s forearm, catching her breath at the hardness of the muscle there. Ian was no desk jockey.

“My time is almost up. I’ll be a responsible member of society again. There’s nothing to say you and I can’t have a more personal relationship, right?”

Ian’s head snapped up at her touch and his eyes took on an intense expression. Sage pulled back in surprise—she’d never thought he was capable of such heat.

Wowsa. A little frisson of excitement danced along her hot skin at making him lose it. This was fun.

“You’re completely out of line. There’s nothing between us, and you know it.”

“You sure about that?” Laughing, she headed to the doorway, making sure he got an eyeful of her short clingy dress.

He’d buried his heat under that cool unflappable exterior once more and she was intrigued. The sense of challenge that led her to computer hacking—the urge to unlock the forbidden—tugged at Sage now. What fantasies and feelings would she find inside this man?

She waved flirtatiously to Ian as she left. Some challenges were just too good to resist….

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading the first book of my new HOTWIRES miniseries. In Fascination, rigid, stick-to-the-rules Ian Chandler confronts his forbidden desires concerning sexy computer hacker Sage Matthews—who also happens to be a convicted felon under his watch. If these two are going to make it together, they will have to not only cross the line, but meet in the middle, where the sparks are sure to fly.

Writing my first miniseries has been fraught with challenges and joys, and part of that was getting to create an entire cast of characters whose relationships grow over the course of three books. I’ve become very close to these characters as they have emerged on the page. I hope they will become memorable for you, as well.

Fascination is set in Norfolk, Virginia, at the mouth of the beautiful Chesapeake Bay, so I am donating a percentage of my earnings from this series to conservation projects on the Bay. Check for more details on this, as well as news on the upcoming HOTWIRES books, Friction (Jan 2006) and Flirtation (Feb 2006), as well as contests and news at my Web site, www.samanthahunter.com.

Warm wishes,

Samantha Hunter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Mike, with love.

To my family and in-laws for all their constant support and enthusiasm about my writing—you all make it fun, and I appreciate you bragging about me!

And for my mom, Dorothy, who had her birthday at Christmas, when this book is being released. I miss you, but I hear you cheering me on every day.

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

“SO DID YOU STAY OUT OF trouble this month, Sage?”

Sage Matthews held Ian Chandler’s steady gray-eyed gaze for a long moment and pursed her lips, as if she had to think carefully before speaking. She looked down at the drink she held in her hand, slipped the straw between her cherry-red lips and sucked slowly, drawing her cheeks in so that her mouth formed a sexy pout around the plastic, closing her eyes as the cool burst of carbonation hit her throat. She released the straw and caught a stray bit of fizz with her tongue before answering.

“Exactly what kind of trouble would you be referring to, Ian?” Her soft southeastern Virginia accent added a lilt of mischief to her sultry purr.

Ian sighed, his full, gorgeous lips drawing into a tight, impatient line, and Sage felt a little spark of satisfaction. Ian might be the sexiest man she’d ever met, but she fought any attraction she’d ever felt because he was also a huge, unforgivable thorn in her side.

Sure, he was only doing his job, but for five years he’d controlled almost every aspect of her life. Annoying him—and teasing him—was one of the few ways she had to wrestle that control back into her hands. It was a small advantage, true, but she made the most of it.

It was an additional benefit that the air-conditioning in the Norfolk Police Department, where Ian had his new office—part of the new job he was leaving his post as a federal agent for—was on the fritz. The sweltering August heat created a fine film of sweat on her skin, making her thin tank dress cling to her, leaving little to the imagination. Sage didn’t want to be subtle. She wanted federal agent Ian Chandler, who specialized in computer crime, to sweat.

She hadn’t worn anything underneath the light shift because she was more comfortable that way but also because she was going to see Ian for her monthly check-in. The more to tempt you with, she thought devilishly. Sage didn’t really want Ian, she just wanted to torture him with what he couldn’t have. She slid a glance over his handsome features. She had a weakness for dark-haired men. Ian was a sexy guy. Too bad he was a cop.

But just five more days and she would be free of Ian for good. And hopefully free of a past that had been holding her back for too long. Her sentence for the computer crimes she’d been arrested for almost five years ago was nearly over. Ian Chandler was the federal agent who’d arrested her and he’d been assigned to “monitor her progress” throughout her sentence.

What that really meant was that he had the right to invade every corner of her life, watch her constantly, ask her anything he wanted and pry into every detail of her activities. If he caught her doing anything he thought broke the rules, he could throw her in jail. No questions asked.

It rankled her that he had so much power over her life, though she’d learned to live with it. Sage was determined never to give him the satisfaction of catching her slipping up—or any kind of satisfaction, for that matter. But he couldn’t arrest her for flirting.

Not that he’d ever expressed interest. Ian was the epitome of straight and narrow. It wasn’t in his nature to break the rules or back off from enforcing them. She tempted him incessantly, knowing he would never cross the line. But that fact only made pushing the limits all the more enjoyable.

She got up out of the chair and sat on the corner of his very organized desk. The room was clean as a whistle, the chrome gleaming, the windows sparkling clear. Everything was exactly in its place, and Sage pushed a neatly stacked pile of papers carelessly to the side as she made room for herself. She leaned over to throw her empty paper cup in the garbage can, not-so-subtly inviting him to take a peek at what was revealed by the slight sag of her neckline as she did so.

He just looked away.

She smiled and crossed one slender leg over the other, swinging it as if to some unheard song playing in her head, and picked up a pen to play with between her nimble, tanned fingers.

“Oh, you know I’ve been good, Ian. I’m always good.”

Sexual innuendo aside, she had been good—not that she had much choice. As much as she liked to mess with Ian, she had no desire to end up in prison, so she’d also played it straight and narrow, as contrary as that was to her nature. There was no way she was going to lose what precious little freedom she had. She’d been a fool for a man once, which was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. She wasn’t about to do it again.