White Hot

I peered around the bedroom with wide eyes. There was no way I could go back to sleep. There was no turning off the light either. My stomach growled. I’d gone to bed without dinner. I’d been too tired to eat.

Okay, sitting in bed and shivering really didn’t accomplish anything. What I needed was to get out and go downstairs to our clean modern kitchen, and drink a hot cup of chamomile tea and eat something that didn’t look like a rat. Possibly a cookie. Cookies were as un-ratlike as you could get.

I pulled the blanket back, put on a pair of yoga pants, and opened my door, half expecting to see the cave walls.

No cave. No secret enemy with terrifying teeth waiting in the darkness. Just the familiar warehouse.

I tiptoed down the ladder and went along the hallway toward the kitchen. The above-the-table lamp was on and warm electric light pooled at the doorway. Rogan sat at the table, a laptop open in front of him. He leaned forward, his chin resting on his chest. His eyes were closed. He dwarfed the chair. He was so well proportioned it was easy to forget how big he was. His shoulders were huge and broad, his chest powerful, his arms made to crush and rip his opponents.

His hair wasn’t really long enough to be tousled, but it looked unbrushed and messy. Dark stubble touched his jaw. He’d lost some of that killer efficiency that made him so terrifying. He was human and slightly rough. I could picture him looking just like that, stretched out on a bed, as I climbed in there next to him.

Mad Rogan in his off mode. All of his titles—Prime, war hero, billionaire, major, butcher, scourge—lay at his feet, discarded. Only Connor remained, and he was so unbearably sexy.

I could just turn around and go back the way I’d come, but I wanted him to open his eyes and talk to me. My mother taught me that former soldiers could fall sleep anywhere, in any position. And they didn’t react well to being surprised.

“Rogan,” I called from the door. “Rogan, wake up?”

He awoke instantly, going from deep sleep to complete awareness in a blink, as if someone had thrown a switch. Blue eyes regarded me. “Problems?”

“No.”

I walked into the kitchen. Electric kettle or single-use coffeemaker? Coffeemaker was faster. I took a cup out of the cabinet, dropped the tea bag into it, and watched as the coffeemaker poured hot water over it.

He checked his laptop. “What are you doing up? I thought we agreed that you would rest.”

“I had a nightmare.” I extracted the jar of cookies from the pantry and brought it and my tea to the table.

He straightened, squaring his shoulders, stretching slightly. The chair couldn’t have been comfortable.

“What are you doing?” I peeked at his laptop. A shot of the video with the Suburban passing our Range Rover, ice frosting the road behind it. He must’ve been going frame by frame through it, trying to see some clues he missed.

“Bug is really good at this sort of thing, you know,” I told him.

“I know.” He pushed the laptop away. Drowsiness still hid in the corners of his blue eyes.

A cup of coffee sat in front of him. I stole it.

“I wasn’t finished with that.”

“It’s cold. I’ll warm it up so you will have something to drink. You can’t eat cookies without a drink.” I stuck the mug into the microwave. “Why aren’t you asleep on your air mattress?”

“I was working. What happened in your nightmare?”

The microwave beeped and I took the cup out and placed it in front of him.

“I was trapped in a cave. It was cold and dark. Something scary was waiting outside and then someone killed a rat, and I knew we were going to eat it.”

I shuddered and sipped my tea. It was almost scalding, but I didn’t care.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s not your fault.” I opened the plastic cookie jar, extracted a fat chocolate chip cookie, and offered it to him. He snagged it and bit into it.

“Good cookies.”

“Mhm.” I broke my cookie in half and bit one piece. There are times in life when sugar turns into medicine. This was one of those times.

“Did you make these?”

“Ha. I wish. It was probably Catalina. I can’t cook.”

He frowned at me. “What do you mean, you can’t cook?”

“Well, I can make good panini, but that’s about it. The way I look at it, someone has to put the food on the table and someone has to cook it. I’m the put-it-on-the-table type.”

He was looking at me oddly.

“Can you cook, Mr. I-Am-Prime?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you have people for that?”

“I like to know what’s in my food.”

I propped my elbow on the table and leaned my chin on my hand. “Who taught you to cook?” He wouldn’t tell me, but any little glimpse into him was worth taking a chance.

“My mother. One summer when she was six, her family was celebrating her older sister’s birthday back in Spain. Her sister loved cream puffs so the caterer brought a tower of cream puffs drizzled with chocolate and strands of sugar. It was the best thing my mother had ever seen up to that point.”

His voice was quiet, almost intimate. I could just sit here and listen to him talk all night.

“As adults were putting candles on the tower, her five-year-old cousin stole a cream puff and ate it. My mother was outraged, because the cream puffs belonged to her sister, so she slapped him. His sister, Marguerite, took offense to the slap. They had a brawl right there on the lawn. Half of the children started fighting, the other half cried, and everyone was sent to their rooms without dessert. The tower was covered with plastic, because their mother was determined to still have the celebration once everyone calmed down. The cousin died half an hour later.”

My heart dropped. “Poisoned.”

Rogan nodded. “They were involved in a long feud with another House.”

“They targeted the children?”

“Children are the future of any House. When my mother was fourteen, she killed the person responsible. She collapsed their summer villa.”

Somehow that didn’t surprise me.

“My mother cooked all of my food herself from ingredients she grew or purchased. So I eventually learned to make my own. Who do you think made that enormous stack of pancakes Augustine had to eat for his initiation?”

“Did you put anything weird into those pancakes?”

“No. That wouldn’t be fair.” He grinned at me. It was a sharp, amused grin that made him appear wolfish. “The real question here is would you like me to cook something for you?”

“Like what?”

“What are you in the mood for?”

Sex.

Rogan leaned forward, muscles rolling under the sleeves of his T-shirt. His face took on a speculative expression. There was something slightly predatory about the way he focused on me; it wasn’t the fear of being in the presence of a man who posed real danger. It was the feeling of being in the presence of a man who was about to try to seduce me. Anticipation zinged through me. Had he actually plucked the impression of my lust out of my head? Maybe it was just a coincidence.

He reached over.

I tensed.

His fingers slid so close to mine, I thought for a moment we touched. He stole the remaining half of my cookie and looked at it.

“That’s mine,” I told him.

“Mhm.”

“There is a whole jar of cookies.”

A light sparked in his eyes. “I want this one.”

“You can’t have this one. Give it back.” I held out my hand.

He examined the cookie and slowly raised it to his mouth.

“Connor, don’t you dare.”

He bit the cookie and chewed it. “I took your cookie and ate it. Are you going to do something about it?”

I was playing with fire. Fine. He ate my cookies, I’d drink his drink. I reached for his coffee. It slid out of my reach and settled next to him.

“Not fair.”

“This isn’t about fair. This is about delicious cookies.”

“In that case, that will be your last.” I grabbed the jar and put it in front of me. It shot straight up and hung above us. My half-empty teacup took off like a rocket and landed on the far end of the island. Okay, enough is enough. This was my kitchen.