EXCERPT #1
Michael wouldn’t have been surprised to see actual sparks flashing from her fingertips, given the effect of her touch on his skin. He pulled her against him, his hands sliding down over her hips to cup her ass, drinking in the feel and smell of her. But without her heels, she barely reached the middle of his chest. He grabbed her hand and led her to the bed. 

“Climb up,” he ordered. “I want you at eye level.” 

She laughed. “I’m not that short.”

He wrapped a fist in her tousled curls and pulled her to him. Bending his mouth to her ear, he sunk his teeth into her earlobe. She jumped. 

“Get on the damn bed,” he whispered into her ear. 

She scrambled onto the bed.

“Much better,” he murmured.

He ran his hands up her thighs until his fingers brushed the tiny swath of lace beneath the shimmering fabric of her dress. She inhaled sharply as he slid his fingers between the lace and the silk of her skin. He loved the way her breath hitched at his touch. He slid the lace slowly down her legs. 

“I think you just stole my turn,” she breathed, her palms on his shoulders as she stepped out of the thong. 

“Royal prerogative. The prince makes the rules— and can change them.” He let the lace fall to the floor and ran his fingers lightly back up her legs, enjoying the subtle shifting of her body in response to his touch. 

“Don’t princesses get to make rules too?” she murmured, her eyes closed. “Or am I Cin—” 

He pressed his fingers to her lips, cutting her off mid-syllable. “Sin is exactly what you are…temptation incarnate.” 

Her lips curved. “My, you do credit me with extraordinary powers.” 

He brushed his lips beneath her earlobe. “How would you feel about turning those extraordinary powers over to me for the night?” 

She opened her eyes. It appeared to take a bit of an effort. “Hmm?” 

“Are you amenable to being my royal subject for the night?” 

She stilled. A beat of silence stretched between them. 

“Depends on what you mean. Are we talking ‘safe word’ kind of subject?” she finally asked. 

He smiled. “No safe word required.” 

Her eyes narrowed. “Is that because you are the serial killer I suspected and I’m going to die no matter what?” 

He clicked his tongue. “Damn. Shouldn’t have used my credit card to pay for this room. What was I thinking?” His hands moved to her waist, and he kissed the hollow of her neck. “Looks like I’ll have to let you survive the night after all.” He traced a slow finger down to where her cleavage disappeared in the fabric of her dress. She shivered. His pulse kicked up a beat. 

“So?” he asked again. 

She shot him a half-apologetic look. “I’m not a very compliant person.” 

He lifted an eyebrow. “Ah, but that’s what makes it interesting. Stepping out of your comfort zone heightens the experience.” His fingertip slowly circled first one nipple, then the other, through her dress. 

Her eyes fluttered closed. “You make it really hard to think straight.” 

He stepped back, lifting his hands up in the air. “Far be it from me to confuse the decision-making process. Take all the time you need.” 

She shot him an exasperated look, then bit her lower lip, considering him. Finally, a half-smile flitted across those lips. “What the hell—so long as no safe words are required—long live the prince.” 

His cock saluted her decision. Affecting a calm neither he nor his anatomy felt, he moved away from her and sat in the chair by the window. Crossing one ankle over his knee, he took his sweet time perusing her, his gaze raking her body. She fidgeted. 

“Stand still,” he ordered.

She froze.

He let the tension build for a long minute, then said. “Take off your dress. Slowly.” 

 

EXCERPT #2
Annie opened the manila envelope of media coverage the office investigator had pulled together and fished out the thumb drive hiding at the bottom of all the newspaper clippings. She plugged it into her computer, and more than a dozen video files popped up. Seriously? Shootings happened every day in St. Louis. Most got barely a line or two of news coverage, if that. But let one of ‘the money guys’ get scratched by a bullet and the media machine practically wet itself. 

Grinding her teeth at yet another example of the ever-present double-standard, she opened the first video file on the list. The low, musical voice of Tina Hoff, Channel 7’s busty, blonde news anchor filled the room. 

“And this just in—founder and CEO of Grayson Aeronautics, St. Louis philanthropist Michael Grayson, was shot tonight in the city’s Central West End. Police say the shooting appears to have been the result of an attempted robbery. Mr. Grayson was rushed into surgery. There is no word yet on any suspects.” 

Annie froze. There, in the corner of the screen behind Tina’s talking head, was a headshot of the man who’d had her tied to his bedpost. The same silky, charcoal hair. The same smoky grey eyes. And beneath the photo the name, “Michael Grayson, Grayson Aeronautics CEO.” A rushing noise in her ears drowned out the voice of the police chief giving his take on the situation. 

Mick. Michael. ‘I design airplanes.’ CEO of an aeronautics company. 

She flashed on the fresh scar above Mick’s left hip. Michael Grayson had sustained a through and through gunshot wound to his left side just above the pelvic bone. 

Hyperventilating, she dumped the envelope of news articles on her desk and scrabbled through the clippings until she found one with a picture. There he was again. Her mystery man, her fabulous one-night- stand man, her ‘no-last-names’ man. Her ever-so-charming prince. 

‘Mick’ was Michael Grayson. 

‘Let’s not bring all the family skeletons to the party.’ It hadn’t been some playful game. He really hadn’t wanted her to know his name. He was too important, too privileged, too goddamned special to let her know his real identity. After all, what was she? Some low-level public interest lawyer. Just a night’s free entertainment. He didn’t want any entanglement, any messy follow-up with the likes of her. A quick lay and out, free and clear. That’s all she was to Mr. High-and-Mighty so why bother getting to know last names? 

Anger bloomed as the rant in her mind picked up steam. Never mind that she’d been the one to suggest their one-night stand. He was the one who’d lured her away from the ball with his slick, sneaky invitation to get away from Kurt Cochrane. He was the one who’d seduced her with that sexy eyebrow and bad-boy gleam in his eyes. Guess he thought he didn’t have to worry about running into the likes of little Ms. Nobody again. Well, Mr. Hotshot was in for a bit of a surprise now, wasn’t he? 

Her anger vanished as the reality of that surprise rushed back. Oh. My. God. She had slept with the victim in the case of her career. She’d had sex with the state’s star witness against her own client—after she’d been assigned the case. For God’s sake, she’d kissed the scar that was her client’s handiwork. Allegedly. 

And Monday morning, he was showing up in her office for her to take his deposition. 

 

583 Words

EXCERPT #3

 

“You had me investigated?” Annie swung her legs around and pushed herself off his lap. “What, do you have a file on me in your office somewhere?” 

He was silent. 

“Oh, my God, you do. You have a file on me? So, what’d you do?” she prodded. “Have me followed? Interview my neighbors? Talk to my co-workers? Dig into my transcripts?” 

Silence again.

“Holy shit. You did!”

“I didn’t know who you were or what you were up to. Whether this whole anonymous one-night-stand thing”—Michael made a vaguely circular motion— “was real or some kind of set-up.” His tone was wary, defensive. 

She narrowed her eyes. “When?”

“When what?”

“When did you have me investigated?”

“Well, an investigation spans time. It’s a little here and a little there as things are uncovered.”

Now he had the audacity to mansplain to her? 

“Defense lawyer here, remember? I investigate cases all the time. My question is when did you start investigating me?” She bit off the ‘asshole’ that ended that sentence in her brain. 

He ran one hand through his hair. “When I found out you were representing the kid who shot me.” 

She supposed that was fair, though it still rankled. And why the hell hadn’t he told her about it? “When did you end it?” 

“End?”

“Yes, end as in stop, quit, finish investigating me?” 

Silence again.

“You haven’t ended it?” She stared at him, incredulous. “He’s still investigating me?”

“In my defense—”

“There is no defense,” she snapped. “You invited me to Johannson’s fundraiser, flirted with me, kissed me, all while you were having me investigated? Was someone in the bushes taking pictures of us so you’d have your own little stash of blackmail with which to destroy my career just in case?” 

“If you will recall”—his words were now clipped, formal, and frustrated—“I found out all of yesterday that you were Eleanor Barlow’s granddaughter. A not- insignificant fact, by the way, and not a discovery likely to motivate me or anyone with half a brain to pull the plug on an investigation of your involvement in her merger scheme. Within hours of that lovely discovery, I learned that my company is the target of Russian espionage, and someone is very likely trying to kill me, so forgive me if I haven’t stopped to send Jacobson a memo on the appropriate time to wind down this particular assignment.” 

She kind of had to give him that. But she sure as hell wasn’t ready to let him off the hook. Not by a long shot. “When was his last report?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You know exactly what I mean. I work with investigators all the time, remember? They do investigations and then prepare reports about the results of those investigations. When was the last time you got a report from Streeter about me?” 

Michael took a slow breath, closed those beautiful grey eyes, and said, “Last night.” 

For a nanosecond, there was silence. 

Then Annie breathed, “You son of a bitch.” 

Her mind raced and she began pacing the room. “That’s why Streeter drove to Chicago instead of flying up with you, isn’t it? He wasn’t up there on some ‘organization- wide investigation’ you weren’t up to speed on. He followed Carter and me up there, didn’t he?” 

Michael sat silent.

“Didn’t he?” She practically screamed the words. 

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “When he ran the plates on Carter’s car, it came back registered to Barlow Industries. I had just been invited to come discuss a business deal with Barlow Industries, so yes, finding out you had an unexpected connection there was worthy of follow-up in Streeter’s mind.” 

“So, he was sitting outside my house just watching me? He had to have been, to be there when Carter arrived.” 

Michael didn’t say a word.

“For how long? How long has that man been following me around and spying on my every movement?” 

Michael didn’t reply quickly enough.

“Answer me!”

He ran his hands over his face. “I don’t know. I leave the details of Streeter’s investigations to him. I just asked him to find out what he could so I could figure out if you were who and what you said you were or if there was some kind of subterfuge at play.” 

She flashed to Michael lifting her chin to meet his kiss in her bedroom at Barlow House. 

‘I may not know fully who you are, Counselor, but I will figure it out. It’s what we princes do.’ 

Oh, God. She’d thought it so romantic, so sweet, the beacon of hope that they might have a future after all. But he was just waiting on his goddamn investigation results!