He glanced once more up at the empty window before turning to look at her with a cold smile. “You aren’t finished yet.” He unzipped his pants and dragged them down, catching her by the nape of her neck. “Let’s see if you can earn all that money you’re charging me.”

He turned up the music and leaned back against the seat, closing his eyes as she went to work on him. He blew a circle of smoke and crushed out his cigarette, allowing the rush to overcome him. It was an amazingly powerful feeling to sit back and enjoy her, knowing it would be the last thing she ever did. Knowing she worked and worked to please him, thinking she would be getting such a lovely tip, and instead…

He moaned and forced himself deeper, holding her head even when she tried to struggle, forcing her to accept all of him, forcing her to clean him up before he took her head into his hands and, smiling, broke her neck.

Chapter 2

The indoor pool was warm and inviting, lights dim, casting intriguing shadows on the tiled walls. A mosaic of trees with shimmering silver leaves crept up to the ceiling, woven into the pattern of the cool mint tiles. From the doorway, Saber waved to Jess and watched him slide silently into the water, the muscles in his arms bulging with strength. His skin gleamed a deep bronze, dark hair tangling over the heavy muscles of his chest and angling down his ridged abdomen to disappear into blue swimming trunks.

He definitely had a body on him. She stared at him often, although she tried not to, and she knew every defined muscle. When he moved, it was with total grace. He was always alert and ready, yet still when he was at rest, unlike her. She fidgeted, always moving, always wary of standing in one spot.

Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him glide through the water. He reminded her of a sleek, powerful predator, silent, deadly, moving with deceptive laziness as he cut through the water.

Saber couldn’t take her eyes from him, watching the power in him. He’d never told her what had happened to his legs, but the scars were still red and raw and the doctors visited him often. She knew he’d had numerous operations, but it wasn’t something he ever discussed. He worked out and he went to a physical therapist daily. He excelled at swimming. Once, he’d stayed under so long, she’d dived in, terrified he’d drowned, only to have him scare her by grabbing her around the waist and tossing her to the surface. No wonder he’d been a Navy SEAL; he was more at home in the water than out of it.

When Jess halted, using powerful arms to tread water, Saber dropped her towel on the deck and dove in, not wanting him to catch her staring at him.

Jess dove right after her and met her beneath the water. His hands spanned her waist and shot her to the surface. She erupted from the water laughing, came down, eluding his outstretched hands, and dove beneath him. They played an energetic game of tag and football. Saber was the football. They raced, tried a strange form of water ballet, and finally ended up clinging to the bars that ran the full length of the pool.

Breathless, her eyes dancing, Saber wiped droplets of water from her face. “This was a great idea, Jess.”

He hooked one arm around the metal bar and lay lazily floating, buoyed by the water. “I always have great ideas. You should know that by now.” He sounded impossibly arrogant.

She sent a jet of water at his smug, grinning face, squealed, and dove to the center of the pool when he retaliated. By the time she had surfaced he was sitting at the water’s edge striving for innocence.

Her heart jumped just looking at him. His smile. His laughter. The way his eyes lit up. How could she have ever gotten so lucky as to find him? She sent another column of water shooting toward him, then turned and swam away. She spent several minutes doing hard, fast laps, driving herself, trying to push her body into fatigue.

Jess settled into the hot tub and turned on the jets, allowing the water to massage his damaged legs. He sat in silence and watched her small body cut efficiently through the water. Strangely, when she swam, his body always went on alert, every sense flaring into self-preservation mode. She was a beautiful swimmer. She moved with the rhythm of a ballerina, silently and gracefully. He knew she had fast reflexes. He’d even tested them a time or two, simply because of this-the way she swam.

When she allowed herself to forget he was near, she swam fast like a racer, but when he’d asked if she’d ever competed, she’d flicked him a glance of such utter disdain that when one second later she’d laughed and said of course, he knew she was lying to him.

He should have used that-added it to the things he knew about her and continued to search for her true identity. She had a valid driver’s license, but her prints didn’t match the prints in the system. Not even close. He wiped his face with the towel and continued to watch her perfect form. It was mesmerizing to see the way she shot beneath the water as she made the turn, gliding half the distance to the other side before surfacing to stroke. Not a single sound gave her presence away, even as she surfaced, and that was more than fascinating to him. He practically lived in water, and just how could she be so completely silent?

Saber. He played with her name in his mind. A sword-for justice? She’d taken the name, obviously. And where did Wynter fit in? Things just didn’t add up with his roommate, yet he couldn’t bring himself to put his team on it. He sighed as he watched her surface again, looking first at the shimmering leaves on the tiles and then up at the ceiling.

She looked so exotic, yet innocent. She was thin, but there was muscle beneath that smooth skin. She turned her head and found him-and smiled. God. It hit him like a punch in the gut. His body immediately heated, blood rushing, centering in his groin, until he thought he might burst with need. The wariness was ingrained in her-those violet-blue eyes, so unusual, so haunted, were always restless, searching for an enemy.

He knew part of the reason she relaxed with him was because he was in a wheelchair and she didn’t perceive him as a threat. It wasn’t that she didn’t see-or recognize-the predator in him; she simply didn’t believe the threat existed any longer.

“Are you going to swim all night?”

“I’m thinking about it,” she conceded. “It’s this or the hot tub.”

“I feel compelled to point out the hot tub is much warmer and that you’re turning blue. The color looks good on you though, it goes with your eyes.”

She laughed, the way he knew she would. He loved that he could make her laugh-really laugh. Genuine and happy. It had taken months of patience, but she had finally let him in, just a little bit. She trusted him. But maybe she shouldn’t. She had a false impression of who and what he was, but he wasn’t about to scare her off by showing her the real Jess Calhoun. She could believe this life, the radio station, the songwriting. The man who treated her gently.

Saber climbed the ladder, shivered, and hurried to the hot tub, taking a seat opposite him. “I didn’t realize I was so cold.”

That was another thing he’d noticed about Saber-she ignored her comfort level, even pain, as if she could block sensation for long periods of time.

“Where’d you meet Larry?” Because he was going to have a few words with the man. “What’s his last name and where does he work?”

She made a face. “He’s a bartender, and believe me, Jesse, he’s not worth the trouble, so back it on down and forget the whole thing. It was my own fault anyway.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I don’t know why I do half the things I do. Going out with Larry was a bad idea and entirely my fault.”

“Why did you go out with him?”

She looked relaxed, something Saber rarely did. She was in constant motion, like a hummingbird. Her hands were always restless. She skipped or danced across a room rather than walked. Sometimes she’d leap over the furniture-she’d even cleared the couch one day, and it was longer and wider than most. She was a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out.

Saber opened her eyes to look at him through the rising steam.

Because of you. She went out with utterly rotten cads because she didn’t dare fall in love with Jesse. That was so lame-so stupid. She couldn’t have someone decent, so she went out with men knowing she couldn’t hurt them-ever. She would never hurt an innocent.

She didn’t have time to censor her thoughts. Not even to herself had she ever admitted that she couldn’t look at him anymore without wanting him. She wanted to trace every line in his face, memorize the shape and texture of his mouth, slide her fingers through that wealth of beautiful hair that fell haphazardly in all directions. She couldn’t close her eyes and not have him in her mind. She smelled him in every room. When she inhaled, he was there, drawn so deeply into her lungs that she felt possessed by him.

Afraid he might read too much on her face, she looked away from him, studying the tiled mural. “Who knows why I do anything I do, Jesse.”

He didn’t have the ability to read minds. She had spoken telepathically to him. Every cell in his body went on alert. Her words were clear, absolutely clear in his mind. Because of you. She was capable of projecting her thoughts into his head. Not only had she been clear, she had done it easily, with no energy spills at all, no surge of power to give her away. Never once in ten months of living with him had she slipped up. Not one time. And that spoke of specialized training-not merely specialized; it took rigid discipline to be good enough to go undercover and never make a mistake. He wasn’t going to buy it that she just happened to find his home, find him, and be trained in telepathic communication. God. Jesus. He couldn’t bear it if she was undercover playing him for a fool.

He sat in silence, stunned at the revelation, furious with himself for not seeing it coming. Maybe all along he’d suspected, but he hadn’t wanted to know. She was so beautiful. So right for him. Who sent her? Who put those shadows in her eyes? The wariness on her face? Because of you. What exactly did that mean?

He kept his features expressionless while he studied the situation from every angle. If she’d been sent there to kill him, she would have done it already. If she was spying, she would have tried to get into his office and he would have known. He didn’t believe in coincidence, so just how much danger was he in? And how much should he tell the others? He’d kept everyone away from Saber, purely for selfish reasons, although maybe he’d known the truth all along.

“What? No comment? You’ve gone awfully quiet, Jesse, and you always have some little lecture to pull out of your long list of them. I guess the truth is, I wanted to feel something for someone. He seemed like fun in the bar. Good looking. Somewhat intelligent.”

He’d been a creep. She’d purposely gone out with a sleaze, just as she always did, because she didn’t want to hurt a really nice man. Wherever she was currently calling home, she knew she could never stay. She wanted to do all the normal things a woman would do when she pretended she was living life like everyone else, but she never wanted anyone hurt on her account. She’d already caused enough hurt for a lifetime.

She sighed and punched her fist into the bubbles. “It was stupid. I won’t be doing it again.”

“It was stupid,” he agreed. “And no, you won’t be doing it again.”

She glanced up at his face. It looked as if it were chiseled from stone. That was Jesse on the outside. Jesse on the inside was…mush. A slow grin spread over her face and amusement slowly lit her eyes. “You’re so bossy. How does anyone stand you?”

“Not very well, which is why I’ve lived alone until you came along. Even my parents avoid me.” He flashed her an answering grin and, using the bars, pulled himself from the hot tub to the platform he used for drying off.

For a moment all she could do was stare in awe at the power in his arms as he lifted his body. Realizing she was ogling him again, she hastily jumped out, turning away from him to shut everything down.