Mine to Take (Mine #1)(2)

Or you could go from everything…to nothing.

The elevator slowed. Skye turned back toward the doors. She took a deep breath. Then those doors slid open.

Her shoes sank into lush carpet as she stepped out of the elevator.

“Ms. Sullivan?”

She glanced over at the pretty blonde woman who’d rushed toward her.

The blonde smiled. “This way, please.”

Trace had seen her on the video cameras. That was the only explanation. He’d seen her, and he’d actually remembered her.

Well, you were always supposed to remember your first, weren’t you?

He’d been her first. Once upon a time, he’d been her everything.

The blonde opened a gleaming, mahogany door. “Ms. Sullivan is here, sir.”

Don’t limp. Skye stepped inside the office and saw him.

The man who’d haunted her.

The man who’d taught her about lust and loss.

Trace Weston.

He sat behind a massive desk. He’d leaned back in his chair, and his head was tilted to the right as his eyes—still the bluest that she’d ever seen—swept over her body. His hair was midnight black, cut to perfectly frame the strong planes of his face.

Handsome wasn’t a word that could be used to describe Trace. It never had been. Sexy. Dangerous. Those were words for him.

The door shut behind Skye, sealing her inside the office with him.

Trace rose from his seat. He came toward her, his stride slow and certain. With every step that he took, she tensed, her body helpless to do otherwise.

“H-hello, Trace.” She hated that stupid break in her voice. Trace made her nervous. Always had.

He stopped in front of her. He stood at several inches over six feet, while she barely skimmed five feet three. Skye tilted her head back so that she could meet his stare.

“It’s been a long time,” Trace said, the words a deep, dark rumble. His voice went perfectly with the rock hard body and the sexy face—a voice that a woman could imagine in the darkness.

She swallowed because her throat was suddenly dry. “Yes, it has.” Ten years and three months. Not that she’d counted.

That assessing gaze of his slid down her body once more. There was an awareness in his stare that she hadn’t expected. A heat that made her remember too many things.

He was close enough to touch. Close enough for her to smell the crisp, masculine scent that clung to him.

His nostrils flared, as if he were catching her scent, too.

“You look good, Skye.” Again, that heat was in his stare. A heat that said he knew her intimately.

She wished her heartbeat would slow down.

“But you’re not here for a friendly chat, are you?” And he stepped away from her. He waved to the open chair near his desk and returned to his seat.

“We’ve never really been the friendly chat kind,” she said softly as she eased into the leather chair.

She didn’t take off her coat. She just pulled it closer to her.

A faint furrow appeared between his brows. “No, we weren’t, were we? More the hot sex type.”

Her lips parted. He had not just said that to her.

His faint smile said that he had.

“I’m not here for that, either.” She’d been wrecked after her last go round with Trace.

He leaned back in his chair. The leather groaned beneath him. “We’ll get to that…”

Uh, no, they wouldn’t. She wasn’t ready to feel that burn again.

He tapped his chin. “You’re not here for pleasantries, you’re not here for sex, then why have you come looking for me?”

This was where she’d have to beg. Because there was no way she had enough money in her account to cover his services. Not with the guy sporting this high rise building and looking like he’d just walked off the cover of GQ. How things have changed. “Someone is watching me.”

He stilled. The heat banked in his eyes as his whole expression instantly became guarded. “And what makes you so sure of that?”

“Because I can feel him.” Wait, that sounded crazy, didn’t it? When she’d gone to the cops, they’d sure looked at her as if she were crazy. You couldn’t feel a stalker. So they said.

She disagreed.

Trace wasn’t speaking.

So she did the talking, saying quickly, “I know someone has been watching me, okay? When I go to my studio, when I go out at night…” A tenseness would slip over her. An awareness that was instinctive.

“You think someone is following you.”

He wasn’t believing her any more than the cops had. “I think,” she stressed the word back to him as her hands clenched, “that someone has been in my house. Things are rearranged. They aren’t where I put them. My doors are locked but someone has been getting in.”

Now he leaned forward. “What’s been rearranged?”

“Cl-clothes.”

His piercing stare stayed on her face.

“Underwear,” she whispered. “Some panties are missing. Some…some are left on my bed.”

“Fuck.”

Yes, that was exactly how she felt. “Cops aren’t buying my feelings. They don’t see any signs of a break-in at my apartment. And they think I just lost my laundry.”