Page 11 of Cops and Robbers

Kate bit her lip and dragged in a breath. He was dangerous. A quality that always attracted her, but she’d never met a dangerous man with a heart of gold. Not that it mattered, she might want to have more fun with him, but in the end she wouldn’t let a man get between her and Naomi again. Especially since he’d never truly want her, anyway.

They were getting nowhere.

Raz’s nostrils flared as his fist, resting against the interrogation room’s two-way mirror, clenched. Damn this woman—this thing—whatever the hell she was.

She supplied them with useless, fake information. She beat around the bush with the three interrogators for hours while Raz sat on the sidelines, his body on fire the entire time.

After their little flirtation—shit—was that really what he was calling it?

He should have immediately backed away from the bold caress of her foot, but it had felt daring and intoxicating to allow her seduction to continue under the safety of the table. He hadn’t been able to resist the need to fluster her back, especially when he didn’t expect her to carry on for as long as she did. It had felt like a ploy for her to get under his skin, just like all her heated comments, but then she’d literally raced inside him to where his dragon lay. Her spirit had felt warm and playful against his—someone determined to seek justice.

After he forced her out, he couldn’t be near her for fear his attraction might lead him to do something truly stupid like grab her black hair and kiss her confident smile into submission. Those lips had been haunting him for months, ever since he first held her calling card.

He was so screwed.

His dragon’s desire for her raged, burning him from the inside out. Each solicited remark or advance she made toward one of the three men who interrogated her clawed at him with unwarranted jealousy. He wanted to yank his hair out.

How the hell did she go inside him?

She couldn’t possibly be—what did Daxton, his only non-rogue dragon-shifter friend, call them—a Fallen?

She smelled and acted human, even though she was a bit too playful for the crime she faced. But something inside him stilled at the prospect that she was one. After Daxton had confided in him about Izzy, the woman Raz had helped him track down, Raz still couldn’t wrap his mind around it.

Fallen angels walking among them? Beings who were punished to reincarnate as humans that could eventually become the dragon’s primary enemy—Archfiends. The dragons had searched for centuries for the origin of the vile Archfiends who used Illusion to deceive and manipulate humans, if not outright kill them, but he never would have expected that. Nor that a dragon and Fallen were soulmates, punished to find each other before they could return to Heaven.

Fallen didn’t seem plausible, but Kate’s energy entered him in the same way Daxton had described. If she were a Fallen, he had a feeling the prison might not hold her.

Sitting beside another officer, Isak, she glanced sideways at the mirror, as if checking her reflection, but it seemed like she stared straight through the glass to see him. Her doe-like brown eyes sent a fiery spike lancing through him. Did she know what she’d done to his self-control? He lifted away from the glass panel with a heated sigh.

She was hot. He could admit that. Her lithe frame wielded shapely curves that her tight bodysuit emphasized. High, model-worthy cheekbones enhanced her button nose. She had the complexion of porcelain, but hiding behind that delicate appearance was a tempered confidence and strength.

But she was a criminal and could be working with Matsuda. She could be the reason his friend was dead. Not someone he needed to tussle with in between the sheets. Still, his instincts whispered of someone trustworthy—in desperate need of…something. And he wanted to find out what that was.

“She’s a tough one,” his lieutenant said.

Raz jumped as if he’d written his thoughts in red on the wall. Regan shut the door behind her as silently as she’d come in. He must be losing his mind if a human could sneak up on him so easily.

“Tell me about it,” Raz muttered.

She offered him a cup of coffee. He grabbed the drink with a tight grin. “Thanks.”

Standing beside him, Regan looked inside the interrogation room with a regal expression. Her dark skin gleamed from freshly applied makeup, her lipstick a different color.

Was it already the next day?

He glanced at his watch. It was nine in the morning. How he stayed awake after ingesting the sleeping agent was beyond him. He had been both lucky and unlucky, his body had rebelled against the toxin and puked it up. Though in the end he’d captured his prey, so he couldn’t complain. Smelling the brewed coffee, he took a sip—black—and sighed with contentment.

“You should head home,” Regan said, not taking her eyes off the glass. “We can take it from here. She’s not going anywhere.”

His heart thundered in his rib cage. He wasn’t sure they could contain her. But if she did have special abilities, she could have used them to escape him. Something about her made him feel as if she wanted him to catch her. After all, she’d flown inside him for a reason. She hadn’t repeated the act on anyone else. What could a Fallen do from within a person and why do it only on him? And why go through all this trouble if that’s what she wanted? His questions rammed against his head, but he’d never have the opportunity to ask her them in the field office.

He watched Kate’s lip jut out. Her words came through the adjoining speaker. “If you don’t let me have some sleep, I’ll have to ask for a lawyer.”

It was the first time she’d mentioned getting council. Isak sat back in his chair with a sigh. That was the last thing they wanted. If she was going to call it quits, so was Raz.

“Just keep me up to date,” he said. His dragon grumbled in his chest; his feet felt heavy, as if they didn’t want to carry him away from Kate.

“Will do.”