Dead No More Read Online Free

muttered, glaring up at him.
    The man straddling her pressed his lips to hers again, looked up and shrugged, feigning sheepishness.
    Lily wanted to kill him.
    The older woman shook her head, muttered something that sounded like “stupid young people” and walked off. The man with her laughed as he pocketed his phone, put his earbuds back in and followed his companion.
    Lily wrestled against the stranger’s strong, but gentle, hold. “Get off me.”
    “Are you going to behave?”
    She glared up at him.
    Chuckling, he rolled off her and stood.
    Scrambling to her feet, Lily dug around in the tall grass until her fingers landed on cold metal. She scooped up her gun, letting it hang by her side. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Who was this guy? A shudder swept through her, followed closely by fiery heat that sucked the air out of her lungs.
    “I see today isn’t a good day to chat.” He took a step back, put on his sunglasses and flashed her a grin, sending her heart into overdrive. “I’m out.”
    Before she could respond, he turned and joined a passing group of runners, melting into their small pack.
    * * *
    S HE BIT ME .
    After seven years of covertly working as a black ops agent for Unit 67, Derek Moretti could safely say that no one had ever bitten him—until today.
That
was one for the books.
    When she’d turned on him, he’d all but forgotten to breathe. She wasn’t as tall as some of the other female agents he’d worked with, but she’d held her ground as she glared up at him, the wind whipping strands of brown hair around her delicate face. Her hazel eyes flashed as she’d shoved her hands onto her slim hips. He couldn’t tell if it was anger or the sun that had kissed the tops of her cheeks, coloring her olive skin to a rosy pink, but he didn’t care.
    She was drop-dead gorgeous...and hell-bent on killing him, a fact Derek couldn’t ignore.
    Curiosity curled in his stomach like a warm fire when he’d taken the now-familiar running path along the river.
Lily Andrews in the flesh.
What would she say? How would she respond? After months of reconnaissance work, watching her, studying her, he’d conjured up a handful of scenarios. But her biting him?
    Yeah, he hadn’t seen
that
coming.
    But then again, none of Derek’s scenarios had involved tackling Lily to the ground, pinning her beneath him—at least not this time around.
That
was a different fantasy, for another time...maybe.
    He chuckled to himself briefly, then stopped as the searing memory of her body beneath his flashed through his mind. Her body had been hard, yet soft in all the right places. Just the sheer awareness of her underneath him, at his mercy, left him momentarily frozen, wanting more. He doubted she’d felt the same—in fact, he was pretty positive that he’d seen fire flash when she’d turned those hazel eyes on him.
    The woman was a freakin’ tigress.
    No doubt she’d meant to deter him, but her feistiness did exactly the opposite—it entranced him.
    Clearly the kiss had taken it too far. But how could he resist? The woman was a knockout of epic proportions. Derek reached up, touched his fingers lightly to his still-throbbing lip and smiled. Yeah, that was
definitely
not the response he’d hoped for.
    Veering off from the running path, he headed west, making his way back to his place. He needed time and space to regroup before he approached Lily again with a proposal she wouldn’t be able to resist.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Monday, September 15, 5:00 p.m.
    L ILY STALKED INTO the downstairs lobby of her penthouse loft. Despite another hour of pounding the running trail, she couldn’t shake the image of that strange man smiling down at her...or the memory of his body pressing against hers. He was all male, all alpha—and taking up
way
too much real estate in her mind.
    George, her doorman and longtime family friend, looked up from behind the concierge’s desk. He frowned. “You okay, Lil?”
    Of course he’d sense