Out of Chances (Taken by the Panther, #2) by V. M. Black Read Free Book Online Page A

that I’m not glad to be out of that room, but why the hell am I here?”
    “So I can keep an eye on you. Without the cameras. That’s what you wanted, right?” he asked.
    “Sure,” she said, but he’d already said that it couldn’t be quite that simple. “When I go to sleep...?” She trailed off.
    “Unless you want to crash on the couch out here, you’ll need to have video feed live for that,” he said. “Sorry.”
    “All right,” she said. “I guess I can handle that. But in the bathroom—no video.” It was a demand, not a question.
    “As long as you take an escort when you shower,” he said.
    “Not you,” she said flatly, crossing her arms across her chest even as she felt the flush creep up her cheeks. Dammit, but she wished she was immune to him. Or rather, she wished that she wished that she was immune to him, because she couldn’t even wish the first. She had a flash of an image in her head—his mouth on hers, his hands on her body, in her body—
    She bit off a groan.
    Humor glinted in his dark eyes, humor and a sharper light that made her think that maybe he guessed what was going through her head only too well. “Good idea. Annie can escort you. Or you can ask for another woman. Don’t worry—she won’t have to be in the shower with you. Just the same room is good enough.”
    “You can stop volunteering me for dealing with your psychotic panther lover at any point, thank you,” Annie said in a singsong voice from across the room.
    Tara turned to shoot her back a withering look. “I’ll work something out.”
    “Take a seat,” Chay said, probably to distract her. He started to reach for the nearest rolling chair, then hesitated. Instead, stood up and offered the chair he’d been sitting in—the sorriest, most battered chair out of the bunch.
    Tara gave the chair a skeptical look. It had a visible butt grove in the cheap fake leather, which was cracked to reveal the fabric backing below. Silver duct tape kept part of one rubber arm rest in place.
    “It’s mine,” Chay said by way of explanation.
    Was it? That was interesting. Tara sat, too aware of the fact that the groove her rear was settling into had been created by his narrower hips and ass.
    Chay quickly bent next to her, so close that she could have leaned against the length of his torso, and began to type on one of the keyboards, navigating through the menus so fast that she couldn’t follow.
    “I’ve ordered you a bed,” he said. “And a chair of your own. Your clothes, too.”
    Bed. The word conjured up way too many inappropriate thoughts with his body so close to hers. Dammit, the panther in her had screwed with her head in a permanent way, because she could smell him in a way that she never could before. It wasn’t the products that he used—in fact, as far as that was concerned, she could only smell the faint, sharp scent of plain castile soap. It was him, and the scent of him, his flesh, his body itself, that was making her insides go to jelly like she was a stupid sixteen-year-old.
    “All right,” he said, pulling back and taking the chair next to hers. She repressed her disappointment. “So you’ve already met Annie Liu and Luke Ford. That’s Liam Mansfield over there.”
    Liam grunted in acknowledgement.
    “I think I recognize him,” Tara said.
    “He was with the group who came and got you,” Chay said. “He’s got two brothers, Niall and Seamus, and they don’t talk much more than he does.”
    “I talk whenever I have anything to say,” Liam rumbled.
    “There are about a dozen people who work in the spook shop regularly,” Chay continued. “The rest of my A-team aren’t spooks. They join us in the rec room, but they don’t have much of a reason to be here.”
    “Spooks,” she repeated, unfamiliar with the word.
    “People who work in signals intelligence,” he clarified. “And the technical support for them. Spooks are the techies. The rest are...field agents of different sorts.