Page 6 of Stolen

Chapter 4

Gunnar Jorgenson—Gunn to his friends, and some of his enemies—was lying naked in a tangle of bedsheets in a fancy hotel suite three states away, knowing that he was about as fucked as he was ever going to be.

In more ways than one.

It wasn’t the mission. This mission was going according to plan, with him posing as a corporation-owning asshole, who, like so many corporation-owning assholes, wasn’t above paying for state senators to block regulations that would keep him from making a shit-ton of money at the public’s expense.

Gunn was playing that role in order to get the goods on one such state senator, who’d deliberately allowed some other corporate assholes to get away with things that had ended in the illness and deaths of a lot of innocent people.

If all continued to go to plan, he’d have his opportunity at an upcoming reception full of wealthy corporate assholes, to which he’d managed to get an invitation.

Yeah, the mission was fine.

The problem was sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him, also naked. His undercover pretend-wife—also known as the woman who was going to bring his entire world crashing down.

Hell, she’d already done it.

Her name was Michelangela Connors, and he had no fucking business being in bed with her—not ever, and definitely not when they were working a mission together.

But the second he’d met her two months ago, all the hard-won discipline and caution of a dozen years in black ops had evaporated like spilled water in the desert.

He knew the rules: Keep your personal life out of your work. Better yet, don’t have a personal life. If you have to have women, keep it light. Casual. Uncomplicated.

Don’t even tell them your real name.

And never, ever fall in love. Especially not with a cop.

And yet, here he was. In bed with an official undercover operative from the Shifter Council Enforcers, letting her draw a fucking tattoo sketch on his bicep with colored markers. About to let her talk him into inking it and making it permanent.

And if she did, he knew he’d belong to her. Not that she’d said anything of the kind. He didn’t even know if that’s what she wanted. He’d just accidentally-on-purpose mentioned getting a tattoo there—right over the scar where a bullet had torn his artery in a long-ago mission, and he’d almost bled out despite his shifter healing.

Knowing that somewhere in her crazy past, she’d trained as a tattoo artist. Knowing he’d never ask her flat-out to put her brand on him. Nah, he’d just pretended to be thinking out loud.

An angel’s wing, maybe, he’d said. Because there must have been a fucking angel hovering over him that day, keeping him alive.

Nothing to do with her name. Nope. Not a thing.

She sat back now, her forehead furrowed in a frown of concentration that made him want to stroke the furrows away, run his fingers through her curly, untamed hair, and bury himself in her all over again. Make her moan, make her breath hitch, make her his.

He looked down at the tattoo drawing, and caught his breath. It was beautiful—a magical sweep of wings and feathers, a feeling of lightness and flying. Just looking at it made his spirits lift.

“Wow,” he said, running his fingers lightly over it, hoping the temporary ink wouldn’t smear. “That’s incredible. You really are the Michelangelo—I mean, Michelangela—of tattoos.” He tugged playfully on her hair. “Or just an angel.” He knew she hated being called romantic, girly shit like that.

Predictably, she made a face. “Please. Everyone who grew up with me—or had the bad luck to raise me—would laugh themselves sick if they heard that bullshit.”

As always, he found himself with a deep and terrifying need to learn all about her. He said, “You couldn’t have been that bad. They let you in the Enforcers, after all.”

She laughed. “Oh, I was that bad. Pushing the envelope, doing shit just to see if I could get away with it. Boosting cars, setting off fireworks in public places. Getting in fights. My dad got to be drinking buddies with the sheriff of the town I grew up in. They figured they were spending so much time together, him bailing me out of jail or paying fines, they might as well go ahead and drink while they did it.”

“You’re exaggerating.” He could buy her as a hell-raiser, but not that big of a one.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Did I ever tell you about the time we were visiting friends in Nashville, and I talked a couple of buddies into base-jumping off the top of one of the downtown skyscrapers?”

“No fucking way.” She definitely hadn’t mentioned that.

“I was fifteen.” She capped off her marker and put it in its case. At his look of disbelief, she added, “I can show you the newspaper articles. About our jump, and how we mysteriously got away without getting caught by the cops. They never did find out who we were.”

“How the hell did you manage that?”