KENSINGTON BOOKS

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Acknowledgments

      For Michal. Of course.

      I must give a special nod of filthy appreciation to Eden Bradley and Sam Saturday for inspiring the Space Race game in this book. I won’t say more, but they deserve all the credit.

      To those who read this for me and beat it into submission by deadline despite winter storms, burst pipes, apartment floods, family meltdowns, and other natural disasters: Robin L. Rotham, Rhiannon Leith, Bethany Morgan, Kate Pearce, and Dayna Hart. Y’all rock. Many, many thanks for responding to the call for help of, “Holy crap, this is due tomorrow. Can you drop everything and critique hundreds of pages right this very second?”

      And, as always, to John Scognamiglio and Lucienne Diver. Editor Extraordinaire and Agent Awesome Sauce. None of this would be possible without you both.

      CONTENTS

      STOLEN TEMPTATION

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      DEADLY TEMPTATION

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      1

      Delilah Chase perched on the corner of the building, her hand braced on the ledge in front of her as she swept her gaze over the city below. From ninety stories up, it looked clean, beautiful, an ocean of multicolored lights against pure ebony.

      But Delilah knew the truth. Up close, it was gritty, dirty, and dangerous. A place where someone like her flourished.

      She grinned and let the adrenaline humming through her body take over. Her claws slid forward, scraping against the slick metal ledge. She ran her tongue down a long fang, her smile widening. It was always this way when she was on a job. Half cool, calm professionalism, half unadulterated thrill seeking.

      Schooling herself to patience, she tilted her wrist and checked her chrono. A few more minutes and the virus she’d seduced a young computer techie into feeding into the building’s security system would kick in. She’d have a quarter of an hour to get in, steal the priceless ruby her client wanted, and get out again.

      Kitten’s play, this job.

      Still, every case had its risks, and the moment a thief got too cocky was the moment they slipped up. If all went well, by the end of the night, multitrillonaire Hunter Avery would be missing a gem and Delilah would have a sizeable commission in her encrypted cred account. So, things had better go well. She gauged the distance between the skyrise she stood on and the one she needed to break into. Tricky, very tricky. Timing was everything. The lynx within her purred at the challenge.

      This was going to be fun.

      Balconies circled the entire penthouse. Not surprising a family of red-tailed hawks would build the glass and mercurite sanctuary for themselves in the middle of the city. High enough they couldn’t see the grime of the real people below.

      The newsvids had reported on every aspect of the Avery family’s lives for as long as she’d been alive. Their fortune was one of the few to survive the Third Great War, which made them newsvid darlings, beautiful people in an ugly world.

      Delilah had heard all about it when Hunter’s parents were killed in a tragic industrial accident. A few years after that, Hunter’s uncle died, and Hunter had all but disappeared from public view. The buzz on the street whispered that Hunter had done the killing himself, his mind twisted from seeing his parents’ death. A bitter little smile curled Delilah’s lips. Figures that he’d get away with murder. The rich always did.

      Now, Hunter was practically a recluse in his tower penthouse, only allowing a trusted few in for business purposes and only leaving for a few business meetings or high-society parties a year. This meant conning her way in wouldn’t work, so breaking in was her best option. Her client said Avery was in Los Angeles at a board meeting and wouldn’t be home until the next day. Her intel had confirmed it, so tonight was the night to get what her client wanted.

      If a tiny part of her was curious to see the inside of the Averys’ ivory tower and got a malicious thrill from stealing from the richest man alive, she’d never admit it to anyone else.

      Her chrono vibrated against her wrist, letting her know the window of opportunity had opened. Reaching behind her, she pulled her grappler gun out of her knapsack, aimed it at the balcony railing, and fired. A gossamer-thin strand of mercurite shot from each end to form molecular bonds with the railings on both buildings. She flipped a setting so the grappler would move along the wire. Taking a breath, she said a quick prayer that the virus worked and she wasn’t about to get fried by the security field that electrocuted any unauthorized life-forms attempting to enter.

      Then she tightened her grip on the grappler, jumped, and let gravity carry her down the wire with a soundless rush of speed and wind. Her heightened vision took in every detail as she went. She knew the exact moment something started to go wrong. The mercurite was designed to dissolve after one use. It left no evidence behind. The wind was especially intense this evening, and she might just reach the end of that one use before she reached the other building.

      Shit, shit, shit.

      Heart pounding so loud in her ears it drowned out everything else, she tilted her feet forward and hoped for greater speed. Tensing every muscle as she hit the perfect spot in her downward flight, she kicked her legs hard. She swung up and around the wire, launching herself into the sky. The cable slackened, and she knew it was no more than silver powder beneath her. She twisted midair, flipping until she landed lighter than a cat’s paw on the edge of the railing. Triumph rushed through her, making her grin. Perfect.

      She loved it when a plan came together. Almost as much as she loved it when the plans went awry and she had to think on her feet. It was why she was the very best at what she did.

      Stepping down onto the balcony, she turned to make sure she’d left no evidence of her passing. The shoes she wore were specifically designed not to leave a distinct footprint. Cost a load of creds, but totally worth it. A quick brush of her fingers across the railing and what was left of the mercurite cable dispersed into metallic dust that swirled away in the gale-force breeze of