Stripped Defenseless Read Free

coat and headed across the room toward the
door.
    * * * * *
    Kade
Gavin stepped out into the biting cold air and finally let out a breath. What
the hell was he thinking? It was as if the woman had put a spell on him and
made him forget his whole purpose for being in there. He had lost his entire
focus when she moved against him in her seductive way. Her lush, petite body at
his fingertips had pushed him over the edge. Almost to the point of picking her
up in his arms and removing her from that shit hole of a joint. He shook the
vision out of his thick skull.
    He
had a mission to complete and none of it involved being anyone’s knight in
shining armor. Just the opposite, actually.
    What
a fool he was for telling her his real name. “Fuck,” he muttered and stepped
across the street.
    He’d
been watching her for the past few days. As a PI, it was his job to observe,
but it had never resulted with him getting a hard-on or fantasizing about his
target’s full breasts under his caress. But the fantasies had built up every
time he saw her swaying her hips on that stage or wrapping her toned legs
around that pole.
    “Knock
it off, Kade,” he mumbled as he reached his hotel room. He was doing it again.
Envisioning. Imagining. What was so different about her? None of the other
women at the club had this arousing affect on him.
    Get
a grip. This was a
job. If she showed up later, he’d play it off. It would help if he knew she was
definitely the girl he was looking for, the one he was being paid to hunt down.
But he wasn’t positive.
    Take
away the red hair and those obvious brown contacts, and maybe she could pass as
the petite woman in the fuzzy photo he’d been given. It was all the information
he had besides the description Zack Moreno had given him—long blonde hair, green
eyes, and full C-cup. Not much to go on, but at least that had cut it down to
two prospects. The one who called herself Poppy fit the description to a T, and
then of course there was Lily, trying so hard to disguise herself.
    He
walked into the hotel room and fell onto the bed. His mind raced as he let the
name slide off his tongue. “Ava Lureau.”
    I’m
coming to get you.
    * * * * *
    Snow
lightly fell around Ava as she stood outside her hotel room. A chill wind blew
past so she pinched her jean jacket shut. The pink and blue neon sign “Girls,
Girls, Girls” buzzed across the street. Three months ago, she’d chosen this
place because of its convenient location...and because they took cash and
didn’t ask for identification.
    But
now she wished she were anywhere but here. She was too close to the mysterious
blue-eyed stranger. Two rooms down to be exact.
    The
temptation to knock on his door was overwhelming.
    She
was more than entranced by the tall, broad-shouldered man who had branded a
desire in her so deep she ached to have it quenched.
    And
spending another lonely night in a cold, bland hotel room all by herself wasn’t
exactly a thrilling thought. Waking in the middle of the night whenever she
heard strangers outside her room window didn’t warm her heart too much either.
It was frightening to think she was a thin door away from some depraved
lunatic. Or Zack Moreno.
    Was
there a difference?
    She
shook his image from her head once again.
    She
should be used to being alone, but the fantasy of having a safe, normal life
with a loving husband and family always crept into her mind. It was silly,
really. The only thing she needed to concentrate on now was survival, and if
that meant being on her own for the rest of her days, then so be it.
    “You’ve
got the wrong room,” a deep familiar voice said behind her.
    Ava
swung around to see Kade standing less than two feet away with sprinkles of
snow falling onto his dark hair and a brown paper bag in his hand.
    “No.
No I haven’t.” She backed up against her door and pulled the key from her jean
jacket pocket. “See?”
    He
stepped closer and towered over her. “You have a room here.” It