Excerpt from Chapter 9 of Concealed (Dark Alliance #2)

       

Maddie made her way into the rotunda of the hotel that had once served as the Charles Street Jail. The amber light cast too many shadows, making it hard to make out faces. But there was one face she couldn’t mistake. Jack stood at the bar, looking heart-stoppingly debonair in his black tuxedo. It took more than a little effort to drag her gaze away and focus on the others milling about the rotunda.

“Do you have eyes on any of our companions for the evening?” Jack asked as Maddie nodded in greeting as she passed by an actor she recognized but whose name she didn’t recall.

The actor didn’t hide the fact that he was looking her up and down, but when he started walking toward her as if to engage in conversation, Maddie turned on her stiletto heel and headed in the opposite direction.

“Negative,” she told him. “You?” When Jack didn’t immediately respond, her gaze drifted back toward the bar and locked with his from across the distance. “Jack, do you copy?”

#

Jack took another sip of his wine, trying to disguise the fact that the sight of Maddie had made him momentarily speechless. She was lovely beyond compare—her thick dark hair swept off her neck into an elegant arrangement, long curls having slipped out to rest against the delicate curve of her throat. The little black dress she wore accentuated the curves he’d often enjoyed tracing gently with his fingertips. His fingers tingled at the remembrance of the nights they’d shared together and of how close he’d come earlier in the day to being able to caress her in the way he so longed to.

And he nearly had. If he hadn’t questioned her certainty about where things were going that afternoon, there was no question how far things would’ve gone. But he was determined not to push her into “falling into bed” with him again, as she’d put it. They’d rushed toward satiating their yearning for one another far too quickly before, and Maddie had bolted. He wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

So why did he feel like he’d fucked up by bringing everything to a screeching halt just as they were revving up?

“I’m here, Mads,” Jack murmured, a familiar ache in the center of his chest.

Regret. Ah, yes, he knew it all too well . . .

 a Rafflecopter giveaway