Page 1 of Tank's Temptation

CHAPTER 1

TESSA

The motel Wi-Fi drops for the fourth time in twelve minutes.

I stare at the frozen upload bar, then close the laptop before I throw it through the stained window. The room smells like old smoke buried beneath lemon cleaner, and the air conditioner rattles hard enough to shake the plastic cups beside the sink.

Outside, tires hiss along the wet highway. Every set of headlights that slides across the curtains sends my pulse into my throat.

I tell myself I’m safe for the next five minutes. It’s the same lie I’ve been telling myself since I climbed through a broken kitchen window at the Rivermark Hotel, hit the muddy riverbank on both knees, and ran until my lungs burned. Dirt has dried stiff across my jeans. My left wrist is swollen where one of Harlan’s men caught me on the service stairs, and my phone lies in three useless pieces inside the trash can.

I can still hear the gunshot. Not the dramatic crack movies use, but a flat, vicious sound inside an empty ballroom, followed by Daniel Morrow dropping out of my frame. My camera had been set to continuous shooting. One press of my finger left theshutter snapping through the sudden silence, catching Harlan looking up, his face turning toward the gallery, and then the footsteps pounding for the stairs.

I open the laptop again. The cloud folder appears, disappears, then loads three gray squares with no previews. Something made it through before I lost the hotel connection. I just don’t know whether it’s enough.

The lock turns behind me.

I’m on my feet before the door opens, dragging the camera bag up with one hand and grabbing the folded tripod with the other.

The man who steps inside doesn’t rush. He closes the door behind him and slips the motel key into the pocket of his black leather cut. Very short dark hair. Light stubble over a hard jaw. Tattooed arms thick with muscle, though he isn’t built like some swollen gym freak. Everything about him looks compressed and controlled, as if all that strength has been packed into one purpose.

The patches tell me the rest: KINGDOM COME MC. ENFORCER. TANK.

Harlan sent a biker to clean up his mess.

“Stay back.” I raise the tripod across my body. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “I’ll use this.”

Tank’s gaze moves from the tripod to my face, then down to the camera bag. He doesn’t smile or tell me I won’t. He simply takes one step farther into the room. I swing, but his hand closes around the tripod before it reaches his head. One sharp twist takes it from me without wrenching my shoulder, and he lays it on the dresser rather than using it against me.

That restraint is almost worse than violence. It tells me he never considered me a threat.

“Clay Harlan wants his property returned,” he says.

“That camera is mine.”

“The files from it aren’t.”

“They’re evidence. Harlan murdered a man.”

Nothing changes in his expression, but he heard me. I can tell by the brief tightening around his eyes.

“Harlan says you and Morrow stole records from him,” Tank says. “He says the murder story is part of the squeeze and this is all part of your story.”

“I didn’t know Daniel Morrow. I was hired to photograph the hotel, and Harlan shot him in the ballroom.”

“You can show us, then, can’t you?”

“No. I can show the police, assuming Harlan hasn’t bought them too.”

Tank glances at the broken phone in the trash, my dirty jeans, and the bruise darkening around my wrist. He notices everything without asking about any of it.

Then his attention returns to the laptop, but I move first.

The door is only three confident strides away. I duck past his left side, catch the handle, and get it halfway down before an arm locks around my waist and my back hits his chest.

Heat and solid muscle close around me, one tattooed forearm braced beneath my ribs while his other hand catches mine before I can claw at him. He smells like wet leather and something darkly clean. The awareness hits low and hot, so wrong that fury burns through the fear.

A man has been murdered. I’m being taken by a criminal in a leather cut, and now, of all times, my body notices how strong and muscular he is. Getting turned on by a dangerous biker is very bad timing.