He expected her to be a man-killer. She should have been. She had the face and the body. She had the voice. She had a soft drawl, barely there, the kind of drawl that reminded him of drifting down the bayou on a lazy summer night with the sky above him dark and a thousand stars shining overhead and a woman, naked in his arms.

She should have had all the confidence in the world. She had confidence when she sparred with any man Malcom put her against, and so far she’d wiped up the floor with them no matter their rank. She was that fast. She had confidence behind the espresso machines and she had every reason to. She had confidence when she walked home at three o’clock in the morning and she shouldn’t.

But she didn’t look at men. She didn’t talk to them. There was no flirting. He’d never seen her flirt with anyone. Not a man or a woman. She was definitely a puzzle, and one he wanted to solve.

He’d deliberately stepped up close to her, crowded her space, to see what she’d do. She hadn’t defended herself. She hadn’t told him to get the hell away from her. She froze. Breathless. Terrified. She’d confused the hell out of him, and that didn’t happen very often. She’d intrigued him, and that happened even less often. She’d also done something insane to his body.

He was a man always in control. Always. Control defined him. He was a man and lived his life as a man. He was tough and liked things his way, and he always got what he wanted. He was single-minded that way. Women, especially man-killers, didn’t do a thing for him. But Catarina . . . The moment her soft body had come up against his, the moment he’d touched bare skin, everything hot and wild and hungry in him responded. He wanted her. And he wanted her for himself. Exclusively. That had never happened before.

He looked down at his arms, at the tattoos he’d acquired so painstakingly over the years. He looked rough and mean. He knew that. It served him well to look that way. He deliberately wore his hair longer than most. He served notice to other men just who he was and what he was capable of. Men got the hell out of his way when he was after something. Especially a woman.