“I don’t think I could eat yet,” Sam said, running her hand over her belly.

“Me either,” Nick said. “But thanks anyway.” He glanced at the kitchen where Skip was still engrossed in the immigration bill. “If you could fail to mention to Chief Holland that I’m upstairs, too, that’d be cool. In fact, I’d pay you.”

Celia chuckled and waved them up. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Feeling like a teenager sneaking into his girlfriend’s room—a goal he’d never managed to achieve back then—Nick followed Sam up the stairs.

She closed the bedroom door and pulled off her sweater.

He winced at the ugly purple bruise on her chest. If he hadn’t stopped breathing, he might’ve enjoyed watching her strip. “I agreed to a nap. I didn’t agree to nudity.”

“You want me to sleep, right?”

“Uh huh.”

She wiggled out of her jeans and panties and came at him with intent in her eyes. “I sleep best in the nude.”

He took a step back and encountered wall. “He’s going to know. If a babe like you is my daughter, I’ve got her room bugged to make sure guys like me don’t get in.” Without allowing his eyes to leave her face, he said, “So he’s going to know I’m up here with his daughter—his beautiful, sexy, naked daughter—and he’ll call some of his cop buddies. They’ll drag me into a dark alley to rip the limbs from my body one by one, and then toss what’s left of me in the Potomac.”

Laughing, Sam slipped her hands under his sweater and eased it up and over his head, catching him off guard when she nuzzled his nipple. That’s all it took to make him rock hard.

“With an imagination like that, you should consider a career in fiction.”

He kept his hands limp at his sides. Maybe if he didn’t leave prints on her he’d walk away with his life.

“You really think you can resist me?” she asked, trailing kisses from his jaw to his collarbone as her breasts rubbed against his chest.

“My life depends on it.”

Her lips glided over his chest to his belly. “All that tough talk from before…” She unbuttoned his jeans, pushed them down and sank to her knees in front of him. “I think I’m about to make you my lapdog.”

Sensing where this was going, he tried to escape.

In a move that both startled and stirred him, she pinned him to the wall.

He groaned, his fingers rolling into fists as her hot mouth closed around him. “Sam…please. I thought you liked me.”

“I do,” she said, dragging her tongue in circles that made his head spin. “I really do.”