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Thief In The Night
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~ Details ~
~ Outline ~
~ Reviews ~
~ Excerpt ~
~ Also of Interest ~
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Details
EROTIC ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
You can’t steal love…or kill it.
- Finalist, Book of the Year – Romance Reviews Today
This quickie is now available.
Outline
This will be the last night in the life of Delly Alexander. A talented cat thief, Delly cracks one safe too many. The safe belongs to an old enemy, Neal Cadogan, who catches her red-handed, and ties her up while he decides what to do with her.
Neal and Delly were once lovers but the rift that separated them is filled with bitterness. Now, with Delly literally at his mercy, Neal takes his revenge — which swiftly reverts to a night of heated sexual need seasoned by years of lies. It is a sensual power-play with each determined to outsmart the other. And both of them are quick to use sex as a weapon.
But their warped passion is the key that finally unlocks the door on a decade-old conspiracy that will utterly change their lives.
Reviews
Thief In The Night by Tracy Cooper-Posey is a tense, sexy tale of a cat burglar who doesn’t really enjoy what she does, but due to a series of actions ten years ago, is forced like a slave into stealing from others. Unbeknownst to her, Neal is her latest target, but she’s interrupted when he comes home unexpectedly. Delly loses the battle to escape and finds herself tied up. Neal has her at his beck and call. And boy, does he want her to submit! The sex is hot, but never feels forced. The steamy chemistry between Delly and Neal quickly rises in the first few pages of Thief In The Night. Their long night together reveals many secrets and, at the end, a few twists.
Thief In The Night is a hot, sexy and satisfying story readers will enjoy. I highly recommend you grab this one up.
(Nominated for Book of The Year)
Holly Tibbs for Romance Reviews Today Erotic
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I’ve rarely read a short story with as many unexpected and startling twists and turns as this one. I give the author high marks for plotting! The story certainly kept me entertained. The sensuality is quite high, and the characters will awaken the reader’s interest and empathy as well.
Annie Kudzu for eCataRomance Reviews
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Thief in the Night is a wonderful quick story. I read this book in one sitting and would have even if it had been 200 pages instead of 40. I fell for both the main characters from the beginning and was pleasantly surprised by the ending. The author did a spectacular job of not giving away the mystery before its time, while making the reader feel like you had all the information needed. Thief in the Night will make you smile and I highly recommend it.
Tara for Two Lips Reviews
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Thief of the Night is a lovely tale about learning how to trust again and believing in what the heart says.
Katie for Euro-Reviews
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Thief in the Night is a quick, fun romp of lost and found love. With twists and turns that I didn’t see coming, Thief in the Night kept me turning the pages, eager to see what would happen next. What a fun read! I’ll be sure to watch for more from this author.
Jolie for Romance Junkies
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Professional thieves are always fun to read about and this story fulfilled that promise. Delly…was a great action heroine. The twist towards the end was brilliant. The plotting was well-done and the story fast-paced and I look forward to reading more from this author.
Sakura for Just Erotic Romance Reviews
Excerpt
Chapter One
Miami
June 27, 9:38 p.m.
It wasn’t a butterfly landing in Beijing that tripped off the events that ended the life of Delly Alexander. It was a cook preparing a banquet in Miami. The harried cook put too much garlic in the sauce base, which caused Neal Cadogan to leave the awards ceremony abruptly and head for home two hours before he was even remotely expected.
His car blowing a tire on the coast road half a mile from his ocean cliff-side home was part of the same run of incredible bad luck for Delly, even though it didn’t look at all connected. The lads who had intended to rip the Porsche off had been interrupted by Cadogan’s early return to his car. Pissed about losing the tidy profit they’d been counting on, they’d jammed the screwdriver they’d been using on the alarm under the hood into the rear radial instead. They were moving fast. They missed the soft side and hit the tread instead. It was steel belted, so the leak created was a slow one. Cadogan was nearly home before the rim hit the dirt.
He’d glanced at his watch, at the mournful pouch of the flat tire and up at the dark high arch of his living room windows that looked out over the pounding surf. His stomach made up his mind for him. He headed home on foot, sliding through the night like a shadow.
He moved through his dark, silent house, heading straight for the bathroom off his bedroom. There was an old bottle of Gravol there that would calm his stomach nicely. Then he could worry about the car.
Delly’s first introduction to the fatal chain of events happened then. Cadogan threw the bedroom light switches and the room blazed with incandescent light. She had her right arm buried up to the elbow in the small wall safe hidden behind the picture that hung over the bed.
At the first blinding flash of light, she acted instinctively. She dived off the bed, tucked herself into a ball and rolled across the wide expanse of gleaming floorboards. As she slowed, she sprang to her feet and leapt for the sliding door she had opened earlier for just this sort of an emergency.
She didn’t look to see who had walked in the room. Her face was covered, but the instinct was ingrained after so many years. She kept her face averted.
She didn’t slow down either. Whoever it was who had just walked into the room—and the chances were good it was Neal Cadogan—they would have to run around the huge bed in the center if they wanted to catch her. No one was as fast as she when she was hopped up on panicky adrenaline. No one.
But as her fingers grasped the cool metal frame of the sliding door, she was sent flying forward through the air by a rugby tackle. Two big arms wrapped around her waist and hung on as they both slithered across the wooden flooring of the deck. She protected her head and face with her arms. There were metal chairs and a metal and glass table out there somewhere. She had been going to use the table to vault over the sides of the deck on her way down to the ground. If she was smart, she could still do it.
She twisted around in his grip and brought her left elbow down sharp and hard, intending to slam it into the man’s temple. She knew it was a man, he was too quick on his feet for a heavy woman, and he was strong. But the blow to the temple didn’t connect. He rolled quickly onto his back, bringing her with him, and her elbow smashed into the wooden flooring by his ear instead.
She cried out as her entire left arm went instantly numb and tears stung her eyes.
“You are a woman,” he said.
He rolled again so that he was over her. For a moment his weight pinned her hard to the floor, then it shifted and was gone. The arms around her waist picked her up. For a moment she was a limp rag doll, hanging over his arms.
Quickly, she found her feet, used her good right hand to grip the big wrists at her middle for leverage and threw her head backward. With luck, she’d break his nose and he’d be too worried about the pain to keep hold of her…
But he must have felt it coming. Something tipped him off. He shifted, and the back of her head connected with nothing but fresh air. She staggered backward, for he was no longer behind her.
Momentarily, she was free, but before she could react, an iron-hard hand grabbed her forearm and she was jerked forward. Toward the bedroom.
She struggled despite recognizing that no strength she could muster would break the grip on her arm. Struggling was better than meekly allowing him to lead her back into the room. Not struggling would indicate submission. Submission meant defeat. And she had no intention of being defeated. Not in this house. Not on this night of all nights. She had an appointment at eight a.m. and come hell or high water, she would be there.
He had her numb left arm in his grip. When they reached the side of the big, satin-covered bed, he lifted it. She had no strength in her arm at all and the movement made her elbow flare with a shooting, silvery stab of pain that swamped her thoughts. She heard the metallic click through the throbbing in her head and looked up at her wrist. She was handcuffed to the bedpost, her arm up at the same level as her head.
The man stepped back, studying her, his hands on his hips and a small smile touching his mouth.
Neal Cadogan.
She clenched her teeth together to make herself stay silent and tugged experimentally at the handcuffs. There was a little give in them and she studied them carefully. Was there enough give? Could she turn her wrist, slipping them around, twisting the chain between the cuffs to the point where the links would be forced open?
“Good point,” he said softly. “We don’t want you turning them until the links give way, do we?” He strode to the bedside cabinet and delved in the drawer. Delly bit back her reaction, a mix of surprise and dismay that he had read her thoughts so easily.
He pulled out a second set of cuffs and moved around the bed to where she stood at the foot. He reached for her right wrist, which she darted out of the way.
He laughed. It was low and quiet. “You really have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you?” He stepped up close to her, backing her up against the bed, and wrapped his arm around her waist once more, pulling her up against him hard. This time she couldn’t prevent the gasp that escaped her. Even as she gasped, his hand slid down her wrist and the cuff was snapped over it.
He lifted the cuff to the opposite bedpost and Delly fought him every inch of the way. It was her right arm, which hadn’t been injured, and she was strong for a woman. She fought and tried to draw her arm back to her side. He smiled and applied more pressure until the cuff was close enough to slip around the bedpost with a soft, final “snick”.
She was now effectively immobilized. She couldn’t twist her way out of the cuffs with two arms anchored to two different bedposts. He took advantage of her helplessness. He grabbed the back of the hood, ripped it from her head and stepped back to study her.
She shook her hair out of her eyes, her heart sinking. Well, it was done now.
He spread the jacket of his tuxedo and planted his hands on his hips. “Delly Alexander.” He didn’t seem to be surprised at all. His eyes narrowed. “You’ve changed your hair since I saw you last.”
“That was ten years ago, Neal.”
“And your eyes too. You’ve done something to them. They used to be green.”
“Yeah, they used to be,” she said softly.
He nodded his head. It was a small, thoughtful movement. He was wearing a modern tuxedo, but the tie was hanging loose. His black hair swept back from his forehead, showing his widow’s peak. His eyes commanded attention, as always. They were silvery grey and it was hard to look away from them. The first time she had met Neal Cadogan, she had been unable to rid herself of the sensation he could see all the way through her. That he could see all her thoughts. Which meant he understood her completely in a way no one else could.
Unlike hers, his eyes hadn’t changed a bit.
It was Neal who looked away first. He went into the bathroom Delly had inspected briefly before tackling the safe. She heard cupboards opening. Then he reemerged, carrying a pink bottle that he swigged from a couple of times before dropping it onto the coffee table that sat between the sofa and arm chair at the other end of the long room.
He glanced at her, his expression still thoughtful, as he slipped past the coffee table and rummaged in the drawers of the old rolltop desk sitting against the wall beside the big picture window. He straightened and headed back toward the bed. And he had a switchblade in his hand. As he approached her, he hit the button and it sprang open. To Delly, the steel glinted in the subdued light of the room.
“The way I see it,” he said, his voice still soft, still low, “is that I’ve caught you in the middle of a criminal act before you had a chance to actually steal anything. And now I have a choice.” He stopped in front of her. “Do I call the police, or do I let you go?” He weighed the knife in his open hand. “The fact that I know you does add an interesting spin to the question, doesn’t it?”
She kept her mouth shut. Nothing she could say would encourage him to let her go. He was playing with her. Neal Cadogan was not the type of man who would forgive this sort of debt. There was a fine line between his brows that hinted at held-back anger.
Then, suddenly, the anger was right there—open, hot and raging. “Why were you knocking off my house?” he demanded, his fist around the knife. “Why?”
“You’ve got better than five hundred grand in diamonds and currency in your safe.”
He stepped closer. “Why me?”
She managed a shrug. “You’re rich.”
“You knew this was my house.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m a thief, but I’m a good one. I checked it out before I came in.”
“Knowing it was my house didn’t stop you? Didn’t even make you pause?”
She clenched her teeth again. Then, when the compulsion to spit the truth at him had faded, she said carefully, “We knew each other once, ten years ago. There’s nothing from that time that would give me reason to reconsider.”
“You’ve gotten a lot better at that too,” he said.
“What?”
“Lying.”
She looked him square in the eye. It was pure defiance. She was afraid but had no intention of letting him see it. So she lifted her chin and pushed it out. “I’ve become very good at a lot of things you thought I was useless at.”
The hand without the knife grabbed the back of her head and held it still as his lips pressed against hers. It was less a kiss than a physical assault. She could almost feel his anger radiating from him as waves of body heat. His lips seared themselves against hers.
She tasted him. He was sweet and hard and combined with his scent, which drifted around her, heady.
Her response was unplanned, uncalled for. She couldn’t possibly feel any sort of physical need or response for this man she had spent the last decade hating with a passion that verged on mania. But just as he pulled his lips from hers and pushed away like a man staggering from an unexpected blow, she felt her own insides roll over, making her almost dizzy.
Neal brought the back of his hand up against his lips, staring at her. His hand trembled. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do that would get me past the overwhelming need to hit you.” His voice was low.
“That supposed to frighten me?” Her own voice emerged ragged and deeper than usual. Damn. He’d read far too much into that. And what the hell was going on with her? How could she allow herself to react to him in any way at all?
Don’t forget who this man really is, Delly. He led you into slavery.
He was studying her again. Had her low voice tipped him off? Her heart started to beat even harder. She could feel it in her toes, her cheeks. Her temples.
“It was a warning, damn it,” he said, his voice lower still. He was controlling it. And his eyes would not quit studying her, assessing…
Also of Interest
This quickie is now available.
Copyright
© 1999 - 2010 Tracy Cooper-Posey 